u/pevasi

I'm thinking of transferring domains from Namecheap as the .com renewals are much cheaper here. From that it seems to me like PorkBun is budget focus, but it does not quite seem to apply for hosting. On NameCheap, even after the recent increase it is still $56 a year for the basic cPanel hosting and 3 domains, PorkBun is $90 for cPanel hosting and only 1 domain, $30 for additional domain. Did I miss some key difference apart from the free SSL or does NameCheap really do better in this category? I would like to have everything "under one roof". Thanks.

I'm in the same boat as many - been a member since 2010 and have been (gladly) paying for several years to help the site and have access to it. I hosted a bit, surfed very rarely but my solo travels were literally based around local CS events and the hangout feature. Couple of months ago when the the apocalypse came I didn't renew the subscription.

But I do really miss it. The best people I've met were from Couchsurfing, it has this thing of attracting just the right friendly, fun and openminded people that are not on other platforms like meetup etc. By now they are probably not reverting the site to what it was, but maybe at least some critical fixes would make it usable again for most. Maybe they are different for everyone, but here are 3 feature fixes that would make me rejoin Couchsurfing:

1. Fix hangouts - this was my #1 way to meet people while travelling (I don't stay in hostels anymore). What was a super simple list with the ability to invite ppl by pressing a button and others can join (this was such a genious natural safety feature to prevent hangouts turning into unwanted dates) not turned in some tinder-like stalking of people on a map, overcomplicated and impractical. This would be the biggest feature request from me, but revert this to the easy and transparent way this used to work (maybe with fixing the sometimes unreliable message notifications) or at least provide this list view of available ppl and existing hangouts to join nearby.
2. Remove fake events - many times I decide where to go when to be able to attend local CS meetings. This is now obfuscated by dozens of fake events (read random 4th league basketball game). Stop adding these fake events or at least provide a filter to filter them out so that I don't see them when looking for events in a city. Provide real CS events in a list view. Easy.
3. Clearly show active users - sorting people by last activity in a database where overwhelming majority is not active at all is critical and trying to obfuscate this is a step directly against the user base. In fact I would solidify this even more, providing filters like "last hosting" etc.

With these fixed I'd gladly pay the subscription again because I know it would help me solo travel and meet great people along the way. If you quit CS what would be your reasons to come back, if any?