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  1. #1

    Low Budget VPS: What is sacrificed for the cost?

    I am considering BurstNET that seem to have quite a few good reviews here, but I am a bit confused by the low price.

    How can they keep the prices so low? The low price comes at the expense of what? Are they on par with Servint, WiredTree, etc ?

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by mkassets View Post
    I am considering BurstNET that seem to have quite a few good reviews here, but I am a bit confused by the low price.

    How can they keep the prices so low?
    We have been in business 20 years, one of the oldest hosting companies in the industry.

    We can sell this low, because we can leverage existing infrastructure to do so.
    We also own our own network, servers, and facility/building (in our main market).
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  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by mkassets View Post
    I am considering BurstNET that seem to have quite a few good reviews here, but I am a bit confused by the low price.

    How can they keep the prices so low? The low price comes at the expense of what? Are they on par with Servint, WiredTree, etc ?
    The main difference is in support.
    Most budget providers adopt a 'DIY' approach (they only handle network/hardware issues). Response times are also typically slower.

    Provided you are an apt server admin or are willing to spend time troubleshooting, budget VPSes are often very cost effective.

  4. #4
    Well, you'll find some budget providers utilize below server grade hardware to lower costs, which will result in higher failure rates of hardware.

    You'll find some are running non-optimal server configurations, no RAID10, weak processors, etc.

    You'll find some lack in the support department.

    You'll find that some are here today, gone tomorrow.

    You'll find that some have heavily oversold services/networks.

    Etc.

    One or all of these is usually common of most budget providers. Most will have to make cuts in quality of service somewhere in order to turn a profit.

    NOTE: This is about the budget server industry as a whole. Clearly Burst.NET has been around for quite a time, and i'm not commenting on their services because I don't think i've ever used them. But MOST budget providers will/have to make cuts somewhere in order to turn a profit. It's usually much easier and cheaper to manage a smaller number of high paying clients as opposed to a large number of low paying ones.
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  5. #5
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    I don't care what people say. Something, somewhere is sacrificed - hardware, network, support, overselling. Otherwise they wouldn't be budget providers, they would be premium providers.
    Hosting is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

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    Quote Originally Posted by TheJoker View Post
    I don't care what people say. Something, somewhere is sacrificed - hardware, network, support, overselling. Otherwise they wouldn't be budget providers, they would be premium providers.
    Not exactly. If your strategy is to compete with advantage of lower cost and scale of operation you can offer good services at budget prices.
    You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough

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    I'm not sure if sacrifice is the right choice of words in this. If a host says 'I will offer you this with all of these features for $x.yz' and that's what you accept, then the only 'loss' would be if they don't deliver on what they promised or later revoke things (IP's, support, space, cpu's, etc).

    There are many very high priced servers that come unmanaged and they have 'average' support response times and they're on pretty 'normal' equipment. Linode, while a fantastic provider, has slower RAID's in many of their nodes (namely their Fremont stuff) than what many budget providers 1/4 of their cost have.

    When you're looking for things sacrificed look into what the host offers and see if they actually come through with it. There is at least a few VPS providers around here that try to roll with the big boys with promises/claims of having all of these bandwidth providers when they really only have 1 of the 4 listed.

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    Unmanaged budget providers might offer some close to top end gear, but little in the area of support, as that will always be the largest expense month to month overall. The better the support department, the high the costs will be for both the provider and the client. If you are capable of managing your VPS, and the provider is capable of running their network, you've found a good match.
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  9. #9
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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_triangle

    Fast, cheap, reliable.. pick two

    Every provider will make different *decisions* to meet their target market. Decisions can be a compromise on any service metric which they do to balance with the other areas of their service. Nobody can be everything to everybody. It's hard, or futile, to speculate on the specifics since we generally aren't privy to the details of each individual operation?

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vazapi-Curtis View Post
    Well, you'll find some budget providers utilize below server grade hardware to lower costs, which will result in higher failure rates of hardware.

    You'll find some are running non-optimal server configurations, no RAID10, weak processors, etc.

    You'll find some lack in the support department.

    You'll find that some are here today, gone tomorrow.

    You'll find that some have heavily oversold services/networks.

    Etc.

    One or all of these is usually common of most budget providers. Most will have to make cuts in quality of service somewhere in order to turn a profit.

    NOTE: This is about the budget server industry as a whole. Clearly Burst.NET has been around for quite a time, and i'm not commenting on their services because I don't think i've ever used them. But MOST budget providers will/have to make cuts somewhere in order to turn a profit. It's usually much easier and cheaper to manage a smaller number of high paying clients as opposed to a large number of low paying ones.


    I agree with this in most cases, but I can only comment on our own operations regarding this not being the case actually (and yes I know you were not giving us a hard time...just explaining for the record to others.).

    Most of our nodes that have gone into production in the past year are NOT weak systems, they are Dual E5620 Quad Core systems with RAID10 (Mostly Dell)...high end systems.

    Our support dept is NOT lacking, when compared to other budget providers. Most other budget providers are non-managed/unmanaged, where we deem our self basic-managed, where we will assist on most things when requested to (reactive as opposed to proactive managed support).

    Obviously we are not going anywhere, after 20 years in business

    Our nodes and our network are NOT heavily oversold. We are using a minute fraction of our network capacity overall currently...probably 25% or less of the capacity we have overall. We use the same network gear as many "premium" listed providers in the industry. The truth is, our network and the premium providers' networks probably have far less differences that they would like you to believe. We have a name for ourselves as a budget provider, so we can;t really market premium services, but with a few minor changes to how we operate, we could easily claim to be such. Slap a premium label on and charge 2-3x the price is the game plan of many premium labeled providers, regardless of the service levels the really provide.

    Our nodes are not that heavily oversold, and I would venture to say compared to some other providers we probably are no where near as oversold. The key here is we manage our nodes well, and take action when we see one overloaded, and remove the cause of such. It is a shared service, so there will always be occurrences of one client affecting the rest on a node, regardless of whether oversold or not, the key here is to remedy it as soon as you find out.


    I cannot speak for any other providers, but we are probably the rarity in these issues able to do this right long term, as we are able to leverage our existing infrastructure (network, staff, contracts, facility, purchasing power, etc...) to make it work, which many of our competitors don't have the luxury of doing.
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  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by mkassets View Post
    How can they keep the prices so low? The low price comes at the expense of what?
    Oversold like the black hole of Calcutta, like a swarm of bees inside..
    Using servers like they're Doctor Who's Tardis, on the outside it might look small but insiiide..ide..ide like a huge warehouse full of merry travellers..and cheap support that might as well speak alien

    (Not aimed at burstvps, but stack em high openvz'rs in general)

  12. #12
    It is simple answer if you dealt before with budget VPS.

    The VPS is not only BASIC MANAGEMENT/UNMANAGED, but you are actually have to do EVERYTHING, that is the usual, and anything more varies, and even withing same company from time to time (I mean if they helped you during first days, don't expect them to do it all the time, it is more a volunteer work, only if they want (or know how to!!!) they will give a hand, hosts themselves look at it this way).

    There isn't any sort of management at all. The host only work at keeping the node stable and up, sometimes may fail too at even this (if they have too many nodes!, or out of careless).

    A lot of budget VPS providers are just one man companies! Most of them doesn't seem to have more than 2 in the team, he/they will have to do everything from A to Z, and the word 'everything' includes usually a huge amount of different tasks under it, from sales to small details of server management, maintenance and upgrades. Some budget companies tends to use FAKE NAMES as support or staff, to give an impression that there are 10 people or something, under the support/company, wherein in reality it's still one man.


    That is the main thing sacrificed, without any mention here of inevitable lowered level of service, like performance and uptime. But sometimes, however, performance can be compared to managed! But this usually needs a LOT of trying, research in places like WHT, ask clients, and even experiencing different budget providers by yourself. So again some trouble.

    Also, taking backups is at least 10x more important to do when you use budget providers for two reasons:

    1- 99.9% of budget plans doesn't include any sort of backup, and providers don't take any part of having such thing to VPSs.
    2- At the same time lot of budget providers can stop or disappear, this is inevitable "more", even though it is not limited to budget providers.
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  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by RavC View Post
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_triangle

    Fast, cheap, reliable.. pick two
    For the VPS world, I think the triangle is more like "good, big, cheap" (pick any two).

    Where "big" refers to resource allocation (RAM, CPU, diskspace, transfer, etc.) and "good" refers to the performance and overall quality of service.

    It is certainly possible to have a "good and cheap" VPS -- with limited resources, e.g., 128MB RAM and a few GBs of storage.

    But if you want "big", e.g., a GB or more of RAM and 50 GB storage, you're not going to get it "good and cheap"

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Violetli View Post
    It is simple answer if you dealt before with budget VPS.

    The VPS is not only BASIC MANAGEMENT/UNMANAGED, but you are actually have to do EVERYTHING, that is the usual, and anything more varies, and even withing same company from time to time (I mean if they helped you during first days, don't expect them to do it all the time, it is more a volunteer work, only if they want (or know how to!!!) they will give a hand, hosts themselves look at it this way).

    There isn't any sort of management at all. The host only work at keeping the node stable and up, sometimes may fail too at even this (if they have too many nodes!, or out of careless).

    A lot of budget VPS providers are just one man companies! Most of them doesn't seem to have more than 2 in the team, he/they will have to do everything from A to Z, and the word 'everything' includes usually a huge amount of different tasks under it, from sales to small details of server management, maintenance and upgrades. Some budget companies tends to use FAKE NAMES as support or staff, to give an impression that there are 10 people or something, under the support/company, wherein in reality it's still one man.


    That is the main thing sacrificed, without any mention here of inevitable lowered level of service, like performance and uptime. But sometimes, however, performance can be compared to managed! But this usually needs a LOT of trying, research in places like WHT, ask clients, and even experiencing different budget providers by yourself. So again some trouble.

    Also, taking backups is at least 10x more important to do when you use budget providers for two reasons:

    1- 99.9% of budget plans doesn't include any sort of backup, and providers don't take any part of having such thing to VPSs.
    2- At the same time lot of budget providers can stop or disappear, this is inevitable "more", even though it is not limited to budget providers.
    * Addition

    3- Of course, data loss out of hardware failure, which is also more inevitable seeing many budget VPS doesn't have protection on HDD, which reduce performance and keep data in high risk all the time.
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  15. #15
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    Well most of the cheap providers are unmanaged and offer little support. Thats a easy way to cut costs. I think that the risk in hitting a really crappy host is bigger in the budget space, but good providers do exist in the budget space. So, it depends a lot on what you need.

    I have hosted my personal stuff on a budget VPS since 2004 and have been happy. Its not mission critical stuff so I can survive a bit of downtime, but the uptime has actually been suprisingly good and the little support I have needed been above my expectations.

  16. #16
    I did actually signed for BurstNET services few days ago, and it didn't take me too long to regret it. I will post the details in a separate thread once my dispute with BurstNET is resolved (or once I give up), but meanwhile I suggest you check I/O sync times on your BurstNET VPS. ("time sync" from shell). Or simply run UnixBench and see how long it takes to complete (yes, not the final score, but how long it takes to complete). Especially, if you have other VPS to compare.

    I still hope they will resolve it or refund my order, but at this point it looks like neither will happen.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by mkassets View Post
    I still hope they will resolve it or refund my order, but at this point it looks like neither will happen.
    If you filed a paypal dispute, all work on any issue you have basically stops (And rightfully so). Can you please PM me your ticket number and I can look into your issue?

  18. #18
    BurstNET,

    Are you kidding me, I PM'ed you my ticket yesterday and you already replied.

    An no, I haven't filed a paypal dispute, I am still trying to resolve it with Shawn

    mkassets

  19. #19
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    I'm not BurstNET. I'm BurstNET_CSM. Two different people. I do not see any PM from you in my inbox. Did you use a different username? or did you PM BurstNET?

    Also, you used the term dispute, so I automatically thought "Paypal". Sorry.

  20. #20
    Oh, sorry, I guess I PM'ed BustNET yesterday. PM'ing you my ticket number. Thanks.

  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheJoker View Post
    I don't care what people say. Something, somewhere is sacrificed - hardware, network, support, overselling. Otherwise they wouldn't be budget providers, they would be premium providers.
    That is a generalization, and is frankly incorrect with many. I'll give you an example...

    We make a TON of money in the SEO VPS, Class C/IP market. Especially with the current IPv4 situation. We can do this because we have access to an insane amount of IP space. So I have a couple of different ways I can advertise if I want to attract new customers. I could spend it on AdWords at $5-15 per click. I could buy some banner ads ($500-3000.00 a month/week), that most experienced surfers do not even see (simply by being desensitized), or you can build fake blogs to hype your company, or...... you can take that same money and subsidize low cost plans.

    So essentially, you are taking your advertising budget, and instead of absolutely wasting it on things that get you little return on your investment. You run insane promotions that get you a HUGE turn out. It's called creative marketing. Something those who are business savy would understand. You get a better return on the investment in running promotions like this, and attracting a lot of sign ups. Even if it is break even enterprise. Why? Because most of those who are quality clients will upgrade over time. Plus it gets you a lot of free publicity.

    That said, not all companies can afford to do this. Additionally, many companies can't handle an influx of hundreds of orders. So your support team needs to be PRIMED for such an occasion. Otherwise that can turn on you fairly quick. Lastly, you need to make sure you have a solid FRAUD CHECK system in place. These plans will attract a ton of cheapskates and fraudsters. So you need to be able to weed them out.

    All in all, there are many misconceptions about the how's and why's of these plans, and how their done in the first place. I do not expect everyone to understand how they are financed. But it's clear that many who have the funding to run them, and do, are making money on the gamble. Otherwise, companies would not offer them.

    That said, it comes down to your business model.

    If you have the infrastructure and money to run them.... like in Burst's (among many others) case from this thread. They can attract a ton of customers in a short period of time. Your support simply needs to keep up with the demand. If you do not have the staff in place to handle it, or you do not want to attract a bunch of break even clients... Then you are like many other web hosting companies.... trying to make $50-100 per server. Providing superior support and getting by on less customers, more margin. For many, this is the way they prefer it.

    Regardless, those who say there is no money in these offers simply do not grasp the concept of business and how it's done. The costs versus the benefits. How to get the most money out of your ad budget, among the other intangibles. Hosting is not the only place you see this type of thing. That said, it's a concept many simply refuse, or are incapable, of understanding.
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  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Barefootsies View Post
    We make a TON of money in the SEO VPS, Class C/IP market.

    <snip><snip><snip>

    These plans will attract a ton of cheapskates and fraudsters. So you need to be able to weed them out.
    Why would you want to weed out your target market?
    Last edited by Mike Johnson; 04-24-2011 at 03:58 PM.

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