"$0.99/mo doesn't even pay for the time it takes me to type $0.99" | Hacker News Reader

"$0.99/mo doesn't even pay for the time it takes me to type $0.99"

unixy.net

37 pointsjamiekc25 comments

It forces you to have a domain name if you want to sign up. You can bring your own, or sign up through them... But the blank is www._________.___ so you are pretty limited by it.

Still, I'm considering getting a new domain just to play with it.

Edit: I can't bring myself to put a credit card number in. Too many things scream 'scam' to me. It probably isn't, but I just can't be sure.

It works for me and paying with PayPal should protect against fraud.

You don't actually need a domain. I signed up with one with I control but I have not transferred it to them yet. They provided an IP I can log in to.

I haven't done anything to push it but it hums along fine. The latency is a bit high but I'm logging in from the Netherlands so YMMV.

You can find far better, "usable" cheap VPS deals at http://www.lowendbox.com

"Folks keep asking the question: what is in it for us (UNIXY or even VPS Tree)? ...know that a 64MB VPS can go a long way in getting someone across the world full of hope."

Seriously? They're trying to spin this as saving the world with cheap VPS? That's pretty gross. They'd be much, much better off just transparently saying "We're doing this as a loss-leading marketing initiative to spread the word about our services."

THAT I would buy. This VPS, not so much.

Personally, I agree that selfish reasons seem more honest. But VPS companies have just as much of a (admittedly pretty weak) claim to wanting to change the world as social networking companies.

BuyVM already offers a VPS for $15/year that has 128MB RAM with 15GB storage and 500GB bandwidth. That's only $0.25 more per month, and it works as a VPN server for those that want to watch Hulu outside the U.S.

I'm not affiliated with them. I just learned about their deals a few days ago and was intrigued.

The pricing is very intriguing (considering how low it is) but the website is so poorly designed I'd be scared to signup. Does anybody actually use these guys? They don't even talk about datacenters or location but their parent company has a canadian domain.

http://buyvm.net/

Can anyone else verify that BuyVM is a good/reliable service? I am planning to get one.

There's a short and sweet review from lowendbox claiming that everything is legit:

http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/buyvm-5-95-openvz-vps-with-512...

They appear to be "out of stock" of $15/year plan

Actually, all but the middle plan seem to be "out of stock".

"Refresh this page a couple of times if the above link fails to load the first time." - This gives me great confidence and I can't wait to give them my credit card number.

Well he does say it is -not- for production use and only for learning/etc.

Even if it's not for production usage, if that warning comes with a page, I'm not gonna enter my credit card details into it. Who knows what's happening them.

I think they're using some kind of REFERER magic to link the 99 page to vpstree.com (so only people that go through that link get to sign up). Or just use paypal if you don't want your CC info logged.

Also: the included disk/bandwidth vary in the text and the example screenshot.

I couldn't resist, so I got one to dink around with. Hell, I spend more than $12/week on power drinks, so if I can abstain for a week, I will have paid for a year's worth of service. :)

I'll have to refresh my familiarity with Debian to get the most out of it (such as how to fix apt-get from bombing with "404 Not Found" errors), but it looks like a nice minimal setup. I'm a little irked by the fact that anything other than SSH is running by default (the infamous "It works!" Apache page is up and running, for instance).

I prefer FreeBSD myself, and I have a $20/month VPS at rootbsd.net (great company, btw). I need to see if there are any really tiny FreeBSD VPS services out there now.

I can hear the skeptics: WTF good is a VPS w/ 5GB drive space, 20GB monthly bandwidth, and 64MB of RAM?!?

A few things come to mind: 1) secondary MX server for catching mail when the main MX is down for maintenance; 2) backup NS server; 3) a machine for crawling the web, to feed back data to a back-end DB on a beefier server (might be relevant for a personal project); 4) fallback "woops! our web site is down!" web server to point the WWW load balancer at when the main servers are down for whatever reason. And my favorite: It's 99-cents, why the hell not?!?

I thought it looked a bit too suspicious for me, but following the other commenters' links I found this: http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/vpstree-99-cents-64mb-openvz-v... At least there's a handful of people there that claims to have tried it out.

Seems kinda silly that after that lecture, they claim to offer 8GB disk space and 50GB bandwidth. Why not make it something more practical and believable for 99 cents? Many companies keep it unrealistic because that's the pitch. But since you're already talking about being real, how about not sending mixed signals?

They are a bit misleading with the space/bandwidth. The front page presents a screen shot of a sign-up page indicating 8GB disk space and 50GB bandwidth, but in reality the actual plan they're offering is 5GB disk space and 20GB transfer.

I got one, because why not? And they take Paypal, so there's no risk.

Any suggestions on interesting long-running processes to start and forget about on something like this? Bandwidth is capped and there's very little local storage.

Can't be used for IRC. I can't think of any use for these limited resources yet.

Also does anybody know a "cheap" VPS that would let me run IRC bots. There are some channels i read, and would like to log them.

I'm using a local company for low latency, but it also happenes to have great prices: www.intovps.com

Been with them for a year now... not perfect, but very good.

The reason I posted this here is to discuss the intention of this offer. I was hoping to hear what others have to say on this.

if they can keep support costs down, they just might be making reasonable money on the deal. This is pretty close what I charge for my larger accounts (I mean, proportionally. I charge a $4/month per-account fee, then $1/month for every 64MiB of ram) but with my abuse/support costs, removing that $4/month surcharge would kill me. But I can see how someone with better automation and/or lower helpdesk/abuse costs than I have could pull it off.

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