

Chunk Host Offering Free Hosting - jtanderson
https://www.chunkhost.com/

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ddeck
Seems like a pretty deceptive company. They display the following during the
signup process:

"We'll disable signups that don't seem to be a real person, have few friends,
or are obviously underage"

I didn't realize there was a minimum age to use a VPS. It also seems that
unpopular people with too few friends don't qualify as VPS users.

After I signed up and they had my info (public profile, friends list), I
received:

"Sadly, we are at capacity at the moment, but we're fixing that ASAP!"

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gexla
On the one hand, it seems strange that a hosting provider would be giving out
free VPS accounts. This seems like it would be the last act of a dying hosting
provider.

On the other hand, this is probably not much different than what Heroku gives
away. In fact, Heroku probably gives away a lot more resources (considering
that AFAIK you can create as many free tier apps as you like.)

Perhaps this will be the opening shot in a new trend which started with the
PAAS providers. Provide free low tier space and make money off the bigger
fish.

Personally, I would rather not share my space with freeloaders unless that
space is tightly restricted. If the providers are being squeezed on their
margins from competition, then I would rather those low margins be spread
equally through all plans with no free tier (which I suppose is what Amazon
does, they are regularly dropping their prices but nothing is free except for
the trial.)

Free hosting isn't enough to move me away from DigitalOcean, especially given
the SSD storage.

~~~
windexh8er
That was my initial reaction; free hosting to get switchers as a last ditch
effort? No thanks, I'd rather pay a small sum to support a good product.

I had tried these guys last year when they were doing a different 'free'
promo. For whatever reason I was unimpressed and had never gone back after the
one instance. Not that they're bad, but I don't remember them being memorable
over the well-knowns of the VPS market.

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ryandvm
Hmm. Here's what they say about the free tier:

    
    
      Free as long as you use it! 
    
      If your chunk is inactive for a while we'll hibernate 
      it and keep it in case you come back!
    

I wonder what constitues "inactive". No SSH login? No network traffic? It
doesn't say in the FAQ.

Still, very interesting...

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shuzchen
I remember some time ago when chunk host first launched. They advertised that
the service was "free during beta", when what they really meant was "free beta
test" (more accurately: "free 30 day trial"). Since that blatant act of false
advertisement I've never spoken well of this company to people looking for
hosting. I don't expect they'll be any less scuzzy with this current deal.

~~~
jal278
Yep, it feel scuzzy to me when they wait till after I've authorized their
facebook app to have access to my friend list and profile before letting me
know that the deal is now off.

Thanks for signing up!

Sadly, we are at capacity at the moment, but we're fixing that ASAP!

Your pal, ChunkHost

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bchar
Also requires a Facebook account, so I guess it sucks to be me.

~~~
coherentpony
I hear you.

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pwnna
I frequently get my chunk disabled because "inactive".

The I/O is complete garbage. `ls` frequently takes a long time... I've seen
I/Os ranging from 100kb/s to 5MB/s

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gluxon
I can't even sign up. Just get "Facebook returned an error" and shuts me off.

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krzysz00
Is the signup failing with "Facebook returned an error:" for anyone else?

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ky3
Thanks everyone! The clear signal is: Run for the hills!

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p1mrx
Their IPv6 support looks iffy: <http://wiki.chunkhost.com/ipv6>

