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The problem with Scaleway

Master Card SecureCode

Cloud hosting providers are popping up everyday that it’s almost difficult to keep up.

The upside is that competition will be fierce, which is always good news for (cloud) hosting consumers like moi.

Good news translates into cheaper cloud instances and free features that one would normally pay for. I’ve recently written about these cloud hosting providers in The most affordable FreeBSD-supported Cloud/VPS hosting providers and Vultr lets you run an operating system using your own ISO image.

This article takes a look at another hosting provider called Scaleway, and why I never completed signing up for an account.

Unlike other hosting providers that I’ve written about, Scaleway offers ARM-based, bare metal SSD cloud servers, which I think is a first in the industry. However, I won’t be surprised if there’s another hosting provider that offers the same.

Scaleway ARM-based, SSD servers

According to the company’s promotional material, each server comes with 4 dedicated ARM cores, 2 GB of RAM, and 50 GB SSD storage. And all that for just €9.99 per month, or $11.25 USD. Aside from bare metal SSD servers, Scaleway also offers the usual choice of popular Linux distributions, and, as the company claims, the “first cloud provider worldwide to offer Docker on ARM”. What’s not to like about being able to run containerized applications on ARM servers?

Unfortunately, I could not try all those technologies first hand because I never bothered to complete the account signup process.

Why?

Well, for one, Scaleway does not accept Paypal or other online payment providers. Only credit/debit cards. That in itself would not normally be a show-stopper for me, but while attempting to use my MasterCard, I was required to create a SecureCode, something I’ve never had to do when using a credit/debit card online. The idea of creating yet another authentication token just to use something that I already have a password for just didn’t feel like something I wanted to do.

Master Card SecureCode

Scaleway is based in France, so the SecureCode is probably a requirement in Europe, but the company needs to seriously consider supporting a payment method other than a credit/debit card. Until then, I’ll hold off for now, but keep the company under my radar. A cloud server with 4 dedicated ARM cores, 2 GB of RAM, and 50 GB SSD storage for $11.25 USD per month is worth watching.

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Reinaldo
Reinaldo
6 years ago

Stay away for this people of Scaleway, bad CRM, bad terms and conditions and the worst is the ask for personal documents in inmage, they piss of on privacy policies…. 2€ stolen from this people…

Michel
Michel
7 years ago

I do not recommend ScaleWay because I was stolen. I used a card and shortly after it was active, it was attempted to be used for purchases without my permission. After that, I tried to remove the card in the company, and they were amazed, they only withdraw by Ticket. I decided to cancel the card and no longer use the services of the company, after all, I lacked a lot of respect in using my card. And they are very unreliable.

Alex
Alex
7 years ago

Well, your post is a bit weird, like you consider the payment process as a part of hosting technology.
Following your logic, I can blame PayPal to be a bad system because it does not allow accepting money in Ukraine.

The workaround for security code is simple, I just keep an almost empty debit card for internet payments, and I add funds only when I need to pay for services online.

I have been using Scaleway for 6 weeks, and it is great.
The only problem is that not all of their listed bare packages are available, and you have to wait for a couple of weeks till they send you an invitation to enable your signup.

Once you start using Scaleway, you get to love it.

John
8 years ago

This is bad. I thought there was some genuine reason. Now they will dominate the market with their 3$ a month \”dedicated servers\”.

Alexandru Panturu
Alexandru Panturu
8 years ago

Hello,
Scaleway VPS are ok for an ARM… low bandwidth.
Customer service, on the other hand is the worst i had until now.
It has been 3-4 months since i am struggling to remove my credit card information and personal data from their side.

Short story:
I got a VPS to test it out. I asked them about the price and they said it was free.
After 1 month i got a invoice ( 2 Euro or so)…. i asked them why tell it is free for testing if they bill the service at the end of the month. The answer was evasive so i asked them to quit the service.
I payed my bills and now i open a ticket each month to delete my data from their side ( that includes credit card details).
They say they will delete it … but you won`t be able to delete the account and data.
Personally i don`t like to have my private and bank information stored without any means to delete it.
I don`t recommend their service. Worst customer experience until now.
Thank you

Alex
Alex
Reply to  Alexandru Panturu
7 years ago

Hi,
I’m having the same bad experience with Scaleway. This is the second month I’m getting billed and I’m not using any of their services. A month ago I effectively closed the account, but it seems it is not closed, my credit card data is still there and I cannot delete it, AND I’m getting billed … I have just opened a ticket demanding the deletion of credit card data and personal information.
I’m based in France, so I’m seriously thinking of making a formal complaint to the authorities.
I don’t recommend this service either. Buy a RPi or an Odroid-C2 board yourself for your hosting needs!

Long Nguyen-Vu
Long Nguyen-Vu
8 years ago

SecureCode is the feature of MasterCard, not ScaleWay. You should contact the your bank instead
SecureCode is a very nice feature, this adds an extra layer of security because the billing system could be compromised any time

Jovan Janevski
8 years ago

Check on the back of Your card. There is the code.

George
George
8 years ago

I thought you were *going* somewhere with that introduction and I was actually interested in reading your post, but you don’t like Scaleway only because you weren’t able to pay with PayPal.

TL;DR of the post: The problem with Scaleway is that the author couldn’t pay with PayPal. That’s it.

Leopard
Leopard
8 years ago

Well, that’s damn good reason for post like this. If they don’t bother to support paypal (witch work well everywhere) it’s not worth to try. (Yeah, i’m (bit) bitter as I cant pay for it 😀

Tony Lee
Tony Lee
8 years ago

Agree with you. I cannot pass the 3D verification because the card company need IE…

Naresh Chandranatha
8 years ago

Wait, That’s it? Are you serious? I’ve been using Scaleway for ages at this point and this is such a petty reason to publish such a post. I won’t bother with your blog anymore.

Nick Koefoed
Nick Koefoed
8 years ago

Wow. Cry me a river, mate. Seriously? You blame Scaleway as a hosting provider and say they have “problems” because their payment processor requires your information be MORE secure?

Get real.

Wendy Sporr
Wendy Sporr
8 years ago

You’ve probably discovered by now that your post is unfair in blaming scaleway for the extra security code now required when using credit cards on line.

It’s the credit card companies that came up with this wheeze, so your article about declining to use scaleway because of something that is nothing to do with them looks a bit silly.

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