
Linode Reduces Transfer Pricing (Incoming Data is now Free) - martey
http://blog.linode.com/2011/09/01/linode-reduces-transfer-pricing/
======
ghshephard
Realize, of course, that "Free" usually means, "We'll let you use a lot for
free, until you use too much, at which point we'll either (A) Rate Limit you,
(B) Have a conversation about why you are abusing the Free Incoming
ALlocation, (C) Charge you for your excessive incoming data (D) Suggest you
take your business elsewhere.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and it's inaccurate of Linode to
suggest they can provide unlimited free inbound data.

The statement "This means you can upload an unlimited amount of data to your
Linode without having to pay for any of the incoming data transfer." will not
stand for all of their customers - the vast majority, yes, but don't create a
business on the belief that you can do unlimited uploads into your linode VPS
at full speed. You won't be able to in the long run.

I would have preferred they provide wildly generous inbound allocations (First
5 Terabytes inbound is free, or something like that) than make a claim they
can't stand behind.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I'm a service provider, and we have similar "unlimited" offers, and I see
where you're coming from. For us, there's the problem that many of our
customers have no idea whether "5GB" or "10GB" or what-have-you is enough for
them. We're willing to offer enough capacity that we're betting that they
won't ever have a problem with it, and the shorthand for that is "unlimited".
We're also gambling that if we do have one or a few customers that abuse the
unlimitedness to such an extent that we have to talk to them about it, that we
can have a reasonable conversation with them.

I think reasonableness is a big part of claims like this. Would a reasonable
person expect to be able to download the internet into Linode? I don't think
so, even though they're saying that it's unlimited.

If someone can think of a better way to tell most customers "don't worry about
resources" without annoying a select few, I'm all ears.

~~~
ghshephard
It's pretty straightforward - find a high-water mark for customers in terms of
their inbound data, that 99.9% fall under, say, for linode, 99.9% of their
customers pull in less than 16 megabits/second sustained, which is 7.2
Gigabytes/Hour, 5 Terabytes/Month.

And then explain to your customers that 99.9% of them use less than 5
Terabytes/Month bandwidth, and that effective now, the first 5 Terabytes/month
of bandwidth is included in the cost of their VPS, and for those 0.1% of
customer who exceed that 5 Terabytes, they'll get a very reasonable rate of
$0.01/gigabyte ($10/Terabyte) for inbound data in excess of the 5 Terabyte
initial allocation.

Realize that linode is probably paying less than $4/megabit @ 95th percentile
- but the vast majority of that is likely downloaded, so they have an
asymmetric allocation that they are trying to utilize with this "unlimited
inbound" offer.

I just want the HN audience, in particular, to realize that the statement
""This means you can upload an unlimited amount of data to your Linode without
having to pay for any of the incoming data transfer."" should not be taken at
face value if you are putting together a business plan.

In general - bandwidth is priced @95th percentile on the internet, and any
time you run into the phrase "unlimited" you should take it with a grain of
salt and get something in writing before you rely on it.

~~~
chc
I'm not sure that will work — it certainly doesn't seem to be solving the
problem that thaumaturgy brought up. Although it spells out a concrete limit,
it does not give any kind of assurance that it's (probably) enough. Lots of
companies use that kind of language to make a plan sound reasonable when it
isn't. For example, I don't tether or anything and don't watch a lot of video,
but I'm still way above the tiny data plan that AT&T says is enough for 95% of
its customers. Like, are we counting customers who don't even have
smartphones?

I'd rather just "unlimited (note: OK, you can't actually download the whole
Internet)" or something like that if you want to get really picky. It conveys
the right message while still providing needed information to slower readers.

~~~
marshray
Ask yourself: "Is it possible that my customers might perceive my business as
resembling AT&T?"

If so, change your behavior!

------
ryan-allen
This must be in response to Rackspace Cloud offering free incoming data due to
their forced migration of Slicehost's customers.

Rackspace Cloud has a bit of a different audience to Slicehost's existing
customers (I'm one of them).

If I were in Linode's position, I'd be offering migration coupons to existing
Slicehost customers as an incentive to move to them instead. It's an
opportunity wide open.

The way Slicehost has been communicating with their customers recently
regarding the forced migration has been enough incentive. It's almost like
Rackspace don't want the business the way they've been conducting themselves.

~~~
wiredfool
I've got a slicehost machine out there, and their communication with the
cutover to rackspace has been awful. I'm still not sure if it's going to be
mostly transparent, needs dns coordination, or if I'm going to have to rebuild
my vm on the cloudwhatever. To be fair, it's not a common configuration
(debian lenny/32bit,384mb), but everything I see just makes me think that it's
going to be more of a pain than I want to have to deal with.

Linode looks good, are there any red flags to worry about?

~~~
dillona
> Linode looks good, are there any red flags to worry about?

Not that I can think of. Linode is pretty great if you can deal with the lack
of disk space

------
Karunamon
I don't see what's so hard about unlimited meaning unlimited. Australia has
the right idea here. If you advertise no limits, and then attempt to enforce
limits, you rightfully deserve the smackdown you'd get.

Moral of the story: Don't say you can provide something you can't.

------
losvedir
This is great! I've been using my Linode as a VPN for when I'm working in
coffee shops, so I'm very happy that half of my traffic is not counted any
longer.

------
krrose27
I swear another cloud provider did this recently..

Oooh yeah. AWS did back in July. [http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-
new/2011/06/30/aws-ann...](http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-
new/2011/06/30/aws-announces-new-data-transfer-pricing/)

~~~
tkhoven
Rackspace's July update for Slicehost customers to the same effect:
[http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=5210...](http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=5210&page=5#Item_1)

In particular: _Under the Rackspace Cloud program you will not have to pay for
incoming bandwidth._

------
mike-cardwell
I know a place that does unlimited bandwidth. You're limited to 10Mbit/sec
throughput though, so your theoretical maximum usage per month is only a
little over 3TB.

How much throughput does a Linode server get?

------
Briney
I've been using Linode for over a year, and I must say their service is the
best I've seen. Their customer support is also off the charts brilliant. I
think this is truly wonderful.

------
riobard
I think the more important news for many is that the overage for outbound
traffic is the save price as pre-paid plan, so you could lower your plan (e.g.
going from Linode 1024 with 400GB to Linode 512 with 200GB). Serving static
pages shouldn't cost much memory and processing power anyway.

------
cheald
Wow, Linode just handed me a pile of money. Thanks, Linode! :D

------
chintan
We recently moved to Linode from AWS (after the recent AWScalypse)

However, the problem we currently face with linode is that the Disk spaces are
puny and "attaching" additional storage is very costly as compared to AWS.
There is no reduced pricing for Yearly contract either.

Love their sub-minute support times. Can't beat dat!

~~~
mlacitation
Prepaying for a year saves you 10%, prepaying for 2 years saves 15. If you
already have an account, just open a ticket and you'll have the discount in
minutes.

~~~
latch
And, even if you prepay, you can still cancel and get a full refund. Even if
you know you'll only use the server for 1 month, prepaying for 2 years is a
smart move!

~~~
sobbybutter
Keep in mind that if you prepay for 2 years, use the server, and cancel before
the 2 years ends, you're refunded the amount paid minus the normal monthly
charge times the number of months you used the service. The discount gets
wiped away, at least it did for me.

~~~
RyanKearney
But if you ask for a refund after a few months then it's not like you were
going to use the full 1 or 2 years anyway, so what do you have to lose!

------
rhizome
Cloudy hosting competition seems to be heating up, with this and Heroku's PG
move.

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jdelsman
This will allow us to provide more real-time data to users without having to
worry about going over our limit. Thanks, Linode!

------
tsycho
Reminds me of <http://www.supersimplestorageservice.com/>

:)

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api
Linode's weak spot is storage. Their offerings are pretty pathetic.

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tszming
Now it is possible to use Linode as a Poor Man's CDN.

~~~
StavrosK
How? Outgoing data still costs money...

