M. Asif Rahman breaks down xCloud's lifetime offer: it's a control panel like Cloudways, not a full host, so you pay once for the software but still need a separate monthly VPS fee from DigitalOcean or Vultr. The $99 tier gets you 2 servers; a server can host multiple sites depending on resources.
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I've had a few folks ask me about xCloud, which is this new hosting offer that the guy behind the WP ninja, fluentCRM and all that he recently invested in. And there's currently a lifetime offer going on for this thing. Now, I have not actually used it. I just wanted to make a few comments about it so you understand what you're getting into if you purchase xCloud. Okay, so here's excal at xcloud Host and I had never heard of it until these guys launched it. And it's getting some traction right now. People are asking me about it because it has a lifetime deal, which is something that this company, they like to do it when they launch a new product. They've done it with Fluid Booking, they did it with Fluent CRM, Fluid Forms, and so they're making it a lifetime. Now I want to make sure that you understand what it is that you're getting here because you may think you're getting hosting like full on hosting and you pay once and you have hosting forever. That's not exactly what's happening here. What xCloud actually is, is more of like Cloudways or Server Avatar or Run Cloud or something like that, where basically you're getting a control panel in order to control a virtual private server that you're going to have through another provider. Now that provider could be Digital o Vulture. I don't. They probably, whoops, they probably work with several of them and. But you'd be getting your, your server through one of those other providers and you're still going to have to pay monthly for that. Now it's going to be a lot cheaper because you can get a good, a pretty decent Vulture server, for example, for like 5 bucks a month, maybe 10 bucks a month. 12. I forgot what the exact price is. But you know, you're paying significantly less there and you're getting a pretty decent amount of horsepower. If you were to use something like Cloudways, you pay monthly, but you're paying roughly double what the server actually cost. If you were just to go get it directly from the provider like Vulture or DigitalOcean or something like that. The double that you're paying with Cloudways is because of the control panel. They're making that virtual private server easier to use. That's basically what it is. Okay? Because otherwise you're dealing with a raw server and it's super nerdy and you're probably not gonna like life if you're doing it like that. So that's essentially what xCloud is doing. They're kind of like just the control panel. They're like what Cloudways provides. Okay. But you're still going to have to go and get the server. You'll plug in, like, probably. I haven't been in here yet, but you're probably going to plug in like an API code or something that attaches to your Vulture account or something to that effect. And you're going to spin up a server inside of xCloud and you will have a lifetime deal. You're only going to pay once for xCloud Cloud itself, but you're still gonna have to pay a small monthly fee for your actual server. Now, another thing that people have been asking about is, let me pull up the lifetime deal is the number of servers because it defaults to this thing for like 15 servers or for 599. But you can pull down to entry. In fact, I think down here the pricing is a little bit more. Yeah, Here we go. Two servers for 99. So here's the thing. A server is not a website, okay? Don't think that you. You need to have one server per website. With a server, it's a virtual private server again through one of your providers, okay? And you can get a little itty bitty server and it's cheaper, or you can get a big old massive server and you can stick as many websites as you want on these servers, okay? And really the only limit is going to be the amount of horsepower essentially that you have on the server. So if you get a little itty bitty server that has like 1 CPU and 1 gigabyte of RAM, you could probably still run several WordPress sites on that. Now, are you going to run a big fancy membership site with WooCommerce and the whole thing? Nah, you're not going to want to do that. You're going to want to get a beefier server than that. But you can definitely run multiple websites on the same server, okay? So keep that in mind. If on the entry account, if it says $99, you can put two servers in that, but on each one of those servers, you can have as many websites as you want. It really just comes down to the amount of horsepower. Are you ever going to need to put one site per server? Well, maybe, but that really comes down to what your needs are. If you are going to have a real beefy site that has a whole lot of plugins going on, you're going to need more memory, you're going to want more processing power, and you're going to have to pay for a bigger server. Again, they're not expensive, at least compared to other hosts, because you're getting a lot of horsepower there. But that's what I want to make clear is when you're looking at these, like, for most people, if you're considering Xclown, you won't need any more than probably their entry plan. And again, keep in mind that you have a refund period. So if you're finding that this is just not your thing, just get a refund. In my opinion, when you go for the bigger plans with multiple servers, it's pretty much because you're running a web agency, which means you're probably going to be hiring a bunch, you're going to have clients hosted with you, or you're in a position where you're managing a lot of websites, okay, in which case get the option to have more servers. Again, it's kind of like paying for Cloudways, except that you're paying for the server directly and you have a lifetime deal on the actual control panel. That's essentially what it is. Now, in terms of my opinion on nextcloud, I want to make clear I've never been in here and I've not used it. I probably will purchase an account in order to check it out and I might end up using it. And in fact, I've got some sites that are still with Cloudways and I might actually move them over to xCloud and then cancel Cloudways altogether. I want to see how their support is and things like that. Now, in terms of lifetime deals with hosting, usually I'd be running the other direction with a lifetime deal with hosting, but it's if it's working, you know, if it basically being that it's only the software and it's not going to be the actual server, it makes more sense. I will say too that I know these guys have a roadmap in mind for Xcloud. The track record is typically when they do a launch lifetime deal, their stuff just keeps getting better. And so it's one of those things to where I think we may be in a position in a year or even less, where people who have the lifetime deal with xCloud are probably going to be quite happy they have it. I know with Grid Pane they used to have a lifetime offer. They made that offer a while back and the people who have it are pretty happy they have it. And I think xCloud could be a similar situation. So that's kind of my off the cuff viewpoints on xCloud. I probably will pick up an account. And if you are looking to pick up an account, just keep in mind it's not lifetime as in you have no hosting bill. It's just that your server bill is going to be a lot less like if you're on, on siteground or something like that, you're, you're paying a decent amount for that hosting. Your hosting bill will be significantly smaller with xCloud because the cost of that virtual private server will be cheaper. Now keep in mind, as far as DNS and all that kind of stuff, I think they're going to have partnerships with other companies like Cloudflare and all that in order to do it. But this is not a hosting account that's in the same. They don't target the same type of people as a siteground. So it's not going to be quite as user friendly, probably, but it should be pretty user friendly. I'm expecting it to have a lot of similarities to Cloudways, maybe with a few interface enhancements and things like that. And the other thing too, I just know from experience with these guys is that they're pretty responsive. So I have a feeling they're going to keep making it pretty good. All right, so those are some off the off the Cuff xCloud fonts. If you have any questions, let me know. But again, I've not used it yet. I just wanted to answer a few questions that I've been being asked via email and I figured this video would be quicker.
