Chunk Host Offering Free Hosting | Hacker News Reader

Chunk Host Offering Free Hosting

chunkhost.com

15 pointsjtanderson13 comments

Seems like a pretty deceptive company. They display the following during the signup process:

"We'll disable signups that don't seem to be a real person, have few friends, or are obviously underage"

I didn't realize there was a minimum age to use a VPS. It also seems that unpopular people with too few friends don't qualify as VPS users.

After I signed up and they had my info (public profile, friends list), I received:

"Sadly, we are at capacity at the moment, but we're fixing that ASAP!"

On the one hand, it seems strange that a hosting provider would be giving out free VPS accounts. This seems like it would be the last act of a dying hosting provider.

On the other hand, this is probably not much different than what Heroku gives away. In fact, Heroku probably gives away a lot more resources (considering that AFAIK you can create as many free tier apps as you like.)

Perhaps this will be the opening shot in a new trend which started with the PAAS providers. Provide free low tier space and make money off the bigger fish.

Personally, I would rather not share my space with freeloaders unless that space is tightly restricted. If the providers are being squeezed on their margins from competition, then I would rather those low margins be spread equally through all plans with no free tier (which I suppose is what Amazon does, they are regularly dropping their prices but nothing is free except for the trial.)

Free hosting isn't enough to move me away from DigitalOcean, especially given the SSD storage.

That was my initial reaction; free hosting to get switchers as a last ditch effort? No thanks, I'd rather pay a small sum to support a good product.

I had tried these guys last year when they were doing a different 'free' promo. For whatever reason I was unimpressed and had never gone back after the one instance. Not that they're bad, but I don't remember them being memorable over the well-knowns of the VPS market.

Hmm. Here's what they say about the free tier:

  Free as long as you use it! 

  If your chunk is inactive for a while we'll hibernate 
  it and keep it in case you come back!

I wonder what constitues "inactive". No SSH login? No network traffic? It doesn't say in the FAQ.

Still, very interesting...

I remember some time ago when chunk host first launched. They advertised that the service was "free during beta", when what they really meant was "free beta test" (more accurately: "free 30 day trial"). Since that blatant act of false advertisement I've never spoken well of this company to people looking for hosting. I don't expect they'll be any less scuzzy with this current deal.

Yep, it feel scuzzy to me when they wait till after I've authorized their facebook app to have access to my friend list and profile before letting me know that the deal is now off.

Thanks for signing up!

Sadly, we are at capacity at the moment, but we're fixing that ASAP!

Your pal, ChunkHost

Also requires a Facebook account, so I guess it sucks to be me.

I hear you.

I frequently get my chunk disabled because "inactive".

The I/O is complete garbage. `ls` frequently takes a long time... I've seen I/Os ranging from 100kb/s to 5MB/s