[Guide] - Get the best deal on a Dedicated Server.

[tripleblade3]

Hey everybody,
So, as many of you server owners out there know, buying a dedicated server is not cheap. They can cost upwards of $200 a month (for a good one).

In this Guide I will show you how to reduce the monthly cost of buying a good server from softlayer.com (you could probably do this with other server providers but I havent tested it, best to stick with softlayer becauase they are very very good IMO and I couldent be happier with them). I have done this twice with two servers both on softlayer and it has worked flawlessly both times.

NOTE: I have only tried this with Softlayer and I am not sure that this will work with any other server providers.

Okay, on to the Guide.

Step One:
Figure out what your budget is and how much you will be able to pay each month. (e.g. I said I could pay $150 a month)

Step Two:
Buy the server with all the customizations you would like and allow yourself to go ~$20 over your budget. (e.g. I bought a server for $180 a month)

Step Three:
Use the server for about 1 day.

Yep, do whatever you want with it, setup your emulator w/e.

Step Four:
This step is the most important step as this is what will lower your bill $20 to your budgeted amount.

Submit a server cancellation request. Yes that's right, submit a ticket to cancel your server. Put a very simple message in the ticket like this:

I can't do it.

Doing this makes Softlayer very curious as to why you would want to cancel your server after only one day and your ticket will attract a lot of curious Employees because of its extremely simple message.

Softlayer never wants to loose its customers and they espically don't want anybody to leave after they have just bought a server one day ago, so they will probably contact you extreamly fast. When they do they will say somthing like this (this is copied and pasted from my ticket):

Employee Response - 2008-Oct-07 23:56 (GMT-0600) [Update 2]
                                                                                                                                                                                               Hello,

We do value your business and would like to know if there's anything we can do for you to keep this server on your account? Please let us know!

Thank you,

Patrick M.
SoftLayer Sales

Perfect! Now we need to respond with something similar to this:

                                                            There are many reasons that I need to cancel this server. But mainly it is the Price. I shouldn't have bought the server in the first place, it was my mistake to buy something that I will have a hard time paying for.

I think the only way That I could keep the server was if the price was lower.

Then an employee should respond with something similar to this:

Hello,
In an effort to keep and grow your business we would like to extend to you a special offer in addition to your existing discounted pricing. If we are able to reduce the price of this server by an additional $20/month would you be able to keep it with us? This would be $70 in savings per month over standard pricing. 

If this is still not a viable solution we can also do a chassis swap and get you into a more entry level server with 1GB of RAM reducing your costs by $40/month. 

Thank you,
Arielle Eaton
SoftLayer Sales

You should know what to tell them now
Respond saying that the $20/month reduction would be great.

Yay!!! You did it, now you have a really good server for a much better price.

EXTRA!:
Make sure you take advantage of the weekly softlayer specials that can be found HERE when buying your server! This allows you to get the best possible deal!

(e.g. I took advantage of the double ram special and got 2 extra gigs of for free )

Anyway, I hope this helps thoes of you looking to upgrade to a dedicated server who are on a tight budget, I know I did

If you have any questions feel free to post them here and I will answer them as best I can!

[tripleblade3]

Whoops! I just noticed, this probably should have gone into the emulator guides section....
On the other hand its not really an 'emulator' guide so maybe this is the right section?

[TheSpidey]

I doubt the legality of conducting fraud against a company, even if it's SoftLayer

[tripleblade3]

I doubt the legality of conducting fraud against a company, even if it's SoftLayer

How are they going to know? There is no way for them to prove that you couldn't pay for it.

[project anthrax]

shouldn't be in the emu server guides

[Twisted7]

This will be useful for my new server, I'd like to upgrade to a dedi at some point. +Rep
Just hope this isn't used so much that they stop falling for it. Though, I don't find it entirely dishonest, as it would really help me pay for the server and they're gaining my business by dropping the price down.

shouldn't be in the emu server guides

Why not? Private servers run on dedicated servers (the good ones, anyway), and they're expensive as hell, 'specially for servers that are just starting out. ANY price reduction is a great thing for a private server owner, and this guide tells you how to do just that.

[rysliv]

or you can go to http://killgaming.we.bs
and get a free wow server managed daily and always online and secure with free website and ventrilo shared 100 users in the server tho... sucks but works heh

nice place to get wow servers
servers are insanely fast
reliable and choose the settings you want online web creation and editing only
no remote access to database its all online stuff

cool

you should use it
its my company
i dont care how many servers you want we host it for you
no problem
includes php5 and mysql in the websites

.co.nr websites or your choice .we.bs domain sites avalible
.50webs.net .50webs.org others to choose
no domains for free websites
free ftp
online ftp access 200kb/sec transfer speeds for free websites
payed websites get 750/sec transfer speeds
extreme FX websites get 20gigabit per second speeds
online ftp sharing unlimited transfer speeds
unlimited ftp storage even for free websites

thanks from the owner of killgaming

[Romis]

or you can go to Kill Gaming - Game Hosting Simplified
and get a free wow server managed daily and always online and secure with free website and ventrilo shared 100 users in the server tho... sucks but works heh

nice place to get wow servers
servers are insanely fast
reliable and choose the settings you want online web creation and editing only
no remote access to database its all online stuff

cool

you should use it
its my company
i dont care how many servers you want we host it for you
no problem
includes php5 and mysql in the websites

.co.nr websites or your choice .we.bs domain sites avalible
.50webs.net .50webs.org others to choose
no domains for free websites
free ftp
online ftp access 200kb/sec transfer speeds for free websites
payed websites get 750/sec transfer speeds
extreme FX websites get 20gigabit per second speeds
online ftp sharing unlimited transfer speeds
unlimited ftp storage even for free websites

thanks from the owner of killgaming

Is it legal to advertise like that?
( Btw, I would want a host. Small server ~ 20 - 40 people )