I noticed a (now closed) thread slamming IAmYourHost because of their $25Gb for $5 a year deals.

I have had a low-priority doorway site hosted on their server since April and other than a few outages (but not much different than I get with one host that I pay $120 a year to) I have zero complaints about their service.

No serious commercial site expects to get 25Gb a year from a five dollar bill but there are a lot of kids out there, even in America (the land of the rich and famous and the very poor and neglected) who idolize the host because he enables them to get online when they are closed out of a lot of other places who want the same $5 (but each month) for 50Mb disk + 500Mb b/w.

I was also a little shocked to see people who in their own TOSs specifically prohibit activities such as video downloads and using a shared account as an archive, encouraging the same practices against IAmYourHost simply to test what they can get for $5 a year.

Too many of us forget what it was like when we were kids and did not have million dollar bank accounts.

What is more important... your web hosting account, or eating a Big Mac from McDonalds once a month?

If there are two McDonald's side-by-side and one is selling Big Macs at half-price which will have the shortest queue?

Originally posted by ChrisBowd
If there are two McDonald's side-by-side and one is selling Big Macs at half-price which will have the shortest queue?

I think he means that $5 a month isn't exactly expensive.

$5 a month is less than the minimum wage in the USA.

Originally posted by ChrisBowd
If there are two McDonald's side-by-side and one is selling Big Macs at half-price which will have the shortest queue?

If one were better quality, handed to me with a smile, had more meat, and came from a cleaner more respectful McDonalds, I'd pay twice as much for it.

>$5 a month is less than the minimum wage in the USA.

As far as I understand it we are talking about $5 PER YEAR, not per month... And that is really ridiculously few... I guess this server is hosted at home with a cable connection or something. If someone pulls out the plug you're offline. $5 per month would be acceptable for this plan but $5 a year does definitely smell fishy.

Oh well, if it is just 25 GB PER YEAR as well it is not that much of a problem. I thought he was selling 25 GB per month for $5 per year...

There is something I would like to add.

Think it like this way!

You have the McDonald's Dollar Menu $1.00 for a Cheese Burger

VS.

The Wendy's Oldy Burgers which cost something like $4.50

What we forget is that both the burgers are made out of meat and bread. The addons or meo and tomatos are the special features with it.

Not necessarily will the $4.50 burger be something of a greater taste then the $1.00 burger at McDonald's.

And hey, its all upto you. You defenately have the POWER to control your mind and by the $4.50 burger if you think the pattie is GOOD FOR HEALTH VS. the pattie at McDonald's.

Its all a mind game! But some considerations does apply.

Please don't criticize people of what they are selling. Only criticize if you find someone who is not keeping their words as of what they are selling! Which means, mind your own business in simple words. If you don't want to buy the cheap stuff just cause your mind is not buying it, forget about it. Go spend 3 times your money and buy what you want.

So if you find a company that really is NOT KEEPING their words after you buy their service than come here and talk against them. Just don't come here and laugh at someone because you think their services are funny. That makes you an idiot when they succeed.

Regards,
HostsWebs.

Lots of analogies here none of them really applicable, unless of course web hosting becomes a tangible retail product some day.

The main point to remember with a service is that better service almost always costs more money...

I want each of you that don't think 5 bucks is a big deal to paypal me 5 bucks.

I mean really, its only 5 bucks right?

Too many of us forget what it was like when we were kids and did not have million dollar bank accounts.


I remember quite well what I was doing when I was a kid. I was planning for my future by going to school, and studying. I wasn't worried about getting a wares site online for my buddies, nor was I worried about opening a business online.

Too many forget what it's like to be kids, because they wasted their childhood trying to open hosting companies, or working hard giving away other people's hard work on their new uber cool wares site.


I want each of you that don't think 5 bucks is a big deal to paypal me 5 bucks.

I mean really, its only 5 bucks right?


$5 is not much if it's an earned $5. Giving people crappy hosting for $5 is the same as asking people to just give you $5 for nothing.

Originally posted by HostsWebs
There is something I would like to add.

Think it like this way!

You have the McDonald's Dollar Menu $1.00 for a Cheese Burger

VS.

The Wendy's Oldy Burgers which cost something like $4.50

What we forget is that both the burgers are made out of meat and bread. The addons or meo and tomatos are the special features with it.

Not necessarily will the $4.50 burger be something of a greater taste then the $1.00 burger at McDonald's.

And hey, its all upto you. You defenately have the POWER to control your mind and by the $4.50 burger if you think the pattie is GOOD FOR HEALTH VS. the pattie at McDonald's.

Its all a mind game! But some considerations does apply.

Please don't criticize people of what they are selling. Only criticize if you find someone who is not keeping their words as of what they are selling! Which means, mind your own business in simple words. If you don't want to buy the cheap stuff just cause your mind is not buying it, forget about it. Go spend 3 times your money and buy what you want.

So if you find a company that really is NOT KEEPING their words after you buy their service than come here and talk against them. Just don't come here and laugh at someone because you think their services are funny. That makes you an idiot when they succeed.

Regards,
HostsWebs.

Some of it is just not possible. Okay, anything is possible, but it is not very probable at all. Lets examine.

Lets say you work a normal 40 hours a week. Now, excluding all holidays for example purposes I'll just say you work 40 weeks a year, so 12 weeks vacation. Now if you're making $5 an hour, this is $8,000 a year. You need to have 1,600 clients paying $5/year to just make less than minimum wage for yourself, barely working.

This is all, not including server costs, software costs, taxes, licenses, tech support, etc. Good business plan? Could 1 person even provide support for 1,600 people?

Now McDonalds can afford to offer $1.00 hamburgers, they buy is such large of quantities that they actually profit on these burgers. Also they're not what most people buy, they'll buy the more expensive items because they like them better.

So, in a proper business environment, I suppose they could afford to sell $5/yr hosting packages, but unless there's some secret business practice that I am not aware of, it's just not practical.

Note: This is mostly speaking of businesses in the USA since the figures are in USD.

>Could 1 person even provide support for 1,600 people?

YES ! Larger companies do usually have like 1 support person for every 5000 shared hosting customers.

The question should have been, "Could 1 person provide quality support for 1,600 people?". No one will argue with the fact that one person could support 15,000 people. Those 15,000 aren't going to get very good support however.

YES ! Larger companies do usually have like 1 support person for every 5000 shared hosting customers.


Well.....this certainly could be possible.....if you are actually a good host. lol I mean if you're a very good host, then support requests will come in, but not from everyone at once.

If you're a bad host, with tons of downtime....then there is no way one person could handle all of those 1600 clients at once, not to mention 5000.