ChunkHost offering free xen vps for beta testers | Hacker News Reader

ChunkHost offering free xen vps for beta testers

chunkhost.com

8 pointschunkhost16 comments

ChunkHost is a new Xen VPS web host and they're offering 512MB ubuntu xen instances with 20GB disk and 200GB bw for free (normally $19/month) to beta testers for a limited time.

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Hey everybody, thanks for all the great feedback so far!

I just wanted to reply to the issues brought up so far.. I'm sorry about the $1.10 charge! We didn't think that'd actually show up on your statement because we only do an auth (not a capture), and then void it right away! Nevertheless, it's been changed to only be $0.01 now!

rsayers, your email bounced back to us because our server name sending the email wasn't fully qualified. we'll get that fixed up and re-send you that email!

We'll also fix up the billing page to correctly reflect the free beta status! Plus allow you to remove your credit card info.

We'll add more documentation/screenshots of the management page/faq-type stuff as soon as possible!

I believe we've fixed up the signup error a few people got now too!

Thanks again for trying it out and please let us know any other questions, comments, or requests you have! And please tell a friend!

Thanks, Joe Jones

Little disconcerting that they plaster 'you will not be billed' all over and then you see a charge on your card from them. It's only $1.10, and obviously just a verification charge, but still a bit frustrating.

Also, the billing screen on their site says:

  Your next monthly bill will be charged on June 4, 2009 for $10.00

  You will be rebilled using your Visa ending in XXXX

Other info: The out of band they give you is AjaxTerm. DNS control is pretty basic. Aside from that you get reboot and delete functions.

I signed up a few minutes ago, have yet to receive my email with the root passwd.

Looks like it comes with Ubuntu 8.04 and no option to change it.

I have 2 linodes currently, I plan to run some benchmarks vs Chunkhost to see how it stacks up.

(1) I attempted to sign-up

(2) Was met with some obscure error and a failure to authenticate my card

(3) Clicked on "feedback" to report the issue with GetSatisfaction (which is awful, by the way)

(4) GS Double posted my issue

(5) I clicked "Delete" on GS to remove the duplicate...

(6) ...which didn't work in the browser I was using

(7) Finally deleted it in Camino.

So much fail :(

Is this site legit?

For potential beta testers: It might be a good idea to hold off on registering until we hear back from Chunkhost on the status of their service.

Every thing worked OK for me when I signed up aside from what I mentioned in my other comment.

I don't like the credit card info required but if they can offer 512 for 20 bucks a month they will have an up on some companies. Someone will have to report back if they try it.

You folks have a nicely designed site, and it's cool to offer such a nice deal to the beta users.

But.

Even though it's beta/free for now, it would be great if you had a screenshot of your admin panel, and some specs about the system. (Aside from RAM we're not told about the Linux distro, file system size, bandwidth before we hand over our credit card info?!)

Other than that, site looks very nice, and I wish you luck and hope to check your service out.

I'd be a little concerned about the potential for spam/abuse if I were them...

Where's the value add? Do we need yet another VPS host?

Yes. We need as much competition as possible to drive down prices and improve service/capabilities.

I'm still waiting for my $10/mo 256meg/10gig xen slice.

this may interest you: http://prgmr.com/xen/ as well as: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=590993

I saw that. it seemed just a little too sketchy for me. I'll probably sign up for mosso at some point. I'm just lazy, and running down my dotmac account now (yes you read me. iphone address/mail/ical sync is sublime)

(Just a heads up) Last time I checked, Mosso did not have shell access. As for prgmr, the admin of the service (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lsc) is a regular, friendly, very forthcoming participant on Hacker News who freely admits their website could use some work :D

I'm not a customer or affiliated with prgmr, but I'm definitely going to check them out.

I'm on prgmr. Been there since December or so, and had no issues with it whatsoever. Ridiculously cheap for what I'm getting, too... $8 for 256 MB is unreal.

Unfortunately, I am skeptical of brand new hosting companies whose only differentiator is that they are cheaper. I always wonder if they are really cheaper or if they are simply cutting more corners than the other guys.

BTW, Mosso is $10.95/month for 256MB not including bandwidth.

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