Hello,

I would like to let everyone know about the JTAN (www.jtan.com) ProWeb account. The account features:

No set limits on Disk Space
10GB Data Transfer a Month
Additional POP3 Accounts, FTP Accounts, Autoresponders, Forwarders available free of charge
Unlimited Sub-Domains (automatic conversion)
mySQL & PHP
Anonymous FTP
IRC Bots & Cron Access
FrontPage 2000 Extensions
Static IP Address

$22.99/mo paid yearly. No setup fee.

Please note we have a very flexible ProWebPlus account for $64/mo which contains all of these features and more. E-mail me at vince@jtan.com if you are interested, or visit http://www.jtan.com. Thanks for your time, and have a nice day!

Here we go again!! Another unlimited space host!! Cant they just get it into there heads??? There in nothing like "UNLIMITED SPACE"?????

I've been in this discussion again, again, and again on this forum. It is a professional "courteous" we are offering to our clients. Yes, you are correct, there is no such thing as unlimited disk space. But we are offering "No set limits", meaning if you have a 100MB web site that you want to upload, you aren't limited. If you have a 1GB site that you want to upload, you aren't limited. If you want to upload 500MB of your web site a week, you aren't limited.

I please ask that you do not simply put the nametag of "Another unlimited host" on JTAN. JTAN has been in business for 9 years, and is a member of the BBB. I've only been working here since January, but it's really a great company. So please reconsider your standpoint, as it is unfair to be judged only because we don't like setting arbitrary limits. Thanks :)

I dun care wether you have been in business for the past 100yrs!! your site states unlimited space.

Anwyas.. what you are saying is that I can take regular back ups of my 20gb harddisk everyday?? So in abt a month that would make it approximately 600gb of data?? Is this allowed??

[Edited by kunal on 09-12-2000 at 07:28 AM]

kunal,

In a post a while back, SysAdmin gave a very good explanation of what we are offering:

It was like a warehouse store at the UK. After checking out your items, you were free to take as many boxes after the checkout line as you needed, but that didn't mean you could take the whole stack of them. It was offered as a courtesy to customers.

Technically speaking, you could make backups of your 20GB HD everyday. We would have to get some more hardrive space obviously, but if you let us know ahead of time, yes, you'd be able to.

But I'd really like to know why JTAN has to get thrown in with the slump of "sucky always tell everyone they suck" web host. It's kind of like giving business cards at your office desk (on a larger scale). You'd like for people to take one, or two or three and give them to some associates, but you don't really want everyone taking all three stacks.

All of our customers that we currently have have no problem with no limited disk space. We have a customer who is currently using 1.8GB.

So once again, I'd ask for you to reconsider your label on JTAN. It's not like we are scamming people. Do you know how many "unlimited" hosts are in the BBB? JTAN is.

Do you think it would be better to offer 50Megs of space and then charge everyone a $1 for every Meg after that? No, we give people however many MB or GBs they need, within reason. How come we can't do that without getting bashed?

Thanks for your time.

Alright, it is not a "professional courteous" I am sorry Vincent but your claim is worth nothing. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why http://www.jtan.com/ still is "unknown" after 9 years of business?

Your both right on both accounts. There is no such thing as unlimited, there is obv. a limit on everything out there in the world. UNLIMTED is simply a term used in advertising to bring people in, Dial Up providers advertise unlimited connections but if you look in their contract it advises that you can not take adv. of this or you will lose your account. SO KUNAL you are right there is no such thing as unlimited, but my problem with what you have siad lies in 2 things:

1. You are not being professional by screaming at someone simply because you feel that something they are saying is misleading, I dont think they are purposly trying to mislead consumer, they just are appealing to what consumers want, and yes they do acually provide unlimited so called service, trust me Im sure one day all unlimited host with get that one customer who will take advantage of the service at that point they may or may not choose to revise their usag policys, but please in the future explain your side of something in a more professional way.

2. Just because not everyone has heard of JTAN does not mean they are a bad company. Often the smallest companys are the best as they take better care of their customers needs. It takes 2 things to make a company a name that everyone in the world has heard of: Money and Money. SMall companys have a limited advertising budget, and a limited staff, maybe their in the business to satisfy current customers, any company who grows too large and can not support current customers, or who loses touch in what really matters (the customers) is bound to fail.

THis is not meant to take sides with anyone, just a little bit of advice. I myself have not been in the field of E-Business for more than 3 years. But in those 3 years I have found out that customer satisfaction should always come above anything else. Because word of mouth spreads ext. fast.

well... I bet if i was to take a 100 of them, they would stop me! Agreed they would think I am nuts, but I dun care!

Misleading it misleading, wether purposly or not!


How are you so sure they provide unlimited space?

Also.. do you have a terms of service?? I cant seem to find one on the site... could you give me the link to it?


Also.. when i did a domain whois it says the domain name was created in 1996. And if my math is correct that is 4yrs?

[Edited by kunal on 09-12-2000 at 01:48 PM]

You see that unlimited produces bad vibes. We all hate it and even if you (in theory) offer it, ouwld it be so hard as to say, "Web Package One: 2 Gigs HD space*"

*More space available upon request

I think that should cover just about anything and everything without sounding so errrr... unbelieveable.

Refrain from using the word "unlimited" anywhere on the site in fact. Who NEEDS "unlimited space" or "unlimited POP accounts" ??? Hotmail?

I think you can be overly generous, without being unrealistic. Your customers will appreciate it. I know that when I was looking for a host, if I saw *anything* like unlimted bandwidth or space, I moved on fast. 2 Gigs of space would catch my eye though :)

cbaker17,

Thanks for having that view point. I'll make sure to recommend your hosting service when the company I work for can't handle the needs. Thanks :)

Coreace & kunal,

Well, I am very sorry you still feel that way. Anyway, yes, the domain name was registered in 1996. JTAN used to go by the name "KD3BJ". It started as a local BBS. And actually, the owner is an engineer and designed and built the Velodrome used for the 1996 Olympics (for bicycling) in Atlanta. Check out the web page, there's some cool information about it. Anyway, yes, the domain name was registered in 1996 when shell accounts started to be offered. The ProWeb started in March 2000. So the ProWeb service is new, but the company is not.

Chicken,

Thank you very much for those suggestions. I will forward them to my boss. Thanks :)

Alright .. I finally got a place to backup my video drives everyday ... it's only about 200Gig's .. ;-)

Vincent did state clearly, in his first post above at the top of this thread, that they are offering "no set limits" on disk space... but not "unlimited" data transfer.

So I don't really see JTAN as being unscrupulous. They are being quite fair and competitive. You may take all the space (as he explained with the analogy of the stacks of visiting cards in one of his posts above), but you still will have to pay for data transfer.

Also notice that JTAN expects to paid for a full year at a time. So on one side they are offering more disk space to attract customers, but on the other side they are offering less flexibility in terms of payment which will be a deterrent.

They believe that this is how they would like to target the competiton... and they have a right to believe that. I am sure they must have really pondered over this strategy of theirs carefully after adequate research.

Just because a webhosting company is offering a different kind of incentive, it shouldn't be immediately voiced as an unscrupulous business practice simply because it doesn't confirm to the industry's general norms of packages or services being offered.

In the end it isn't how much a webhosting company offers in terms of incentives or discounts in its rates... doing either to an extreme would simply be a stupid business strategy for the long term.

Quality service, effective marketing, reasonable packages and prices and fast support (in that order) are the factors that will make any webhosting company succeed in this industry.

And for those webhosting companies who don't succeed, when you analyze it down to the core reasons for their lack of success... you will realize that they hadn't paid the requisite attention to either one or more of the above factors.

Learner

[Edited by Learner on 09-12-2000 at 09:23 PM]

I am not trying to pick a fight, but would like to make an observation and follow-up with a question:

On 9/12 @ 7:14 AM the words "you aren't limited" appears within your post and you go on to explain that there are no limits.

@7:45 Am you post contains the phrase "within reason."

Now, while I wouldn't personally use the word 'unlimited' with my own service, you have every right to use it within yours. (There is an old saying: I don't agree with a word you say, but will fight for your right to say it.)

My question is this:

...within reason...

Whose "reason" is it? The client's or your's?

If it is the client's "reason" then it is truly unlimited.

However, if it is within your "reason" then you have just set a limit, thereby cancelling out your 'unlimited' claim.

Perhaps if you wish to use unlimited as a marketing tool, you should define whose 'reason' that 'unlimited' will be guided by.

I am not trying to start a discussion into the semantics of this. Nor am I trying to pick the fly sh*t out of the pepper. I am just trying to better understand the service you are offering and the underlying concepts behind it.

From what I see around here, resellers and hosts are like very good scientists...ignoring the superficial claims and researching down deep to explore the true meaning of any and all claims...and rightly so.

And a final thought, Learner kindly pointed out that while space is unlimited, bandwith is not.

As a fellow longstanding member of the BBB and a strong believer in fair business practice, is it fair to offer an unlimited amount of space and then smack an unsuspecting client with a massive bandwith bill? Yes, customers should research their business and should have a fair amount of knowledge before starting out on such a venture. But, you know as well as I do that that rarely happens (except for the users of WebHostingTalk!)

Perhaps a definiton, description and examples of bandwith usage would be in order to better educate the client to make an informed decision. I know that years ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity and would have cried at the first bandwith bill...cause my first inkling would have probably been to do the video storage thing referenced in an earlier post :-)

Incidentally, what is your refund policy since you request annual pre-payment?

DONE! Thanks for reading this far. I look forward to your reply(ies).

You had to know I'd stick my nose into this one... ;)

First of all I'm not surprised to see CBaker17 defending the "unlimited" offering since his own company does it at http://www.eazyaccess.com. Their idea of unlimited is subject to "terms and conditions over viewed in the usage policy" - that would be the usage policy that I have yet to find on their site.

Oddly enough, I can't find any terms and conditions or usage policy on http://www.jtan.com either. Hmmmm. Do I see a pattern developing here?

Unlimited means without limits. Period. Disk usage or data transfer are NEVER without limits or the host concerned would go out of business within a very short space of time. Simple economics lesson #648:

A 20GB H/D costs around $120 (cheap IDE drive). That's $6/GB purchase cost.
Data transfer costs from $3/GB upwards.

Offering TRULY unlimited amounts of these for a finite amount of money would result in a loss. That doesn't even take into account admin costs, server expenses etc etc.

One final nail in the coffin, and all "unlimited" hosts should take notice of this: At the start of 2000 I registered a complaint against a host (I cannot name them as the case is ongoing) with the BBB because their "unlimited" offering had limits set by the company and not disclosed in their terms and conditions. This was deemed to be an answerable case and the company is currently in talks with the BBB....

In short - you cannot economically offer an unlimited amount of any item which has a cost for a limited price. And since you can't offer it, for God's sake stop advertising it!! You make yourselves look stupid and bring the whole industry into disrepute.

Speedie.

Try this:
http://www.jtan.com/proshell/fineprint.html
And this:
http://www.jtan.com/proshell/fineprint.html#bots

Scroll down and you'll see pieces of policies on unlimited, restrictions, etc. Like this:

"Accounts described as having "no fixed limits" may have various limits imposed at any time without warning. JTAN administration reserves the right to log anybody off at any time or otherwise restrict access."

Everybody probably knows how I feel about issues like this one, so I won't go into it again.

Boy where ever you go speedie you try to start something dont you.... Oh well some people are just like that i guess...

First of call I never said I dont offer unlimited, in fact our site does. We are in fact in the process of changing this from unlimited. And Im not going to go into a rant and rave about unlimited, there are alot of people who do not like that terminology which is why we are redoing our plans as well as usage policy at the time in fact. BUT your way of talking to people is rediculous. If you were literate you could have seen I was not taking a side in my post in fact I bring up pros and cons on both sides, and just so there was no mistake at the end I even reiterated that I was not taking sides. GROW UP

PEOPLE this is supposed to be a friendly board. I no longer enjoy even coming here to read posts because everyone is always bickering. IF someone wants to advertise unlimited let them, if someone wants to tell people that they run their sites on a 486 let them. Dont condemn people and degrade them as a company or as a person.

You guys have successfully turned a polite ad post into a rant and rave forum, bravo.

Maybe if we spent less time ranting and raving and more time making friends and helping those friends we all could produce something worth talking about.

JUST TO CLERIFY I AM NOT TAKING SIDES BUT IT JUST DISSAPOINTS ME TO SEE MY FELLOW COMPETITORS BEHAVING AS IF THEY ARE CHILDREN ON THE PLAYGROUND. I ALWAYS WISH FOR YOU TO SUCCEED. IN FACT YOU WILL OFTEN SEE ME SENDING POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS WHICH REQUIRE SERVICES WE CANT PROVIDE TO MY COMPETITORS. I HOPE TO SEE YOU ALL SUCCEED. I AM IN THE BUSINESS TO COMPETE BUT NOT CONDEMN.

I think that most of us are, in fact, on the same page with regard to assisting each other when possible. But offering things that do not exist is not only misleading and immoral, but oftentimes borders on illegality (if it doesn't just fall right over that border). You cannot expect people to stand by silently while they wait for another poor lost lamb to get themselves flogged because they simply don't understand that there is no such thing as unlimited anything - all they see is more=better.

As far as JTAN's ad - I, personally, would love to see a host who offers this type of deal just spell it out as "we can give you the space you need, for a price" instead of implying that hard drives are limitless right off the bat. They aren't offering unlimited, per se, in this ad but that same spirit is there. And in fact, on the site itself, the content does say "unlimited" disk space, on every single account - including the lowest one. So if someone shows up and wants 1Tb of space for $99 a year, do you think they've read the policies (which, by the way, are not that easy to find)? Nope. All they know is what they see up front.

This type of claim can never go unchallenged, no matter what forum it's in.

I agree with you cbaker17...100%!

When I was referred to this board I was told that it was basically a "community of web hosts helping each other out without major worry about competition."

My own preconception was that it was going to be about how ot be a better host, current trends, marketing tips, legal issues, hosting issues and the like.

When I came to the board I soon found that some people treat it like a "front" for a web host critiquing service. I feel that this makes one hesitant about even telling others the name of their own service, good or bad. Granted, there are some good posts on here, but from my experience the rants outweigh the communal aspects.

My feeling is that, in the case of this thread, I would rather participate in a discussion of what 'unlimited' means, rather than bashing a pour soul(s) for using the word. [I hope others didn't take my previous post that way.]

Just my two-cents.

No, I don't try to start something wherever I go. And as for your comments about my literacy (or lack thereof) I won't rise to them.

I think the fact that your company is currently changing it's site so that unlimited is no longer offered really says it all, doesn't it?

I am as entitled to my opinion as you are. If you don't like it, then I'm really terribly sorry - not. It remains equally as valid as yours.

Speedie.

Offering "unlimited" opinions all day long...

[Edited by Speedie on 09-13-2000 at 12:29 AM]

Michael,

This forum generally is a very friendly place to be. Not that I've been here long, but I too had it recommended to me and I've received a lot of help (and tried to help a few people with coding issues etc). It's a great resource :) and I feel bad that you think it's full of bickering. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Unfortunately there are one or two issues that provoke strong feelings, and unlimited hosting is one of them. It's like any other forum for adult discussion: there will be sensitive topics that touch raw nerves. Such is human nature.

If anybody else took exception to the way I expressed my dislike of "unlimited" offers then I apologise. I am the first to admit that I can occasionally be a little brusque when something riles me. I won't apologise for having an opinion though, and I do think that if you make an offer in a public forum (especially a controversial one such as "unlimited" this or that) then you should expect people to voice their concerns and opinions. Either that or you end up with a censored forum where people can only say nice fluffy things and the only victim is the truth.

Once again, my apologies to anyone who was offended by my tone (but not my opinion).

Speedie.

Well.. running down any host doesnt give me any kicks or any personal pleasure! BUT when a host tries to use such poor tactics to attract a cleint, it does touch raw nerves!!


I would recommend jtan to anyone, seeing how polite the people there are. :) Just that the unlimited thing outs me off!!

Dint mean to offend anyone!

[Edited by kunal on 09-13-2000 at 09:33 AM]

Hrrrm, it started as an advertisement for JTAN, went to a discussion on unlimited, then went to a discussion about the hosting forum. What a great topic. ;)

kunal,

I wasn't offended by you, I think I take criticism well. At least I THINK I do. :)

Thanks for the kind words, too.

I'd like to thank everyone for their input. I'll see if the plans can be made a little more "realistic", but as some of you pointed out, they ARE realistic. They aren't realistic in compared to some other hosts, yes, I agree, but the point is is that we STRIVE to offer the no limits for the sole purpose of our customer's benefits, so that everything isn't a competition as to who has more POP mailboxes. Our customers come, state what they want, and we tell them we can do it. That's how we like to do it. Thanks everyone for your input. :)

It is hard for threads to stay on track, that is a given. I don't understand why Charles turned this into a disccussion about how people bicker here, and all I can say is that this is a discussion board and in most of the discussions I have had, there are opposing opinions. I call these, "opposing opinions" not "bickering", but anyway...

I understand Vincent's position and I think he understands mine. I would have to agree that Vincent seems rather calm about discussing the issue and the only one who doesn't is Charles. (Just a poke atcha Charles, guessing you posted without having the morning coffee :))

I don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to see that stating UNLIMITED in big letters on the front pages, but including "Accounts described as having "no fixed limits" may have various limits imposed at any time without warning..." in the TOS is a bit of a errrrr... run-a-round.

To put it simply, you can't say that you may impose various limits on things that are unlimited. My view is that this should be illegal. Why this does not fall into the false advertising catagory is beyond me.

I understand that there are no hard limits set, and that it is difficult to get that point across without using the word "unlimited", but at the same time I do think it is possible. Offer 1,000 POPs. Isn't that enough? Ok, make it 2,000 POPs. I ask again, who needs this? Hotmail?

At some point, (and one should think about this *before* it happens), someone is going to want to set up 100's or 1000's of POPs, and you will HAVE to make a choice as to how many you are going to allow. Someone else is going to want 1TB or more of space. I believe that you can decide what the limits will be before hand, and can be generous, and still not use the word unlimited on the features list. Sooner or later you *are* going to have to make a choice about what the limits truly are, and I hope you'll also include a page about why someone SHOULDN'T go with a host that claims to offer unlimited sevices.

I am not the internet police, nor am I trying to act like I am, but I just like to comment when something isn't right, or as it should be. I think people will be more impressed with large numbers of POPs and space, than they would if you just label the amount unlimited, and then try to explain the limits of unlimited later in the TOS. To me this is just common sense.

[Edited by Chicken on 09-13-2000 at 11:54 PM]