Search VPS - second update: auctions, a place for backups, licenses and reviews about hosts
Hello!
Today I would like to tell you about the latest updates of the project for searching virtual servers :
')
But for starters, I would like to get a little distracted and reveal a little secret. In the near future, in addition to the ability to search through virtual servers, it will be possible to search for dedicated servers . At the very end of the article you can read a small comment for hosters.
The idea to create an auction section was born completely unexpectedly: there was a discount section on the project, but I wanted to do something non-standard. At that moment we thought that auctions were just what was needed, and this would be equally useful for both users and hosters. Users get a very good discount on virtual servers, and hosters get a new client and advertising: the section with auctions is second only to the main page.
By default, the auction lasts one day, but users always have the opportunity to buy the server for the blitz. With hosters there is an agreement that the blitz is always less than the base price for the server, so the user in any case receives a discount of 5-10%. However, there is always an opportunity to get a higher discount: the starting price starts from 30% of the base server cost, so the discount can reach 70%.
According to the rules of the auction, with which hosters agree, any server is redeemed for an unlimited period. That is, while the winner pays for the server, the hoster must provide it at the specified price.
Today 6 different servers are put up for auction with discounts up to 50%.
To make the server owner's life a little easier, we decided to make two paid services: renting a backup space and renting licenses on the control panel.
I don’t think I need to say anything about periodically backing up important data. Therefore, there was a desire to create the possibility of renting a fairly cheap place to store backups, and at the same time make this process as convenient as possible.
We tried to make the price of such a service quite low and affordable: 10 GB costs 30 rubles a month, 50 GB - 100 rubles , then there is a proportional increase in the cost and storage volume. The equipment is located in Europe and is connected at a speed of 1 Gbit per second, there are no restrictions on the amount of traffic. The service is provided with full IPv6 support. A little later, it will be possible to choose the locations of the repository, and Russia and America will be added.
From a technical point of view, the service is a regular FTP account. ISPmanager panel is installed on the servers, and all interaction takes place through the API of this panel.
The service is fully automated: creating accounts, changing passwords and more. As soon as the user pays for the service, an account is automatically created on the server, and the user receives an email with access data. Password change and service renewal is also fully automated.
However, full automation seemed to us insufficient to ensure that the service was better than others.
Almost all of those with whom we saw such a service, it was just an FTP repository and nothing more. That is, "here is your login password and do what you want." Therefore, we made three small improvements: the ability to see the occupied space directly from the personal account, the ability to receive notifications about exceeding the threshold of the occupied space and the ability to restrict access to the storage by IP addresses.
There are no questions with the first improvement, but I'll tell you about the second in more detail.
It often happens that the backup setting happens once, and then it is forgotten until the backup copies are needed. This is where the problem arises: you need to somehow check that backups are being created and are being created correctly. Unfortunately, it is not possible to check the correctness of the creation from our side (and we will not go into other people's data), but you can notify the user about errors. Errors are most often caused by the fact that the repository is fully occupied and there is no place to upload new files. This is where the second improvement will help: the user himself sets a threshold for notifications (for example, 90%), and as soon as the amount of occupied space exceeds the specified threshold, the user receives a notification.
Restriction on IP addresses works fairly standardly: you can enter a list of up to 25 IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) and the storage will be available only from these IP addresses.
In addition to the backup space, the server owner may need a control panel. With its help, you can solve all sorts of tasks directly through the browser without special administrative skills: manage users, databases, domains, DNS, email, and much more. Now there are only four popular paid control panels: ISPmanager, cPanel, DirectAdmin and Plesk Panel.
After talking with hosters, we decided to focus on the first three: Plesk Panel is still much more common in Europe than on the Russian market.
There were no problems with connecting ISPmanager sales - the developer’s billing allows you to work through the API, so work with this type of license is fully automated: purchase, renewal, change of IP address or activation key.
Not so long ago, the ISPmanager panel was updated to version 5. A lot of functions were redesigned and the interface was improved. The ability to work for NAT can be considered a very big advantage in the new version of the panel: the license can be activated not by the server’s IP address, but by the key, and thus the presence of a “white” IP address is no longer necessary. Until the end of May, good discounts are available on the 5th version of the panel, and we sell the license at the lowest allowed prices: 144 rubles for 1 month of rent, 1,440 rubles per year and 2,160 rubles for perpetual license .
With cPanel and DirectAdmin, unfortunately, there is no such purchase automation. To connect to the cPanel API, you need a good turnaround, and as far as we know from DirectAdmin, as far as we know, buying licenses is only available in manual mode.
I'll tell you a little about billing, payment methods and so on, which I had to face in order to start accepting payments and automate the sale of services.
To start your hosting and start accepting payments, you don’t need much: there are ready-made billing systems that you just need to install and adjust a little, after which everything is ready to receive money and make a lot of money. Unfortunately, in our case, this scheme does not work. The fact is that the forum's engine was originally taken from the phpbb3 forum engine, which saved a lot of time during development: there was no need to write modules for user registration, login, password recovery and other things, and the forum part itself is actively used. From here there was a problem: integration with any third-party billing is extremely problematic. Without thinking twice, we decided to go ahead and write our billing for our tasks. The only goal that we set for ourselves is the convenience of using such billing by the user. Therefore, a lot of functions work without reloading the page, and the logic of the work is well thought out enough to save the user from unnecessary actions.
Once upon a time I wrote a post about how to receive payments . Much time has passed since then, and the situation has changed a lot. For example, Yandex.Money has the opportunity to accept payments to physical accounts. persons, not only from one account to another, but also from a bank card. Qiwi wallet has also slightly updated its platform, and now they receive payment alerts in a more convenient way.
At present, you have the opportunity to pay for our services in six different ways: Yandex.Money, bank card (via Yandex.Money), Qiwi wallet, WebMoney, Robokassa and RBKMoney. PayPal is currently not connected, but we plan to do it a little later.
For several months we thought about what to do with reviews about hosts. The fact is that it is completely incomprehensible how to determine who wrote a review: a real client or competitor who decided to annoy another hosting provider. You can, of course, contact anyone who wrote a review and check it out, but this is not very realistic.
Therefore, we decided to create a topic for each hoster on the forum, where users can write reviews about it, and host representatives will be able to answer questions. From the convenience I can note that the forum and the host page are connected - on the host page there is a link to its topic on the forum, and in the topic on the forum there is some information about the host and a link to its page.
From small improvements: on the hot site, you can now see the date of domain registration. It is clear that the domain may not be related to the age of the company, but at least it can give some information about the host. Also, when viewing detailed information about tariffs, a form for error reporting appeared: with its help, you can quickly write to us that the tariff information is incorrectly filled out.
As I wrote at the very beginning of the post, now there is an active work on filling this section, but the process is quite long, so we decided to ask the hosters to help us. If you want to speed up the addition of your dedicated servers to a new section, please send to info@poiskvps.ru information about your tariffs, which would contain the following data:
As a thank you, we promise to add all such tariffs bypassing the general queue.
At the moment, these are all significant improvements on the project. A section with dedicated servers will appear within a month, and there will definitely be a separate post about it.
PS Thank you andorro for editing the text.
Today I would like to tell you about the latest updates of the project for searching virtual servers :
- VPS Auctions Appeared
- Now you can rent a space for backup
- Now you can buy licenses on the server control panel
- Hosting reviews
')
But for starters, I would like to get a little distracted and reveal a little secret. In the near future, in addition to the ability to search through virtual servers, it will be possible to search for dedicated servers . At the very end of the article you can read a small comment for hosters.
VPS Auctions Appeared
The idea to create an auction section was born completely unexpectedly: there was a discount section on the project, but I wanted to do something non-standard. At that moment we thought that auctions were just what was needed, and this would be equally useful for both users and hosters. Users get a very good discount on virtual servers, and hosters get a new client and advertising: the section with auctions is second only to the main page.
By default, the auction lasts one day, but users always have the opportunity to buy the server for the blitz. With hosters there is an agreement that the blitz is always less than the base price for the server, so the user in any case receives a discount of 5-10%. However, there is always an opportunity to get a higher discount: the starting price starts from 30% of the base server cost, so the discount can reach 70%.
According to the rules of the auction, with which hosters agree, any server is redeemed for an unlimited period. That is, while the winner pays for the server, the hoster must provide it at the specified price.
Today 6 different servers are put up for auction with discounts up to 50%.
To make the server owner's life a little easier, we decided to make two paid services: renting a backup space and renting licenses on the control panel.
Now you can rent a space for backup
I don’t think I need to say anything about periodically backing up important data. Therefore, there was a desire to create the possibility of renting a fairly cheap place to store backups, and at the same time make this process as convenient as possible.
We tried to make the price of such a service quite low and affordable: 10 GB costs 30 rubles a month, 50 GB - 100 rubles , then there is a proportional increase in the cost and storage volume. The equipment is located in Europe and is connected at a speed of 1 Gbit per second, there are no restrictions on the amount of traffic. The service is provided with full IPv6 support. A little later, it will be possible to choose the locations of the repository, and Russia and America will be added.
From a technical point of view, the service is a regular FTP account. ISPmanager panel is installed on the servers, and all interaction takes place through the API of this panel.
The service is fully automated: creating accounts, changing passwords and more. As soon as the user pays for the service, an account is automatically created on the server, and the user receives an email with access data. Password change and service renewal is also fully automated.
However, full automation seemed to us insufficient to ensure that the service was better than others.
Almost all of those with whom we saw such a service, it was just an FTP repository and nothing more. That is, "here is your login password and do what you want." Therefore, we made three small improvements: the ability to see the occupied space directly from the personal account, the ability to receive notifications about exceeding the threshold of the occupied space and the ability to restrict access to the storage by IP addresses.
There are no questions with the first improvement, but I'll tell you about the second in more detail.
It often happens that the backup setting happens once, and then it is forgotten until the backup copies are needed. This is where the problem arises: you need to somehow check that backups are being created and are being created correctly. Unfortunately, it is not possible to check the correctness of the creation from our side (and we will not go into other people's data), but you can notify the user about errors. Errors are most often caused by the fact that the repository is fully occupied and there is no place to upload new files. This is where the second improvement will help: the user himself sets a threshold for notifications (for example, 90%), and as soon as the amount of occupied space exceeds the specified threshold, the user receives a notification.
Restriction on IP addresses works fairly standardly: you can enter a list of up to 25 IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) and the storage will be available only from these IP addresses.
Now you can buy licenses on the server control panel
In addition to the backup space, the server owner may need a control panel. With its help, you can solve all sorts of tasks directly through the browser without special administrative skills: manage users, databases, domains, DNS, email, and much more. Now there are only four popular paid control panels: ISPmanager, cPanel, DirectAdmin and Plesk Panel.
After talking with hosters, we decided to focus on the first three: Plesk Panel is still much more common in Europe than on the Russian market.
There were no problems with connecting ISPmanager sales - the developer’s billing allows you to work through the API, so work with this type of license is fully automated: purchase, renewal, change of IP address or activation key.
Not so long ago, the ISPmanager panel was updated to version 5. A lot of functions were redesigned and the interface was improved. The ability to work for NAT can be considered a very big advantage in the new version of the panel: the license can be activated not by the server’s IP address, but by the key, and thus the presence of a “white” IP address is no longer necessary. Until the end of May, good discounts are available on the 5th version of the panel, and we sell the license at the lowest allowed prices: 144 rubles for 1 month of rent, 1,440 rubles per year and 2,160 rubles for perpetual license .
With cPanel and DirectAdmin, unfortunately, there is no such purchase automation. To connect to the cPanel API, you need a good turnaround, and as far as we know from DirectAdmin, as far as we know, buying licenses is only available in manual mode.
Billing
I'll tell you a little about billing, payment methods and so on, which I had to face in order to start accepting payments and automate the sale of services.
To start your hosting and start accepting payments, you don’t need much: there are ready-made billing systems that you just need to install and adjust a little, after which everything is ready to receive money and make a lot of money. Unfortunately, in our case, this scheme does not work. The fact is that the forum's engine was originally taken from the phpbb3 forum engine, which saved a lot of time during development: there was no need to write modules for user registration, login, password recovery and other things, and the forum part itself is actively used. From here there was a problem: integration with any third-party billing is extremely problematic. Without thinking twice, we decided to go ahead and write our billing for our tasks. The only goal that we set for ourselves is the convenience of using such billing by the user. Therefore, a lot of functions work without reloading the page, and the logic of the work is well thought out enough to save the user from unnecessary actions.
Payment acceptance
Once upon a time I wrote a post about how to receive payments . Much time has passed since then, and the situation has changed a lot. For example, Yandex.Money has the opportunity to accept payments to physical accounts. persons, not only from one account to another, but also from a bank card. Qiwi wallet has also slightly updated its platform, and now they receive payment alerts in a more convenient way.
At present, you have the opportunity to pay for our services in six different ways: Yandex.Money, bank card (via Yandex.Money), Qiwi wallet, WebMoney, Robokassa and RBKMoney. PayPal is currently not connected, but we plan to do it a little later.
Hosting reviews
For several months we thought about what to do with reviews about hosts. The fact is that it is completely incomprehensible how to determine who wrote a review: a real client or competitor who decided to annoy another hosting provider. You can, of course, contact anyone who wrote a review and check it out, but this is not very realistic.
Therefore, we decided to create a topic for each hoster on the forum, where users can write reviews about it, and host representatives will be able to answer questions. From the convenience I can note that the forum and the host page are connected - on the host page there is a link to its topic on the forum, and in the topic on the forum there is some information about the host and a link to its page.
From small improvements: on the hot site, you can now see the date of domain registration. It is clear that the domain may not be related to the age of the company, but at least it can give some information about the host. Also, when viewing detailed information about tariffs, a form for error reporting appeared: with its help, you can quickly write to us that the tariff information is incorrectly filled out.
Search for dedicated servers
As I wrote at the very beginning of the post, now there is an active work on filling this section, but the process is quite long, so we decided to ask the hosters to help us. If you want to speed up the addition of your dedicated servers to a new section, please send to info@poiskvps.ru information about your tariffs, which would contain the following data:
- Server name (tariff)
- Information about the railway - the number, volume and type (sata, sas, ssd), type of raid controller (soft or hard)
- The amount of RAM and its type (ECC or non ECC)
- Processor - the number of physical processors, the name, the frequency of one core, the number of cores, the number of parrots from this site: www.cpubenchmark.net
- Amount of traffic
- Port capacity
- Guaranteed band
- Country of placement
- Type of administration included in the price of the server (without administration, basic, full)
- IPv6 support
- Availability of server control panel included in the price: ISPmanager, cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk Panel
- Cost per month
- Installation cost
- Server ownership: reselling (you just resell servers owned by others), your servers are foreign (you bought servers and brought them to someone’s data center), your servers - your own digital center (you bought servers and built your own digital center) .
- The name of the data center
- Information about KVM and other features for remote server management
As a thank you, we promise to add all such tariffs bypassing the general queue.
At the moment, these are all significant improvements on the project. A section with dedicated servers will appear within a month, and there will definitely be a separate post about it.
PS Thank you andorro for editing the text.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/220543/
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