Author:  Amy Armitage

Navigating the World Wide Web in search of the perfect web host can be an incredibly discouraging experience.  I know… I’ve been there. 

My broad (but not necessarily sharpened) skill set in Web Hosting ranges from Forum Administration, Technical Support to Basic System Admin, Management, Sales, Marketing, Affiliate Programs and Business Development. In such a new industry it would seem that I am considered a seasoned veteran.  However I didn’t start out that way; in fact I had no clue how to turn on my new PC after unpacking it from its box only 7 years ago.

Most of us consider ourselves ethical people, I know I do, so it’s important to me that the company I represent is well regarded in the industry.  So often lately, the articles I’ve been asked to submit, or the topics to speak on seem to cover overselling, undercutting, hosting pitfalls, poor customer service, domain name traps and general issues and traumas consumers are exposed to on a daily basis.

Along with many of my respected peers, I work especially hard to support our industry and promote the great aspects of the services we provide. The sad reality as with any business is that there are a number of hosting companies and their unhappy users giving the industry we fight so hard to keep alive, a disreputable name.

Let’s consider what initially grabs the attention of our audience, and the reality of what they are actually purchasing and receiving.

Domain names are a great way to increase new sales and many companies offer a free domain or discounted domains with every hosting plan.  This is very attractive to a would-be webmaster.  Lunarpages offers a free domain name for life (Translated: The life of the hosting account) plus additional domain names at $2.99 each and we guarantee we will renew them for the same price for as long as the customer is hosted with us.  In our case, it is what it is, however this is where it’s vital to read the fine print.  The downside to these promotions is the consumer appears to get a free service, or pays a radically discounted price for their domain, and upon renewal they are surprised and understandably outraged by increases ranging from 25% to 500%.

So how can situations like this be avoided?  It’s key before buying any hosting package to actually read the company’s terms and conditions (TOS), ask questions, check out reviews and ratings and test the support services. 

Questions to ask:

Is the purchase price the same upon renewal? 
What am I buying? (Detailed list of account features)
Can I upgrade at any time and how I am charged?
How long has the company been in business? 
How many staff and data centers? 
What support services are offered?
Where are they located?
Are they a member of the BBB or the equivalent?
If I purchase a domain name, do I own and control the domain name? 
Is the support in-house or outsourced? 
Do they offer a money back guarantee?
Do they have open community forums? Join those forums and post some of your questions. If it’s a busy forum then you know you can use this as an alternate support vehicle.
Are they a couple of young kids running a server in their garage? Think about it… isn’t that how most Web Hosts started? ;)

Considerations and Suggestions:

Do they have a visible phone number on their website that is easy to locate?
Is there a list of customer sites you can visit to check out the server response times?
Support hours and methods of support (I.e. telephone, live chat, email, forums etc)

Check out their response times and the accuracy and detail of the replies. I recommend calling the support number and see if you can get someone to answer the phone.  Time them… It’s a hobby of mine to check out our competitor’s support, quality of service and response times.  Why not?  If they are terrible it makes me feel reassured we are still on the right track, and if they are superior it gives us something to strive for.

Google them and see what kind of reputation they have.

Keep in mind, almost ALL of these review/top ten style sites are paid handsomely for the premium positions, so they are not necessarily a true representation of the REAL hosting experience.

SUCKS Pages – Sucks pages exist for most industries.  Most of the time the hosting sucks sites are created by a customer who was either a spammer, was using too much CPU on a shared server, or abusing the service in some other manner that resulted in a suspension of their service. My advice is to keep these in mind because they can be accurate, however don’t limit your research to just these kinds of sites. If you are able to find a significantly higher number of positive reviews, then chances are this is simply an irritated “abusive customer”.

Do they have a COUPON? Coupons are usually available for most services. You just need to search for them.  Whenever I’m purchasing an online service I search for coupons and generally track down some decent savings. If the order page has a section for coupon submission then there are savings to be had!  You can receive extras such as free domain names, money off an annual plan, additional free time and loads more.

Undercutting – Some Web Hosts offer you the world, but what are you really buying? I think these large and jam packed packages are geared towards newbies (term that describes individuals new to various computer environments or applications) who are bedazzled with the BIG numbers. 15 GIGABYTES STORAGE! 2 TB DATA TRANSFER! Are they actually going to use this? Do they even know what it is?

Drastically reduced prices are wonderful for the consumer.  But how do they affect our industry?  When do the plan increases and price cuts stop?  How can we compete with free web hosting services from large companies like Microsoft and Google?

Surprisingly price undercutting doesn’t influence our business model.  We won’t discount our prices and run at a loss, nor will we oversell data transfer and storage (more later on this).

Quality – I often think about the perception of quality.  When I’m looking at buying a product, and I have the choice of a high end solution at double the price, a middle of the road range, or rock bottom prices my choice is consistently the service or product with mid range pricing with a great reputation.  Low prices may bring in an influx of new customers, but what about the quality of those customers?  Will they renew their service?  Are these the type of customers who will over utilize the free support services?

Free hosting doesn’t generally offer the kind of support the major hosting companies do.  Consideration of the quality of support and service are fundamental in making a successful hosting choice in my opinion.  An online web presence is invaluable to your business.  Is free hosting worth risking your business if your site or email is offline with little or no support options?

Let’s define overselling:   Overselling is when a business or individual offers additional products or services that they are unable to provide.

It is a term that some industry insiders suggest was coined by smaller web hosts when describing plans the more successful and higher profiled hosting companies advertised. These companies manage significant volumes and profits and basically can afford to increase their plans and included features. Some start ups and less noteworthy companies cannot begin to contend with this and imply the larger companies are not really willing or able to back their offers.

When I came to work for Lunarpages Web Hosting our average shared server hosted approximately 1200 customers. As a direct result of our growth and profitability, we increased the space provided on our hosting plans and reduced the number of customers per server.  Bandwidth has come down tremendously in price year after year and because we purchase such high volumes, we receive considerable discounts.  The result is our ability to pass these increases and savings on to our customers.

Overselling can be a touchy subject depending on whom you are talking to. There are not many articles that I’ve been able to find that really explain it accurately.  I love reading blogs.  It’s one of my daily rituals and a very honest and real representation of overselling that I read recently was by Josh Jones’ (CEO of Dreamhost).

Due to limitations of how many words this article can have, I’ll link you to the entire entry

I would hate to be accused of quoting specific text that takes what Josh is trying to say out of context ;)

[start quote]

Quote Josh Jones:  “Overselling” is not terrible at all!

In fact, it’s one of the primary tools that makes a zillion very useful (and critical) business models possible! One of those business models is web hosting.

You see, in web hosting at least, customers have WILDLY varying usage levels. To top it off, no customer even knows what their own usage level is going to be like beforehand.

Any business with this sort of customer profile, simply MUST “oversell”.. it comes with the territory. You’d be crazy not to! In fact, one of the PRIMARY values you’re providing to your customer base IS the “overselling” itself!

Let me illustrate why they must “oversell” with a reverse example.. and let’s use us!

Imagine we didn’t “oversell” at all. We still offer 20GB of disk space and 1TB of bandwidth on our $7.95/month plan because that’s what the competition has forced us to offer. 1TB of bandwidth is about an average of 3Mbs. 3Mbs for a month costs us about $90/month. The 20GB of disk space actually costs us about $200 (BELIEVE IT OR NOT!), because of the level of availability and backups we provide. So, we’d be losing about $200 up front and $82 / month on each and every customer!

And, all in the name of not “overselling”, our disk arrays would sit 98% empty and our network pipes 1% full!

But with us, you really CAN use all the stuff we’re offering. You won’t be disabled for it. You won’t have to wait. Your performance won’t suffer. It’s just a good thing for us there’s a difference between being able to use something and actually using it!

Of course, we do actually do have people who use their full 20GB, and actually DO stream porn and use the TB of bandwidth, all for just $8/month. And we actually DO lose a crapload of money on these people! But we only lose it on these people. And there are very few of them. And, as a bonus, they love us. And they refer their friends. Who, on average, don’t use their full 20GB and 1TB.

Guess what? We keep our file servers 90% full at all times, and our peak traffic times at 85% of our capacity! Why? Because despite the wild variations among all our customers, on the aggregate our disk and bandwidth usage grows very predictably. It’s easy to add another disk shelf and it’s easy to add another gigabit uplink, so there’s no reason to do it before we need to. Performance doesn’t suffer and it keeps our costs nice.

And it all works out! And we are ALL happy. Us, because we’re living on the edge and making a profit. You, because for only $7.95/month you know you could use up to 20GB of disk and 3Mbs of bandwidth should the need ever arise. And that’s a pretty small price to pay for such peace of mind!

[end quote]

Our main focus at Lunarpages Web Hosting is customer support and server uptime. It’s simple really. We don’t oversell or promise massive plans that our customers will not use. Our servers remain online and if for any reason they don’t, we get them back online ASAP and communicate with our customers in the process.

So many Web Hosts get it wrong. I hear these horror stories of customers waiting days and even weeks for a response to their emails, rude or outsourced tech support, customers signing up for big commits with companies that become insolvent.

There are reputable and reliable hosts out there.  The hard part is finding them.  Once you do, you’re golden.

Random Posts

• Easier E-Commerce Web Sites with MIVA
• Add Some Lunartastic Content to Netvibes
• Stopping Spam – Favorite Web Development Freebies (Part 3 of 5)

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Amy Armitage, Web Hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed . Comments are currently closed.