While I know that a host that charges 0.99 cents a month is cheap what is considered medium or high cost and what can be expected from the medium and high cost hosts?

Honkaroo

For decent support, expect to pay over $20 a month for a small account. But some will charge that and the support will still be crapy.

I would not go with that host if there charging .99/month, thats just overselling to the max with no support what so ever.

I think 99 cents per month is way below cheap. :D But I think you can receive just as bad of service from a high cost host as you can a low cost host, it's probably not as common though. I think a lot of it just depends on the company. But of course the price will have a factor.

I would definetly be asking some questions about the host. I do not see how anyone would even offer a plan for under a buck.:

Originally posted by 93.3
For decent support, expect to pay over $20 a month for a small account. But some will charge that and the support will still be crapy. There's a few hosts that charge less than that and still deliver excellent support.

Having said that, repeat with me....

A buck a gig...
A buck a gig...
A buck a gig...
A buck a gig.

A buck a gig for what? Bandwidth? Meaning $50 for 50GB of Bandwidth? Doesn't make much sense to me.

Originally posted by ProXie
A buck a gig for what? Bandwidth? Meaning $50 for 50GB of Bandwidth? Doesn't make much sense to me. It does, though. Remember, someone who needs a lot of bandwidth will be more likely to use it than someone without. Now, datacenters like RackSpace charge $2/GB, and someone with a colocated server pays about $1/GB. So anyone who charges less can NEVER change datacenters or go colocated. It just doesn't make sense to charge less.

Originally posted by ProXie
A buck a gig for what? Bandwidth? Meaning $50 for 50GB of Bandwidth? Doesn't make much sense to me. Not everyone is a bottom dollar host. I tend to charge anywhere from $1.50 down to $0.85 per gig of traffic. I do this so that I can make sure that I will be in business for a long time. It costs me approximately $0.75 per gig of traffic, so I'm not making a whole lot of money here.

Been in business for over three and a half years. I come here, and quite often find that some of these bottom dollar hosts are out of business within three months, simply because they were undercharging/overselling their servers and not even breaking even.

It's truly a sad state when a host goes under, however, for those that don't charge appropriately and/or plan for the long term future, there's no one to blame but themselves.

Please do be aware that I am NOT trying to advertise sales, rather I'm trying to show a guideline of why I've been able stay solvent compared to some of the other hosts (especially recently) that have gone under...

You get what you pay for. If you want a barebone host to throw some files up then it might be worth it, but I wouldnt go in expecting so much.

Originally posted by 93.3
For decent support, expect to pay over $20 a month for a small account. But some will charge that and the support will still be crapy.

You can also go the other way around, pay less than $10 a month and get great support. Depends on the company usually.

Here are a few steps that could assist you in determining if in fact a host is too cheap or not;

1) Take their IP and trace it upstream and find their datacenter.
2) Look at the Datacenter pricing, specifically look for bandwidth pricing.
3) See if that Datacenter offers co-location (since that would be the least expensive bandwidth they offer more times than not)
4) Once you determine the cost of bandwidth from that Datacenter you can match it with what the host you are considering is charging.
5) You should keep in mind that some Datacenters do offer discounts for some Hosts.

Now, is the host you are considering cheaper than what the Datacenter costs are? If so how would they be able to:
A) Stay in business taking a loss?
B) Be able to pay for and provide support?
C) Pay taxes?
D) Pay other associated business costs?
E) Pay for back-up solutions and disaster recovery plans?

When you can answer all those questions with reasonable answers you will have a pretty good idea on if a host's pricing is going to be able to give you the comfort level you need to have with your host...

It depends on how much web space and transfer you are looking for in a hosting plan as to how much you are going to pay.

For example a small account such as 50MB space and 500MB transfer does not warrant the $20 a month price tag mentioned above.

Post your specs and see what others think you should be spending ;)

yea, if you read the details on some of the webhosting sites, they sound all great but if u look at the space given , and how often there not working its not worth it

I wanted to get a general feel for what cheap, mid price and high price hosting costs might be. Thanks to everyone for their answers.

Honkaroo

You are asking customers to go one step up though. OK If some hosts (consider resellers) were selling a little higher than the host, is that customer that WAS interested in the host itself going to consider them now that they have now found a way to delete the middleman?

No, of course not. Hosting is about supporting the customer, in our case we go further than just support the customer, we send our customers emails every 1 week, 4 weeks and 8 weeks at different periods in their hosting to find out gripes and work on them.

We dont wish to compete with lower paid hosting plans, that was never our intention, nor do we wish to compete with our reseller!!

Customers SHOULD be encouraged to look at the HOST and NOT their upstream provider!!

Your sending the customer to the wrong people, for every hosting provider out there waiting 10 minutes for an email,a large hosting provider doesnt have time even in 4 hours to answer their stupid email that he has seen sooo recently and his nice auto response covers it.

For once, customers are starting to consider the little people with the running and supporting their websites, dont bring the horrible massive "yes we love you" companies into this again,as we know they are full of it and are making their revenue through cheating their clients into one rules or another, all it takes is for the client to fall into one of their stupid large commercial traps in the TOS which everyone supposedly read.

Customers SHOULD be encouraged to look at the HOST and NOT their upstream provider!! I disagree. You can have the greatest salesman in the world but if the product is not any good, does it really matter how good the salesman is? Does it matter how great the salesman's support is if the product is always broken?

A host can only be as good as their upstream provider as far as network stability, uptime and reliability are concerned. What if the datacenter has no support on the week ends? You don't believe that is relevant information for a client to know about? Even co-location should require a tech available that can access your box via a console in case of emergencies.

If your site is important to you, your research in selecting a host should not end with the host, it should go upsteam to the datacenter as well.