Discussions on the hosting biz generally

anonymousDev

Wait a minute @luceos
Plans from 49 euro/month? Simultanous users limit in XXI century? Seriously?
What is Managed email sending?

Taking users limit into consideration, Focus on your community growth ( from your motto ) sounds like rather sad joke.......

Its cheaper to spin-up new ( high-end ) AWS instance, pay upfront for 1 year and install Flarum manually.........

One must be crazy to pay you for hosting @ Blomstra.

Edit:

Seems it's pretty hard reporting back here while you're very busy making things move forward 😃

Well, if you find reporting back here hard ( due to time constraints / amount of work / wwhatever ) than why not focus on one projet only? Flarum was first. So, either Flarum ( here ) or Blomstra. Especially when you say sth like this:

luceos Will take a look within the next hours.

And these hours turns out to be one month........ Not very good move both credibility-wise and business-wise; if you say sth, stick o it no matter what. Or, say nothing and do whatever.

luceos Google Kubernetes Engine

I would not trust anything from Google when it comes to business solutions..........

matteocontrini

anonymousDev yeah until you consider what it takes to be highly available, manage tens or hundreds of online users, automatic scaling, storage, backups, CDN, email sending, websockets management, the knowledge and time it takes to get all these things right... and the fact that people don't work for free. Then you'll get close to that price 🙂

Hari

anonymousDev @blomstra provides a unique hosting service in a pool, your site will not go down if there is a sudden spike in users. for example: if i have 200k+ subscribers on youtube and if I go live discussing q&a on my forum if the users are starting new discussions my flarum will continue to work whereas in the case of AWS or DO droplet it just stops responding.

yes, it is expensive but it is a premium hosting service maintained by experts. it is up to us to choose Rolls Royce or a fiat car

linc

anonymousDev Seriously?

It's OK to not be their target audience. It doesn't require being publicly indignant. I've hosted my own forums for twenty years (and ran a large forum SaaS company for a decade) and it sounds like a very nice rate to me. I value my own time and someone being accountable for a service. I don't begrudge you having different values.

luceos

anonymousDev thanks for your feedback.

I think the others above were so kind to provide argumentation enough for the prices we have. It warms my heart that we have the support of people that are very outspoken about Flarum 😍.

anonymousDev Simultanous users limit in XXI century? Seriously?

The online users limit is a soft limit. As you can read here. In fact we even tolerate going over this limit daily, because we believe that we are working with our clients to build the best communities. Our role is creating a stable and performant platform.

As an example here's this same client going over their plan limit daily; we are okay with this as long as it doesn't hinder platform stability or the perceived performance of end users:

🟨 number of guests plus members
🟥 plan limit

anonymousDev And these hours turns out to be one month........

This was resolved the same day 😉

anonymousDev I would not trust anything from Google when it comes to business solutions..........

We run on Azure now, increasing quotas at GKE took weeks.

anonymousDev

luceos This was resolved the same day 😉

But you have not written back till one month after.............

luceos We run on Azure now,

Azure is also not that great, but way better than GCP.............

luceos The online users limit is a soft limit.

Soft or hard, I dont care. Limit is limit, regardless of its name..............

Hari yes, it is expensive but it is a premium hosting service maintained by experts.

Marketing BS. Good quality does not necesarily have to be expensive.............
Also what you get with all tiers? Support by mail, really? Wether they reply to you or not, its hard to guess. Also you dont know if you will be waiting 5 minutes or 5 hours for reply! What if you have urgent support request?
Its this this premium you are talking about? This is another sad joke from company.

matteocontrini Then you'll get close to that price 🙂

No. Do your research, some calculations and you will see how wrong you are...........

matteocontrini what it takes

Please don't. Just don't.
Im co-owner of similar company ( we offer paid hosting for some work ) so I know exactly what it takes. We also offer tiers. Our "smallest" costs $20, and "biggest" costs $80. We also use stack similar to Blomstra's. And are in business close to 10 years. Why? Because we host things ourselves. We own our physical servers
Know what? Our prices hasnt been changed in close to 10 years! Yes. We know exactly what it takes to have offer similar to Bloomstra.
So kindly dont say this prices at Bloostra are justified. They are not

Also, @luceos, you havent answered my question..........

tankerkiller125

luceos We run on Azure now, increasing quotas at GKE took weeks.

And despite the M354 and M362 type jokes out there... Azure is not M365, where I work we moved our entire 8 Hyper-V host infrastructure (around 50 vms, 4 web apps, 2 SQL servers, etc.) to Azure, and we've never once had an outage caused by an Azure issue.

matteocontrini

anonymousDev I'm not sure if you're here to be constructive or just to say that you're better... (or maybe .................)

I also run a pretty large Flarum instance and I know how much it costs (without even taking into consideration Kubernetes and other stuff). If you're able to keep prices low because you have your own infrastructure I'm happy for you, consider starting your own (better) hosting business, that would definitely be interesting 🙂

jordanjay29

anonymousDev While it's fair to have criticism and ask questions, let's do so in a way that respects our Community Guidelines, especially:

Make sure your replies provide constructive feedback and support to allow for an inclusive community.

luceos

anonymousDev you havent answered my question..........

Is this about managed email sending? I mean that relates to Blomstra taking care of outbound email for the community.

Thanks jordanjay29 for making us stay on topic 👍️

Darkle

I agree with everything that has been said here before, a stack like Blomstra's takes months (or rather years) to perfect, it's something much more complicated than a simple high-end instance, this is not just a question of server power, believing that is a tremendous mistake in anything related to scalability...

On the other hand I don't think there's anything to discuss, that's how the real world works, especially the professional one. The company where I work if at some point they have to use Flarum they will use Blomstra, they would never consider dedicating a worker to maintain the instance for it, it's obvious that the salary that the company will dedicate each month will allow them several years of a Blomstra plan.

A company like Blomstra does not just offer hosting, there are professional guarantees that of course an AWS instance will not offer you.

anonymousDev

matteocontrini consider starting your own (better) hosting business, that would definitely be interesting 🙂

I have no need to. Im good with current business......... 🙂

Darkle stack like Blomstra's takes months (or rather years) to perfect

Same goes with every stack TBH..........

Darkle it's something much more complicated than a simple high-end instance

I know. AWS instance was just an example.

Darkle I don't think there's anything to discuss

Just the opposite in fact...........

Darkle that's how the real world works, especially the professional one

No & no............

Darkle professional guarantees

For any serious company ( and Bloomstra wants to be taken as one ) this goes without saying..........

Darkle it's obvious that the salary that the company will dedicate each month will allow them several years of a Blomstra plan.

While this is / may be truth, things should not be this way. Im not Bloomstra specific right now; Im taking about hosting biz generally..........

@jordanjay29 where have I not been constructive?

jordanjay29

anonymousDev Im not Bloomstra specific right now; Im taking about hosting biz generally..........

This is a great time to split the discussion away then.

I'll clean this out so that @luceos can stick back to the Blomstra business at hand. Please keep this discussion here and not back in the Blomstra discussion again.

anonymousDev

jordanjay29 This is a great time to split the discussion away then.

This is creating unnecesary burden IMO.........

anonymousDev

luceos Is this about managed email sending?

Yes. Exactly.

luceos I mean that relates to Blomstra taking care of outbound email for the community.

So, IIUC, if users generates more notifs than limit, mails/notifs stop comming? Or do you mean newsletters/spam?

luceos

anonymousDev So, IIUC, if users generates more notifs than limit, mails/notifs stop comming? Or do you mean newsletters/spam?

There is no email sending limit.

You can have your opinion on what you think is the best way to handle hosting. That is your prerogative. We do it differently, we use two plan limitations - Online Users and Asset Storage - which are monitored but not enforced. We do this so that we can have conversations with our client about their growth and help them reach their ambitions in a way that makes it economically viable for them.

I hope that my answers clarify things. If you have any further questions feel free to reach out to me personally on Discord https://flarum.org/discord/ or email - you have probably seen that on the Blomstra website already.

anonymousDev

luceos hope that my answers clarify things.

No. It does not.

luceos There is no email sending limit

Really?

Than whats this?

luceos the best way to handle hosting.

Im not saying that my way is the best and your is the worst......... we ( you and me ) approach this differently, and thats whats good (in the long run ).

luceos

anonymousDev Really?

Than whats this?

That's the amount of queue workers.

anonymousDev

luceos if so, than why they are dubbed ‘emails’?

davwheat

anonymousDev

Presumably because emails are processed by those queue handlers.

2 queue handlers means 2 emails can be sent at the same time. 25 handlers means 25 emails at the same time.

There's no cap on how many emails can be sent overall, but if a community generates outgoing emails quicker than the queue handlers process them, that is when issues will start happening.