Celebrating TextDrive’s Three Years
The Original VC200
In May, 2004, Dean and Jason raised the initial money for TextDrive by offering people an opportunity to buy a lifetime hosting account for $200. Only 200 accounts were available.
The New VC200: Lifetime Joyent Accelerators
To celebrate the third anniversary of the original “VC200”, and to usher in a new era of on-demand infrastructure based on Joyent Accelerators, we’re going to do it again. Joyent Accelerators are the future of on-demand infrastructure. Beginning today we have 200 slots available for lifetime, yes lifetime, Small or Medium Accelerators. Pricing is here. This is a one time opportunity. When the 200 slots are sold, that’s it. So accelerate…
UPDATED: Existing lifetime customers will be able to keep their existing shared accounts.
UPDATED 5/25/07: We have sold 197 of the 200 accounts in this special promotion. If you are interested in getting a lifetime ‘S’ or ‘M’ Accelerator and have not placed your order yet, we would encourage you to do so now. Once the 200th is sold, the promotion will end. Cheers.
28 Responses
2 questions:
1. Would I be swapping my lifetime shared for lifetime accelerator?
2. How does a small accelerator compare – speed, stability, not quotas – to the premier shared I’m in line to receive?
3. (I can’t count) Can an idiot like me keep an accelerator safe? I can probably work out how to set stuff up, but then I’ll forget and I don’t want to become the weak link, nor have my sites compromised.
thank you
@Andrew
1. No.
2. Much faster, Solaris stability.
3. Hard to answer.
@David – thanks. To clarify, I can have a lifetime small for $399 in addition to my existing lifetime shared?
If I get to keep my shared and get the accelerator i’m in. I need to know I’m keeping my Shared account though.
I’m in. Thanks gang. Can’t wait to meet all of you in June.
Nice. If only I had the need.
I’m struggling to use my capacious Lifetime shared account as it is, and my Web 2.0 app is still largely imaginary.
Happy birthday to Textdrive, though!
Can we buy more than one?
@Andrew. Nothing happens to your other stuff. This is new stuff.
@anoop. Yes, you can buy up to…well, better hurry.
I’m in. So how many are gone?
My Joyent Account Overview screen says I am currently currently on the Core Premier Prepaid plan. Am I elegible for the upgrade?
I am a little confused on the terminology “Joyent Lifetime Customer”. Seems like my plan was called “Lifetime” at some point in the recent past.
Scott: if you paid a big fee and haven’t paid one since. You’re a lifetime user. You are eligible for the lower prices.
Yikes! This is really cool. I have gone with every lifetime update offered since I joined up (started with the mixed grill and then to 3ML when the new offer was made available.) I think even if the 200 slots are used up quickly all the lifetimers should have a chance to get one. I am a broke college student so I need to do some juggling.
Man, I hope was fast enough. Great offer anyway!
I’m in as well (assuming my ticket was quick enough). Hmmm, let’s see.
VCIII -> 3ML
Bingo + Connector coupon
SftpDrive Strongspace
VCa200
2x shared for clients (these will likely go somewhere else)
Sheesh.
Me: Hi, my name’s Geoff and I’m a Joyaholic.
JA Group: Hi, Geoff!
(Oh, and by “somewhere else” I mean into the 3ML hosting plan.)
I’m in for a medium. If they are available still. I only just woke up, so here is hoping!!
Incredible, I hope my ticket was in time.
Joyent is everyday more like Apple, I heard: “Just one more thing” while reading the announce.
Also, David, could we get an explanation for why some of us previous VCs who had paid for upgrades to Three Martini Lunch are yet to receive our hosting upgrades despite having made payment back in January. I’ve also started a thread in the TextDrive forum:
http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=15752
Great deal, I’m in on one Medium Accelerator.
I spent some time trying to figure out how to migrate over from my existing shared Mixed Grill plan until I realized its a net-new proposition and I get to keep the old account. Amazing!
I’ve been on the lifetime account for awhile now (long enough for it to “pay for itself”) and I’ve been very happy with the service and support. That includes the nice little upgrades along the way, e.g. 100GiB Strongspace(!). That sort of attention to the customer is what makes this decision easy.
[note: I needed to post anonymously because i was banned by the rogue AI that runs the Joyeur comment system.]
kchrist wrote ( http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?pid=131828#p131828 ):
> FYI, for anyone interested, Daniel has
> informed me that while the lifetime
> shared accounts (MG, 3ML) track the
> services offered by Plus and Premier
> accounts (eg, upgrades to the Plus
> account are given to MG holders as
> well), lifetime Accelerators do not. A
> small Accelerator will always stay at
> the level you’re buying it at (256 MB
> RAM, etc), even as the smalls they
> offer for sale increase over time.
@ David Young: this really needs to be in the product description, otherwise it’s quite disingenuous (especially since every other lifetime deal contradicts this).
i also respectfully suggest that you reconsider this detail. how much money will you be saving by preventing lifetime accelerators from tracking the “S” and “M” resource levels? my guess is that the savings will be relatively insignificant and that it would be to Joyent’s benefit to let lifetime accelerators track the resource levels of the “S” and “M” accounts.
by allowing lifetime accelerators to track resource levels you will generate more value in the form of good will from the account holders than you will save by locking resource levels.
peace,
david
besonen wrote:
> @ David Young: this really needs to
> be in the product description, otherwise
> it’s quite disingenuous (especially since
> every other lifetime deal contradicts
> this).
upon further consideration, it contradicts hosting plans in general since every hosting plan i’ve ever heard of always has resource increases over time. that’s the nature of hosting. if the resources didn’t increase over time the hosting service would become obsolete and effectively useless.
if you do decide to keep the resources locked at a fixed level it would be better to drop the word “lifetime” from the title of the offer. because these accounts will not be usable for a lifetime. in fact purchasers would be lucky if they were usable for 10 years given the rate of change in the IT industry.
peace,
david
If you have a lifetime account already, the price is less than one year of service. (If you don’t, it’s still less than 2 years of service.)
This is a fantastic deal whether they bump up the levels over time or not.
Michael wrote:
> If you have a lifetime account already,
> the price is less than one year of
> service. (If you don’t, it’s still less
> than 2 years of service.)
>
> This is a fantastic deal whether they
> bump up the levels over time or not.
Michael, i’m not irritated about the value of the deal. sure, i’d like resource levels to track and i do think it would be to Joyent’s benefit, but i’m not irritated about this.
i do however feel irritated knowing that the information that the resource levels were locked was very likely specifically and intentionally excluded from the description.
this behavior smacks of “big corp” marketing gimmicks.
this behavior is the opposite of transparency.
it is bad public relations. especially because most folks would assume the opposite.
it is corrosive to community because it engenders distrust.
it would be similar to if Sun silently starting selling hardware with NGE’s instead of Intel E1000g’s. people would be pissed.
David: I agree, it would have been nice to know. I’m just saying I would have signed up even knowing that.
I don’t have any visibility into why it was left out – but I know TextDrive and Joyent have treated me more than fairly in the past with amazing upgrades to lifetime accounts at no additional cost. I have a tendency to think they would do the right thing if possible.
Michael wrote:
> I know TextDrive and Joyent have
> treated me more than fairly in the
> past
agreed.
i feel a bit disappointed that i suggested that Joyent may have been intentionally deceptive. they have a lot more integrity than most other companies in my experience.
in hindsight i would have simply asked for an official statement to be made regarding the future status of the resource levels—since i’m not sure i would purchase a lifetime Accelerator if they were locked.
So if someone does want to upgrade one of these plans, say from an M to an L sometime down the road, how would that work? Would we just, for example, be charged the difference between the L and M plans per-month?
Raymond — my understanding is that you can upgrade from S to M later, but that you can’t upgrade from M to anything bigger.