Hello everyone,
This is going to be a very tough post. This is a post I didn’t want to ever have to make but I have no choice to be frank. Please note this post will be including full transparency to which I have NEVER, EVER shared with customers or to the open public.
This post may be a long one so I apologize in advance for that but it is very important so please read it in full.
Let’s start at the beginning…On May 29th, 2019, Linden Lab – The company behind Second Life – posted a blog post (link) which included, near the bottom, the news that they were raising the credit processing fees by double the percentage, a shock for a lot of inworld business all across the board. If you are unaware, Second Life charges a fee to sell your L$ then another fee to process them as a credit to US Dollars. Essentially, being charged twice. Once at 3.5% then another 5%. The amount you receive from selling changes basically daily and I decided to eat this fee increase at the end of the day. I did NOT want to raise my prices.
This brings us to October 1st, 2019 where I was sent the invoice as always from our datacenter for the servers payment. When I opened the email on October 2nd, I was quite shocked that the bill was over $70 higher than anticipated. I opened a ticket to find out why…and to fix it. They replied with the news that this was because the company behind the control panel we use, Cpanel, raised their pricing and that has been passed down to the customer. Here is the link to their new pricing posted on their website.
Screenshot of our former pricing
Screenshot of the new pricing (The Balance forward can be ignored, I owed a balance to which I had requested an extension and have paid)
We will be charged $42 base price per server plus $0.15 per an account over 100 accounts. This fee is quite a heavy fee to say the least and it will change each month based on the accounts we have. As most know, we create all of our accounts manually so now we will be charged for the accounts that sit on the server that have yet to be sold. We will be trying to cut that down by having a set amount up for sale to decrease that.
This comes to the news I never wanted to do…as you can see by it being now 9 days later…I have thought about and to be honest, I have cried about this situation everyday since because I didn’t want to have to raise our pricing but at this point, I have to because our current pricing for the budget streams is not sustainable with the price hikes we have endured from Linden Lab to now our datacenter. We cannot stay inworld in business with pricing at $0.37 a month (L$100). We cannot pay real world servers, software fees, our amazing staff, and expand etc at this rate.
We are considering launching a Patreon but for one, I am unsure if anyone would be interested in Hostcrate like that and two, outside of keeping your same price & a new Tshirt/Sticker/Merch each month as an exclusive benefit to becoming one of our Patreon’s, I have not a clue what to offer. Hostcrate has been my life since I was only 22 years old so this defeat is so heartbreaking to me personally because I love all of my customers, I love what I do so very much, and Hostcrate would NOT be around for this long without you.
I just hope everyone can take a moment to understand and not be upset with me about the price change I must make. Thank you all.
Pricing will be changed on October 10th, 2019.
Budget Streams: L$99/week
Intro Streams: L$150/week
Club Streams: Remaining the same as of now
Radio Streams: Remaining the same as of now
License changes have been posted at: https://news.hostcrate.stream/2019/10/update-to-important-changes-at-hostcrate/
L̶i̶f̶e̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶L̶i̶c̶e̶n̶s̶e̶s̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶r̶e̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶u̶p̶p̶o̶r̶t̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶y̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶t̶e̶r̶m̶i̶n̶e̶d̶.̶ ̶L̶i̶f̶e̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶L̶i̶c̶e̶n̶s̶e̶s̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶m̶o̶v̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶y̶e̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶t̶e̶r̶m̶i̶n̶e̶d̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶d̶e̶c̶i̶s̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶s̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶v̶i̶c̶e̶s̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶F̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶,̶ ̶O̶c̶t̶o̶b̶e̶r̶ ̶1̶1̶t̶h̶,̶ ̶2̶0̶1̶9̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶.̶
I am truly sorry to everyone that I may disappoint with this news. I hope that you’ll still keep us as your provider through this change but I understand if that won’t be the case.
Again, Thank you,
LustyLexxi Larimore