LowEndBoxes Review (LEBRE) side project

poisson

This is a side project I have been wanting to get off the ground for a while, and following #lexit's momentum, I decided to put it all together once and for all. Nothing fancy, so keep the expectations low.

My aim was basically to help people make better decisions on what to buy so that they can get the best lowend deal and avoid getting scammed. There is a lot of information on various forums, which can be daunting for newbies, so I thought I would try to package information in an easy-to-understand manner. I have also decided to do a whitelist of providers that I think are definitely reliable based on lurking around various hosting forums, and I think all the honest and reliable providers here in the forum should have been captured. If I missed out anyone, please let me know.

I also wanted to have a quick way to gauge how value-for-money provider deals are based on paper specifications, so I developed a quick and dirty method to evaluate deals. Nothing scientific, but good enough for me, and I hope it is useful to you.

Here's the link if you are interested to take a look: https://lowendboxes.review

vimalware

I appreciate the effort into creating a methodology (at least until jsgguy tears into it)

seriesn

Totally digging the lay out! All the best

poisson

@vimalware said:
I appreciate the effort into creating a methodology (at least until jsgguy tears into it)

Oh, in my profession, we tear into one another's methodology all the time, so you learn to defend your methodology. Anyway, my aim is just to provide an easy-to-understand and reasonably accurate way to determining if you are getting good value for money (defined by getting the best performance for the least money).

I suspect I will have a very busy Black Friday weekend. I am interested to see how many offers can blow the reference box out of the water. SmartHost came close!

ITLabs

Hey @poisson thanks for the initiative! How do you intend to evaluate the boxes regarding the storage type (item 5). Since REBOX1 is NVMe will you setup other refboxes with HDD and SSD?

poisson

@ITLabs said:
Hey @poisson thanks for the initiative! How do you intend to evaluate the boxes regarding the storage type (item 5). Since REBOX1 is NVMe will you setup other refboxes with HDD and SSD?

That one was kinda a rough estimate. HDDs are given a score of 1. SSDs are given 3 (generally read writes of SSDs are approximately 3 times that of HDDs from what I see from benches on forums), and Nvmes are given a 6 (read writes typically doubles SSDs, hence a 6). I don't want to go into very specific details of IOPs and stuff because my aim is to capture the relative performance difference sufficiently, so I think the numbers I have chosen are quite accurately reflective of real-world performance.

Edit: LowEndBoxes Reviews only look at paper specs, so I have to make assumptions. Also, it is a relative benchmark of value, i.e. the numbers are not raw performance but kind of like performance per dollar. I link to real benchmarks for confirmation when I see them because real benchmarks tell another story.

terrorgen

@poisson said:

@vimalware said:
I appreciate the effort into creating a methodology (at least until jsgguy tears into it)

Oh, in my profession, we tear into one another's methodology all the time, so you learn to defend your methodology.

Curious, what is your profession?

poisson

@terrorgen said:

@poisson said:

@vimalware said:
I appreciate the effort into creating a methodology (at least until jsgguy tears into it)

Oh, in my profession, we tear into one another's methodology all the time, so you learn to defend your methodology.

Curious, what is your profession?

I am an academic.

terrorgen

@poisson said:

@terrorgen said:

@poisson said:

@vimalware said:
I appreciate the effort into creating a methodology (at least until jsgguy tears into it)

Oh, in my profession, we tear into one another's methodology all the time, so you learn to defend your methodology.

Curious, what is your profession?

I am an academic.

No wonder!

tgl

this seems interesting, it could be an alternative to that scam website, LEB

poisson

@tgl said:
this seems interesting, it could be an alternative to that scam website, LEB

Thats also a strong motivation. LEB is a total scam.

hzr

LEB occasionally posts good providers, much like a broken clock is occasionally correct

poisson

@hzr said:
LEB occasionally posts good providers, much like a broken clock is occasionally correct

You sure you want to rely on this clock to be at church in time for wedding?

willie

Ya know there are a bunch of these already but when it comes down to it, I've never found them useful. My main buying criterion is always what do I think of the humans at the other end of the service, and that's not something that can be captured in a database. By comparison, specs mean basically nothing. I'm experienced enough to know what competitive offers are, and don't much care about squeezing out the last 0.0001. So I just go by my own past experience and the believable user reports of other members.

For a long time (and still to some extent) I obsessively tracked storage offers, but the tracking is in a text file, not a sortable database or anything like that. I just don't see much need for web UI's around things like that.

vyas

The site and the list is developing nicely,

Byw LEBRE is cool LeBro is cooler. Like French urban subculture thingy.
What say tou bros, @uptime @ITLabs ?

ITLabs

@vyas said:
The site and the list is developing nicely,

Byw LEBRE is cool LeBro is cooler. Like French urban subculture thingy.
What say tou bros, @uptime @ITLabs ?

I say LESBRO.

sonic

Very nice project!

poisson

@willie said:
Ya know there are a bunch of these already but when it comes down to it, I've never found them useful. My main buying criterion is always what do I think of the humans at the other end of the service, and that's not something that can be captured in a database. By comparison, specs mean basically nothing. I'm experienced enough to know what competitive offers are, and don't much care about squeezing out the last 0.0001. So I just go by my own past experience and the believable user reports of other members.

For a long time (and still to some extent) I obsessively tracked storage offers, but the tracking is in a text file, not a sortable database or anything like that. I just don't see much need for web UI's around things like that.

I would say that you are not the target audience of this little project. The target audience is for people who either don't know how to evaluate paper specs, or for people who want a quick and easy way without investing too much time to think. By no means is my evaluation fool-proof but it serves as a useful decision-making aid for the two groups I have mentioned.

Also, the project only evaluates whitelisted providers to reduce the chances of being scammed by dishonest providers. I also intend to eventually compile a ranking chart of all the paper spec evaluations in terms of value as a centralised reference point. Even if a year or two has passed, you don't have to go and trawl forums for past offers to see whether the current offer is better than old offers, and perhaps providers can use the data to enhance the value of their offerings.

Thanks for the feedback and I will try to make the platform as useful as possible. It will be better than LEB, I promise.

terrorgen

@poisson I was planning until Black Friday for my next VPS deal, but gave @seriesn my $48 after your review.

You bastard!

vyas

@poisson is not getting much love these days. For the right wrong reasons :-)

poisson

@terrorgen full disclosure: I also gave @seriesn my Black Friday budget this year..

uptime

@vyas said:
The site and the list is developing nicely,

Byw LEBRE is cool LeBro is cooler. Like French urban subculture thingy.
What say tou bros, @uptime @ITLabs ?

I say LEBRE is @poisson's brainchild and brand and that's plenty cool enough for me

Le(s)Bro super cool too - maybe they will find some suitable application as well?

@poisson - I have yet to dig into the details of your methodology but do very much like what I see just in terms of the layout - first impressions and all that. Will certainly be keeping an eye on how it develops.

@willie - if you might have any notes on storage deals that are not yet listed in https://lowendstorage.win please let me know. I'm now maintaining the site started by @Mason - not (yet) obsessively though!

(And I definitely agree about prioritizing long-term reliability etc. when evaluating providers.)

EDIT: I just remembered that currently there are a lot of links to LET offer threads on https://lowendstorage.win - hopefully those will get switched over to corresponding threads on this forum as time goes on (and those providers show up to make offers here).

Anyway - back to reviewing LEBRE now!

EDIT2:

might also mention one thing about my own (informal) "methodology" - I generally do not let providers know who I am on these forums (with a couple exceptions: InceptionHosting and IntoVPS - when my first order attempts got stuck in maxmind). Two reasons: one is just an instinct to keep my "real life" personal info generally separate from my online presence. And the other is for putting on an informal "reviewer" hat - I think it makes good sense to be a secret shopper rather than get some "I have a very important profile on the forum" treatment.

Then I mostly idle the service, maybe put in a few tickets only as necessary - and if I find a good use for the system then so much the better. (I often do, eventually.) But I gradually get a decent sense of some baseline - how smoothly the control panel works for me, how the support and necessary communications get handled - and especially how reliable the system is over the period of at least a few months. That's when I start mentioning my experience with the provider as such, whenever it's appropriate to do so.

willie

Certainly I wish @poisson the best with this project, and the whitelist is a good idea. But it's not just that I'm not the target audience for it: I also think the intended audience (inexperienced users) isn't a great target for it either. That type of user is likely to assume all servers with similar specs are equivalent commodities, and pick the cheapest one. Commodity servers are a thing (Digital Ocean etc. sell them at the midrange, or GCP/AWS/etc. further upscale) and that is probably what such a user should buy, even though they are a bit expensive by LES standards.

LES is partly about working around limitations and flakiness to get stuff done economically, and people who attempt that for anything serious should know what they are doing. Even the whitelisted providers all have such limitations (not many very large vps's, frequent stock shortages, etc). People who just want cheap servers to play around with should have realistic expectations going in. What's left is the thrill of the hunt .

mikho

@ITLabs said:

@vyas said:
The site and the list is developing nicely,

Byw LEBRE is cool LeBro is cooler. Like French urban subculture thingy.
What say tou bros, @uptime @ITLabs ?

I say LESBRO.

The ones who watch and never gets to play with the toys??
?

ITLabs

@mikho said:

@ITLabs said:

@vyas said:
The site and the list is developing nicely,

Byw LEBRE is cool LeBro is cooler. Like French urban subculture thingy.
What say tou bros, @uptime @ITLabs ?

I say LESBRO.

The ones who watch and never gets to play with the toys??
?

Haha! Touché mon ami!

poisson

@willie Great points. I have a consumer guidance section that will be up eventually explaining in newbie terms the various components of a lowend box so that they will know the limitations and can make better judgement. Everyone has their method of evaluating, and my method is just one. I tend to pick those that I think are really good value for money for evaluation, and you can look at my picks as a crude first filter and then use your own methodology to see if you concur. If your personal methodology yields similar conclusions, then just buy it already!

@uptime It's a crude paper specs methodology, but I think it is mostly accurate mainly in real life because I only feature whitelisted providers, and they manage their servers well so you can expect to get the performance that is advertised. I also hope for LEBRE to be an information repository. I have added a charts section to rank the LEBRE scores historically so that a few years down, you can see how a box then matches up with the boxes a few years ago without having to wade through tens of thousands of forum posts. Providers can also use the information on LEBRE to design their promos: find boxes I have evaluated with high LEBRE scores and make them better!

seriesn

LEBRE, if done right, could easily become the "GeekBench" for providers. Is it for everyone? I doubt. Just like GeekBench. To some it is some cool nice numbers, to others, it gives you in-depth idea of how compatible it is with one's requirements.

Keep up the good work man

poisson

Decided to give WisHosting some love: https://lowendboxes.review/wishosting-kvm-ssd-nov-2019/

They actually have very, very good value boxes on a regular basis!

dahartigan

@poisson said:
Decided to give WisHosting some love: https://lowendboxes.review/wishosting-kvm-ssd-nov-2019/

They actually have very, very good value boxes on a regular basis!

Wishosting are extremely excellent potassium and are certified and awarded with the dahartigan seal of potassium quality. One of my first LE* providers and will always hold a special place. Seriously though, his ticket etiquette is an example of excellence. Always professional and polite and seems to enjoy helping people. Go find a legit complaint, I bet you'll come up short :-)

poisson

@dahartigan said:

@poisson said:
Decided to give WisHosting some love: https://lowendboxes.review/wishosting-kvm-ssd-nov-2019/

They actually have very, very good value boxes on a regular basis!

Wishosting are extremely excellent potassium and are certified and awarded with the dahartigan seal of potassium quality. One of my first LE* providers and will always hold a special place. Seriously though, his ticket etiquette is an example of excellence. Always professional and polite and seems to enjoy helping people. Go find a legit complaint, I bet you'll come up short :-)

I like his boxes too. I had one previously and seriously nothing but top-notch quality and service. My only complaint is that he just keeps too low a profile and doesn't advertise himself enough!

poisson

Canvassing some views from the trustworthy LES crowd as I just saw the Hostsailor BF deals. Can anyone vouch for their customer service and product reliability?

sonic

@poisson said:
Canvassing some views from the trustworthy LES crowd as I just saw the Hostsailor BF deals. Can anyone vouch for their customer service and product reliability?

They arent cheap at all, even with 60% discount.

FlamingSpaceJunk

This seems like a fun project. Didn't someone have a benchmarking script to collect numbers about hosts?

@poisson said:

@hzr said:
LEB occasionally posts good providers, much like a broken clock is occasionally correct

You sure you want to rely on this clock to be at church in time for wedding?

Weddings are about seeing how much alcohol can be consumed, so sure.

We don't eat fast food because it's healthy. Cheap crap is cheap crap, and it gets the job done when the job isn't important. I know where to go if I want a nice meal and don't mind paying the ticket, and I know where to go if I don't.

poisson

Looks like @HostDoc is seriously tempting our wallets (and we are just talking appetizers now; wondering what the main courses will be): https://lowendboxes.review/hostdoc-black-friday-2019-dallas-dual-compute/

I didn't compute a LEBRE score for this Kansas VPS monster because it is more than $7 but I am glad I already spent my BF budget because I was really tempted to click buy.

HostDoc

@poisson said:
now; wondering what the main courses will be): >

The main plans for BF are also available on the site if you scroll towards the bottom however they can not yet be purchased and will become available from black Friday.

dahartigan

@HostDoc said:

@poisson said:
now; wondering what the main courses will be): >

The main plans for BF are also available on the site if you scroll towards the bottom however they can not yet be purchased and will become available from black Friday.

Those are some seriously overdose levels of potassium Doc :-)

I assume the explosions I heard last night followed by a crazed "I did it!" being heard from your lab were the result of testing the purity of the potassium.

dahartigan

@poisson said:
Looks like @HostDoc is seriously tempting our wallets (and we are just talking appetizers now; wondering what the main courses will be): https://lowendboxes.review/hostdoc-black-friday-2019-dallas-dual-compute/

I didn't compute a LEBRE score for this Kansas VPS monster because it is more than $7 but I am glad I already spent my BF budget because I was really tempted to click buy.

I'm also out this BF, I have already blown my budget on crack potassium and a shipping container of @cociu's sisters who have become weak on plow or hair grow on chests.

poisson

@HostDoc said:

@poisson said:
now; wondering what the main courses will be): >

The main plans for BF are also available on the site if you scroll towards the bottom however they can not yet be purchased and will become available from black Friday.

Ah.. but I suppose the pricing will drop a bit if paid annually, right? That's what I have observed with the warmers.

Also, I think I see some typos in the actual BF offers:

UK 1Gbps: last plan's pound symbol is missing
SG 250 mpbs: second plan bandwidth should be 300GB, not 300 MB
AU 250 mbps: all plans bandwidth should be in GB, not MB

That's about what I managed to catch.

HostDoc

@poisson said:

@HostDoc said:

@poisson said:
now; wondering what the main courses will be): >

The main plans for BF are also available on the site if you scroll towards the bottom however they can not yet be purchased and will become available from black Friday.

Ah.. but I suppose the pricing will drop a bit if paid annually, right? That's what I have observed with the warmers.

Also, I think I see some typos in the actual BF offers:

UK 1Gbps: last plan's pound symbol is missing
SG 250 mpbs: second plan bandwidth should be 300GB, not 300 MB
AU 250 mbps: all plans bandwidth should be in GB, not MB

That's about what I managed to catch.

There may be a host of errors present I believe.
This is what happens when indulging in too much of your own medication.
I will have it rectified before the end of the day. Thanks for pointing them out. Thanks @FAT32 also for pointing out previous errors.

poisson

@HostDoc said:

@poisson said:

@HostDoc said:

@poisson said:
now; wondering what the main courses will be): >

The main plans for BF are also available on the site if you scroll towards the bottom however they can not yet be purchased and will become available from black Friday.

Ah.. but I suppose the pricing will drop a bit if paid annually, right? That's what I have observed with the warmers.

Also, I think I see some typos in the actual BF offers:

UK 1Gbps: last plan's pound symbol is missing
SG 250 mpbs: second plan bandwidth should be 300GB, not 300 MB
AU 250 mbps: all plans bandwidth should be in GB, not MB

That's about what I managed to catch.

There may be a host of errors present I believe.
This is what happens when indulging in too much of your own medication.
I will have it rectified before the end of the day. Thanks for pointing them out. Thanks @FAT32 also for pointing out previous errors.

Nothing like LESourcing proofreading.

poisson

In light of the latest mass LEB deadpooling, I thought of improving the whitelist on LEBRE through the community's collective wisdom. If anyone has hosts worthy of whitelisting that I am not aware of, drop a reply. If you would like to second any suggestions based on your experience, please do. The more honest sharing we have, the more likely we have a dependable whitelist of providers.

uptime

hello @poisson - for the sake of convenience to discuss in this thread, would it make sense to post your current whitelist in a comment here? (I am feeling somewhat lazy today ...)

Also if I might presume to impose just a bit here with my own info-gathering agenda to mention that there are now well over 100 providers listed with wiki pages open for additions here: https://lowend.wiki/Providers - please feel free to use that as a scratchpad for collaborative notes or whatever to augment discussion here - and I'm happy to tidy up rough drafts or whatever later if/when necessary.

The LEBRE reviews and whitelist are mentioned briefly on the wiki as well (though might also be good to add as a note where appropriate in individual provider pages there too).

There are about 20 "lowend" providers I've tried myself over the last couple years - and I think there are plenty more good ones I don't even know about. I'll definitely be circling back around to learn from others here and chime in with a few of my own observations - after I've had my coffee ...

EDIT: still haven't had coffee yet. But YOLO so here you go, some very rough grist for your mill. (I would be able to personally recommend about a dozen or so based on my own very limited experience - am just hoping this big "kitchen sink" list might jog some memories and maybe will inspire some more dischssion here)

Here are links to individual wiki pages for over 100 (mostly lowend) providers.

Please feel free to add your notes, and let me know if any questions or suggestions.

• AlphaVPS
• AnyNode
• AquaNX
• Atlantic.net
• Avoro
• BaCloud
• BanditHost
• BinaryLane
• Budgetnode
• BunnyCDN
• BuyVM
• BuyShared
• CatalystHost
• Cloud2Z
• Cloudcone
• Clouvider
• Contabo
• CrownCloud
• Dacentec
• Dediserve
• Dedispec
• DigitalOcean
• DrServer
• EvolutionHost
• ExonHost
• ExtraVM
• FalloutHosting
• FastMako
• Finalhosting
• First-Root
• FlowVPS
• FreeRangeCloud
• George Datacenter
• GestionDBI
• GreenCloudVPS
• GTHost
• Gullo's Hosting
• Hetzner
• Hivelocity
• Host.ag
• HostDare
• HostDoc
• Hostens
• HostEONS
• HostHatch
• HostHongKong
• HostingInside
• HostMantis
• Hostodo
• HostSailor
• HostSlick
• HostSolutions
• HostUp
• Hostus
• Hukot
• Hyonix
• HyperExpert
• Ikoula
• ImpactVPS
• InceptionHosting
• IndoVirtue
• IntoVPS
• IonSwitch
• IoFlood
• IoZoom
• Kimsufi
• Joe's Data Center
• LaunchVPS
• Leapswitch
• LetBox
• LiteServer.nl
• Linode
• LKwebhosting
• LunaNode
• MicroNodes
• MikroVPS
• MisterHost
• Mivocloud
• MNX.io
• MrVM
• MyW.pt
• Naranjatech
• Netcup
• NexusBytes
• Nocix
• Online
• OVH
• Owned-Networks
• Packet
• Paperspace
• PHP-Friends
• Prolo.io
• Prometeus
• QuickPacket
• RadWebHosting
• Ramhost
• Ramnode
• ReformHosting
• ReliableSite
• Scaleway
• SecureDragon
• SeFlow
• ServaRICA
• SkylonHost
• SmallWeb
• SmartHost
• SoYouStart
• SpartanHost
• SpeedyKVM
• SpryServers
• SSDBlaze
• SSDNodes
• StockServers
• Terrahost
• TinyKVM
• TNAHosting
• TurnkeyInternet
• UltraVPS.eu
• Upcloud
• ViridWeb
• Virmach
• Virpus
• Virtono
• Vultr
• Webtropia
• WiredBlade
• Wishosting
• WorldStream
• X4B.net

Ouji

Hello @poisson, any reason why you don't consider Contabo reliable enough to be in your whitelist?

I know they have some weird stuff, like limiting read/write speeds on their SSDs, but people noticed that they usually lift the limits if you ask them.

Thanks for the great job, I love your website.

poisson

@Ouji said:
Hello @poisson, any reason why you don't consider Contabo reliable enough to be in your whitelist?

I know they have some weird stuff, like limiting read/write speeds on their SSDs, but people noticed that they usually lift the limits if you ask them.

Thanks for the great job, I love your website.

I see some mixed reactions about Contabo, but a lot of it was in the past. I haven't seen many recent Contabo experiences. Could you point me to some?

poisson

@uptime thanks for the list! It certainly helped me remember some obvious candidates that I missed whitelisting, namely:

AnyNode
Hostens
Ikoula
OVH
Scaleway
SSDBlaze
SSDNodes
SecureDragon
SoYouStart
TerraHost
TNAHosting
TurnkeyInternet
Virtono

If anyone would like to chime in on whether any of them are deadpool or oversold risks, please do. I probably will add Contabo to the list.

EDIT: Finalhosting was mentioned but nope, not whitelisting for a long time.

abnoeh

There are linode and digitalocean in that list, so maybe aws lightsail can be in the list too?

poisson

@abnoeh said:
There are linode and digitalocean in that list, so maybe aws lightsail can be in the list too?

That's true.

tgl

Error 522 Ray ID: 54203c3c5ee3ee89 • 2019-12-08 16:49:54 UTC

edit: now its back up, it was very slow for 5-10 minutes and had timeouts, dunno why, could be your hoster

poisson

@tgl said:
Error 522 Ray ID: 54203c3c5ee3ee89 • 2019-12-08 16:49:54 UTC

edit: now its back up, it was very slow for 5-10 minutes and had timeouts, dunno why, could be your hoster

Not sure what happened there. Will monitor it to see if it recurs. Thanks for providing an additional pair of eyes!

uptime

@poisson - glad to hear you found the long list helpful. I should be clear that it covers a wide range of (mostly lowend) providers - and is neither complete nor the basis for any specific recommendation. That said, I'd expect that at least 90 out of 100+ currently on that big list will still be in business as such 3 years from now, based on their track records and general reputation. And yes I have definitely included a few wildcards as well, either inadvertently or ... for the lulz

Seriously though - the intent for the wiki is to cover a range of providers including the good, the bad, and the heretofore relatively unknown. But I'd rather start with the ones I know about, and I try to pay attention to the better ones. And I would tend to agree that trying to keep track of all the fly-by-night summerhosts could be a Sisyphean and possibly pointless chore. (Still - much respect to @teamacc for their work in that department!)

On the other hand - I will confess that I am also sometimes a bit leary of the implied responsibility when recommending a provider (though I frequently will do so anyway). And maintaining a whitelist seems even that much more fraught with peril ... but here we are. I'll be glad to see you make it work!

I can suggest quite a few additions to your list, using just the basic "not a summerhost" criterion.

I'm inclined to start with providers who are registered on this forum:

• BudgetNode - @Ishaq
• BunnyCDN - @BunnySpeed
• CrownCloud - @SpeedBus
• FreeRangeCloud - @freerangecloud
• LaunchVPS - @LaunchVPS
• SkylonHost - @FHR
• QuickPacket - @qps

And - as luck would have it - I'm happy to say that I have had good experience with all of these providers. (Some more than others, but I think they are all legit. And a few are definitely on my short list of superior potassium.)

Will be interesting to compare notes to flesh out the YMMV part of the collective wisdom project, to be sure!. But suffice to say I'd be really surprised to see any of these providers doing a vanishing act - they are all relatively known quantities and qualities as far as I am concerned.

To be continued ... maybe let's just first digest these 7 suggestions. (And perhaps also see if additional information might influence your process for identifying and evaluating candidates for inclusion in your whitelist)

mfs

I do appreciate the effort in helping out others and giving them a somewhat sensible guideline in their purchases. Anyway, as willie noted, some people on LE* are very likely to flock on an unsustainable deal and, when deadpool comes, they will be self-indulging with their past bad choices (it happened even in the current deadpool, I spotted at least a couple of posts like this). The circle is doomed to be repeated. Other people, more experienced, like to play with tiny boxes and aren't worried about abstract references. Also,

poisson said: evaluate paper specs

I have a few issues with "paper specs". Two vCPUs can perform very differently depending on node density and allowed burst; the same disk space may perform very differently depending on architectural choices; the same price tag won't compare support, professionalism or location. Even formal passmark scores may be totally different depending on how many patches have been applied against spectre/meltdown... same goes for bw (multihoming and upstream providers come into play)... and so on

In my view there's no way out but offering some sort of critical guidance to people who are willing to learn from someone's experience and/or expertise. Like: be wary of companies with hidden whois no history no contacts suddenly proposing incredible deals, for starters. Or: if you're looking for storage, the fact that you'll have only 1/4 thread with minimal burst may be irrelevant for your case. Or: if you're trying to build your own VPN/wireguard, who cares about storage. And it's still really the tip of the iceberg.
It's way more difficult but it should be done, it's the only way out.
Critical Thinking is difficult sometimes and people tend to jump to a pre-defined solution. Also because a reasoned solution seems exhausting. There's also sometimes the desire to gamble a little bit
Sure a whitelist is better than a blacklist. Yet a reasoned collection of critical tools about how to properly evaluate a box for desired usage cases may turn out useful, along the illustration of specs and abstract ratios.
It's difficult to give a review after three or six months already, even with all sorts of benchmarks and recorded performance...
It's a difficult project to carry out to begin with, even more in someone' spare time.

All the best

TL;DR teach a man to fish...