Damon
Check my status to contact me :)
This should be a discussion Thread concerning ZAP-Hosting's Lifetime Servers/Offers
Sup everyone,
it's been a while. I wasn't sure in which forum category this would fit best as it is not a "Job" offered by me or anything.
More of a PSA/heads-up:
I recently found out that one of the oldest German (Game-)Server Hosts, ZAP Hosting, now offers lifetime VPS/Rootservers in their product line.
They were selling lifetime Minecraft servers for a long time already, but I always hoped they would add VPS and they did
Those servers are paid for once only and you get to keep them forever respective to their ToS (see below for more info; inactivity clause).
This could be a chance, especially for small OTS, to stay online for years without relying on donations and even if only 5-10 players are online small servers could survive.
For those who prefer Windows Hosting over Linux, they offer lifetime Windows Rootservers, too
TL;DR: The company didn't have the best reputation over the years, but it seems to have improved in many ways.
I already ordered a lifetime VPS (vServer/LXC vps) from them in Finland which is running stable so far ZAP Hosting Finland VPS Lifetime vServer LXC (Recent History) - HetrixTools (https://hetrixtools.com/report/uptime/f409b9c69d3f363d8ef67455d5e6d4bc/) .
One downside I noticed is that Rootservers still only offer Ubuntu 18.04 (going EOL and apparently bugged image), and Debian 10.
Their vServers (VPS/LXC), however, come with recent images like Debian 11, and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which is the product I have bought from them.
They are, however, apparently already working to add new images and improvde Rootservers alltogether.
Website: Server Hosting with ZAP 2.5 - instant online & prepaid - ZAP-Hosting.com (https://zap-hosting.com/en/)
Crunchbase Company profile: Click
Northdata: Click
Status Page: ZAP-Hosting Status (https://status.zap-hosting.com/)
TrustPilot: ZAP-Hosting is rated "Excellent" with 4.5 / 5 on Trustpilot (https://www.trustpilot.com/review/zap-hosting.com) ; Rating: 4,5/5 with 18.000+ Reviews (as of May, 4th. 2023)
YABS (Server benchmark from April 2023): VPS, Root Server 1, Root Server 2
In General:
ZAP-Hosting (German company, founded in 2010), after providing Lifetime Minecraft Servers for many years have recently extended their product line to include:
You will find that the products first display the monthly price, but in the box to the right where the price total is displayed there is an option where you can click "OR xx€ lifetime".)
Sustainability:
According to the ZAP-Hosting website, there are currently 4043+ active Lifetime Servers , and about 32863 active servers in total. This suggests that while lifetime deals are often considered to be a rip-off and not sustainable, even after deducting 5000-lifetime servers, there would still be about 27000 active servers that are paid through subscriptions/prepaid contracts, suggesting that ZAP-Hosting has enough revenue to sustain their lifetime offers and/or doesn't just vanish overnight.
The total assets were counted as 1.926.615€ in 2021 according to data from Northdata (link above).
The catch (MUST READ!):
ZAP-Hosting, in the light of extending their lifetime server product line, seems to have updated their Terms of Service now requiring ALL their customers who purchased any kind of lifetime product (Minecraft Server/Webspace/vServer/Rootserver/Dedicated Server and future offerings) to log into their ZAP-Hosting Dashboard AND open up the respective product's control panel (e.g. if you have a vps with them, open the vps control panel; if you have a Minecraft Server..) once every 3 months to avoid suspension due to inactivity. If you service/product has been suspended due to inactivity you will apparently receive an email stating that you have 4 weeks to contact them, before your service/product gets cancelled permanently and any right to refund is waived.
ToS excerpt regarding lifetime products (April 9th, 2023):
I confirmed via Ticket that you DO NOT get a warning before the service gets suspended and was advised by the support staff to add a reminder on my phone (e.g. Google Calendar) to remember to log into the Dashboard and open up the product page. The support staff, however, indicated that during time of suspension, the data would not be removed from the service, albeit they stated that it's always good to have backups in the same sentence. I suggested they contact their customers 1-2 weeks PRIOR to suspension in order to avoid production service suddenly getting suspended and apparently my suggestion was forwarded to whomever (likely /dev/null ).
This part about the inactivity clause sounds tedious and annoying, but I'm sure some people might still be tempted and bite.
Fwiw, I already bit the bullet.
The company has been around for 13 years now and it's likely not going anywhere so fast. It has, however, also never been known to have a stellar reputation in the german gameserver market in terms of performance and customer reviews.
Anyway, make of all this what you will. I am happy with my LXC Finland Lifetime VPS from them so far, although I am not hosting any OTS on there.
However, when I was talking to @Iikki the other day, I thought that this one-off payment could be a great chance for small (OTS) projects to succed, so I thought I'd post it here.
Fwiw, I am not affiliated to ZAP, just a customer.
I am running WIreguard+OpenVPN on the LXC VPS for now. It also supports Docker apparently.
Kind regards,
Damon
Sup everyone,
it's been a while. I wasn't sure in which forum category this would fit best as it is not a "Job" offered by me or anything.
More of a PSA/heads-up:
I recently found out that one of the oldest German (Game-)Server Hosts, ZAP Hosting, now offers lifetime VPS/Rootservers in their product line.
They were selling lifetime Minecraft servers for a long time already, but I always hoped they would add VPS and they did
Those servers are paid for once only and you get to keep them forever respective to their ToS (see below for more info; inactivity clause).
This could be a chance, especially for small OTS, to stay online for years without relying on donations and even if only 5-10 players are online small servers could survive.
For those who prefer Windows Hosting over Linux, they offer lifetime Windows Rootservers, too
TL;DR: The company didn't have the best reputation over the years, but it seems to have improved in many ways.
I already ordered a lifetime VPS (vServer/LXC vps) from them in Finland which is running stable so far ZAP Hosting Finland VPS Lifetime vServer LXC (Recent History) - HetrixTools (https://hetrixtools.com/report/uptime/f409b9c69d3f363d8ef67455d5e6d4bc/) .
One downside I noticed is that Rootservers still only offer Ubuntu 18.04 (going EOL and apparently bugged image), and Debian 10.
Their vServers (VPS/LXC), however, come with recent images like Debian 11, and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which is the product I have bought from them.
They are, however, apparently already working to add new images and improvde Rootservers alltogether.
Website: Server Hosting with ZAP 2.5 - instant online & prepaid - ZAP-Hosting.com (https://zap-hosting.com/en/)
Crunchbase Company profile: Click
Northdata: Click
Status Page: ZAP-Hosting Status (https://status.zap-hosting.com/)
TrustPilot: ZAP-Hosting is rated "Excellent" with 4.5 / 5 on Trustpilot (https://www.trustpilot.com/review/zap-hosting.com) ; Rating: 4,5/5 with 18.000+ Reviews (as of May, 4th. 2023)
YABS (Server benchmark from April 2023): VPS, Root Server 1, Root Server 2
In General:
ZAP-Hosting (German company, founded in 2010), after providing Lifetime Minecraft Servers for many years have recently extended their product line to include:
- Lifetime 'vServer' (LXC); from 79€ for 2vCores, 8GB RAM, 25GB SSD, 500 Mbit/s, 1 IPv4; the lifetime Finland LXC I ordered came with a nice Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz
- Lifetime 'Rootserver' (KVM); from 154.80€, 4vCores, 8GB RAM, 60GB SSD NAS, 500 Mbit/s, 1Ipv4, Intel Xeon E5-2650v2/Intel Xeon E5-2667v2
- Lifetime Dedicated Servers; from 572.80€ for 1x Intel Xeon E5-2603v2, 4 Cores, 1,8 Ghz base clock, 64GB RAM, 500GB SSD, 1 IPv4
- Lifetime Webhosting; from 46.80€ for 5GB, 40 e-Mail accounts, 40 MySQL databases, they use Plesk.
You will find that the products first display the monthly price, but in the box to the right where the price total is displayed there is an option where you can click "OR xx€ lifetime".)
Sustainability:
According to the ZAP-Hosting website, there are currently 4043+ active Lifetime Servers , and about 32863 active servers in total. This suggests that while lifetime deals are often considered to be a rip-off and not sustainable, even after deducting 5000-lifetime servers, there would still be about 27000 active servers that are paid through subscriptions/prepaid contracts, suggesting that ZAP-Hosting has enough revenue to sustain their lifetime offers and/or doesn't just vanish overnight.
The total assets were counted as 1.926.615€ in 2021 according to data from Northdata (link above).
The catch (MUST READ!):
ZAP-Hosting, in the light of extending their lifetime server product line, seems to have updated their Terms of Service now requiring ALL their customers who purchased any kind of lifetime product (Minecraft Server/Webspace/vServer/Rootserver/Dedicated Server and future offerings) to log into their ZAP-Hosting Dashboard AND open up the respective product's control panel (e.g. if you have a vps with them, open the vps control panel; if you have a Minecraft Server..) once every 3 months to avoid suspension due to inactivity. If you service/product has been suspended due to inactivity you will apparently receive an email stating that you have 4 weeks to contact them, before your service/product gets cancelled permanently and any right to refund is waived.
ToS excerpt regarding lifetime products (April 9th, 2023):
! § 10 Lifetime products
! (1) Products designated as lifetime products are paid for once instead of recurring.
!
! (2) The term Lifetime/infinite/lifelong describes the lifelong right to use the product until it becomes inactive.
!
! (3)** The case of inactivity occurs if the named lifetime product is not accessed by the customer in the customer web interface within 3 months. ZAP-Hosting then reserves the right to switch off and block the product.
! If the customer does not contact us for a further 4 weeks after the blocking (grace period), the product will be permanently deleted and the entitlement to lifelong use will be cancelled.** The customer expressly waives the right to a refund of the purchase price.
! After contacting us within the grace or blocking period, the inactivity case will be lifted for the time being and the product will be fully usable again.
!
! (4) Lifetime products cannot be paid for with ZAP credits (ZAP Coins) or ZAP coin voucher codes.
I confirmed via Ticket that you DO NOT get a warning before the service gets suspended and was advised by the support staff to add a reminder on my phone (e.g. Google Calendar) to remember to log into the Dashboard and open up the product page. The support staff, however, indicated that during time of suspension, the data would not be removed from the service, albeit they stated that it's always good to have backups in the same sentence. I suggested they contact their customers 1-2 weeks PRIOR to suspension in order to avoid production service suddenly getting suspended and apparently my suggestion was forwarded to whomever (likely /dev/null ).
This part about the inactivity clause sounds tedious and annoying, but I'm sure some people might still be tempted and bite.
Fwiw, I already bit the bullet.
The company has been around for 13 years now and it's likely not going anywhere so fast. It has, however, also never been known to have a stellar reputation in the german gameserver market in terms of performance and customer reviews.
Anyway, make of all this what you will. I am happy with my LXC Finland Lifetime VPS from them so far, although I am not hosting any OTS on there.
However, when I was talking to @Iikki the other day, I thought that this one-off payment could be a great chance for small (OTS) projects to succed, so I thought I'd post it here.
Fwiw, I am not affiliated to ZAP, just a customer.
I am running WIreguard+OpenVPN on the LXC VPS for now. It also supports Docker apparently.
Kind regards,
Damon
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