Thoughts on servers.com?

[SeanLMG]

Hey guys,

 

Servers.com (https://www.servers.com/) has reached out about working with us. Has anyone ever heard of these guys, or had any experience utilizing their dedicated or cloud servers? We're finding positive reviews online, but not a lot of user comments and we want to ensure they're valid ahead of pursuing this opportunity.

[ebprince the computer nerd]

I have heard of them, but has never had any experience with them. They seem pretty trustworthy, but I would recommend to maybe just use them for like a week to test it out. It’s best to try out products/software before sponsoring them. (Also new employee, so congrats!)

[williamcll]

Why not ask for a sample server and run some benchmarks then compare it to other mainstream server hosting like AWS?

[kirashi]

5 hours ago, SeanW_ said:

Hey guys,

 

Servers.com (https://www.servers.com/) has reached out about working with us. Has anyone ever heard of these guys, or had any experience utilizing their dedicated or cloud servers? We're finding positive reviews online, but not a lot of user comments and we want to ensure they're valid ahead of pursuing this opportunity.

A quick search over on https://www.webhostingtalk.com/ doesn't yield many results, save for one user who claims they host email spammers. Any hosting provider is susceptible to this if they allow emails to be sent from their servers / IP address ranges, so I'd take that person's review with a bucket of salt. That being said, a lack of reviews on one of the older webhosting / server review sites isn't necessarily a bad thing, so as @williamcllsaid: I'd want to have them provide some freebies that LMG (most likely Jake or Anthony) can put through their paces before taking them on as a sponsor.  

[SeanLMG]

Thanks all! We'll definitely try them out, but part of the problem with being LTT is we can sometimes get preferential treatment when it comes to products/services and customer service. Always good to touch base with the audience and see how their experience has been, especially if they've had any negative interactions. Appreciate the feedback! 

[wall03]

1 hour ago, SeanW_ said:

we can sometimes get preferential treatment when it comes to products/services and customer service.

I would just buy their service for a week without telling them and seeing how it goes.

[mariushm]

I also never heard of them.... They seem to have the money to buy the domain, probably paid tens of thousands of dollars for it if not more. 

 

The website seems a bit sketchy to me... too much business crap and marketing text, less actually technical stuff... and they seem oriented more towards businesses and not regular home users and people who watch LinusTechTips (they brag about carriers and datacenter standards and things home users won't care about)

 

Can't even customize orders (or go through process to check it out and see what options they have) without having to sign up for an account, and I can't be bothered to do it.

 

Also, just randomly checked the About us, contact details ... see http://servers.com/about-us/about-servers-com

They claim it's US company  : " We were founded in 2014 by a group of hosting industry veterans. We're headquartered in Dallas, Texas."  yet the page has no US address.

They have addresses in Singapore, Cyprus, Russia, and UK ... and looking at Google Maps for the UK address, it's probably a PO Box or some small office there without any employees. 

 

So based on this, for me they would be way more sketchy than let's say derbauer's company, hetzner  (and they're ok company)

 

 

[darknessblade]

From what i could find it might not be a good partner.

-----------

With my mean reason being that they charge at least 90+$ a month for a Outdated system

----------

A  dell r220 with a Intel E3-1231v3 and 32GB of ram for 90+$ a month

 

Not forgetting just to view customization options you Must have a account. which is a RED flag in my opinion.

-----------

with the average 2nd hand price [on ebay] going for such a system being around 240$

Customers, or viewers who want a server or get into server management, are better off buying a 2nd hand system.

 

In my opinion they must have some really stellar service to justify the price for such a system.

 

 

[N0ps32]

They seem to be pretty expensive but maybe that's due to them being US based idk. They offer a Server for 109€ with a worse CPU and half the RAM you would get at Hetzner for 88€. And that's as far as I can tell without drives in them? Their VPS are also pretty expensive.

[GhostRoadieBL]

If they add a Canadian carrier I would be happier about them sponsoring. It's not something I could find a use for but they seem well established and stable.

[darknessblade]

3 hours ago, James Evens said:

Looking at there OpenStack pricing it seems like they are aiming for AWS level of pricing which isn't the best idea if your website contains marketing speech like this in the paragraph about network connectivity:

 

 

Also not entirely sure what they are aiming at with the cloud storage:

Cloudflare R2 is $0.015/GB.

Backblaze is $0.005/GB storage and $0.01/GB traffic.

HOLY-F i didn't even notice those cloud storage prices, those are outright Illegal.

 

Why would anyone even pay that much, when you can get the actual hardware for much cheaper.

especially as you pay double. both for traffic and for storage.

 

Even in Europe where Data-caps are non existent on local wired internet, why would you willingly choose a company that charges for every single GB you transfer, to and from the server.

 

Even a Reputable "local" cloud storage/webhosting company, charges 2TB for about 10 euro a month, without any traffic limits/cost.

{this company both serves consumers and companies in need of storage/webhosting}

[N0ps32]

2 hours ago, darknessblade said:

Why would anyone even pay that much, when you can get the actual hardware for much cheaper.

 

To be fair that is never a good argument with hosting providers. They provide more value than just the hardware costs, e.g: Secure facility with likely 24/7 on staff security, Backup battery and Generators, Electricity, Dedicated fiber links to other locations and they have to have staff to run everything which is very expensive. 

 

And with cloud storage especially you are also paying for the flexibility and API access you get with it. But I agree that in this case the prices are ridiculous especially since you can get cheaper offers from reputable companies. 

 

Quote

Even in Europe where Data-caps are non existent on local wired internet, why would you willingly choose a company that charges for every single GB you transfer, to and from the server

 

That's only for residential ISP traffic. It's only "unlimited" because the ISPs know that most people aren't gonna use multiple terabytes of traffic a month and they can balance out the heavy users with your average grandma who pays way too much. I have never seen a bigger server provider that offers truly unlimited traffic or if they do it's limited to 100Mbit/s. Traffic does legitimately cost money so charging for it is fine if it's reasonable and not the ludicrous prices they are charging. 

[Sorachan]

Knowing the hosting industry, small companies come and go so fast and so quick it's radiculous to deploy anything critical on these servers. Usually these small hosting providers gain market share through super cheap virtual servers, oversell virtualised servers as much as possible without any SLA to ensure profitability, but they are cheap so many people are willing to risk it for non-critical applications.

 

But this one is expensive, so they probably try to promote themselves by spending heavily on sponsorship, I'm not saying they definitely don't have good SLA, or they will definitely be gone by any day, but since nobody heard them, even in places like webhostingtalk, lowendtalk etc, I hope they will survive long enough.

 

The barrier of entrance is way too low in this industry...

[SeanLMG]

Hey guys, thanks for all the feedback. With what's been mentioned, we think there are better hosting partners to align ourselves with. Locking the thread now.