Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

For folks who are headscratching here, back in about 2007 (I remember it because I was getting into Rails) Joyent's precursor company TextDrive bootstrapped some hardware purchases by selling a (barely capable of running Rails, fairly rare for the time) shared hosting account. The kicker was that you'd pay about ~18 months upfront and it would be Lifetime. I don't trust my memory for numbers but somewhere between $150 and $300 if I recall correctly.<p>I actually used them as a hosting provider for a while, and followed the support forums. Supporting the Lifetime offering was a challenge pretty much from the getgo, because some folks were less than neighborly with their usage of system resources, partially out of ignorance, partially out of Rails playing very poorly with shared systems, and partially because you attract an <i>interesting</i> type of customer with this offering. The physical hardware had some faults and probably has not improved much over time.<p>Meanwhile, shared hosting for Rails is, well, not a very attractive option over the last couple of years, thanks to VPSes, Heroku, Amazon, etc etc. Joyent apparently wants to exit the business.<p>Of note: I remember somebody asking Slicehost to match the business model and Matt shot them down saying that it was too gimmicky for his taste and wouldn't be mutually beneficial. Slicehost eventually came up with a neat solution towards the same end: they were oversubscribed, so they sorted their waiting list by the amount of non-refundable deposit you were willing to make, giving them much-needed cash flow without committing them to service for forever.

"your lifetime service will end on October 31, 2012"<p>If you're writing that sentence and don't see a problem with it, there's no helping you. Look, many of us have been there and sold "free" things to early customers who become a pain later on, but you have to honor it. Better yet, never sell something "lifetime" without at least some kind of low recurring fee to cover nominal costs.

I paid the extra $$ for lifetime (and did it back when I was a grad student and had basically zero money) because I didn't want to have to think about hosting any more. Now I have to think about hosting again. Ugh.<p>Broken promises leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I do not want to be a jerk here, but the only reason I joined was the promise of "lifetime" - they can NOT just cancel our accounts does it does not suit them. Please contact me webmaster @ opendomain ORG if you would like to join the class action lawsuit.

I wonder why Joyent thinks they can get away with this. "Q: How long is it good for? A: As long as we exist." seems to be a pretty good definition of "lifetime." I would think they could only get out of their promise via bankruptcy. Maybe Joyent is trying to substitute for legal bankruptcy with moral bankruptcy.

I really like what Joyent is doing with illumos, dtrace, and other similar projects. That said...<p>They basically have let their "legacy" customers languish for a while, and after a pretty bad migration process a year or two ago, it was obvious that they really wanted to discard these old accounts - those boxes are running a version of opensolaris that's over 4 years old (snv_67).<p>Most of us paid quite a bit for our "lifetime" subscriptions, just to have it ripped up into a bunch of different parts that either get EOL'ed or sold off to another company (as was done with Strongspace).

The fairest way to offer "lifetime" or "unlimited" plans is to include a simple warranty:<p>"If we ever cancel this plan, we will refund your money in full."

In the end shared hosting with Joyent wasn't very good. It was slow, it was clunky and had an air of neglect. I have one site remaining on it I think. Most of my sites are on Linode.<p>What was worse was that Joyent changed directions, decided its then current customers weren't profitable enough (my guess shared hosting = higher per head tech support costs) and basically stagnated the service while it introduced new services. I think they did this a couple of times, and it has always made me relunctant to recommend them to friends (even ones looking for cloud services).<p><i>Sigh</i> I hope StrongSpace will still honour the lifetime part.<p>BTW for readers who think lifetime account holders are being greedy, the point of the accounts was that when TextDrive/Joyent needed extra capital to expand, they offered lifetime accounts in return for quite a bit of cash up front. In part, they are where they are due to this clever bit of fund raising.

I wonder why they are this dumb. It's like buying bad press. Did they really think this wouldn't get out and make them a mockery? Would it really cost that much to continue providing something to these people forever, so they wouldn't have to say the lifetime is over? Dumb dumb dumb.

I assume they're giving everybody a refund of their purchase price, right? ...Right?

Great, one company less to worry about next time I'm shopping for hosting.

Joyent just offered me 50% of my original investment back as a payout. Anyone else hearing this? Might be more lucrative than whatever a class-action lawsuit would return to each of us.<p>Might take them up on it as it's better than the hosting deal they are offering (given that i want nothing to do with them, anyway... dollar for dollar it seems about equal).

Seems a little odd, surely with the cheaper RAM, far more powerful CPUs and inexpensive disks these days, they could spend a few $$$ and burn a couple of U , keeping their customers happy?<p>I don't know how many servers they would have needed in 2007 to provide the services they sold, but surely now they could consolidate all those users onto 1/4 the machines?<p>What is this negative press costing them?

Here's the answer you'll get if you write to their support complaining about the change:<p>Hi Obie,<p>As often happens in the software business, vendors “end of life” older platforms and migrate customers to new versions or platforms. The service you purchased a “lifetime subscription” to will no longer be supported or available from Joyent. On the other hand, we appreciate and value your business as an early customer. As such, we have created special offers specifically for you to make this transition as easy as possible. Details and promo codes were provided to you in the email.<p>I hope you will be able to take us up on the offer and see the benefits of our new platform.<p>Thanks,<p>------------------ Peter Yorke Senior Solutions Architect JoyentCloud.com

As annoyed as I am with all of it, I'm more interested to know how to move off of their products and services now.<p>My lifetime account is where I have several important email servers, and I don't know how to migrate them. All the email says is to contact Joyent about getting migrated to one of their other product offerings. However, if I am only given 2.5 months to sort all this stuff out, I DO NOT WANT to use Joyent services. I'd love to use GMail for Business, Linode or what have you, but I don't know where to start.

Dear Joyent<p>You got me:<p>"We've been analyzing customer usage of Joyent’s systems and noticed that you are one of the few customers that are still on our early products and have not migrated to our new platform, the Joyent Cloud."<p>So sorry about not appreciating enough your new platform because " Everyone that’s moved to our new cloud infrastructure has been pleased with the results".<p>About the whole "lifetime" ("As long as we exist.") thing ... Stupid me. I never get that. I mean that was meant metaphorically, right, like in marriages?<p>Ok then, you divorced me. Thanks that I can still sleep under your roof for one and a half month.<p>And yes: You keep the house. And the money. I keep my files.<p>I think, we can call this a true a win-win situation. Sorry, I mean "win-win".<p>Sincerely.

&#62; "...and noticed that you are one of the few customers that are still on our early products..."<p>One of the few? Cool. It's not costing you that much to keep them on their lifetime plan. Surely its not worth the negative PR?<p>Not sure what Joyent is thinking.

Had an account with them back around then because their site made them seem technically proficient, but dealing with their customer service was like dealing with bad sys admins - grudging help and lazy. There were also a lot of unfinished nooks and crannies in their system. An overall lack of craftsmanship and care. The email brought back not so fond memories and is indicative of their attitude in all their interactions. Partly you are paying for company culture and theirs is not good.

This was the same service that had an outage last year which took over two days to recover from, for which their answer was basically "what did you expect, we're neglecting that server"? Sad thing is, putting the bottom line before responsibility is probably an effective strategy because the market does not penalize it sufficiently.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people "fall" for this "lifetime" pricing model. In fact I said the exact same thing three months ago [1].<p>The fact that the service provider is not getting any future revenue from you, even if they've fairly discounted your lifetime value, gives them the incentive to get rid of you.<p>Additionally it gives the wrong incentives to users to "abuse" their "unlimited" service. You saw this with AT&#38;T's "unlimited" wireless data plans recently [2].<p>I know why people do it: as an alternative to raising capital. Businesses do Groupons for the same reason. In fact, I'm feeling like a broken record here [3].<p>The problem with Groupon (and similar "offer" sites) is they create the wrong incentives and attract the worst kind of customer. The best situation for Groupon and for businesses is for lots of people to buy the offers and then not to use them.<p>The lesson here is that if you want to create a sustainable and <i>liked</i> business, you need to align your incentives with those of your customers [4].<p>As a customer, stop falling for this charade.<p>As a business, stop taking short term cash flows for <i>perpetual</i> liabilities just to raise capital.<p>Seriously.<p>EDIT: regarding "unlimited" (in Karunamon's comment), he is correct: we do need to hold companies to a higher standard. For example, Australia's ACCC (I guess equivalent to the FTC but with a heavy focus on consumer rights) has cracked down on the use of "unlimited" (eg [5]).<p>But that just reinforces my point. In Australia pretty much all Internet plans have stated quotas. With unlimited plans you create the wrong incentives to throttle users, impose nebulous "fair use" conditions and generally whittle away at what's really "unlimited".<p>It's the wrong incentive system.<p>With Internet quotas at least you know you're getting what you pay for and your plan is priced for your usage, not some median or 95% usage that will constantly have the provider trying to throttle "power users".<p>[1]: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3936701" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3936701</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/03/01/att-limits-unlimited-data/" rel="nofollow">http://mashable.com/2012/03/01/att-limits-unlimited-data/</a><p>[3]: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2649739" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2649739</a><p>[4]: <a href="http://www.accountingweb.com/blogs/ronaldbaker/firms-future/incentives-matter" rel="nofollow">http://www.accountingweb.com/blogs/ronaldbaker/firms-future/...</a><p>[5]: <a href="http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/12/accc-taking-tpg-to-court-over-unlimited-plans/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/12/accc-taking-tpg-to-cour...</a>

I've been warning people about Joyent for a few years now. A few years back I was using them for some hosting and they were dishonest about their shared filesystem issues.

The fact that I got a good deal for hosting in retrospect is irrelevant. Joyent offered lifetime service in exchange for a large payment up front. It wasn't just a one time deal they regretted. They made lifetime offers on numerous occasions. It was their business model at the time, no one forced them.<p>Here's a very easy solution for Joyent.<p>Refund my money. My payment was for lifetime service. Pay me back and we'll call it quits.

Joyent seems to be doing some general housecleaning... I received a similar notice (same first paragraphs) related to the closure of their <a href="http://no.de/" rel="nofollow">http://no.de/</a> Node.js hosting service:<p>----<p>Joyent is retiring the No.de service. If, as a Node.js developer, you prefer a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, we suggest that you consider our third-party partner, Nodejitsu, who offers a Node.js PaaS that runs on Joyent. Joyent continues to provide an ideal cloud infrastructure to run your Node.js applications, with performance and debugging tools that no other cloud provides. Sign up for a free trial on Nodejitsu (www.nodejitsu.com) or take advantage of Joyent Cloud's 30-Day Free Trial using this promotional code.<p>----

Every company that offers "lifetime" anything, seems to mean their lifetime, not yours.<p>I once had a lifetime free checking account, I still have the advertising flyers from when I got it.<p>Well they took that away from me last year too.<p>I guess they just count on you getting a lawyer and lawsuit being more of a hassle than you just walking away.

I'm another Mixed Grill customer, currently on a shared Solaris box.<p>When I bought it, I knew it was a gamble, and with the $500 spread over 6.5ish years, it's not a terrible ROI.<p>I assumed I'd lose out due to the company eventually folding, though. "As long as we exist" seemed pretty straightforward, and what I knew about them didn't leave me believing that they'd just pull the plug like this.<p>I've updated their Wikipedia page with a short section that I believe summarizes the situation accurately and factually, without letting my emotions creep in too much - if anyone cares to edit it, have at it. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joyent" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joyent</a><p>Joyent, I'm disappointed. You had a few memorable tech disasters, but never before did I personally experience ill will from you. I had begun to trust you guys.

Looks like Jason Hoffman has stepped into the forums to explain the reasoning behind their decision and do some damage control:<p><a href="http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=240955#p240955" rel="nofollow">http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=240955#p240955</a><p>They probably should have done that on the original letter.

Someone already started a Google group for people to discuss where to move their hosting: <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ex-joyeurs" rel="nofollow">https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ex-joyeurs</a>

For anyone who's interested, a "Money back or five free years of your own virtual server" offer has been posted by Jason Hoffman: <a href="http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?id=33682" rel="nofollow">http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?id=33682</a><p>It doesn't come close to honoring the "as long as we exist" that we bought in for, but it's a lot better than the starting position, and Jason is talking a little about why we're being cut.<p>(From what I can see, it looks like cutting the lifers may have been a requirement of some of the recent VC investors. That's me reading between the lines a bit, though.)

This actually seems fairly typical for most free or lifetime plans for things. Are there counterexamples of site/services that offered lifetime access that are still doing so 5 years later?

This reminds me I bought a lifetime license for Visual Studio in the 90's. Less than a year later they revoked it ans esent q cheque for $50 and a copy of Visual Java

Split the company in two, one with lifetime accounts one without. One with lifetime accounts goes bankrupt immediately. Promise kept, goals achieved!

Seriously though, the printout I have from March 29, 2006 of their Mixed Grill offer says "One-time payment of $499" and "How long is it good for? As long as we exist."<p>That constitutes a contract which they are clearly trying very hard to ignore. It seems so petty given their success, available resources, and the very manageable limited bandwidth and quota'd storage space us lifetime customers are allocated.

I think lifetime should mean lifetime.<p>They should of given you at least 15 years free I think.

Wow. Either Joyent is financially doomed on its own (and is trying to cut costs), or is just really stupid.<p>EOLing an old lifetime product with high support costs makes sense. What they should have done was moved the "small number of customers" using Lifetime service onto a new lifetime platform using their shared hosting platform. The plan they're offering for a year seems like an adequate replacement -- the cost of providing that low tier of service forever is probably not much more than the cost of providing it for a year.<p>Maybe make it opt-in, so inactive accounts don't spin up on the new platform, and provide some higher level of service at a discount (so, instead of a $50/yr cloud plan for free, you could optionally get a $250/yr plan for $150/yr.)

They did the same for their perpetually paying customers too. When I signed up for my TextDrive account it was billed as one price ($10/month) forever. Then Joyent bought them and things were OK for a while but I figured that was the end of my price guarantee.<p>My biggest issue with Joyent is they seem to change their services every year or two while letting their legacy customers languish. I used to have an account on a shared host. Now I have a Smart Machine, or maybe a Shared Accelerator. I'm not sure anymore and they keep changing the support website.<p>Now I just use them for mail but, I'm dissatisfied with that so I'm looking to move.<p>What I want is to pay for a service and not worry about it. It's too much work being their customer nowadays.

Class action law suit?

Much suckage. Lifetime means lifetime. It wouldn't be too much out of the way to provide a small host for "lifetime" users. I have complained to joyent.

This is fraud, no contest. The real question is what's the best way to deal with it. 1. Social pressure to re-instate equivalent service (1.5gb for me) 2. numerous small claims court applications (full refund + migration costs/damages) 3. Class action (similar to above).<p>To make any of them work to full effect, we'd probably have to band together? Any argument as to which method is preferred? CCT

I believe I also have a "lifetime" account, I have not received this email. Though I did switch over to the solaris machines a few years ago.

TextDrive was a great host back in the day (I signed up around 2004) and I was also happy with Joyent as well. They've obviously changed target markets since then, which is unfortunate, but I think the offer they made is certainly palatable and a sign of good will. All good things must come to an end, and then you go on to the next good company.

If you are a VC/MG/3ML like me, I think you can ask support for a partial refund. I did it, now let's see...<p>Jason Hoffman says that and other interesting things about the EOL here (read all of his posts):<p><a href="http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=240955#p240955" rel="nofollow">http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=240955#p240955</a>

Had a similar experience with an old host, promised "lifetime price freeze". A couple of years later they started charging me more as they had 'moved me to a new server' which I fiercely contested. In the end we settled for a compromise.

"There's a sucker born every minute" -- usually attributed to P. T. Barnum. The people who got sucked into buying into this "Joyent ending ‘lifetime’ hosting accounts" hustle probably got the greatest bargain of their lives. I'll bet they were mostly young folks, ever chasing after that proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (although some never quit). Hoping for endless service with no further incentive for the provider. What a priceless lesson at such a small cost! This company has actually taught one of life's great lessons for a truly paltry sum!<p>Anyway, here's what I do: I register my domains at nearlyfreespeech.net. They have a somewhat limited number of different TLDs available, and at about $9 per year, are not cheap (or "free"), but certainly not exorbitant. But their integrity is rock-solid. One time I let my domain expire for a couple weeks, an alarming circumstance. But they restored it for free after I simply payed the fee (this can only work for a limited time, of course). My old (and reliable) previous host and registrar would have charged me about $200 to get it back! So the $9 is like cheap insurance.<p>I use asmallorange.com as my host. They charge as little as $35 per YEAR, with $0.50 per GB per month for additional bandwidth. (Both of these hosts are "pay as you go.") So if I ever have a disagreement with my host, they cannot mess with my domain name! Also, my registrar uses FreeBSD servers, while my host uses Linux, and I don’t want to deal with FreeBSD (it’s probably more stable than Linux, but I know nothing about how to use it). The smallorange service (running on Linux) is chock-full of great features, including Cpanel. They have a feature inside their Cpanel that one-click installs things like WordPress, and I used it. But I chose a one-click install password that it allowed, but that the rest of Cpanel would not allow, and that lead to problems. But their customer service was right there for me, and they immediately cleared it up. Hope this doesn't sound spammy. The main point is, if you really want service, pay as you go is the way to get it. It worked great for me.

I thought I'd switched over to Solaris hosting, but still got the email??

They could have just refund ALL of those money as credits for JoyentCloud. Would this be a better solution?<p>So you essentially got "x" years of hosting plus Those money back as credits.

I have quite a few static sites on them right now (personal, friends and family). Looking for a reasonable host that won't cost a bunch. Any recommendations?

BTW, I too have moved to the Solaris hosting.

My two cents: <a href="http://stateful.net/joyent-refugee/" rel="nofollow">http://stateful.net/joyent-refugee/</a>

To anyone thinking of Joyent for cloud services: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, ...

Outraged, too. Any suitable alternatives in sight?

Where is Dean Allen now that we need him?

Dear Jones, we said "till death do us part" but you are now divorcing me. :(<p>In case you didn't get it, Jones is the name of the shared server that I'm on. ;)

Mixed Griller here. I don't remember what the language was, but perhaps in this case "lifetime" meant the lifetime of the product, shared hosting. Personally, I'm happy with the accelerator, I never did like shared hosting and quit using it a long time ago except for a couple of sites that are gathering dust.