Posted: 2026-04-25
I wanted to share some thoughts on pricing. I've been frequenting the Low End Talk forums lately and it's kind of shocking how low VPS prices have gotten. They do make Slow Servers and SporeStack look really expensive.
This has made me wonder about lowering prices. Though ironically, Slow Servers and SporeStack EU are reduced price compared to my Vultr and DigitalOcean offerings.
I think a lot of it comes down to my design being a bit less efficient, cost wise. Modern providers seem to use huge hosts (many 256GB of memory or higher) that use a lot of power, and they have a few of them per point of presence. My hosts have 32GB of memory and are much lower power density per rack. Spokane also isn't the cheapest place for a datacenter -- not that it's expensive. And a 1/3 rack is much less cost effective than a full rack, but the full rack is more expensive until you get it going.
The third rack accounts for 10 hosts, two routers, and a spare. 10 hosts, with 25GB of VPS memory each, at $6/month, puts me at $1,500/month. If the cabinet was maxed out, I think my costs would be a bit over half of that.
Thus, let's say that best case scenario I am getting $700/month. Which is great, but let's go over some more numbers.
Hosts cost around $400-500 a piece. I've been losing money on Slow Servers since January -- it's not even breaking even yet on a month-to-month cost basis (let alone upfront costs!) The datacenter is about an hour and 45 minute drive for me, so 3.5 hours of driving to get there. If I make one trip to the datacenter per month (that figure could be high on average and low sometimes) at 3.5 hours round trip, then at least 1 hour in the datacenter, it's 4.5 hours of work right there. Aside from that, working from home I'm putting in a lot more time than that. And gas itself is probably $40 for that trip, unless I take the Jetta where it'd be half of that (which I need to put a new fuel pump into.)
Lets say that Slow Servers, when at 1/3 cabinet capacity, takes me 8 hours a week to run. In a 28 day month, I'm making $700 for 28.5 hours of work, almost $25 an hour for my time. Which is a bit more than some fast food places are paying for entry level work. Back when I was working a day job, I was making well over $60/hour and that was on a salary. I didn't have to worry about being on call. I just had to sell my soul. I could probably contract at $100/hour if AI and my deliberate backwardness hasn't killed my prospects.
Of course to get to that $25/hour point, I have to invest a lot more time into automation and architecture. Time that's in the red.
It does irk me that realistically, SporeStack should be cheaper than say Vultr and not more expensive because it is less performant and with fewer features surrounding. And if I cut my prices in half, which might be fair (though still higher than many providers on Low End Talk,) at best I would break even and not lose money! Except no, I wouldn't break even, because those hosts would never pay for themselves.
I don't think that Slow Servers will ever be extremely lucrative for me, though things will improve if I can fill the 1/3 cabinet and make a wiser build out into a full cabinet, and possibly more from there. Then the driving is to maintain a much larger fleet, and the time spent writing automation and designing architecture pays off much better.
Despite the high cost, Slow Servers is about on par with IncogNet, at least for smaller servers. And no-KYC hosts that take cryptocurrency tend to cost more money. Slow Servers is also kind of boutique, but then again, so is a thirft store. Thankfully, SporeStack is a good nest egg, for lack of a better phrase, that helps fund this unusual venture. I also appreciate being hands-on and offering something more than just reselling. So in a lot of ways, it's a labor of love.
Strangely, Slow Servers led to SporeStack EU. A lot of my push for Slow Servers was to push away from Vultr and DigitalOcean. I'm quite happy with the SporeStack EU host. There are some caveats, like a single IPv6 address instead of a whole /64, no VNC or serial consoles, and no BSD images, but it's hosted at a much smaller company. They do buy modern or modern-enough hardware, which I don't care for, but at least it's not funding massive corporations diving into the AI market headfirst. I feel much better about reselling SporeStack EU than Vultr or DigitalOcean. And there's many good reasons to want to host in Amsterdam or Stockholm, especially if you live out that way!
Maybe one day it'll make sense to lower prices for Slow Servers. I don't think any time soon, though. Unless hosts never fill up because costs are too high -- that's a much bigger problem!
And if Slow Servers is too expensive for you, I completely understand.
Thank you for reading!