Dedicated servers: how the auction works

A dedicated server is an entire physical machine that belongs to you alone. No neighbours: all of the processor, all of the memory and every disk are yours.

It is an auction, not a price list

Dedicated servers live on their own Dedicated servers page rather than in the general store. The reason is simple: this is a live supplier auction, and we mirror it every hour.

What follows from that:

• Identical hardware can cost different amounts. Two servers of the same configuration often list at different prices — which is why every lot is shown separately instead of being folded into a "plan". Otherwise the cheap offers would simply vanish from view.
• A lot someone else takes disappears from the list. If a configuration suits you, do not leave it for long.
• The price you see holds at the moment you look. Below the list it says when it was last refreshed.

How to choose

The page has filters: processor vendor, memory, disk type, a text search and sorting. Lots are shown twelve at a time — there can be close to two hundred, and one endless page is unreadable.

How to order

1. Pick a lot and pay the order from your wallet.
2. At checkout you may write which stack to install for you. The field is optional.
3. A person then prepares the machine: we take the server from the supplier and set it up by hand. We promise to be within 24 hours and send a notice when it is ready.
4. With that notice come the address, the login and the password, and the server appears under My servers.

About renewal — this matters

Servers are renewed one period at a time, and an unpaid server is deleted ON its expiry day. The two-week grace that hosting gets does not exist here: the machine is rented from the supplier by the month, and we cannot hold it at our own cost.

So keep the money on the balance in advance, or set it aside on the service itself — then it will renew on its own.

When you need one

Take a dedicated server when you have hit the ceiling of a VPS: a large database, heavy computation, many disks, isolation requirements. For an ordinary website it is overkill — hosting or a VPS is enough.