Slow Servers

Hand drawn+painted logo, by my wonderful wife, without the assistance of AI.

A Simple Site, offering (relatively) Slow Servers hosted on Secondhand Systems in Spokane, Washington, with (hopefully) Satisfactory Service.

Why on earth would I want a "slow server?" It's slow!

You might not! But slow is relative. Compared to the latest Ryzen processors, it's slow. But if you want to host a basic website, have a Jabber server, DNS, etc, it's probably fast enough for most. Our hardware is absolutely bleeding edge compared to something from the year 2,000. It could probably get you to the moon and back if you believe in that sort of thing (I do, but my wife doesn't.)

It's just hard to justify buying new hardware when there's so much adequate hardware already made. It's not like circuit boards biodegrade -- there's a significant environmental cost for performance benefits hard to justify for most. One could argue that the Internet is unnecessary, and it probably is. But some of us remember it being used primarily for human communication and the sharing of knowledge, and for the Internet's most useful functions, these "Slow Servers" are quite adequate.

These servers are also slower because they are chosen and designed to use less power. This is cheaper for me, (possibly) cheaper for you, and better for the environment. Slow Servers is the manifestation of an idealistic vision of what hosting should be. There's no ambition to pursue the latest and greatest, keeping up with the Jones', and their great-great grandchildren. The idea is to maintain year 2010 levels of communication without WALL-E (TM) levels of trash and waste upgrading equipment every few years.

What Slow Servers offers

Virtualized Private Servers (VPS) hosted on OpenBSD with VMM. The VPSs have only IPv6 connectivity by default, but IPv4 is (soon, maybe now) available for a fee. Inbound IPv4 is available free of charge through our own SNIProxy server, so the legacy IPv4 Internet can still reach many services on your server(s). There are more ammenities, described below.

Pricing

All plans have only one vCPU, which is shared. Routed /64 IPv6 allocations are included.

You likely won't notice much performance gain in the larger sizes, unless your needs are memory bound. Their main use is if you need more disk space. Unfortunately, VMM is unable to allocate more than one vCPU.

If you wish to pay by the month, order through SporeStack. If you wish to pay by the year, you can order via email or SSH.

If you would like a IPv4 address, it costs extra. You can't currently request a IPv4 through SporeStack.

Amenities

Operating Systems

I use and recommend OpenBSD, but understand that Debian is preferable for many. I may add more options in the future.

Location

Spokane, Washington, USA

Proudly located in the Neutron datacenter (Levy Building)

Payment

Slow Servers accepts Monero, Bitcoin, and Bitcoin Cash. Cash or silver in mail to the PO box below is also possible.

You may pay by the month through SporeStack, or annually by any other method.

If you want to try before you buy, send a friendly email. Don't write it with AI!

Ordering

You can currently order Slow Servers four different ways. But please first read the Service Level Agreement and Acceptable Usage Policy, whichever way you choose!

Order through SporeStack

You can pay for Slow Servers and launch through SporeStack. The easiest way is through the HTML/Javascript launcher on the website.

This is probably the easiest option for most.

SporeStack (HTTPS)

SporeStack (HTTP Tor Hidden Service)

Order by email

Send us an email: support@slowservers.net

For example:

Hi Slow Servers,
I would like to purchase one "$4.50/month: 768MiB of memory, 24GiB of disk" server from you for one year.
My SSH Public key is: ssh-ed25519 AAAAC4NzaC1l...
I would like to install OpenBSD 7.8 myself.
You may pick the hostname and my username to access my VPS' host with.
I will pay for one year with Monero.
Thank you,
Pseudononymous Philosopher

I will respond with an invoice. After payment, I will send you another email with details.

If you wish to use PGP or signify +/- age, see the "security fingerprints" link below.

Order through SSH

No password needed, no SSH key. You do have to have IPv6, however.

Or, via Tor.

You'll probably need something like this in your ~/.ssh/config:

Now you can run:

Just follow the prompts!

Ordering via mail

If you really want to maximize the "slow" experience, we can correspond via mail.

Note that the PO box is likely to only get checked about once a month unless it gets used often.

Cash in mail or silver payments are possible. Realistically, it's probably best to send an email before doing this, but maybe you're feeling brave?

And please don't send silver from abroad, then ask for a refund of that silver, back to your international address!

About Slow Servers

Gemlog (blog/news)

Alternatives to Slow Servers

Differences between Slow Servers and SporeStack

Physical host servers.

Network layout, for the curious. (Looking Glass coming eventually!)

Security fingerprints and such

Frequently (or not!) Asked Questions

Our SLA (Service Level Agreement)

Acceptable Usage Policy

Other

Physical things (mostly hardware) for sale

Slow Servers Status

Status (Gemini)

Status (HTTPS)

Slow Servers Endpoints

Slow Servers is Gemini native and/or available over Tor. The site itself is hosted on one of our VPSs and comes to you from Spokane, Washington.

Slow Servers (Gemini)

Slow Servers (HTTPS)

Slow Servers (Gemini + Tor Hidden Service)

Slow Servers (HTTPS + Tor Hidden Service)

A Final Note

Modern AI tools/agents, such as LLMs, ChatGPT, Co-Pilot, Gemini, etc, are not used in the development of Slow Servers.

Proxied content from gemini://slowservers.net/ (external content)

Gemini request details:

Original URL
gemini://slowservers.net/
Status code
Success
Meta
text/gemini
Proxied by
kineto

Be advised that no attempt was made to verify the remote SSL certificate.