<story><title>If I was your cloud provider, I&apos;d never let you down</title><url>http://joyent.com/blog/if-i-was-your-cloud-provider-i-d-never-let-you-down</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>UnoriginalGuy</author><text>&quot;lifetime&quot; &quot;unlimited&quot; &quot;forever&quot; etc products should always been looked at sceptically for that reason. Anything that is either finite or requires up-keep cannot be offered on these terms, it is just impossible.&lt;p&gt;I actually avoid unlimited products on purpose because I think a lie is a bad way to start doing business together. Be it web-hosting, broadband, or anything else. I would prefer they just be up front and then we both know where we stand (no ambiguity).</text></item><item><author>anonymouz</author><text>With the lifetime account fiasco still ongoing [1], they should probably shut up.&lt;p&gt;[1] Joyent/Textdrive sold lifetime shared hosting accounts for a one time payment in the beginning. Those accounts would exist &quot;as long as we exists&quot;. A couple of months back they sent an email that they are &quot;discontinuing&quot; lifetime accounts. After uproar from the community they offered refunds. Many people (including me) agreed to the refund, but then they decided to make another 180 degree turn, not paying out the refund. Instead they are now spinning off a new &quot;Textdrive&quot; that is supposed to &quot;take over&quot; the lifetime customers. No details about funding/general outlook/etc. of this new company has been provided so far. Questions to this end are shrugged off as &quot;everything is perfect, just trust us, ...&quot;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, the new Textdrive Forum (discuss.textdrive.com) seems to be down at the moment...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>typicalrunt</author><text>What Joyent forgot about was that by getting rid of the lifetime account holders (I was one) they were effectively silencing their greatest word of mouth sales.  I would always recommend their services to others, and I would purchase many of their other products/services as they came out.&lt;p&gt;But by pulling out the rug under me[1], it left me distrustful of them.  So let&apos;s assume that I got my money&apos;s worth, but what Joyent has now lost is the word of mouth.  Even worse, instead of &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; telling people about Joyent, I actively turn them away from Joyent.&lt;p&gt;While Amazon goes down from time to time, at least I have less unknowns with them.  With Joyent, I don&apos;t know how they are going to fuck me at the last minute when they decide to pivot for the umpteenth time.&lt;p&gt;[1] Not once, but thrice.  First, they cancel the lifetime accounts, forcing me to quickly move to another provider (thank you GAFB and Heroku).  Then they say I can get a refund for the service, which when I asked for it they first denied that they gave it out and then told me that the offer was rescinded because the Textdrive service was coming out.  Third, they keep calling me telling me that I need to move, even though if they spent 2 seconds checking for account activity they would see that no domain routes to them anymore, nor is any data stored with them.</text></comment>
<story><title>If I was your cloud provider, I&apos;d never let you down</title><url>http://joyent.com/blog/if-i-was-your-cloud-provider-i-d-never-let-you-down</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>UnoriginalGuy</author><text>&quot;lifetime&quot; &quot;unlimited&quot; &quot;forever&quot; etc products should always been looked at sceptically for that reason. Anything that is either finite or requires up-keep cannot be offered on these terms, it is just impossible.&lt;p&gt;I actually avoid unlimited products on purpose because I think a lie is a bad way to start doing business together. Be it web-hosting, broadband, or anything else. I would prefer they just be up front and then we both know where we stand (no ambiguity).</text></item><item><author>anonymouz</author><text>With the lifetime account fiasco still ongoing [1], they should probably shut up.&lt;p&gt;[1] Joyent/Textdrive sold lifetime shared hosting accounts for a one time payment in the beginning. Those accounts would exist &quot;as long as we exists&quot;. A couple of months back they sent an email that they are &quot;discontinuing&quot; lifetime accounts. After uproar from the community they offered refunds. Many people (including me) agreed to the refund, but then they decided to make another 180 degree turn, not paying out the refund. Instead they are now spinning off a new &quot;Textdrive&quot; that is supposed to &quot;take over&quot; the lifetime customers. No details about funding/general outlook/etc. of this new company has been provided so far. Questions to this end are shrugged off as &quot;everything is perfect, just trust us, ...&quot;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, the new Textdrive Forum (discuss.textdrive.com) seems to be down at the moment...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JoachimSchipper</author><text>If the upkeep is smaller than the cost of capital to the company, such an arrangement probably remains mutually beneficial. Given that the cost of computing resources was falling enormously and continues doing so, I can see why TextDrive expected this arrangement to be profitable for them. Note that pensions and annuities, arrangements with terms best described as &quot;pay $X/month for as long as I live&quot;, exist.&lt;p&gt;(Of course, they pivoted out of the hosting business and found that supporting a one-off machine is an expensive headache. But it&apos;s not &lt;i&gt;impossible&lt;/i&gt; for such an arrangement to work.)</text></comment>