Hello,
Cobaltracks.com is now offering virtual hosting. It should apear on our page in the AM tommorow but is on our parent companys page now
(MOVED)
www.cobaltracks.com
Please disregard the bandwith limits on this page they will change in the AM tommorow. Also this price is free from sales tax. and there is no setup fee.
We do not bill for bandwith use or throttle our servers. I don't really want to say unlimited we put 75 sites per cobalt on a 10Mbit FDX link. If a customer is useing excessive resources such that (s)he is affecting others we will ask them to move to a dedicated server.
This is designed as a low cost way to enter the market or a low tech way for people who don't want to deal with manageing there own server. This does not affect cobaltracks dedicated server sales at all.


Sam

sam,

Make sure that you set a limit on bandwidth so you dont end up on my site, unlimband.com

Jim

Hello Jim,
I agree there is no such thing as unlimited bandwith. At some point you will hit a physical limitation. (Speed of NIC , speed of server I/O bus etc.)
Is there an industry correct word to say "We don't bill you for bandwith and you can use as much as the server can crank out"
We will either ignore the bandwith question altogether in our ads or come up with some way to explain this I'm not sure.
Some sites NEED a dedicated server and if a customer is affecting his "servermates" we will inform the customer that we might are not the best virtual host for him and (s)he should consider a dedicated server.
I'd like suggestions on what people would like to see in virtual accounts? More storage? More emails? Lower price?
200Megs Storage
Unbilled bandwith (75 Sites, 1 10Mbit port shared)
PHP,SSI,CGI,Email(5),Front Page
Cobalt GUI
$9.95

Sam

What happens if 2 sites on the server are using 49% of the server resources each? Do you kick them off the server? You really have to explain what happens if a customer uses too much server resources, and what will happen if they do.

I also would make sure you put a limit on each individual site, even if it is 200 GIG of bandwidth.

Jim

We wouldn't let a site get that high. If we see a sight noticeably affecting his neighbors we will ask him to stop the activity or move to a dedicated solution. We'll word our AUP in such a way that we will have omnipotent rule over this however I don't think it will be a big problem. The "one bad apple" site that's hosting a redhat-7.2 mirror or something like that will pop up I"m sure.
This service is NOT targeted for people who are heavy users. If you have a small site(20-50Gig) and ocasionally spike or are just afraid of being nickeled and dimed than this is the right plan. We would of course always refund money if you were not satisfied or if our hosting doesn't fit you.
Also 10Mbit is a fair amount of traffic for 75 sites and we will not hide any information about the servers conectivity or the fact that it is shared. We aren't offering this is not a dedicated server so we aren't offer unlimited CGI/PHP/mysql etc..... We are saying we will not bill for bandwith overages however we will kindly ask if your site is affecting your neighbor that you move to a dedicated server(If your site belongs on one you'll know) or modify your site. This is a service where you HAVE to play by the rules. It really isn't right to charge Mom and Pop's plumbing supply store more a month for hosting just because Jdawgs house of warez (WE DO NOT ALLOW WAREZ by the way) uses resources. Jdawg begone and Mom and Pop stay is what we're saying without confusing Mom and Pop.
I am not so much concerned with bandwith as I am with CPU usage. Any suggestions on this? Good policys for it? Any other hosting companys doing things like this?

Your per-site limit is a good idea. Also we're trying to bring the price per site to aroung $6 but that would mean we'd need a good customer base and it would be a "no-frills" service. (Even though we will be offering tech support).

Sam

Sorry to post another I should have edited the first one...
Sam

I think the word you're looking for is "unmetered", no?

I would be inclined to avoid any of the 'U' words - set a limit like 50Gb, or another generous amount instead.

unmetered, unlimited, unrestricted, untaped.....ive heard them all, but all are just coverups. Dont use them.

Heres what I worked out:

10MBPS = 3200 GIGs (10 x 320)
75 Sites = about 42 GIGs of Bandwidth per month limit.

Total servers possible on a DS-3/T-3 line: 4.5

If you filled a DS-3/T-3, then you would have: about 337 customers.

At $6.00/month per customer, that would equal = $2025/month revenue.

Now, will that $2025/month cover the costs of administration, connection costs, severs, rack space, marketing, support personel?


I know that not every site will use 42 gigs, but what would happen if they did? I mean, you promised it, now you have to deliever it.

See what Im saying?

Jim

Hello,
My intention isn't to decend into the continueing argument about unlimited bandwith. We will probably not mention bandwith at all and if someone ask we'll try to explain it to them. I do wish there was a word for it though :-(... Lots of companys do this.
Think about it. You have unlimited local calls on your phone most likely however if more than 30% of the people in your exchange decide to dial at once (Assumeing ATT 5ESS configured as our is) you won't be able to please that call. Most people in the US have 100Amp or 200Amp power from the power company if people all used that they would cripple the power system(Perhaps not the best analogy because you have to pay). What I'm trying to say is that it is VERY possible to be profitable this way. The average site on our virtuals now generates about 2.5Gig per month. We can put 75 on a RAQ4 so instead of $99 we make ~ $500 per month.
We are not alone in this type of plan it is very similar to that rackshack is offering persently. It makes a lot of sense.
We will however set a limit somewhere on our bandwith :-(... I don't really want to do that because if you aren't hurting anyone else we don't care how much bandwith you use but I think we'll have to.
Also just a note your last statement got my attention. We do not promise that you will have anything. We simply say that you will not be billed for bandwith overages. If you'd like you could consider it a "best effort" service. We will make every effort to keep network performance at or above current levels and performance has been beautiful for over a year. However we do not promise you can move X amount of traffic. That would be impossible for any host to do....

.... one of the best threads I have ever read (not only here) about this issues. They are always covered up and hiddedn due to marketing reasons and yet so important if you REALLY want to make a SERIOUS website which has to be 24/7 available or if you want to resell space to such customers.

A machine is a machine and a connection is a connection. There are limits therefore. I value a host much more if he speaks out honestly about this and tells me "up-front" what I CAN do without running into trouble rather than beeing a crap like ***** for example... yes, I AM an ex-victim :D

If you do hosting you need to have AT LEAST DOUBLE income with the hosting then the costs. Costs are the money you pay for machine and connection and your administration cost as well as power, heating/air conditioning of your facilities and of course a percentage for hardware failures which you will have to take care of.

Uhoh, make sure you get a SSL cert. for this: http://www.visuallink.com/hosting/online_order.html

:eek2:

Like ShareFile, I believe that if you should tell the customer the truth. Ok, so you have a 10MBPS limit (300x10 = 3000 gigs) That means that if you put 75 sites per server, each should be able to transfer: 40 GIGs per month.

Just say that, forget the unlimited or unrestricted crap.

Jim

In another thread jimb posted about his beliefs on unmetered, I said -

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So what you are saying is that we shouldn't have unlimited POPs anymore? No more unlimited forwarding? Should ALL host now limit cgi use with "hard numbers"? You know when you use to much scripts, you are forced to upgrade or move don't you when it effects resources?

jimb, I suggest you educate yourself about what is false and what is true, instead of posting BS to get people to visit your host bashing site. I don't know how many times I have seen you post that they are the same yet provide no proof. Your site is ignorant by placing unmetered host on it. You have no understanding of how unmetered works, and it is apparrent. Why don't you read this thred and see if you can intelligentally debate it -

http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=27443&highlight=unmetered

PS- As I have stated before "Because it is." is not a good reply.
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I know that not every site will use 42 gigs, but what would happen if they did? I mean, you promised it, now you have to deliever it.

There was no promise for unlimited. There was a statement that you will not be billed for it. Hence - unmetered. This is the same as allowing unrestricted use to CGI. There was no promise to allow server abuse.

jimb, I find it funny that your design company (or whoevers you say it is), forwards people who need host to a host who offers unlimited POPs. Hey, that isn't very hypocrytical. Maybe if you were a web host you would understand this.

Sam, is this offer still valid? I ask as the plans are listed with 100MB of transfer, but maybe it is a typo, or is that it? (Not saying it is bad if so, just wondering?).

Also, I don't see how this turned onto a debate about unlimited/unmetered, but jimb, I'll ask you to email hosts privately about your site, please do not post statements such as, "Make sure that you set a limit on bandwidth so you dont end up on my site, unlimband.com".

Sam, email me if it ok just to remove this entire thread, or all the posts after the intial one.

Im not going to fight you again UmBillyCord, I already have and you keep bringing this up same topic up. We have already discussed this once before, and you know what my response would be. If you want a fight, you can email it to me.

I am going to stop posting in this thread.

That is it.

Jim

Hello,
At first I thought delete this thread but perhaps it has some useful info in it a change of subject is in order however....
I am editing the html link to reflect the new plan. The link I first supplied is outdated.
This offer IS valid, it has simply moved away from visuallink.com and to cobaltracks.com. Please checkout the new thread I posted
as "Offical cobalt racks annoucement" or the cobalt racks homepage
Lastly if anyone would like to debate bandwith definitions with please do it via PM.

Sam