Realistic hosting, tips and gotchas in the Web Hosting Industry - and why we don't offer unlimited space and bandwidth for $1!

Support Costs and Matters

One of the main factors determining a hosting providor's service is the support they provide. Support Costs. This is why we cannot and do not offer unlimited hosting features for $1/month! We pride ourselves on our friendly and helpful support and we employ talented staff which cost!. Look out for the different methods of contact a company offers to you. We offer email, ticket, online community access and telephone

Host xxx will offer me 50GB space for $5/month. Why wont you?

If it sounds too good too be true it usually is!
When comparing our prices to some of our competition you may see a difference:
50 GB of Hard Drive Space and 300 GB of Bandwidth for $5.00 a month

They are charging so much less for so much more....Is that possible?
The answer is no...They advertise 50 GB of Hard Drive Space and 300 GB of Bandwidth for $5.00 a month but in reality you are not getting what you really are paying for....

These companies are playing there chances on the fact that you will NOT use what they are contracted to provide!

Why? Any web host would be out of business if they really provided you 50 GB of Hard Drive Space and 300 GB of bandwidth for only $5.00.

First, its not just 50 GB of Hard drive space as almost all web hosting companies use a RAID setup to prevent data loss which translates that there needs to be at least double the data's space which now comes to 100 GB of space needed. It costs more than $5 a month to provide 100 GB of space on a quality hard drive in our quality data center on our quality servers.

On top of that, they are also playing there chances that the customer does not need much server resources. Why? Because between 300 and 2000 customers are being placed on one server...You are reading correctly, 2000 customers on one server, with every customer pushing and shoving each other to get there share of the server resources (CPU, RAM etc.)

Why are we different

We provide the service you pay for...We guarantee that when you order a plan with us, that we actually have that hard drive space and its allocated specifically for you.

Remember All hosts have the same basic limitations when it comes to server resources and specs. There is no magic server that has a never ending supply of RAM and CPU. If a host ever claims to give unlimited space or bandwidth DO NOT JOIN THEM. The thing to remember is that the average web site uses about 50 Megs space and less then 1 gig bandwidth a month. So what hosting companies do is they lie! They make up scam plans with tons of space and bandwidth for around $8 bucks a month. It's a numbers game... Only one or two of every 100 people that signup on the plan are going to use all the bandwidth advertised. So what do they do? They usually terminate the sites that use it saying "your site is using too many resources." They aren't lying about the resource usage. IT'S the truth! Most people don't realize that bandwidth and space used have nothing to do with the server resources being used. Resource usage has to do with the amount of CPU and RAM a site uses. If a site uses a lot of bandwidth they aren't kicked for using their bandwidth they are kicked for using up most of the servers cpu and ram. Another thing to remember is that the cheaper the plan is, and the more space / bandwidth included the more sites per server the host will have to pack in to make their money back. So the lesson here is don't shop for a host based on their plans! You should shop based on recommendations and experience!

Free domain names

Be careful about joining a company offering a "free domain". Almost more than not there are strings attached and you may be stung with high renewal fees later on.

Fly by night companies

Many companies come and go in this industry. We've been around for over 5 years and know what to look out for. We recommend you do a whois on their domain name. Then look for the creation date of the domain name. If the domain name was created less then a year ago it's more of a risk to join that hosting company. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn't something you should be taking a chance on. It's too easy to become a hosting company. All someone has to do is join a reseller plan and they are now a host.

You could also test the speed of a host's network to your location by...

Clicking start > run > type in "command" enter, and then type "ping hostdomainname.com" wait for it to finish and look for the average ping. The lower the number the better, and chances are the faster your site will load if you should host with them. Any number around an 100-150 average would be good. Over 200 is most likely a loaded server/network.

100% uptime, please.

If a hosting company claims 100% uptime they are lying. All servers need to be rebooted every now and then for security and software updates. If they never reboot that means their server is insecure and they will eventually be hacked.

When a company guarantees an uptime, that doesn't make it true. A host has as many uptimes as they have servers. It all depends on what server they put you on, and how well they manage it from the time you're put on it. We guarantee a 99.9 uptime but that does not mean we will hit it every month for eternity.

Rev 1.2 MJB April 2007