Free VPS.NET Cloud Hosting from Chicago DrupalCon

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patoshi's picture

Did anyone claim their VPS.net accounts with their code from DrupalCon Chicago? I claimed mine and it seems like they charged me. Anyone have any updates on this? I just emailed them and will have to wait till they respond back. I was pretty sure they said it was a lifetime account.

thanks

Comments

Yes, but pretty hard to use

yktdan's picture

Yes, but pretty hard to use since their forum and wiki are down.

I attended DrupalCon chicago

LSU_JBob's picture

I attended DrupalCon chicago and got my free VPS.net node.

A colleague of mine also did this and got charged. What he got charged for is "snapshots".

When you make a new instance you have to manually uncheck a checkbox to explicitly say you don't want automated backups for your instance. I think the fee is $10 for snapshots.

So the fine print that VPS.net didn't tell you is that you get a free node for life, but you can't have automated backups of the node, even though they will try to get you to buy automated backups if you fill out the form too quickly and don't pay attention to what checkboxes are checked before you submit your request for a new instance.

yea same here. i had to email

patoshi's picture

yea same here. i had to email billing@vps.net to get them to credit me back for the drupalcon promo. kinda anonying i must say... its like one of those free trial offers things where you have to navigate a mine field of checkboxes to make sure they arent checked. i really like there control interface, but it really sucks the fact that you have to pay $10 each time you request for support. i wouldnt have mind going to them if that had a full monthly managed server option.

I finally got the signup but...

bkamlin's picture

Signed up but they sent an invoice for $20 a month. The "lucky" promo code said drupalcon at time of submission. Waiting for a call back. Wondering if this is really worth it. Do you really think they will do a free node for life if the setup is this difficult?

Look at the form you are submitting

LSU_JBob's picture

Be careful, the form you use to make new instances have checkboxes checked by default that will try and charge you.

Be sure you carefully read the entire form and all elements to submit it, since you have to have a valid credit card to receive your "free" instance for life, you don't want them automatically charging you for things you don't want.

what i did was if you have a

patoshi's picture

what i did was if you have a citi card or bank of america card you can generate a virtual number for one time use so they wont be able to charge you if they decided to one day. you can do this thru the website .

Just got charged.

bkamlin's picture

Grrr....

just email billing@vps.net

patoshi's picture

just email billing@vps.net and they will take care of it... pretty shady that they are doing that... i also got charged too because i had a feeling i did after checking the following day. my other co workers signed up fine without the hassle as it seems that its a horribly built form or on purpose where the session variables arent stored if you are hit back to the page with a validation error, the drupalcon code is deleted. one might just hit the submit button again without noticing. and BAM u got charged!

Happened to me

hansyg's picture

I had the same issue, I had an error on the form with the checkboxes that are automatically checked. When the form validation kicked in and returned an error it rechecked those boxes. I realized that after I received an email from billing for $10 for my backup. I just emailed their billing customer support and it was taken care of.

I do however keep getting an "overdue outstanding balance" email from them but when I log in and check my invoices there is no outstanding invoice. Pretty frustrating, I think they are working out some kinks.

My recommendation would be to email billing@vps.net with any concern you have about outstanding invoices or anything you didn't sign up for.

I use VPS.NET but

nickgs's picture

I use VPS.NET but unfortunately was not at DrupalCon for a free node. I find it interesting that they did this. I think what they are planning for is to get more nodes out of you AND/or sell you additional services such as backup, etc.

What I have found is one node really isn't enough to run a few Drupal websites with moderate traffic. Two nodes is where I am at right now and its fast!!

Nick
http://www.nickgs.com

I am using the free node for

tnanek's picture

I am using the free node for a development server; fits my needs perfectly (I got an Aegir installation set up, which is pretty tough to do on shared hosts).

When I tried to sign up for it during the Con, I was having difficulty (fraud prevention errors), but I emailed them and they told me shortly afterwards that all was well for me to sign in.

This won't be adequate for an actual build, but for development it suits me fine.

I got no charges at any point - never even gave my credit card info or anything.

decibel.places's picture

My account was put on hold as soon as I signed up, they want me to send them my ID and credit card images. No problem, but they also charged my account $20 as soon as I submitted the form, and I cannot make any changes in the dashboard because of of the verification requirements. I sent them an email requesting that they credit my account before I verify my payment method. I have used Rackspace Cloud Hosting and they provide even less in the way of a control panel and support, unless you of course pay for "managed" cloud hosting. I could not submit the sign up form without providing the card info AND verifying my phone number with a code they sent be via an automated call.

I got one as well

Cristobal Wetzig's picture

So any news from VPS.net. I have the code as well. And want to use it. But not if i have to hassle with mails back and forward for subscriptions. Did you get your refunds?

The way I see it, unless you

tnanek's picture

The way I see it, unless you already have an account with them and have already given them payment information, you might as well try it, and never enter any payment information. As my comment above states, I did this and never got billed - they couldn't even bill me if they wanted to, with things as they are now.

You have to

LSU_JBob's picture

You have to enter payment information just to get the free account.

Easy to not get charged

yktdan's picture

My rememberer is that I did not get any charge message until I created a machine. Watch that dialog VERY carefully. There are defaults about backups, etc. that cost money. Make sure you uncheck all the options that cost money.

DrupalCon Code

mtpearson's picture

Hey everyone, I lost my program book from the Conference that had the code on the back. Was it all the same code or different ones? If it was the same one is there anyone able to give me the code? Thanks.

UPDATE: Scratch that. Just found it!

VPS.net is ridiculously slow.............

patoshi's picture

holy crap.. it is sooo slow.. i was trying to set this up as a dev environment just for ONE site and gosh it takes so long to load. im just gonna just use it as a dropbox backup dumpster.

what about the rest of you guys?

Slow and spotty here

BBC's picture

Backup dumpster sounds about right to me...

I haven't been charged, but am finding that it is very slow, especially when creating new nodes. I set it up a few days after DrupalCon and shut the VPS down to experiment later on. When I came back a few days later, I waited hours for the thing to start back up. Then had a whole lot of trouble getting the command line console tab to show anything but black.

I am using it purely as a

decibel.places's picture

I am using it purely as a LAMP sandbox: I have installed CentOS with Webmin and SVN and Git. I also installed D7.

I would not expect a "free" service to compete against a paid service.