Black Friday falls on the day after Thanksgiving—the fourth Friday of November—and traditionally marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. This year, it falls on November 29. Alongside the usual retail promotions, a number of VPS providers, software developers, and online services are offering limited-time discounts.
Here is a selection of deals covering servers, productivity tools, AI products, and cloud storage.
VPS and cloud servers
RackNerd
Founded in 2019, RackNerd is known for offering inexpensive VPS plans with relatively strong specifications. Its network is not specifically optimized for mainland China, but the low prices and reasonable configurations make it a practical option for beginners who want to experiment with a VPS.
For these plans, DC02 is generally the preferred location.
<table> <thead> <tr> <th>Memory</th> <th>CPU</th> <th>Storage</th> <th>Traffic</th> <th>Port speed</th> <th>Price</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>1 GB</td> <td>1 vCPU</td> <td>20 GB SSD</td> <td>1,500 GB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>$10.99/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2.5 GB</td> <td>2 vCPU</td> <td>40 GB SSD</td> <td>3,000 GB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>$18.93/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> <tr> <td>3 GB</td> <td>2 vCPU</td> <td>60 GB SSD</td> <td>5,500 GB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>$27.89/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> <tr> <td>4.5 GB</td> <td>3 vCPU</td> <td>100 GB SSD</td> <td>8,500 GB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>$39.88/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>The provider’s Black Friday sale page is available at RackNerd Black Friday. A flash sale is also scheduled for the evening of November 28, Pacific Time, through the provider’s official Telegram channel. Previous years have included specially priced packages during this event.
CloudCone
CloudCone is an Indian cloud service provider established in 2017, with its main data center located in Los Angeles. Its offerings are similar to RackNerd’s in terms of price and positioning, while its management panel is generally more polished.
The plans below include substantial monthly traffic allowances and 1 Gbps ports:
<table> <thead> <tr> <th>Memory</th> <th>CPU</th> <th>Storage</th> <th>Traffic</th> <th>Port speed</th> <th>Price</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>512 MB</td> <td>1 vCPU</td> <td>7 GB SSD</td> <td>2 TB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>$10.99/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1 GB</td> <td>2 vCPU</td> <td>14 GB SSD</td> <td>3 TB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>$12.99/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2 GB</td> <td>6 vCPU</td> <td>27 GB SSD</td> <td>4 TB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>$20.88/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> <tr> <td>4 GB</td> <td>9 vCPU</td> <td>55 GB SSD</td> <td>6 TB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>$37.50/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>More information is available on the CloudCone Black Friday VPS sale page.
ZgoCloud
Established in 2023, ZgoCloud is a China-based VPS provider offering KVM instances in locations including Japan and Germany. It also has plans with routes optimized for users in mainland China. Its product range includes both general international-network VPS plans and China-optimized options.
The Black Friday promotion includes the following benefits:
- Any annual plan costing at least $36 qualifies for one of these upgrades:
- An additional 100 Mbps of bandwidth
- 1 GB of extra memory
- 20 GB of additional storage
- After purchase, users can submit a support ticket and specify which benefit they want.
- Los Angeles AMD VDS inventory is available again, featuring AMD EPYC 7003 processors, native U.S. IP addresses, NVMe SSD storage, international connectivity, and Windows support. Annual plans start at $88.
Some of the available plans are listed below:
<table> <thead> <tr> <th>Memory</th> <th>CPU</th> <th>Storage</th> <th>Traffic</th> <th>Port speed</th> <th>Mainland China optimization</th> <th>Price</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2 GB</td> <td>2 AMD EPYC 7002 Series cores</td> <td>40 GB SSD</td> <td>4 TB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>No</td> <td>$25/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> <tr> <td>4 GB</td> <td>3 AMD EPYC 7002 Series cores</td> <td>60 GB SSD</td> <td>6 TB/month</td> <td>1 Gbps</td> <td>No</td> <td>$45/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> <tr> <td>768 MB</td> <td>1 Intel Platinum 8452Y core</td> <td>15 GB SSD</td> <td>600 GB/month</td> <td>200 Mbps</td> <td>Yes, 9929 & CMIN2</td> <td>$20.88/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> <tr> <td>1 GB</td> <td>1 Intel Platinum 8452Y core</td> <td>20 GB SSD</td> <td>1 TB/month</td> <td>300 Mbps</td> <td>Yes, 9929 & CMIN2</td> <td>$37.50/year, same renewal price</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>The promotional page is available at ZgoCloud.
Software deals
Things
Things is a long-established task-management app for Apple platforms. It is known for its clean interface and straightforward workflow.
Black Friday discount: 30% off.
Zipic
Zipic is a simple image-compression utility designed for fast batch processing. It supports compressing multiple images at once while maintaining a high compression ratio.
Black Friday discount: 30% off.
Raycast
Raycast combines application launching, file search, task management, and a broad extension system in one productivity tool. Its streamlined interface and extensibility make it useful for speeding up repetitive desktop workflows.
Black Friday discount: 20% off.
ChatHub
ChatHub is available as both a browser extension and an application. It provides a unified interface for interacting with multiple chatbots, including ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard, making it easier to compare responses and features across different AI models.
Black Friday discount: 20% off.
Podwise
Podwise is an AI-powered knowledge-management tool aimed at podcast listeners. It can turn podcast episodes into summaries, outlines, mind maps, and transcripts, allowing users to review key information without going through the entire episode again.
The service can be used while listening to view a summary or afterward for a more detailed review. It also supports moving information into knowledge-management tools such as Notion and Obsidian.
Black Friday discount: up to 65% off.
Online services
Perplexity
Perplexity is a conversational search engine built around large language models. Its Black Friday promotion reduces the monthly price to $5, compared with the regular $20 price.
PikPak cloud storage
PikPak provides cloud storage with file uploading, sharing, management, and offline-download features.
The Black Friday promotion offers 40% off monthly plans and 60% off annual plans.
View the PikPak Black Friday promotion
Additional deal roundups
For a broader list of promotions, these collections may also be useful:
- Awesome Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals for Mac Apps
- Awesome Black Friday / Cyber Monday Deals – 2024
- 2024 Black Friday cloud-service deals
- Black Friday software recommendations