Pair Networks Price Increase
I’ve been hosting ATPM with Pair Networks for almost 25 years now. At one point, it needed a dedicated server, and then technology improved and we were able to use a high-volume shared hosting account. The site has been in maintenance mode since 2012, and as lower level hosting plans got better and traffic gradually dropped off, eventually it could run on the least expensive shared hosting plan. This was $66/year in 2019. Pair increased the rate to $88 in 2022, and it stayed there for a while. I’m sure there were cheaper options elsewhere, but Pair had provided many years of good service, and it seemed a small price to pay to keep the archives online without putting a lot of time into investigating an alternative host and moving the site.
On December 2, Pair sent an e-mail:
In recent months, we’ve experienced rising operational costs as we upgrade our hardware to improve the quality and reliability of our services. To support these improvements, we will be adjusting our rates effective January 1, 2025.
For our valued existing customers, these new rates will only take effect upon your service renewal.
The new rate was $159/year, a huge increase in percentage terms. Other hosts have been raising rates, too, but not by that much. It’s not really clear to me what’s going on here, as for decades the hardware/storage/bandwidth got better and prices went down. My guess is that we’re currently getting a lot more than we need, but there’s no lower tier to downgrade to. In Pair’s case, the timing shortly after it was acquired is suspicious. Anyway, with our renewal in June, I made a note to investigate other options but figured that staying another year with Pair wouldn’t be that big of a deal.
On May 1, Pair sent another e-mail:
Starting June 1st, 2025, we will launch our NEW Pair Platinum Mail services, replacing the current free email offerings. This change is driven by rising our commitment to continuously improve our products despite operational costs and technical challenges in maintaining high-quality service.
[…]
To ease this transition, we are introducing new email service bundles, offering discounted rates as you increase the number of mailboxes in your plan. This pricing model ensures continued service quality while providing flexibility and affordability as your needs grow.
All the hosts we’ve used have always included more than enough mailboxes for free along with the Web hosting. This change raised the expected $159 to $639, even though we barely get any non-spam mail these days. And it’s anything but “flexible”: you can’t actually buy the number of mailboxes you need:
While each mailbox is priced competitively, we also offer bundle options designed to reduce the price per mailbox as your needs grow—delivering even greater value for businesses requiring multiple accounts.
It looks like there are bulk discounts, but when you actually go to configure it, it turns out that adding more mailboxes makes the per-mailbox price go up. This is because you can’t buy 11 mailboxes at the 10-mailbox rate; you would have to buy 20 and leave 9 unused.
The short notice and trying to market this rigidity as as benefit leave a bad taste, and it just doesn’t seem like the same company anymore. So now I really am looking for alternatives, or perhaps I’ll move it onto the server for one of my other sites. Pair also got rid of their discount for yearly billing, thus incentivizing us to move sooner. I’ve kind of been dreading the move because the site uses Python 2 and MySQL, and the last time I tried compiling the dependencies on a modern version of Linux I ran into multiple blockers. But, actually, it was surprisingly easy to update all my other server code to Python 3, so I should probably just do that here, too.
Previously:
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I have been with Pair for over 20 years and they have gotten more expensive and yet are behind. I moved to Dreamhost and it is pretty good.
Seriously, look at mxroute.com. All good but not for spamming or mailing just newsletters. The guy is obsessed about fighting spam & giving a rep for your Mail. Check & if you meet the terms & conditions you’ll get a great deal. You can figure out the config easily. Been a customer for ages. You can mail me on the hidden address if you have questions.
I’ll plus one MXRoute. I’ve been using them for ages too for accounts where I don’t have Google Workspace stuff.
Very good and affordable service.
Might be worth looking at whether there is any content you can convert to static too. But Pair seems clear they don’t want to serve the lower volume customers anymore which is a shame.
BuyVM has always been good on the low-cost thing and they do have a shaded plan through their non-BuyVM brand that’s decent for the price depending on what you need.
NameCrane is BuyVMs lower cost shared hosting option. Unclear what your traffic needs are but when MediaTemple died it’s where I moved all my obsolete stuff I didn’t rang to deal with in docker or VMs.
Have a look at LeaseWeb ( https://www.leaseweb.com). We've been using them to host the ClamXAV websites for more than 10 years. We use dedicated servers, a handful of VPS and their CDN.
They're fast and inexpensive, and the tech support is always excellent.
Also really good are Mythic-Beasts ( https://www.mythic-beasts.com ). They're a UK-based company built by techies who welcome (but don't expect) a certain level of technical knowledge in their customers, and their tech support is some of the best and fastest I've ever come across. We use them for a couple of our internal websites as well as for Mac Mini Colo.
Fastmail for mail hosting. Far and away the best on the market.
NearlyFreeSpeech for managed Linux hosting. No frills, most common web stacks precompiled, good rates, competent and hands-on staff.
Have had good luck with "Tornado VPS" (back when they were prgmr.com). They don't do shared but their lowest tier VPS is $5/mo.
@Jim Yes, I was lead editor for 17 of the 18 publication years. @Christina The comments are still somewhat active, and Lee Bennett is willing to moderate them, so I’m going to keep the site non-static if possible.
Thanks, everyone, for your hosting recommendations! (I’m already using DreamHost and Fastmail in other contexts and am happy with them.)
Love the idea of keeping ATPM non-static as long as possible, but interesting to realize there've only been 20 comments added since May 2024, and of those, only 8 were deemed worthy to release.
French provider alwaysdata.com has inexpensive plans, including a free tier a rarity nowadays, and good support for mailing. Billed on storage space occupied.
Chiming in with another recommendation for DreamHost. I've been with them for nearly 20 years, and have been very happy. Their support is great, even when I ask them weird questions. The shared hosting is reliable and they maintain things well. I got in with a really great rate, which they let me keep up until this year, but the increase was still pretty reasonable (it went from $100/year to $133/year for me).
I moved my domain registrations to Cloudflare because they offer them at cost, and DreamHost does not, though they give me one free domain renewal each year. I use Google Workspace for email, but it's nice to know DreamHost is always an option - they don't charge per inbox.
"Love the idea of keeping ATPM non-static as long as possible"
In this case, I think the best option would be to take a snapshot of the currently rendered content and host it as static files. As long as external links remain functional, that's 99% of the website's value.
"In Pair’s case, the timing shortly after it was acquired is suspicious"
The same happened to Gandi. They were great, got acquired, and now the prices are ridiculous. I suppose in this case, increased traffic from LLM scrapers could also play a role.
Michael - I was able to cut my own hosting fees down with an Intel NUC I had sitting in my closet. Do a search for NUC colocation data centers, yes they really exist. I cut a lot of hosting infra down to a single NUC box for $21/mo. 8 GB RAM and .5 TB SSD. Can't beat that.
Sure, you have to do a lil linux sys admin, but... the upsides are huge. The python2 makes things ugly, but maybe that's something that could be dockerized?
I used both Pair and Dreamhost for shared hosting projects over a decade. Customer support was fine for both. Transfer speeds for both were unimpressive, even for low traffic sites. The server hardware for both is old. Both use basic LAMP stacks years behind current (LTS). I'll be on neither soon. VPSes are better suited for my needs and the price will be about the same. Neither company is competitive in the VPS space. I will probably use Vultr.
DH specific: DH does make it easy to use recent PHP versions and one-click install and update specific apps. I disliked their control panel organization and it feels like few actions take effect immediately.
Pair specific: Their email charges have me running.
Email hosting: I ruled out Fastmail because I only want to use US-HQ'd companies. MXRoute looks great, ty for the suggestion in comments. Google Workspace gets you Gemini access and some other extras, but supports the evil empire.
Domain registration: Looked into Cloudflare but read CF locks you into using their nameservers if you use them as a registar? Do any let you synchronize renewal dates?
I've been a Pair customer since 1998. Just canceled. If they're going to screw over existing customers, I'm not going to give them any more of my money. I don't even know who the company is anymore after Kevin Martin sold it.
