7 ms·

Interesting business model ---------- Experts Host Sites Here for $1/month Do you like paying extra so other people can ask amateur questions? That's how it

Interesting business model ---------- Experts Host Sites Here for $1/month Do you like paying extra so other people can ask amateur questions? That's how it is at other hosting companies where beginners and experts pay the same price. Beginners drive up the cost by asking a lot of novice support questions while the experts don't contact support. That is great for amateurs, and unfair to the experts like you. No Support Linux Hosting has a completely different business model. We ignore the support questions, and pass the savings on to you! If you are an expert who does not want to pay extra for help with amateur support issues, then you can host with us and save big money. Experts like you can sign up now for free. We charge $1/month per website, and there is no limit to the number of websites you can host in your account. This is the best deal in the web hosting industry, as long as you are the type of person who can find his or her own answers. ----------- From https://web.archive.org/web/20201109042643/https://www.nosupportlinuxhosting.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201109042643/https://www.nosup... I guess they took savings from security too.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago
What you get for $1/month > Each website in your account can use up to 1GB of disk space and 30GB of monthly bandwidth. These resource limits are enough for most normal websites. Each website can set up 3 databases and 25 email accounts. The server specs are here https://web.archive.org/web/20200618180933/http://www.nosupportlinuxhosting.com/ServerSpecs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200618180933/http://www.nosupp...
- generationP 6y ago
  > 30GB of monthly bandwidth. These resource limits are enough for most normal websites Unless you have a griefer with a broadband connection and half an hour of time I guess?
  - Aachen 6y ago
    Yes, but how often does that really happen? I've known of this possibility since I was a teen, and sometimes it happened on fairly popular sites back when unlimited bandwidth was very expensive, but it was rare back then and I haven't heard of this actually happening to any site in the last decade. I'm sure you can find examples online, but it's way more common to get a proper DDoS than to get this kind of attack.
    - toast0 6y ago
      At my last job, we would get casually DDoSeD from time to time. One of the ones I remember was a wordpress pingback reflection to a large file. Not too hard to handle (pingback is dumb and needs to die in a fire, but at least wordpress sets user-agent), but used a ton of bandwidth until sorted it out.
    - Jach 6y ago
      You'd think it'd be more common given how many sites are on EC2 and how expensive Amazon's egress is, but nonetheless, I never hear billing horror stories from that vector.
    - LinuxBender 6y ago
      This was a common prank on mobile browsers using 30+GB favicon.ico files. I am not even sure that was ever truly fixed in all the browsers, might be a good thing to test. The browsers would continue to download the favicon in the background even if you left the page. People that were roaming would get their cellphone accounts suspended. Providers reacted by putting roaming limits in place, but it still caused grief for people.
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    CDNs are the only sites that have ever saturated my broadband or fiber connections. Accessing 'mere mortal' web sites is way slower. Block out the whole day on your calendar.
    - generationP 6y ago
      OK, true -- I guess you can slow it down Zeno-style per IP if you set it up correctly.
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    Well, to protect from that you need to pay more than $1 of hosting or put up a free CDN in front of it.
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
NearlyFreeSpeech, where I have been hosting my static personal site for 9 years has a similar model. You pay for exactly the resources you use. I pay less than $20/year. If you need support, you pay $5/month extra. https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/support https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/support
- pas 6y ago
  How come support is not pay-as-you-go based on time?
  - corty 6y ago
    I guess for small shops, a steady stream of income to pay a support person's salary is more important than the benefits of hourly billing like fairness and possible higher income.
  - l-lousy 6y ago
    “Why did it take you so long to answer my question” , “I just wanted a quick answer why are you charging me for 20 minutes of support”. Human time spent on support is not as cut and dry as hosting resources used, so I imagine it’s easier to not have that discussion. Also 5$ would be like 15 mins of any qualified persons time, so really you’re not paying much.
    - Zenst 6y ago
      >Also 5$ would be like 15 mins of any qualified persons time, so really you’re not paying much. Be less minutes than that I dare say. $20 an hour tech costs, then you have overheads and that's without a profit margin. I'd say 5 mins be more closer to the mark. Really gets down to how many support calls you have as if you have a couple admins who have to dip into a support queue, then their hourly rate would be higher. However if you have a nice frontline 1st line support pool with 2nd and 3rd for escalation model/scale then it will get cheaper. That all said you have to factor in how much support they use and maybe your average user will need one or two tickets a year and then at the other end you the types who fail to read FAQ's and end up needing more support to use their computer, let alone the service and blur the lines contacting you for an issue that after some back and forth turns out to be the user's end. Those will be costly. So you balance things out - and go with the average and yet at the same time, dread some types of customers.
tyingq 6y ago
The Cpanel licenses would take 30 cents/month out of that $1 too.
bluedino 6y ago
Reminds me of the old prgmr.com: An easy to understand price schedule: $4/month per account, and $1/month for every 64MiB ram. Please note; this means all plans come with $4/month worth of support.
- pera 6y ago
  I know but I believe they should rephrase that: I have been using their VPSs for ten years and they have the best customers support I have ever dealt with :)
- alanpost 6y ago
  Prgmr.com owner here. While that copy is old, and our pricing reflects the hardware we run on today, the quip has now been updated to: "You get $5/month of support," which is the price of the smallest package we offer. That wisecrack aside, the reality of the support we provide is more in-line with our byline: "We do not assume you are stupid." In practice, and with a hat tip to pera replying to you here, that means we provide what you might call peer support--we explain what's going on, what steps are necessary to correct it, and take responsibility when we caused the issue. And expect similar candor. As you might expect, most of the technical support we provide is routine--with sufficient information communicated to both parties the problem is typically straightforward to resolve. But we treat tickets on their merit and customer reports do come in that admit more substantive investigation and resolution: the LAN of 16 Million Hosts: https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/07/17/classful-networking.html https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/07/17/classful-networking.html Possible Data Corruption on Debian Buster: https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/07/15/debian-buster.html https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/07/15/debian-buster.html Debugging freebsd.org Resolution Failure: https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/04/23/debugging-freebsd-resolution-failure.html https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/04/23/debugging-freebsd-resoluti... The people you talk to when you write us have the authority to investigate and--if correctable on our end--resolve your problem.
IgorPartola 6y ago
For those interested in this kind of thing, there are two fun resources I would recommend. First, LowEndBox (https://lowendbox.com/ https://lowendbox.com/) which documents where you can get VPS hosting for as little as $1/month or even cheaper in some instances. Second, Super Dimensional Fortress (http://sdf.org/ http://sdf.org/) where for a $1 you can get lifetime low level hosting and for $25 you can get access to a much beefier server. A community of old school *nix nerds comes as a bonus.
- dannyw 6y ago
  Just watch out: lots of the low end box providers end up shutting down, and may take your servers and data with it. I now stick to reputable “value” providers like BuyVM. Having an operator I can discord and get frank answers, as well as a commitment to privacy (Tor exit nodes welcomed), is nice.
  - devwastaken 6y ago
    I remember their employees in their politics chat being angry conspiracy theorists and being entirely unreasonable similar to q conspirators. There's no problem with disagreement in politics but there's a line of general reasoning skills that bleeds into their actions. I don't trust those people having access to someone's server/data, especially if they are quote "liberal" or "progressive"
  - klodolph 6y ago
    This is one of the reasons why business negotiation books will remind you that when you’re making a deal with a vendor, you want to make a deal that is profitable for the vendor and supports / sustains their business. If you don’t, then you’ll have to find a new vendor after they collapse (or get rid of you as a client). For personal hosting I think one of the problems that makes this more complicated is that even as a group, you’re nobody’s biggest customer. You’re just a side business for someone selling hosting B2B, usually. I know that the local grocery store will make sure that they can still sell to local customers, because that’s the core of their business; I’m not so sure that cloud providers care much about my dinky website.
  - 6y ago
richardfey 6y ago
If they appreciate what an "expert" is, they surely could hire one in security.
achairapart 6y ago
Also, no one noticed how funny is that they actually used Microsoft servers/tech for their own website (At least I presume by seeing urls ending in .aspx[0]) while offering "Linux Hosting"? [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190608074736/https://www.nosupportlinuxhosting.com/Admin/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fAdmin%2fDefault.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20190608074736/https://www.nosup...
- intrasight 6y ago
  These days it would be a presumption since .net is well-supported on Linux
  - tekknik 6y ago
    A lot of people, myself included, would throw in fake extensions to throw off the script kiddies. It seemed like everybody wanted to be one at some point and throwing up an ASPX extension on a php powered site made the scans stand out that much more. Plus it funny :)
    - achairapart 6y ago
      Oh, now this makes me want to use /cgi-bin/signup.pl for my next webapp.
fukmbas 6y ago
Honestly just sounds like a bullshit way to not provide support for your product.
- kstrauser 6y ago
  I love that model when done well. Others have mentioned NearlyFreeSpeech.net web hosting. What they provide to me: a place to upload my static web pages to, period. What I ask from them: serve these web pages I've uploaded, period. I don't want or need support for any of that. If something breaks on my part, I can and will diagnose and fix it. If something breaks on their end and they need to fix it, then that's a bug report and not a support request. In exchange for that, their prices are dirt cheap and perfect for the things I need it for. I couldn't possibly host it myself for the prices they charge me. I think that's a good example of there the business model makes a huge amount of sense for all involved.
kall 6y ago
If that kind of thing is appealing to anyone, check out uberspace.de. It’s the best possible version of shared hosting and it can even cost 1€ too (you should pay more though). Unlike this thing they are both super friendly to all manner of linux nerd stuff yet provide excellent, gracious support where they teach you the stuff you don’t know.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

What you get for $1/month > Each website in your account can use up to 1GB of disk space and 30GB of monthly bandwidth. These resource limits are enough for most normal websites. Each website can set up 3 databases and 25 email accounts. The server specs are here https://web.archive.org/web/20200618180933/http://www.nosupportlinuxhosting.com/ServerSpecs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200618180933/http://www.nosupp...

generationP 6y ago
> 30GB of monthly bandwidth. These resource limits are enough for most normal websites Unless you have a griefer with a broadband connection and half an hour of time I guess?
- Aachen 6y ago
  Yes, but how often does that really happen? I've known of this possibility since I was a teen, and sometimes it happened on fairly popular sites back when unlimited bandwidth was very expensive, but it was rare back then and I haven't heard of this actually happening to any site in the last decade. I'm sure you can find examples online, but it's way more common to get a proper DDoS than to get this kind of attack.
  - toast0 6y ago
    At my last job, we would get casually DDoSeD from time to time. One of the ones I remember was a wordpress pingback reflection to a large file. Not too hard to handle (pingback is dumb and needs to die in a fire, but at least wordpress sets user-agent), but used a ton of bandwidth until sorted it out.
  - Jach 6y ago
    You'd think it'd be more common given how many sites are on EC2 and how expensive Amazon's egress is, but nonetheless, I never hear billing horror stories from that vector.
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
    This was a common prank on mobile browsers using 30+GB favicon.ico files. I am not even sure that was ever truly fixed in all the browsers, might be a good thing to test. The browsers would continue to download the favicon in the background even if you left the page. People that were roaming would get their cellphone accounts suspended. Providers reacted by putting roaming limits in place, but it still caused grief for people.
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  CDNs are the only sites that have ever saturated my broadband or fiber connections. Accessing 'mere mortal' web sites is way slower. Block out the whole day on your calendar.
  - generationP 6y ago
    OK, true -- I guess you can slow it down Zeno-style per IP if you set it up correctly.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Well, to protect from that you need to pay more than $1 of hosting or put up a free CDN in front of it.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

NearlyFreeSpeech, where I have been hosting my static personal site for 9 years has a similar model. You pay for exactly the resources you use. I pay less than $20/year. If you need support, you pay $5/month extra. https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/support https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/support

pas 6y ago
How come support is not pay-as-you-go based on time?
- corty 6y ago
  I guess for small shops, a steady stream of income to pay a support person's salary is more important than the benefits of hourly billing like fairness and possible higher income.
- l-lousy 6y ago
  “Why did it take you so long to answer my question” , “I just wanted a quick answer why are you charging me for 20 minutes of support”. Human time spent on support is not as cut and dry as hosting resources used, so I imagine it’s easier to not have that discussion. Also 5$ would be like 15 mins of any qualified persons time, so really you’re not paying much.
  - Zenst 6y ago
    >Also 5$ would be like 15 mins of any qualified persons time, so really you’re not paying much. Be less minutes than that I dare say. $20 an hour tech costs, then you have overheads and that's without a profit margin. I'd say 5 mins be more closer to the mark. Really gets down to how many support calls you have as if you have a couple admins who have to dip into a support queue, then their hourly rate would be higher. However if you have a nice frontline 1st line support pool with 2nd and 3rd for escalation model/scale then it will get cheaper. That all said you have to factor in how much support they use and maybe your average user will need one or two tickets a year and then at the other end you the types who fail to read FAQ's and end up needing more support to use their computer, let alone the service and blur the lines contacting you for an issue that after some back and forth turns out to be the user's end. Those will be costly. So you balance things out - and go with the average and yet at the same time, dread some types of customers.

tyingq 6y ago

The Cpanel licenses would take 30 cents/month out of that $1 too.

bluedino 6y ago

Reminds me of the old prgmr.com: An easy to understand price schedule: $4/month per account, and $1/month for every 64MiB ram. Please note; this means all plans come with $4/month worth of support.

pera 6y ago
I know but I believe they should rephrase that: I have been using their VPSs for ten years and they have the best customers support I have ever dealt with :)
alanpost 6y ago
Prgmr.com owner here. While that copy is old, and our pricing reflects the hardware we run on today, the quip has now been updated to: "You get $5/month of support," which is the price of the smallest package we offer. That wisecrack aside, the reality of the support we provide is more in-line with our byline: "We do not assume you are stupid." In practice, and with a hat tip to pera replying to you here, that means we provide what you might call peer support--we explain what's going on, what steps are necessary to correct it, and take responsibility when we caused the issue. And expect similar candor. As you might expect, most of the technical support we provide is routine--with sufficient information communicated to both parties the problem is typically straightforward to resolve. But we treat tickets on their merit and customer reports do come in that admit more substantive investigation and resolution: the LAN of 16 Million Hosts: https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/07/17/classful-networking.html https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/07/17/classful-networking.html Possible Data Corruption on Debian Buster: https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/07/15/debian-buster.html https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/07/15/debian-buster.html Debugging freebsd.org Resolution Failure: https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/04/23/debugging-freebsd-resolution-failure.html https://prgmr.com/blog/2020/04/23/debugging-freebsd-resoluti... The people you talk to when you write us have the authority to investigate and--if correctable on our end--resolve your problem.

IgorPartola 6y ago

For those interested in this kind of thing, there are two fun resources I would recommend. First, LowEndBox (https://lowendbox.com/ https://lowendbox.com/) which documents where you can get VPS hosting for as little as $1/month or even cheaper in some instances. Second, Super Dimensional Fortress (http://sdf.org/ http://sdf.org/) where for a $1 you can get lifetime low level hosting and for $25 you can get access to a much beefier server. A community of old school *nix nerds comes as a bonus.

dannyw 6y ago
Just watch out: lots of the low end box providers end up shutting down, and may take your servers and data with it. I now stick to reputable “value” providers like BuyVM. Having an operator I can discord and get frank answers, as well as a commitment to privacy (Tor exit nodes welcomed), is nice.
- devwastaken 6y ago
  I remember their employees in their politics chat being angry conspiracy theorists and being entirely unreasonable similar to q conspirators. There's no problem with disagreement in politics but there's a line of general reasoning skills that bleeds into their actions. I don't trust those people having access to someone's server/data, especially if they are quote "liberal" or "progressive"
- klodolph 6y ago
  This is one of the reasons why business negotiation books will remind you that when you’re making a deal with a vendor, you want to make a deal that is profitable for the vendor and supports / sustains their business. If you don’t, then you’ll have to find a new vendor after they collapse (or get rid of you as a client). For personal hosting I think one of the problems that makes this more complicated is that even as a group, you’re nobody’s biggest customer. You’re just a side business for someone selling hosting B2B, usually. I know that the local grocery store will make sure that they can still sell to local customers, because that’s the core of their business; I’m not so sure that cloud providers care much about my dinky website.
- 6y ago

richardfey 6y ago

If they appreciate what an "expert" is, they surely could hire one in security.

achairapart 6y ago

Also, no one noticed how funny is that they actually used Microsoft servers/tech for their own website (At least I presume by seeing urls ending in .aspx[0]) while offering "Linux Hosting"? [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190608074736/https://www.nosupportlinuxhosting.com/Admin/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fAdmin%2fDefault.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20190608074736/https://www.nosup...

intrasight 6y ago
These days it would be a presumption since .net is well-supported on Linux
- tekknik 6y ago
  A lot of people, myself included, would throw in fake extensions to throw off the script kiddies. It seemed like everybody wanted to be one at some point and throwing up an ASPX extension on a php powered site made the scans stand out that much more. Plus it funny :)
  - achairapart 6y ago
    Oh, now this makes me want to use /cgi-bin/signup.pl for my next webapp.

fukmbas 6y ago

Honestly just sounds like a bullshit way to not provide support for your product.

kstrauser 6y ago
I love that model when done well. Others have mentioned NearlyFreeSpeech.net web hosting. What they provide to me: a place to upload my static web pages to, period. What I ask from them: serve these web pages I've uploaded, period. I don't want or need support for any of that. If something breaks on my part, I can and will diagnose and fix it. If something breaks on their end and they need to fix it, then that's a bug report and not a support request. In exchange for that, their prices are dirt cheap and perfect for the things I need it for. I couldn't possibly host it myself for the prices they charge me. I think that's a good example of there the business model makes a huge amount of sense for all involved.

kall 6y ago

If that kind of thing is appealing to anyone, check out uberspace.de. It’s the best possible version of shared hosting and it can even cost 1€ too (you should pay more though). Unlike this thing they are both super friendly to all manner of linux nerd stuff yet provide excellent, gracious support where they teach you the stuff you don’t know.