glog

 If you have ever heard the phrase “You get what you pay for,” it holds true in almost every industry. If you pay more, you generally get more.  There are of course exceptions, but most of you will agree, the phrase has a positive track record to date.

 But there is another preconceived notion that most people inherently believe.  As consumers, we have been conditioned to look for “the best deal.” Based on what we generally know, it makes perfect sense to shop around for the lowest price.   If you can get a MammothBurger with Cheese, Fries and a Drink for $4.99, one would guess that it’s a great value over the ColossalBurger Meal Deal that can be purchased right across the street, especially when the Colossal deal costs $6.99. 

“More for less, equals better.”

This is almost always untrue in today’s web hosting industry.

 The current trend with web hosting companies is to advertise HUGE packages, usually equivalent or exceeding the limitations of an entire dedicated server, in the hopes of attracting new business.  And it seems to be working. In years past, the marketing trick was to offer things like “Unlimited Disk Space” and “Unlimited Bandwidth.”

Why “Unlimited” Failed Miserably. 
“Unlimited” sales tactics worked great for many hosts for a while, but soon, consumers got smart to what was really going on. Web hosts that were offering “Unlimited” often over-booked (oversold) their servers to hundreds of times their true capacity.  This was a time when reseller web hosting was just beginning to blossom, and many new hosting companies were just emerging.  It was now possible to own a web hosting company from the comfort of your living room, in-between class, or as a side job to earn some extra income to one’s regular day job.

 These new companies found themselves not only having to learn how to run a business, but had to compete with the established “Unlimited” players.   A great portion of these new hosting companies ended up folding due the the largely unsustainable business model.  Some of the smarter hosts actually got lucky and were able to sell off their businesses sometimes for up to 24 times monthly revenue before they headed for the hills. A great number of web hosts ended up vanishing off the face of the earth completely, with no advance notification to their customers. Site owners were left high and dry, often with no access to their site files, important databases and remotely stored images.  The hosting companies that were still online, ended up absorbing the customers that were looking for a new host, because their last one was no where to be found.  Meanwhile, these companies ended up having to maintain their “Unlimited” packages with more and more customers.  For a while anyways…

 Performance levels for shared hosting sites on unlimited hosting plans was so bad, many sites were simply unusable.  Customer accounts were being dog-piled onto any available machine.  Sites got slow. Servers crashed. Restorations of sites could take weeks (the longest I witnessed was three full weeks) to complete on a recently crashed machine due to the number of sites on the server and limited restoration technology. Ahh, the good old days of hosting.  

At one point in time, not long ago, if you saw the words “unlimited” and “web hosting” on the same page, it was a sign to run, and run fast! Lots of us who have been hosting web sites for a few years or more remember those early lessons and are already suspicious of the latest marketing ploys….

 Many web hosts have changed the marketing tricks they use now to get around the old unlimited cliche. The trend now is to offer huge plans for unbelievable prices. It is not uncommon these days to see 250 gigs of disk space and 1000 TB (yes, Terabytes!) of transfer sold for somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.00-$10.00 USD per month.

The Birth of  Overselling
 How do they do it? They might as well just say “Unlimited” right on the package details. Today’s buzz word is called “Overselling,” and it is nothing new. If you have ever been in an airport, you know that airlines do it all the time. The difference with airlines and web hosting is, if an airline overbooks it’s flight, you are going to get a coupon, or even bumped up to first-class on your next flight. With web hosting, chances are you are going to end up paying the hosting company for the upgrade. Weird right?

If you look closely at these plans, you will notice that all hosts selling these ridiculous hosting packages have one thing in common….FINE PRINT. Not that fine print is an evil thing on its own, but the nature in which this fine print is being used it troublesome.

 The key thing to realize is you will never be able to use all the space or transfer that was sold to you.  One common fine print item (in so many words) states that: “You can only use the space for website files.”  Well what the heck does that mean exactly?  Who decides what “is”, and what “is not” website file? Your host does, and they are the sole arbiter, no ifs, ands, or buts…. So if you are thinking you will be able to store your entire MP3 collection online, think again! Got lots of pictures for a gallery? How about lots of large video files? Planning on running the next youtube for $6.00/mo? It’s not going to happen folks.

 Another good fine print item is along the lines of “You can do whatever you want, so long as you do not use too much of the server resources.” This is usually vague as to what the exact definition of “too much” is but basically its saying that if you plan on using a dynamic web site that uses scripting languages like ASP, PHP, Perl, etc., you basically do not qualify for this plan….not if you plan on using all 250 gigs of space they sold you. Rules are in place that if you use “too much CPU time” you are in violation of the Terms of Service and no longer qualify for your selected plan. The kicker here is that on an overloaded server, your scripts are going to take a bazillion times longer (sorry, I do not have scientific numbers) to execute than they would on a well maintained, and non-oversold server. Your scripts could be perfectly fine, but since you are sharing a server with so many sites all competing for the same resources, naturally, it is going to take longer to complete it’s task. So guess what? You get penalized and have to upgrade. WOW! This web hosting thing is fun!

 Once the hook is in your cheek, and you are a customer, it is generally realized that you probably do not want to go through the hassle of shopping for a new web host, transferring your site files, possible disruptions in things like email, and all the other fun that comes with changing web hosting providers.  After all, it took a long time to find this great deal right? (remember, More for less, equals better right?) Oh, and speaking of hooks… 

And Now, For The Bait and Switch…
You will shortly be offered “upgrade” options generally anywhere from two, to two hundred times the original cost of the package you thought you were buying.  Some hosts will move you to a dedicated server automatically.
 (price: $150-$500/mo)

 Can anyone say ripoff? The sad truth is this tactic works extremely well and several of the largest web hosts on the Internet today have grown to hosting empires in just a few short years using similar strategies.

 To clear up any misconceptions, this is a natural progression for almost any popular website. At some point any rapidly growing site is going to need a dedicated server because it will be a detriment to other websites on the shared hosting platform where it started. However, the problem here is that customers are being sold plans that they will never be able to use, they are not reading the fine print, and consent to letting the host decide what is, and what is not, “web site files.” the host tells them they need something larger than they do, and customers are eager to comply.

 If I bought 250 gigs of disk space, I would expect to put anything I wanted on that space. Who cares what it is? I bought it didn’t I? These days the answer is yes AND no it seems. Yes, it is plausible, but probably not possible.

Lets Pull the Numbers for a sec..
The fundamental question remains: Who can use a plan that offers 250 Gigs of space and hundreds or thousands of gigs of transfer? Basically no one!

 In order to actually use that kind of space and be within limitations of the fine print, you would need a static HTML site with virtually no scripting, no movies, no MP3s or other large files. Considering a typical web pages is about 50KB in size, and a “web hosting gigabyte” is equivalent to 1,000,000 KB, you’d have to build 20,000 web pages to use just one gigabyte of disk space! To consume all 250 gigs of space, you would be writing 5,000,000 (5 million) web pages.

 To put it into perspective, if you were to simply count out loud  (yep, people would think you were strange, I don’t suggest it) to 5 million, at the rate of 1 number per second, it would take you 83,333 minutes, which is equivalent to 1,389 hours, or roughly 59 days!!!

And that is simply counting the number out loud, assuming you never had to stop to take a breath of air, never had to pee, and ate so many MammothBurgers you never had to stop and eat.

 So before you fall for the latest web hosting marketing tricks, make sure to read the fine print. If it is important to you that you are able to actually use the space that was sold to you, (wow, that’s a novel concept!) and you do not want your web host snooping around your private files, and telling you what you can, and cannot have on the server, look for a realistic hosting package at a realistic price.

Ask your host if you can store your entire music library on their servers. If they say no, you are probably want to reconsider your hosting decision.  Ask yourself how you got to that site in the first place… Chances are you came to their site off of a series of sponsored ads, marketing machines, forum pumpers, and maybe a hosting directory or two that were either paid handsomely to put that host in the “Top 10,” or that directory was simply owned by that hosting company.

Do your research folks.  Look closely.  Ask your friends.  Consider the money back guarantee option, and read the fine print. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Web Hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.