Why people still buy cheap hosting??

[Anthony Ng]

You may have read stories from people having their website down for well over a week, or the so-called "host" (who turns out to be a high school or even elementary school kid) simply vanishes from the face of earth, but why do people still sign up with them??

Every logical mind KNOWS that it's not possible to run a Hosting BUSINESS (yes, business; unless it's some kids earning snacks or flash cards) on a couple of dollars per month REGARDLESS OF DISK SPACE AND BANDWIDTH, not to say those who ask for a few dollars per YEAR!! :shocked: Reason? Any reliable host would have to take into consideration SUPPORT. Yes, support, and it costs. For clients, esp. newbies, to submit a ticket (forget about phone calls) every other months, and your few dollars are gone. So how could they survive?? EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT, but my question is: why do people still waste their time and go with those cheap hosting, only to switch everything over in a few months' time! Just curious.

[Poker]

because they are cheap web newbies

[chording]

Uptime and support are not considered as critical to them :-D

[slimcrazy.com]

How many people do you actually think, knows what to ask for when looking for Hosting?

Some simple question to be asked:
1. Do you own the datacenter?
2. Is it your hardware or are you a reseller?
3. Do you offer advanced support and at what cost?
4 If you dont have a phone number you are not a company!
5. Who is your backbone/uplink provider? If they hesitate to answer run.

Lets face it most people do not have the money to spend for a dedicated server or
even prime VPS accounts. You are looking at a min of $80 a month for a good shared account. And about $180 for entry dedicated server.

We all know that all the big boys, including rackforce, apollohosting, valueweb, ipowerweb, and the many other ones that own there data centers. Fill there shared servers to the max.

I was on an Apollo server for a year and I bet it was running at 70% cpu most of the time. Must have been 200-400 accounts on that server.


You can get cheap hosting, I can sell you cheap hosting, but you get what you pay for as in the TOS.

If you really want to use 5GB of space and 100GB of transfer for file downloads, well simply on most $2.50-$$25 accounts your site would be shut down in a matter of weeks.

That being said, let me tell you how I feel about selling cheap account ok.

Lets say I sell 10 reseller accounts, cheap. 10-40$ a month.
In three monthes the person that bought the account quits paying for it and disappears and leaves whom ever he sold accounts to high and dry.

Ok so now I can go in, move these clients over to my accounts, and wham i just built a bigger client database for doing nothing but giving some kid a cheap reseller account on my servers.


But there is a big difference in me and most people, I own a brick and mortar computer company, and I have a reputation I would like to keep.

And since we are being realistic, All most resellers are really doing is selling customer well most average customers what they really need. Average person will never go over 100mb of space, unlimited is a gimmick. I could call it free and put in the TOS that you will pay me $20 a month for support to go with your free hosting.

ok i am bored of typing now.

[GT Web]

right now, support is not something I really need, I'm not running anything complex and can figure it out myself...

however, uptime is VERY important, lately my host has been doing very well at that...

[Anthony Ng]

uptime is VERY important

Yes, sometimes you need to experience downtime first hand to fully understand its importance. Some of my long-term clients (who are less computer-savvy and depend on me to design and maintain their websites) don't even KNOW there is something called uptime, because their websites have NEVER been down basically over the last 5 - 6 years (or at least anything noticeable); they just think things *should* be like that. LOL!

[MrDude]

A freind of mine started a Hosting company

1.8 GB Space, 20GB bandwith and unlimited everything else.

I signed up as i needed to run a phpBB forum, i was a newbie to hosting, i noticed my site was down so i asked and he said he looked at my coding for me and i made an error, me being naive, fell for it, Again it was down, he said somebody in the datacenter walked past and kicked the plug, then they said they were upgrading, next time they shutdown without letting me get backups.

I have a reseller account with a well known very proffesional hosy. Now, im only a 16 year old kid, I dont tell my customers that, They would be put off as most people are either prejudice or hate somebody younger than them doing well. my customers have had 2-3 hours downtime in 6 months, This was for a server move which they were notified weeks earlier, i run live support myself, provide telephone support etc, It really annoys me when any bad hosting company is around they assume its a schoolkid/teen. i was hosted for over a year by a kid who was younger than me, with no problems, please stop labeling us all, Say some teens, my last host that went down like a year ago was an adult, Should everyone start labelling any adult running a hosting company as a bad host?

[Anthony Ng]

Not intend to flame, but "doing business" with MINORS (people less than the legal age of majority, i.e. 18 or 21 depending on respective jurisdiction) put oneself in disadvantage, either as a host or a client. And FYI: most decent service providers explicitly forbids that too.

[GT Web]

Yep, doing business with minors can be a pain...but dont paint us all with the same brush, I have completed many successful transaction over the past couple years.

[SouthernTn]

because its cheap and it sounds good. But, then they realize it wasn't.

[Banned: Get-A.com]

"kids earning snacks or flash cards"... such as "F$'s" ?

As ecollins points out...There are exceptions.

start by...
call the "hoster" your planning on using, at 3 a.m., and ask them 1st... or your drunker than me?
2nd...can they actually touch the business side of the server rack.
3rd... did you fall down?
4th... do you need EMS?
5th... are you young enough to need a diapaer? are you old enough to need a diaper? if so, can you change it yourself?
8th... what is required for me to get a major discount?
6th was lost in the slurring jibberish
7th was a blurp
9th... is improper to mention in public forums.
10th.. is dead air of the telco connection.

[Dale Hubbard]

I don't do LOL's, but here's an exception.

[Banned: Get-A.com]

[cooljeba]

that me too go LOL. But frankly speaking this is a kind of buisness where Reputation Matters the most and also the experience. These are two factors that can only be earned and not bought. If a Hosting company has both of these then i don't mind doing business with a 5 year old kid who runs such a company.

..:: peace ::..
Jeba

[nomis135]

people that buy cheap Hosting are usually unexperienced people or people that are broke

Because choosing the cheapest is never the best.
If you go buy a computer the cheapest you pay the cheaper the computer is.

[Canadian]

actually the host I'm with now is very cheap and has the most outstanding customer service/response time I've ever encountered. Shopping around is crucial, always good to go with word of mouth from someone you trust who is a long time customer of theirs as well.

[nomis135]

you mainly need to see how long the company has been around if its a brand new company offering too cheap plans there's a good chance they will go out of bussiness soon.

If the company has been online for a few years and has the same nice prices there are more chances of getting a good service.

[stevesko]

It depends what you are doing on the site. I spend 1,000/month to host one site, have others on free for 3 years servers, and others at 1.99-5/month.

The sites that are on free to cheep are just there to build and pass PR - and I need each site on a different c block for that, the big $ is an ecommerce site making $$$$$$/month so it's mission critical.