
Show HN: I recently launched a new cloud hosting company - jasondecastro
https://ramgrid.com
======
condescendence
Since other people have ripped apart your site already I'll focus on the good.
I like the marketing towards dev teams, I've been thinking about this for
sometime. B2B industries are strong and provide secure streams of money.

I started a virtual server service in the past and of course marketed it as
such, unfortunately they're a dime a dozen. Your marketing approach might be
the edge you need. The $49/month plan ain't bad either, I might grab that just
for myself ^-^

One thing to focus on, I think, is to explain what we'd be getting for a CPU,
I use Virtual Servers/Machines for everything..even have a few servers at my
house for my development needs. Some are old and still usable, while some are
razor sharp off the shelf stacked with the latest Xeon's. What I'm getting at
is that I don't really care what's in the thing, but I'd like to know what I
can run on it efficiently.

For example I buy the $49/12GB package. Do I get more CPU's if I split it up
into 6x2GB vs 12x1GB? Or is that a flat rate item of 1vCPU per machine?

~~~
detaro
In general, how does the splitting thing work? I guess I buy 12 GB RAM + some
storage and then can create virtual machines using it up piecemeal?

If so, I quite like that model: It's not overpriced and splitting everything
up into individual VPS is useful, esp. if it comes with an API. A single 12 GB
VPS is cheaper, but getting 12 1-GB VPS would probably be more expensive, at
least at a provider with an API.

------
ewindisch
Running a hosting business is hard work, I did it for over 10 years. It's
under-appreciated, users complain about everything, nobody wants to trust you,
and many of the customers you do remain want to bleed your support dry. Some
of the most successful hosting companies have succeeded by eliminating SLAs
and making support hard to reach. Others such as Rackspace make support easy
to get, but make sure the customers pay for the privilege. All of the problems
with trying to start a hosting company are clear from the responses here.

One of the problems in this space is that it's a mature market. Developers are
accustomed to Amazon, Digital Ocean, Linode, Azure, and GCE. These are mature
products and yes, users are skeptical of new entrants that don't do as much,
don't have a complete product, or even have put effort into their website. For
HackerNews, it's ironic, but clearly this audience is expecting a mature
product not a lean approach. (Self-provisioning while now industry-standard
requires a significant effort to prevent fraud & abuse, and slow-provisioning
is completely in-line with Lean methodologies)

So, some advice:

* Don't give up just because of the bad feedback. Iterate!

* Focusing on devs is probably wrong if you don't have a plan to leverage individual sales to enterprise sales. Individuals pay less and you need more of them. More customers usually equals more support, they're more fickle, and less likely to be retained. Perhaps surprisingly, they're also traditionally seasonal, with dev-based buy-in being strongest during summer.

* Find a hook. Something you do better, or different. For my hosting company, it was virtual servers for only $6/mo, when at the time the lowest priced alternative was $20/mo. We adopted an architecture that allowed us to radically compete on price. It doesn't have to be price, and honestly, it's better that it's not. Also make sure the hook is understood by the market, one of my company's problems was that our low price had us compared to shared hosting or container-based solutions, because virtual servers at that price was too unbelievable.

* Hack trust. Some people here mention trust. Now, I think this is over-valued. People put data with companies they really don't know much about all the time. At some point, nobody knew who Dropbox, Docker, or Digital Ocean were. If, however, this proves to be a problem - and it could be in the current surveillance state - then look at ways to hack trust. For instance, a service such as AWS Lambda has a different threat (and trust) model than EC2, based solely on how developers use these products. If you stick with VM-based hosting, then develop partnerships, get reference customers, bring on staff that the community already knows, loves, and trusts.

Good luck!

------
hardwaresofton
Just a note to the makers of ramgrid -- while many of these comments may be
harsh, it is probably not in your best interest to respond in
anger/defensively.

This page is a trove of feedback from potential users of your product.

I personally chose a cloud hosting company called INIZ (that I'm extremely
happy with) based on comments and a mention on HN -- just trying to let you
know, this is your crowd, and they're angry/confused about your site. Find a
way to fix it.

~~~
beachstartup
just another note.

i'm in the infrastructure business.

people are incredibly, incredibly cynical about infrastructure, because there
are so many bad hosting companies out there. even the good ones are bad.

also, people expect top tier services for free or close to free. you can thank
amazon for that.

your #1 challenge will be to overcome trust issues.

~~~
iheartmemcache
Bunnie Huang had a really interesting take on the evolution of the markets. It
was just a 30 second quip, a mere nugget falling from the ingot which was the
lecture. This won't do it justice but to paraphrase him he basically said
(w/r/t Shenzhen where effectively every retailer is selling a commodity,
eventually they bottom out in price-competition) - the way that merchants
differentiate themselves is via being "the guy" who can provide services in a
reliable fashion. He goes to the same guy every time to pick up his 10k spools
of resistors to throw into the pick'n'place even if its a few cents more on
the bottom-line to the BOM[1] because he has developed a relationship and
reputation with those vendors. I've had some catastrophic failures with
Rackspace but even with proof of concepts with one tiny 400/mo box[0] they
spent easily 12-15 hours with high-level engineers to help resolve some pretty
obscure WAS stuff. I'm pretty sure they ended up bringing in software guys to
help, or those Rackspace IT guys had some of the most in-depth _and_ wide-
range knowledge I've only seen in people like Brad Fitzpatrick[2]. They really
went above and beyond - which is why I don't mind paying 4x what an OVH box
might cost.

There are so many shitty engineers, shitty lawyers, shitty automotive
mechanics, doctors and hosts out there that your market differentiation can
literally be phrased in a sentence: "Be just a little bit more competent &
reliable than your lazy competition". I'm not the smartest guy, but being
dependable to your customers is certainly worth paying the premium.[3]

[0] I've got a lot of equipment with them so I'd expect that kind of treatment
if I was operating under my own account but this was off a brand-new account
where a speculator bought an energies trading platform from a distressed
company. His IT partner didn't have much WebSphere experience so he brought me
in, gave me the company card and asked me to get it to work

[1] Even the high priced merchants in Shenzhen are significantly cheaper than
what we get at Digi-key and Mouser :(

[2] In that, you'd be very hard pressed to find an engineer who can code "high
level Perl" (it was as high level as web-apps went during the LiveJournal
days), could write Memcached, could write kernel patches for network drivers,
do UI (though things were admittedly far more simple then), all the while
taking care of the physical IT ops (see: Coders at Work, for a fantastic
account)

[3] And any client you have who doesn't recognize this, you should choose to
fire as soon as possible. They don't see the value in the services you deliver
and you surely aren't being compensated appropriately.

------
al2o3cr
Marketing page copy: "Unlimited 1GB servers"

FAQ when signed in: "Each plan has a maximum capacity for the amount of
servers its allowed to create. Due to the significant amount of dedicated
resources we provide, we can't literally give you unlimited servers. However,
you could upgrade your plan whenever you'd like."

So your marketing page is LITERALLY a lie. Good job.

~~~
destroyer998
When you click the refund link in the footer, you are presented with a page
not found error:
[https://ramgrid.com/legal/refunds](https://ramgrid.com/legal/refunds)

Is this supposed to be scam or a joke?

~~~
smt88
Edit: I take it back. It seems to be serious and not just a test. I found the
creator's LinkedIn.[1]

Previous comment: _Probably a landing page to test a concept before the
concept is developed. It 's done frequently, but this person has done it
rather sloppily._

1\.
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondecastro](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondecastro)

~~~
USNetizen
From a self-written description of his previous project:

 _" I know what you're thinking. FkPaying is a brand new way to watch movies,
download books, and download music. I built out a really nice website that's
very intuitive and user friendly. Yeah... if you're reading this, the website
might have been taken down by the FBI. It was a good run, folks. I hope I
don't get taken to jail for this."_

Yeah, seems proud of being taken down by the FBI. I'm not really comfortable
with people that take such pride in pushing the limits of the law and it
doesn't bode well for the reputation of this current venture.

~~~
RIMR
Wow, really? I might need to report my card "lost" so that I can get a new
number. Stripe protects that information from the vendor, right?

Though I doubt this kid is going to try to be that brazen, especially since he
is using his real name to do this (assuming this isn't a fake identity).

Might request a new number just in case. I really don't trust this asshole
anymore.

~~~
smt88
I wouldn't be too hasty to call him an asshole. Based on his LinkedIn, I think
he's just a kid without any work experience and, consequently, without much
understanding of professionalism. "FuckPaying" seem to be not that different
from one of us wanting to start some kind of Napster when we were young, and I
think a lot of grown HN users are probably PopcornTime users...

~~~
USNetizen
He's an "assistant instructor" at at least one school/program, and others.
This isn't a "kid" if he's teaching other people.

We can't and shouldn't blame potential fraud on simple "youth" for someone who
is obviously of an age that he is teaching other people to do these things.

------
jlgaddis
There's a lot of information missing from your page that I'd want to know
before even considering becoming a customer...

Where is/are your datacenter(s)?

What virtualization technologies are in use?

What type of hardware is in the physical hosts?

What operating systems are supported?

Minor complaint: clicking "Enterprise" or "Education" in the footer opens up a
new mail message. That's not what I wanted nor what I expected.

~~~
cbuq
And if you don't have a mailto: program, the "Enterprise" and "Education"
links do nothing.

To add to your suspicions, the website layout is exactly the same as one of
the new bootstrap v4.0 themes, and is just as vague about it's product.
([http://themes.getbootstrap.com/products/marketing](http://themes.getbootstrap.com/products/marketing))

~~~
jlgaddis
> _... the website layout is exactly the same as one of the new bootstrap v4.0
> themes ..._

Wow. Yeah, that's bad.

~~~
coreyoconnor
Why is this bad? Is there a licensing issue?

Otherwise, re-using a known layout will not play into my purchasing decisions.

~~~
frik
It's a carbon copy!

Even the pricing $9, $45 and $119 are the same and the footer text is the same
too.

" _We’ve been working on Go Analytics for the better part of a decade and are
super proud of what we’ve created. If you’d like to learn more, or are
interested in a job, contact us anytime at themes@getbootstrap.com._ "

" _We’ve been working on RamGrid for the better part of the last couple of
years and are super proud of what we’ve created. If you’d like to learn more,
or are interested in a job, contact us anytime at business@ramgrid.com._ "

Is this some kind of MVP to test the water? Probably not, and just a silly
joke...

------
jakejake
This appears to be a half-functioning project by an inexperienced but
enthusiastic young person that has gotten way more attention and been taken
more seriously than he imagined.

I can see myself having done something like this when I was 13 or 14, meaning
well and just wanting to be involved in a startup. But I think he used a
bootstrap template that made the page and product look just good enough that
people here are giving it a serious evaluation as a hosting business. It is
clearly not ready for serious use, but it is an interesting lesson about how
wide open tech is for anyone to come along and create a business.

~~~
RIMR
Good assessment. As someone who paid for the personal plan, and watched it
implode from the inside, I get the exact impression you do.

The problem was the number of mistakes made:

* Offering the support line as a "literal" replacement for emergency services.

* Including a racial slur in a 503 page.

* Falsely advertising the number of servers you can create as "Unlimited", when the limit is actually 2.

* Use of a generic bootstrap theme with minimal modification.

* 404'd refund and legal pages.

* Not established as a LLC.

* No way to manage billing profiles (in violation of Stripe TOS)

* Broken and untested remix of Ubuntu Server.

* No account management portal - You can't change or reset your password at all.

* Advertised as a finished product for use by businesses, when it appears to have barely been tested in-house.

This is how you lose your business, and then get sued into bankruptcy. This
kid should be happy he just lost a couple thousand dollars in server hosting
and refund fees, rather than millions and the loss of his credit reputation
for life.

Learn a lesson from this, would-be entrepreneurs of HN. Don't do what this kid
did.

~~~
jakejake
The fact that the pricing plans were taken as-is from an HTML template (that
had nothing to do with hosting) is a pretty good sign that the project is a
bit rough around the edges.

A good lesson indeed, if you pretend to be serious and do a decent job, people
are quite likely to take you seriously.

------
USNetizen
I'm a little leery when the "refunds" link is dead and there is no "contact"
page for a business. Hard to vet the legitimacy of a company without that
information in my opinion. A lot of the site seems very cut-and-paste as well
with several "coming soon" features and very little descriptive information. I
would have thought this to have been worked out given this has been in the
works "for a couple years" per the owner(s).

I also don't see how this stands out from the thousands of other companies out
there offering "cloud hosting" of some sorts - do you own your own facilities?
Lease them? Use other providers? What type of equipment is this and where are
you located? etc. Not nearly enough information to determine a unique
competitive advantage from what I can see.

What type of security measures do you use? The only "description" I see is
"top notch" which doesn't tell me anything. Any compliance info you can share?
Security audit results? Something? Anything?

Just my first instinctual opinion here, trying to offer some constructive
feedback.

------
USNetizen
It seems a self-written description of the owner's "previous projects" include
an FBI Takedown on one of them - and he's seemingly proud of it. This doesn't
bode well for the legitimacy of the current venture:

 _" I know what you're thinking. F_ _kPaying is a brand new way to watch
movies, download books, and download music. I built out a really nice website
that 's very intuitive and user friendly. Yeah... if you're reading this, the
website might have been taken down by the FBI. It was a good run, folks. I
hope I don't get taken to jail for this."_

Couple that with the overwhelming issues others have brought up here and I
have doubts this is a serious business at all.

------
Zekio
Wow, I wouldn't trust that site with even a single cent, even the prices are
the same as the ones on the bootstrap template O.o

I like the name though

Edit: Also the about talks about there's been spent years on this, while the
website looks like something slapped together in a couple of minutes at best.

~~~
bt3
Do you mean you _wouldn 't_ trust that site?

I for one like it, and would rather have my a company of this nature spend
years on their product, rather than their website copy.

~~~
Zekio
Damn, I always write "would" instead of "wouldn't" ...

I'm just saying, that I don't actually think years was spent on it the product
simply because the site is lacking, could be external web developer making it
cheaply, I wouldn't know.

------
halite
I'm usually not opposed to trying out new services and tools but this one I'm
not so sure.

For a cloud hosting company, there are few basic essentials:

* Support - live, tickets, email, phone etc.

* DevOps work

* Marketing

* Documentation

* and more...

I'd be little hesitant if everything for so called "cloud hosting" company is
done by a single "I".

------
jedberg
Some feedback for you: I read your webpage and I'm unclear as to why you are
better than, or even different from, Amazon.

And glancing at your pricing, I think Amazon is cheaper too.

I'd suggest adding a grid or a bullet list enumerating how you are different.

Also, something to keep in mind -- when launching a new product that replaces
the functionality of another, you can't be just as good, or even slightly
better, you need to be _significantly_ better to get someone to move. So you
should focus on showing why you would be _significantly_ better than your
competitors that you're trying to displace.

------
r0muald
Good to see that there's room for some competition in this space!

You are loading two HTTP assets on your landing page, resulting in security
warnings for mixed content.

The pricing model is interesting but the wording isn't very clear: what does
"monthly RAM kick-start " mean? How does it relate with "Unlimited 1GB or 2GB
RAM servers" ?

~~~
joshmn
There really isn't much room at all. If anything, the room is a race to the
bottom.

There's room in niche hosting services, like WordPress or Magento, and you can
make a pretty penny off it. But your typical shared, VPS, or dedicated? Yeah,
good luck competing.

------
CM30
Well, I'll be honest... I'm not too sure about this service, or the idea
behind it. I mean, hosting (both in the 'cloud' and non cloud sense) is a
really competitive, cut throat industry with players able (and willing) to
spend millions of dollars on advertising and services.

And people kind of want stability in this type of thing. So if you want
Ramgrid to do well, you're gonna have to prove you can keep the company going
for at least a few years in order to convince people you're reliable.
Remember, many hosting companies are fly by night operations (there's even
jokes about some of them being set up by high school kids in the summer
holidays), and people are hence more than a tad wary of new ventures in this
space. Especially when they don't have a big name like Amazon's behind them.

But hey, good luck with the whole thing.

------
kingnothing
What differentiates this from AWS or other known providers and why should
companies choose to trust a new service over the incumbents?

~~~
tyingq
I _think_ it's trying to play in the same space as
[http://wable.com](http://wable.com)

That is to say, you pay for a bundle of resources (x cpu cores, x gb memory, x
gb disk, x ipv4) at a fixed price. Then, you can subdivide that into however
many VPS instances as you want (well, within reason).

As for trusting it, well...it looks like there might not be much of actual
service behind the front page. It's possible it's just a tweaked version of
this bootstrap theme:
[http://themes.getbootstrap.com/products/marketing](http://themes.getbootstrap.com/products/marketing)

That said, the Wable business model seems to be popular, and they don't appear
to have much competition using the "resource bundle" model.

~~~
jamroom
I've checked out Wable - are there any other providers that you know of that
provide resource bundling like Wable? I really like Wable but I don't see an
API, and for what I'm doing would have to have an API to control
creation/deletion of servers. Thanks!

------
grey-area
Looks interesting and a nice landing page, but your main problem will be
trust. Probably for that reason needs a lot more detail (datacentre, tech,
investments). I'd remove the word unlimited from both plans as it is highly
misleading.

An API is probably not going to gain you customers before the above.

------
letcree
It seems like they're just renting OVH dedicated servers
([https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-
servers/hosting/](https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/hosting/)) and
selling virtual machines on them. You could get cheaper pricing and more
reliable servers by purchasing VPS from OVH directly, or going through a more
reputable provider that resells OVH like My Custom Hosting or Luna Node.

~~~
RIMR
As someone who just tried to use OVH, I have to say, it was way easier to pay
for RamGrid.

Just tried to rent a VPS from OVH. Payment failed three times. Three new $3.49
pending transactions on my bank card - No VPS...

------
jh37
Why was this launched before these "Powerful and seamless APIs"?

------
notacoward
"Never experience the hassle of ... while saving a bunch of money"

Wait, you mean that if I don't use your service then I'll have hassles but at
least I'll save money? That's how it reads. You seem to expect that people
will parse it like this.

    
    
        (never-experience X) while Y
    

Unfortunately, most people parse it like this.

    
    
        never-experience (X while Y)
    

Try each one out on "never experience burning your hand while cooking
breakfast". Do you see the difference, and why the front-page copy might make
some people giggle?

~~~
purplerabbit
Was going to comment something like this, but you've said it very well. But
yeah... The site's grammar is a bit sketch across the board.

------
fweespeech
1) Datacenter[s]? Locations?

2) Virtualiztion technology being used?

3) Hardware + Customer Density [ I'm guessing its commodity 32GB nodes with 1
TB disks based on your configuration offerings ]

4) Bandwidth costs????

------
marvel_boy
Newbie here. How can I bet on your service? What happens if 6 months ahead the
service close?

------
pcglue
Good on you for trying something. I hope you learn from this. I can only
imagine the trouble I would have gotten into if the internet/social media were
around when I was a teenager or even in college.

------
bdcravens
Sign up for a plan: "Still unactivated! Give us a bit more time and then
you'll be free to peek around however you'd like."

I don't think this is acceptable in 2016.

~~~
bdcravens
Hmmm.. still not activated, and I received an email offering a refund.

Too bad, I was looking forward to launching a server, and running the IP
address through ARIN. I suspect the service is just software running atop
Digital Ocean or AWS.

------
michaelmior
Sounds interesting, but you should have someone edit your copy. Below is a
sample of some issues I found.

> We are the first to do this.

Have cheap prices? Not really a selling a point.

> We care about not only the privacy

"the" is unnecessary here

> we guarantee that our interface is top of the notch

The expression is just "top notch"

> so that you could easily spin up and deploy new servers

"can" easily spin up

> every month you'll receive discounts and other prop

What is a "prop"?

------
oldfatslow
I was signing up and had some questions right off the start. What is included
in standard support and how is it different from 9-5 support? You have DDoS
protection for $10 extra. If I buy the DDoS protection but others on your
network do not, am I still protected from their potential DDoS attacks?

------
BinaryIdiot
The API is interesting; looks more like a natural language versus syntax. I'm
actually working on something that would be able to create that syntax for you
though it's not something you'd be able to integrate anytime soon however I do
see the value in it!

------
dankohn1
Boy, I read through and thought this was a parody.

"Security: We guarantee top notch security from the minute you're on the
payment page to the second you start creating servers." Meaning that the
security ends the moment you start creating a server?

~~~
RIMR
Well, to be honest, the security of the server is your responsibility. They
aren't managing your instances for you.

------
PancakeAH
Can someone explain how this differs from just server hosting?

~~~
tyingq
It looks like they are trying to use the same model as
[http://wable.com/](http://wable.com/).

They sell you a monthly subscription to a resource bundle (some # of cpus,
ram, disk space, ipv4s) that you can then run as 1 large VPS, or 3 medium
ones, or 4 smalls + 1 medium, etc.

Wable is fairly popular because of this approach, and they are relatively
unique in doing it that way.

------
destroyer998
It seems shady at best.

[https://i.imgur.com/QTpBGJT.png](https://i.imgur.com/QTpBGJT.png)

~~~
hartator
What's the webmail are you using? It looks good.

~~~
keehun
That's fastmail!

~~~
destroyer998
Yep: [https://www.fastmail.com](https://www.fastmail.com)

------
zongitsrinzler
You should really put a lot more info on your page. How does it all work? You
need to build some trust.

------
yeukhon
First question: what are you running on? AWS? Openstack private data center?
Google cloud?

------
cphoover
what is your SLA?

------
4r10r5
aws is the new microsoft and openstack is the new linux. API lock-in is real
and outliers will suffer.

------
curiousGambler
Is the link broken, or is just me?

------
RIMR
Christ, this is a total shitshow.

Enjoy the free $9. Your service is unusable, so I'll never really be using it.
It'll be the only $9 you ever get from me.

My first step with any VPS is to run "sudo apt-get update". This generates a
ton of checksum errors.

I figured I would get around to that later, so I updated what I could. Then I
tried to install Asterisk, but it appears that you stripped all the default
repositories out of apt, because that package isn't available.

Oh well, I guess I'll compile it from source. Nevermind, make and gcc aren't
installed! I was able to install make using apt-get, but not gcc!

I shouldn't have to go through this many hoops. The OS shouldn't come broken
like it is. Just push out server-core like you should have to begin with!

It's like you tried to make this service as intentionally bad as you possibly
could.

EDIT:

This is so stupid I can't even begin to understand why you would do this:

"If the emergency is completely life threatening and our instant messaging
support isn't appearing right now, do not hesitate to call us at: [redacted].
However, you will only weaken relations if you called and the problem is
something that literally wasn't life threatening. Like, you actually seriously
need to be dying in order to call us."

Don't EVER suggest that someone should call you in a life-threatening
situation. I understand you're exaggerating, but you could be sued for
millions if anyone ever called that number and they were in an actual life-or-
death situation. The only acceptable number to call in a life-threatening
situation is 911 (or 999, or whatever you call in your home country).

If you don't want people to call you, don't give out your phone number. It's
very simple.

Your site isn't just bad. You could ruin your life with serious legal issues
over all of this stuff.

Please, for the love of God, tell me you established an LLC and aren't the
sole-proprietor of this monstrosity...

EDIT2:

I just spoke to the founder over support chat, and he's being very humble and
apologetic over the problems. He's disabled all recurring billing so that he
can end this experiment gracefully and continue working out the kinks before
the actual launch. We overwhelmed him a little.

I'll give him credit where credit is due: Half-baked or not, he's taking this
seriously and trying to right wrongs. I look forward to seeing what the next
four weeks have in store, and I am going to work with him to be the best beta-
tester I can.

It isn't a scam, so don't worry. I wouldn't suggest signing up for this for
any reason other than to experiment and help him beta-test. It's not stable
enough for use with production servers. Hopefully he'll clarify that to
potential customers before they sign up, because unlike me, some people may
have intended to do real-world things with this service.

EDIT3:

Oh nevermind. Founder is clueless. He stopped responding to me when I told him
that I had completely lost control over my services, and when I tried to open
a support ticket, this happened:

[https://i.imgur.com/G7yAlAc.png](https://i.imgur.com/G7yAlAc.png)

I cannot stress enough that there is nothing on Earth that you handle this
way. I am putting 3/1/16 on my calendar, because I'm almost certain I'm going
to need to dispute a credit card charge on that day. I don't think I can take
his word when he says he disabled recurring payments...

~~~
tptacek
Morbid curiosity: you want to install and run _Asterisk_ , the PBX software,
on a $9 VPS from a provider that just announced with a Bootstrap template
today?

~~~
RIMR
It was cheap and Stripe is secure. I could part with $9 to play around with a
potentially shitty service. I was going to run an instance of Lenny on
Asterisk, so it's not like I was doing anything important with this.

