wardmundy, yup; so it seems.
I protested, and got this response:
"regarding installing a new OS, I am afraid using CloudPro is the only way we have so far, however I recommend you this method as it seems pretty popular by customers..."
hecatae, with regard to the "missing gigabytes" I also posed that question, and the response was this (I appear to be an invited guinea pig):
"Regarding losing GB that is not accurate as we have thousands of customers and this is the first time I am reading this, when you move to CloudPro you are able to create your own server or servers assigning them how much SDD, memory or Ram they will use, please try and let us know thanks"
And finally, with regard to my protestations that in order to move to CloudPro as a mandatory prerequisite to the simple task of re-imaging my Developer 1 server I'd need to kill that highly-customized and working server with no ability to properly image it and restore it (as one can to trivially with Digital Ocean), the response was this:
"the company is working in a feature for back up servers as this is a question that we receive everyday, there are clients who seems to have a program by their own, they have been able to back up their information"
With respect to backing up the server, I asked that question in this forum a while back but my question didn't produce a workable solution. Can't unmount the virtual drive and then access it externally, and any solution within C-a-C would seem to require additional purchasing additional storage resources -- something I am now hardly inclined to do.