We are trying to find an inexpensive web hosting services. I accidenatlly stumbled over a site (www.todayswebhost.com) whose "limited time offer" seems way to good to be true. I have tried to find information about them through cnet, zdnet, wired, and such sites but there seems to be a lack of information on them, such as none. Has anyone ever heard of them or done business with them?

Antima, they're hosted on the Alabanza network, which assures them of excellent reliability and speed. However, none of us have heard of them before, so I suggest you e-mail their sales/tech support departments and see what kind of a response you get, and how quick it is. Keep us posted :)

We took the leap of faith and signed up with todayswebhost.com as our web hosting service. After a couple of general questions their response time was pretty good. We'll try them out and see what happens.

I may be a newbie to this web business but leave out the web from the statement and I have a lot of experience.

I couldn't resist taking a look at this as it sounds to good to be realistic. Here are my concerns and why I will pass.

1) very new name registered earlier this year so no track record (this in itself is not a reason to not use though because all business has a start date)

2) They have only registered the .com vs of their name. I would think most serious business's looking to go forward for a long time would spend the extra (less than $100.) to lock up the other .net .org .ws etc. (maybe an oversight but no place for oversights of this nature when stting up a business IMO)

3) If the bulk of their customers sign up for the lifetime plan come a year from now the cashflow crunch might come to them and maybe it goes the route a lot of health clubs. Bye Bye.

4) What happens if you sign up for this plan and then want to change? I am not interested enough to ask but if serious I would.

I seriously hope they succeed because if they don't they will probably just cease to exist one day and leave a lot of customers in a lurch. This is my main concern in my quest to find a budget priced host.

"they have only registered the .com vs of their name. I would think most serious business's looking to go forward for a long time would spend the extra (less than $100.) to lock up the other .net .org .ws etc. (maybe an oversight but no place for oversights of this nature when stting up a business IMO)"


You are very wrong. A company who has trademarked their domain name doesn't have to worry much about the others if the domain name is very specific and cannot be confused with another industry, lets say the domain is "we-sell-computers.com" and you register the .net version, they are too close and can be confused and thus YOU can be sued. We are actually in a situation where someone registered a domain name and added a few letter to make it slightly different, something along the lines of host.com VS. hosting.com We are speaking to our lawyer right now to make sure they dont open a site.

Rob I think you are missing my point. For $10.00 per name I could register those extensions and since they are in the business they can do it for less. Why take the chance on having a future problem when for very little cost you can ensure you don't. What lawyer can anyone see to enquire about the problem for $40.00 not to mention the cost of pursuing it. Being right doesn't mean it won't cost a lot to prove it. Back to my point which is "I want to deal with a solid business run by capable owners and this oversight on their part gives me concerns about their business acumen"

In your case good luck. Registering a similar name such as host.com and hosting.com would IMO never be overturned. Maybe something such as IBMhost and IBMhosting possibly because of the known trade mark included.

Graham

We were sort of wondering about the lifetime offer they have out there and how they would support themselves (if the bulk of their customers went through the lifetime plan), however, they do have normal plans like other services. Perhaps the lifetime offer is just promotion, to do exactly that, promote themselves because they are fairly new. This will get them off the ground. At least we are hoping that's the case.....

Someone I used to work for said "Sometimes you have to be prepared to lose money in order to make money, it's a calculated risk." Hopefully this is the motto they are employing.

As for cancellations....the response I got was they will refund a prorated amount (which sounds fair), however, when you join, on their application in red letters it says that they do not credit or process refunds....a little shaky, but if this pans out it's a risk we're willing to take.

In addition to the topics discussed :

Graham has raised an excellent point about companies registering the .net and .org versions as well. The majority of legitimate hosting companies on the Net do register the other names as well to avoid confusion, and considering it's only $10-15/domain now, there really shouldn't be any problems with cost. The other country/weird-specific domains like .ws and .cx etc. probably aren't necessary (I don't know of one company which has all 3 major suffixes .com .net .org, and extra .ws, .cx, etc.).

As for lifetime plans, they can be quite dubious. There was a discussion raised about this point over at ScriptKeeper about whose 'lifetime' they were talking about. Is it the company's lifetime, or *your* lifetime, or whose?? Lifetime plans can be dodgy at best.

As for the close differences in domain names, you will usually get cases overruled (i.e. give hosting.com back to host.com) only if the name has been trademarked, and it is specific and close enough (in addition to ICANN finding a name has been registered in 'bad faith' - see http://www.icann.org for further info) Generic names are very hard to rule on.

A final piece of advice : if you find that you're being overcharged for services you didn't pay/ask for, then you have a way of recourse - ring the bank ASAP and request a chargeback on the item, explaining the reasons. Then, if the hosting company persists, then the bank and the local authorities will be able to advise you.

The very best of luck to all.

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BC
(I don't know of one company which has all 3 major suffixes .com .net .org, and extra .ws, .cx, etc.).

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Actually do a whois on http://www.websitesource.com they registered .com .net .org and .ws and they are paid up on .com until 2010. Guess they plan to stick around.

This company looks pretty good but I have 90% decided to go with tera-byte. Others who are undecided might want to take a peek at their plans and do some further due dilly.

Graham

I notice a lto of folks going with tera-byte. Do they only do raq shared hosting or can you get on a real linux box?

Jaguar, they only do RAQ3 shared hosting... They used to do FreeBSD, NT and Linux hosting before they decided to consolidate and offer all the features from one base system.

They have great overall services, but arent Raq's quite limited ?

Not really. RAQs basically run *nix, and they have an excellent control panel for beginners to use and is very easy to use. Not to mention it looks cool in your rack ;)

However, they do have a reputation of crashing badly if bad CGI scripts are run or extremely CPU-intensive CGI processes are run. This was particularly prevalent in RAQ2; RAQ3 seems to handle it better, but is still occasionally suspectible. RAQ4 is the latest version, but I haven't heard much about it.