Thanks Dalkore for re-starting this thread with up-to-date data.
I've used a few of the hosting services offered here, and as feedback has been requested I'll provide some.
I've been mining since early 2013 on pretty much everything, I've mined at home, hosted in a sweatbox in China (Mr Li) and with a more traditional datacentres in the US.
My background is in IT services and I've even built some smaller datacentres in the distant past so, although I haven't visited any of the ones on the list, hopefully my experience will provide some relevance to my comments. I'll be as honest with my comments as I can.
Thing is with hosting, its pretty much essential for any medium to large farm, and to start with there were many providers who charged reasonably and fairly, but its got harder and harder to find hosting and now the costs are much higher, some of the earlier companies have had to raise costs because they underestimated the demand and need for extra staff etc. So its a bit of a minefield. The low cost places fill up fast!
VPN access is a must, otherwise you have to raise a ticket for everything, changing pools, rebooting, changing firmware etc. And some hosting companies will charge you for every time you ask them to do something, now thats fair enough, they have to pay staff to do the work you ask for, but most of those things you can do yourself if you have VPN access to your hardware, they you only need tickets if there is something hardware related that you need a human to fix.
AMERICA, UNITED STATES of=====================
Pros:- If you have problems with hardware he knows them inside out so can often repair or get them going again.
- Prices are based on metered usage, which means that if your miners are underclocked or have lost boards or running slow or theres an outage, you only get billed for the power used during the month.
- Low accutate prices
- Takes bitcoin as payment for hosting
- Setup was fast
- VPN access to your miners
- No extra cost for support, although I've offered for bigger jobs
- No hidden extras
Cons:- He would be the first to acknowledge that his location and setup isn't the best for heat management, he does what he can but miners can sometimes run slower on the hotter times of the year.
- May sometimes take a few days to get back to you
- Support is during business hours only
- Not had any extra space for more than a year
Summary:I've had hardware hosted here since 2016
gekkoscience is run by sidehack, well in the bitcoin space we should all know who this is, he's designed quote a few USB miners and mini-pods now, and in the meantime has been a long term hoster of miners for those of us lucky enough to get space there. If you can get space and are willing to be patient, its one of the best places to host your miner in all but the hottest months of the year. Its getting space there thats the killer, sidehack just doesn't have any space left.
URL: www.teslawatt.comPrice: $450.00/unlimited for 5 kW hosting or $125 for S9; no contract, no setup fee and includes free VPN access
Location: Gardnerville, Nevada, ZIP 89410, USA
Comment: Representative is
TeslaWatt.com Pros:- Good comms, fast response to emails
- Equipment setup was fast
- VPN access to your equipment
- Dedicated support email
- Support response times are quick
- Prices as listed -
$125 $110 per S9 which is (still) right on the limit of mining profitability - Offered 10% discount in July/Aug
Cons:- Does not take bitcoin/crypto as payment
- Usage is not metered, you pay $125 per miner, even if the miner is running slow, underclocked or is off!
- You need to handle any shipping taxes/customs invoices yourself
Summary:Teslawatt are fairly new on the scene, I've been using them since May 2018. They seem a reasonably sized company with many staff. I've not had any problems so far, but I feel with the fixed per machine cost you are running it fine in terms of profitability, e.g. at the time of writing you are making
$11 $2.50 per month on a 14.5TH S9. It would be better if they could bill you for actual electricity used, sometimes miners run slower, or stop running, or have the ability to use different efficiency settings which can have an impact on the power usage dramatically.
Its very inconvenient that they don't take
BTC or other cryptocurrency as a payment method, bitpay is an option if they want instantly converted to currency, or just have a wallet address we can send to.
BTC is international, and borderless, not everyone is in the US, not everyone converts their coin instantly to $$$. It adds delays, and unnecessary exposure to the transaction to have to convert to $ then transfer that to a US$ account and do a bank transfer IMHO.
CANADA=====================
Pros:- Good prices, web site has their prices slightly higher than here, they starts at $75/mth then $70/3mth and $65/6mth, although they may do deals for bitcointalk members
- Great comms, both on the forum and via email with allinvain
- Experienced, and friendly, offered to pick up some of my miners from another host if I needed it.
Cons:- Short of space, not sure whether there will be facility to grow your farm there, and its hard to get your foot in the door!
- No VPN access for smaller clients
Summary:Not used them before, just sent some kit there this week. One of the older hosting companies, allinvain is a long time participant in the mining space. I've been on the waiting list for over a year and they just got some extra space online so I jumped at the chance. Will update the review once I've spent some time there.
There was a slight delay of a week or so after the machines arrived before they were up and mining, all seems good with reasonably quick response times to changes of pools, reboots etc. My machines have been running there for a week with little to no problems.
No VPN access for smaller clients, I understand they want to keep costs down, and as long as they don't charge me every time I need a miner checked or rebooted then I'm fine with it.
There may be some issues with taking on new customers or with some of their colo space, which once I have more info on I will update this thread.
Pros:- Great comms, dedicated account manager
- Support site ticketing system with good team of techs looking after your kit who are quick to respond
- VPN in Labrador-City colo (see Cons)
- Accept bitcoin/crypto as payment method for bills via Bitpay
- Initial pricing was very good (see Cons)
Cons:- Price is based on manufacturers specs per/kw of the equipment provided, this means they assume a S9 is going to do 1400W regardless
- No VPN in Goose Bay colo
- Prices are not $60/kW, the increased prices in April 2018, after I had been with them for a year, from $57/kW to $82/kW incl taxes, which makes a S9 around $115/mth
- They also added hourly billing for installation of equipment and support tickets.
- Although initial setup and handling of equipment was excellent, they ran out of space quickly and many people were left with equipment sitting idle for months (see summary)
- No VPN access in Goose Bay colo
Summary:I've been using Great North Data since May 2017, overall I've been happy with the service I've recieved on the equipment that was sent and setup. However they had some unfortunate issues with their power provider that really slowed down their planned increase in infrastructure. This stuff happens, its understandable, but its frustrating when it drags on and I felt they could have handled the comms better around the issue. This is purely a criticism of the management at GND, the tech team on the ground are excellent and fast to respond and quick to fix things. And I understand that sometimes its hard to give clear estimates on work undertaken by suppliers (especially services suppliers) but still the frustration levels were felt by many people who had sent miners there on the promise they would be setup but then had them sitting for months. Unfortunately it also came at a time when there was just no other hosting available anywhere. It also happened during the crypto peak which added fuel to the fire.
I think they also suffered from being too optimistic in their price projections as, yes, initially they were the cheapest in the land at $57/kW but after just under a year if hosting there they hiked their prices by nearly 50% to $87/kW and also added hourly ticket charging for everything from reboots to installation. Again, its relative, when
BTC prices are high then profitability means you don't notice it so much, but when prices drop like they are now, then you can feel like you are barely scraping a profit at all.
Also they charge on the estimated manufacturers kW numbers for the hardware, so for a Bitmain S9 they charge for around 1.4kW. Ideally they should bill you for the power you use. Charging a flat fee based on the manufacturers data means that if your hardware is off, or loses a board and only runs at 75% capacity or you want to underclock it to try and give it longer life or whatever the reason, it doesn't matter because you get charged the same regardless.
They also need to install VPN access at both colo's, at them moment its only in Lab City not Goose Bay, I have some miners in each and I have far less tickets (which you have to pay for) where the VPN is active. I explained the importance of VPN access at the top of this post, and its vital. So I would suggest that gets sorted sooner rather than later.
That being said, I'm still a customer there, the miners I had waiting were brought online recently and service has been smooth ever since. They are suffering from the heatwave in Canada and North America currently and miners are underperforming or going offline during the heat of the day but I expect that to be over soon and everything will be back to normal. I'd like to see slightly lower prices, and I'd like to see them charge for power used rather than the rated power usage of the hardware.