Topic: Anyone using bitcoin's to pay for VPS or Hosting Services? (Read 1158 times)

The price would change based on the value of the bitcoin at the time payment is due.  The subscription service (if created) would have to convert the rate each time.

I've implemented it on http://www.cleverpuffin.com/

But yes, no recurring payments is an issue.

YES!

Especially once the company starts a somewhat deceptive approach with terms/conditions and raises the difficulty to unsubscribe.

OP, I'd emphasize a simple and effective email notification system, prompting the customer for an optional address to alert/warn when time is up. Maybe even 2 email addresses to enter. Maybe have customers download a .txt or .pdf etc. for their subscription length.

are the prices a set deal? or they change from time to time?

Hi,

We will match or beat most "reasonable offers", PM me your current offer.

We are not looking to be the cheapest host on the market or don't want to get into price wars, After 10 years in the business we have noticed time and time again new hosts come onto the market and offer services with little to no profit going back into the business. Also most don't own there own hardware or data center space but instead rent month to month and you are leaving what choices they made in selecting there provider on your business. You can only hope it was not selected with the same business plan, the cheapest on the market but unfortunately this is the case most of the time.

 Most new hosts will try to skip every corner so focused on being the cheapest or on there customer growth rate forgetting that quality and reliability is something that should never be overlooked and should come before nothing else and is what will keep your customers loyal with you.

The prices we charge we set in a way that will allow us to continue to maintain our hardware, network and pay a support staff.  How other firms offering services for less then a cup of coffee can do this over the long term,the answer is no.  The growth rate will overtake the current servers load and not enough cash will be on hand to buy the proper upgrades. You end up with oversubscribed services and/or outages, slow performance or even worse a complete shutdown of the host. I have seen it time and time again.

In a year or two, lets see what firms has had less outages, better support and/or still in business. I know YOKU Cloud will be here for you, Can you say the same about the others?

ref: www.yokuhosting.com

I personally am very interested in paying for a VPS with Bitcoins, once I have some more Coins in my wallet I might take you up on this, as right now I have two VPS that I use for various project that I would love to move somewhere I can pay with BitCoins.

I actually like the idea of hosting with you (I briefly had a server with BitVPS as well).
Unfortunately you charge quite a bit more than my current host 

Would be looking for 2-3 virtual cores (depends on the speed of your virtual cores), 1.5GB of ram and don't care in the slightest about hard disk space. I use maybe 120GB/month of bandwidth. You're actually pretty pricey for that spec...

Yes, I mentioned a website in my first post. It has advantages because you don't need regular access to the net if the service is hosted. However it carries counter party risk that has plagued bitcoin start ups.

That being said, I don't feel this is a priority at all. Maybe this could be a second tool that connects via rpc. There are a lot of ways to implement it without introducing these features to any specific client.

I think that someone who really cares about their subscription being paid will ensure that it is paid (and not one legitimate email regarding payment for services due has ever ended up in my spam folder).

With regards to refunds that is actually rather simple - just send it back to the address that sent you the funds in the first place (that cannot be cheated).

Bitcoin is much safer than other forms of payment when it comes to things like identity theft (and much safer for the customer because they don't need to give you any information to make a payment).

One issue for any business with month to month payments on something like servers, domain names or web hosting or any mission critical business function is that if you forget to pay that monthly bill or for some reason you cant, Its in the Spam box etc.. Your whole business could go down if the provider shuts you off.

Recurring payments are important peace of mind to some business owners.

Just to note on that subject, We try and call all clients before turning off or disabling any services for a few days, but not all services are so kind.

One issue of BitCoins for our business is in refunds, We are trying to work out a way to issue refunds back in bitcoins.  
Some of the issues or questions we ask ourself with refunds:

• Fast changing rate of bit coins, customer would receive the current value in bitcoins, It could be less or even more then they paid.
  
  
• Chance for fraud, typically with credit cards, paypal, checks, etc.. If you issue a refund or credit the monies that you drew from the account are allways placed right back in the same account they where drawn from. From what I can see this is not possible, You don't know who you are taking the money from and then sending it back too.

ref: www.yokucloud.com

Understood - perhaps an online wallet that offers such a feature might be the way to go (where you perhaps top up the wallet once every few months so you don't leave too much in it).

This would be fine if there was a lot of lead up time. Both my work and personal life often puts me into places where I'm completely unconnected to the internet for up to two weeks, and when I come back I don't always go through all my email immediately either. Currently, I use BillPay linked to my bank to ensure that all of my bills get paid. Another risk to the relationship here is an email provider suddenly flipping a switch and trashing these payment requests as spam.

I'm not saying I won't subscribe to services because there's no autopay service, I just know that if I do, then sometimes I'll forget to pay an sometimes I just won't be able to because I'm away.

While I do think this would be a nice feature (although this might be a little worrisome for security which is already such a problem) is it really a problem to click on a Bitcoin URI that comes in the periodic email bill (paying would be basically 2 mouse clicks assuming you have the client running)?

One client feature I would like is recurring payments. I want to subscribe to services with the ability to turn off that subscription, but I don't want to have to remember. I might even use a website wallet for this feature.

Maybe - but if you look at the homevpn.com website (as an example) you'll find the following:


So they wear this "limitation" with pride - personally I would much prefer to do business with companies like that (but maybe that's just me).

From a consumer standpoint this is indeed an advantage (mostly, it can be annoying to do that every month for example). However from a business perspective it is harder and might prohibit certain business from accepting bitcoins. Which in the long run might be a disadvantage for bitcoin consumers as well.

Actually this is a big reason why I prefer Bitcoin's "push" to other "pull" payment options - nothing more annoying than having to "unsubscribe" to some service you no longer want (especially when they make it hard to do so and even more especially when you're internet connection to their site is not working).

Also I think that down the track clients with automatically scheduled payments will be created (but always with the buyer being in charge).

Hosts coming and going are nothing new, We have been in business since 2001.

Reason why most fail is because they oversubscribe there services, You can spot these most of the time, They tend to use words like "unlimited" in there offerings or offer everything under the sun for less then the cost of a cup of coffee.

yep quite a few have come and gone some remain, one of the most popular Bitcoin "businesses" at one stage

We are trying it out on www.yokucloud.com and wanted to see if there was a marketplace for it. ?

Whats your experience so far?

One thing we noticed:
Recurring transactions not possible, The customer will need to send his payment manually each month after getting there invoice. This could be a pain for some sending a payment each month.

We are looking forward to working with the BitCoin community.