My fiance feels as though a particular hosting site is a ripoff. I agree.

See, she works part time in the evenings selling lingerie, (essentially booking "girls night out") parties, through a third party company.

The company agents have the option of putting their sales online, and they suggest this particular company to host and design their website. As a seasoned webhost myself, Melissa (my fiance) asked if I could set her up on one of my servers, so I went ahead and did so. Curiosity got the best of me, so I visited the "recommended" site and was appaled. Here's the reasoning for that. First off, their servers have cPanel, an nslookup reveals a company called VPNTODAY.com. A quick ARIN check reveals that the server is housed at one of good ol' Robert Marsh's datacenters at EV1SERVERS. Take a look at their pricing structure and specs:


The below services come with each hosting package:
* A domain name of your choosing
* 5 email addresses and unlimited aliases at your domain
* Both POP mail and web accessible email
* A fully operational shopping cart with check out.
* Ability to accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, checks and debit cards.
* 300 MB of space for email orders
* Search engine for your site
* Daily web traffic reports
* Personalized welcome page with link to online store.
* Completely optimized for search engine submissions.
* Webpage is submitted to Google/AOL, AllTheWeb and MixCat, by our staff.
* Useful daily web statistics provided for this page.
* Useful marketing tips and tricks provided.
* Unlimited traffic.
* A domain name of your choosing.
* 1 web accessible email address at your domain.
* Updates to content are maintained by our staff, therefore you do not have to have any technical experience.
* Shopping Cart
* Free credit card acceptance and processing.

$15.00 a month, $75.00 setup fee.
You only get one HTML page with this service.

The next package, a meer 2 page website. $20.00 a month, with a "LOW LOW" setup fee of $100.00!

This goes all the way up to a 7 page website for $70.00 a month with a $350.00 setup fee. AND, if they find something better, they won't let you move your site elsewhere:

(Off their FAQ page)

Q: Can I move my site to another server?
This answer is threefold. First, the websites run on software that is hosted from our servers. if you have access to this software you are able to move your site elsewhere. Second, as for the products, content, images, etc... those as well are hosted from a database from LI servers therefore making you unable to move your site's content to another server unless you were to purchase this information. Third, if you are the owner of your domain name, you will be able to move this domain elsewhere, however, if the domain is owned by LI, you will have to purchase a new domain name for your new website

Come on! Give me a break! I could create the same package on my FreeBSD/cPanel with even more options, eliminate the setup fee, design some templates, configure and maintain shopping carts, and still make bank, if I could get the word out to some of the higher-ups at the company. Does anyone else, think this service is a ripoff? Setup fees alone? Let me know what you think.

Total ripoff, You need to tell them a Few Words of advise, Do a good Google search for about a good.... 10 minutes or so, you will find a good host! Guaranteed! :cool:

OR prehaps they have actually got a stable business model with decent profit margins which guarentee long term stability? The unlimited hits its a bit bad but I don't think its that outrageous they just aim at a differenet market

Rus

THats true wenglands google helps it alll.And also forums like WHT will help too

Pricey maybe, but a ripoff? That's a little harsh.

This is a business, not a charity - there's nothing evil about earning a profit. It's not like they're doing anything unethical... scamming 500$/mth websites to senior citizens, or roping in yearly accounts and then disappearing. Now that's a ripoff.

There are definitely cheaper plans if all you need is blank web space, but they appear to sell web space plus value added services (domain, basic site, setting up shopping cart, search engine submissions, etc). To some people that level of handholding may be worth paying a little extra.

Are they worth the money? No clue, but they could be. Premium 24/7 support, high-quality web pages, an all-in-one ecommerce solution - if a company offered these things, 70$ a month could be an absolute bargain! It just depends.

Can you do it better/cheaper? Maybe! If you can, go for it.

Maybe Im the only one here thats confused by this.

They design one webpage, not a template I would assume, and then they host it. They also setup a ecommerce site as well with the site they created? Plus on top of that they give you a free credit card processor? All for just $15/month.

Doesnt seem like a ripoff and not even over priced. Kind of seems underpriced to me if they are giving all those services. I am a touch confused by the one webpage deal though.

This seems like the same principle of dedicated servers. Why pay $400 / month from Rackspace when I can get a server just like it from EV1 for $150 /month?!?! Service....plain and simple. Businesses are willing to pay a premium for good service and quality of product.

...but maybe im just off my rocker....

Come on, tell the truth, you're just mad because you didn't think of it first, and they are making good money doing it. :)

That is a perfectly viable business model, nothing wrong with it. It is DEFINATELY NOT a ripoff.

Would you say that I am a ripoff because of the prices I charge for setting up a basic website? (>$1000)

I value everyone's opinion. However, they're running cPanel, and have some templates available to choose from. But with the cPanel, webspace, and the service they offer, don't you think that somone (ie ME) could do it for much less, and still make a profit? There are 30 new lingerie salespeople every day. If I could get their business, and charged 1/4 of what this company is charging, I would still be rolling in dough. A lot of the lingerie saleswomen, according to my fiance, are not technically savvy, so they think that the price that's being offered with LI is normal, as they've never shopped for a webhost before.

My fiance' signed up with them for shits and giggles. We used our joint credit card to pay for a month, and then we were going to cancel. Originally after completing the signup process, our credit card was charged, and the site was never built. We tried calling the 24/7 support number at 10:00 AM. No answer, left voicemail. Called again at 11:45, voicemail. Between Melissa and I, we called about six more times until about 8:00PM, and finally gave up. Emails went unanswered for a few days. Finally, I left a very angry voicemail saying that "as a webhost myself, if I offered 24/7 service and support, and never responded to my users, I wouldn't have made a nickel." I also let her know that with her current pricing structure, that she should, by all means, be sitting right next to her phone at all times, IMHO. In my personal opinion, the service is a ripoff, and I'm going to try to save the customers some money and bring up hosting and design opportunities to one of the managers that Melissa knows.

aside from the support issue, still sounds like a good deal to me. They provide a turnkey solution, updated content, search, credit card processing, et al. Now if they'd only set people up promptly and have better support I'd say their business model is better than half the people here!

Believe me, they can't offer free credit card processing - Somewhere along the way, they have to take a percentage fee of the sale, or they'd end up going bankrupt.

Is the one you mean among these?

http://www.google.ch/search?hl=de&q=%22Personalized+welcome+page+with+link+to+online+store.%22&btnG=Suche&meta=

Originally posted by Joshua
Believe me, they can't offer free credit card processing - Somewhere along the way, they have to take a percentage fee of the sale, or they'd end up going bankrupt. Fits right along with their unlimited traffic policy...

This is what you call business in a open market.

This company can charge whatever they want, and under almost no circumstances can it be classifed as a rip-off.

Why? Because an open market involves choice, and they have a right to charge whatever the market will bear.

A host near my area charged $40 a month for 25mb space, no control panel, and no databases. Yet they do pretty well. People perceive that as value, and that's ok with them.

IMO, it's only a ripoff if you don't do your due diligence, and find out that you could get better for less.

Originally posted by amish_geek
Come on, tell the truth, you're just mad because you didn't think of it first, and they are making good money doing it. :)

Not true. :-) They're making money, I already make plenty of money working at Intel. Webhosting is a side project for me, and I make some extra money doing it. I don't care who thought of it first, I'm by no means mad, but I know I could save these people a bunch of money doing it. What angers me, is the price they're charging. In today's world of webhosting, that's horribly expensive.

Would you say that I am a ripoff because of the prices I charge for setting up a basic website? (>$1000)

Yes, I would.

Originally posted by 6PM
I value everyone's opinion. However, they're running cPanel, and have some templates available to choose from.


What does cPanel have to do with it? Just because a host runs cpanel, does that make them a ripoff?

Originally posted by 6PM
Yes, I would. Then I would say it is a very good thing you seek other's advice in the arena of 'value'. If you can come to that conclusion without asking any further questions about amish_geek's services... then you most certainly lack the judgement to be appraising other people's services.

It sounds to me like they might be using soholauch with ecommerce / shopping cart option.

It might explain being able to say "Ability to accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, checks and debit cards." Of course they would be leaving out the part about needing a merchant account or 3rd party gateway to go with it.

god forbid they are actually making some real money for a service they provide. :)

6PM, if you detest ripoff companies so much, how does it come you work for Intel? I can't believe you honestly think their prices are anywhere near fair.

Is the site you're speaking of http://www.ileasedmysite.com ?

Usrbingeek, (By the way, I LOVE your username!)

I'm not suggesting that cPanel makes the company a ripoff. What I'm saying, is that if they're running cPanel, and I'm running cPanel also, couldn't I provide virtually the same services that the aforementioned company is doing, if not more, and charge less?

Look, all I'm saying is, if I were to offer the EXACT same services that is offered by LI, and more, and offered TRUE phone support, not just voicemails, created a system where an inexperienced user could easilly build their own storefront, and charged far less than what LI is charging, don't you think the general population would choose the lower priced option? That's really all I'm getting at. My opinion has not waivered. It is my belief that the prices are too high. I doubt I will waiver from my opinion. Someone would have to give me a really good reason to make me think otherwise. They're a hosting and design company, and for a maximum seven page website, a $350.00 setup fee is awful high, seeing as all they're probably doing is configuring the new domain in WHM, and building some templates. Honestly, it really doesn't seem that hard.

Note: my fiance's account is still active over at LI, and yet when she tries to build sites, she gets error 500 often.

Ya know you guys need to get the hell off my back, OK? I'm expressing my opinions here. I asked for suggestions, and it's getting to the "bashing" point. Nowhere, in my original post, did I ask for someone to tell me that I lack judgment (it's spelled JUDGMENT, SROHost, verify at dictionary.com) or other things, which I do not lack. It is not your job to tell me what I know, and do not know. You don't even know me.

MY OPINION, ladies and gentleman, is just that. I've talked to some of my tech friends, showed them the website, and it's their opinion, too, that LI is charging too much. I'm not telling you folks not to be opinionated - however there's such things a being opinionated, and being mean and opinionated. Some are crossing that border.

Originally posted by RambOrc
6PM, if you detest ripoff companies so much, how does it come you work for Intel? I can't believe you honestly think their prices are anywhere near fair.

My employment at Intel is not your business, RambOrc. I don't care what Intel's pricing structure is for their products. I don't even work in sales. I work in a completely different area, in the IT department. I make good money for what I do, and that's why I work at Intel.

Second, Intel is NOT webhosting. There's quite a difference between webhosting and hardware/software.

I will agree that SROHost makes a point. I should have researched amish_geek's services offered, before I made the desicion that the service provided was classified as a "ripoff." I checked out the webhosting section and the prices are definately fair, so that part, I do apologize for.

Despite having something not many people on WHT (if any) have - a university degree in linguistics - I usually rather ignore people misspelling words, but since you insisted on telling another guy that he spelled a word in the wrong way, I'd like to point out that both judgement and judgment are existing and officially accepted versions of the word. If you are really interested, I could try to dig up the exact ethimology, but based on my general knowledge of languages, I'd say that chances are the original spelling is judgement and the shorter version is a latter development introduced by uneducated people and because becoming widespread, accepted as right form. Then again, it might be the other way around, there are many cases of such a change too.

Regarding rip-off webhosting prices in general, looking at WHT, webhosting directories and even search engines in general will give you a rather false image of the industry, because all you'll see is the bottom and the lower mid-range - I mean price-wise. Webhosting for even simpler contents than you rage about here are offered AND ACCEPTED by many companies for hundreds to thousands of bucks a month, with setup costs many times higher than what you see there. For your information, the webhost with the largest market share is not 1&1 or pair.com but IBM - and if you'd know what kind of prices they charge for their services, you'd suddenly understand that the example you posted at the beginning of this thread is still at the bottom of the industry as far as prices go. Are they a rip-off then too?

As harryhood mentioned, they might use SohoLaunch on their servers, which would explain among other things the 500 errors. SohoLaunch is a cool product I offer my customers as well, but it has its own bugs in every release, sadly.

Also, never forget they charge most of the money not for webhosting, but for the setup and maintenance of a website, which always costs way more. Imagine what kind of content the customer might throw at you, how much time you might need to create a decent-looking website out of it, split the fees by the hours you spend on it and look how many bucks you get per hour. And then ask yourself whether it's really a rip-off or rather a poorly paid job? From what you posted (you still didn't disclose the URL so we can't know for sure what we're talking about), it looks like they are charging $50/page at setup and $10/page for monthly maintenance. I'd say doing design jobs for less than $50/hour means offering something for less than its worth. Now, let's say you want to do it for half of what this company charges - that means if you spend more than half an hour on a design and complete implementation of a page, or if you spend more than 6 minutes/month on updating a page, you've actually went below $50/hour. And before you say "screw the designers, why do they charge so much for their work?" and are willing to work for a fracture of what they charge, think of what you would feel if Intel would decide to put you and all your colleagues on the street and employ nonprofessional hobby IT personal for a quarter of what they pay you?

As an aside, I checked the site of wenglands who is in absolute agreement with your opinion. His site is offering "custom website design" for a $19.99 one time fee. I think even you agree with me that this is anything but a viable business model...

Ramb, thank you for providing a lucid, well thought out response, rather than some who merely wrote the equivalent of "you're wrong screw yourself." It's appreciated. You do bring up good points. I was hoping for someone to just bring up other opinions, other ways to look at the situation, so I thank you for that. You're a good person.

I'm used to seeing webhosts out there, that provide quality services, ungodly amounts of bandwidth, hard drive space, and other features, for less than twenty dollars per month with no setup fees at all, so when I visited the host in question, and saw the services, I was shocked at the prices they displayed.

I started this thread thinking that I might have enough time to tap their market, but Intel is going to be keeping me extremely busy starting on May 2nd, and if I were to start hosting more websites at this time, I would probably not be able to give the new customers the attention that they deserve, and that's not fair to them. Someone mentioned the URL earlier, but I never verified it. The company is called "I Leased my Site" at www.ilmsinc.com - if any of you believe you can provide better service and better price, please go for it.

This is not true. They are trying to make money and they aren't even that expensive.

And thank you 6PM for having been open to other people's opinions. :)

Having taken a look at the site, I have to say that while my previous arguments hold and the prices could be more than fair for the advertised service, it looks like this company doesn't make true on these promises. Their own website looks like something amateur-done from the late 90s, I surely wouldn't let anyone design a website for me with that kind of own site.

One thing that's confusing me OTOH is that they have a link to lots of lessee sites which though all looking different in the end all plug into the same osCommerce installation that sells the same products for the same prices. What gives?

So, Ramb, you hear what I'm saying about specific aspects of this particular company. So, to verify, in your HO, the pricing structure and services offered are acceptable in your eyes?

Additionally, not once, when I've called them (morning, afternoon, evening) have I actually gotten a live body on the other end. That would sway me from signing with them as an UndercoverWear agent.,

It's not so much about the price as rather that as far as I can see what this company promises and what it offers are too completely different things - if the prices would be lower that would actually be even more of a reason not to go with this company because then it'd be 100% clear that it's amateur stuff... this way that they charge this much and have this many clients there seems to be some reason why people choose them (no idea what though). I personally wouldn't go with them no matter what the price.

Originally posted by 6PM
(it's spelled JUDGMENT, SROHost, verify at dictionary.com). Which is why I don't show up on message boards criticizing other people's spelling (as you do other host's pricing) ;).

Sorry I worded my post a bit offensively, but you asked for opinions and it is my opinion that while the host in question might be higher priced than others in a similar market, you have no more justification in calling them "a ripoff", (Slang 'to exploit, swindle, cheat, or defraud') than you did amish_geek. Higher pricing alone does not make someone a swindler.

Somewhat of a tangent, but I came across some interesting explanations of the judgement/judgment discrepancy - apparently a bit of an ongoing dilemma.

http://www.margaret-marks.com/Transblawg/archives/000571.html
When I was first learning the law, I learnt that although general British English accepts either judgement or judgment as the spelling, preferring judgement, legal English prefers judgment. And I find that in the law reports too....

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html
"Judgement" is governed by one of the rare rules of English orthography, so why not enjoy it? After [c] and [g], [e] is retained to indicate the letter is "soft," i.e. pronounced like [s] or [j], respectively. Omitting it indicates it is "hard," i.e. pronounced [k] or [g]....

So basically I take from this that 6PM's description of what they OFFER was a great deal for the price they were asking but they are really an amateurish site that isn't delivering on the good features they are supposed to provide.

In the end, I'd say 6PM's description is great so there's only one thing for him to do (and he's already pursuing it from the sounds of it) - offer and actually deliver these services and with some professionalism too. You have your work cut out for you, with a site like theirs they are handing you the business on a silver platter :)

Actually, Plexi, I'm not. I'm not going to try to get their customers. As mentioned, Intel will be keeping me busy, so it wouldn't be fair to the customer to take their money and not be able to offer them the help and support that they'd need. If you want to try, go for it!

I would tend to believe that this company caters to a niche market, and for that, their prices are fair. In fact, for the design, maintenance, and hosting of a 7 page site, $70/month and a $350 setup is slightly cheaper than it could be. Sure, someone could have the site designed for $2000 and then host it for $5/month, but that's a tradeoff that someone will have to look at when shopping for these kinds of services.

I definately have to agree that they've found themselves a niche market, and valuation is only defined by what the customer is willing to pay. However, after looking at their site, and a few client sites myself...

I wouldn't say they're exactly a ripoff, (see my explanation of value above), but they are definately making a decent ROI for the services they're providing.

As someone mentioned earlier, it seems that all of the "leased" websites do nothing more than redirect to the same osCommerce installation and use a referral number. (I think it's osCommerce anyway.) Regardless, sure it would be easy to offer "free credit card processing" to everyone, because most likely they're just charging everything under their own name, and keeping track of individual sales by use of referral numbers.

As for the pricing per page, I have nothing against paying designers a fair amount. Nothing at all. However, when you're using frames, and simply changing the content, which is mostly textual, how can you qualify that as a new page?

Personally, I wouldn't spend that kind of money for the service they're providing, but then again, I'm not a client in that particular market. I would imagine that most of the people selling those products have limited knowledge of the actual value of the service they're getting, and to them, what they're paying is a "fair" price. If they felt like it was too much, they wouldn't pay it. Simple as that.

I'm not sure who said something about the 90's, but I was definately getting that whole "animated .gif, Geocities, long lost and forgotten" vibe.

Anyway, if they're able to market their niche, and make a reasonable profit from it, good for them. If they're not providing the services that they promise, then ... OTHERS DO!

Saying that one company is a "Ripoff" just due to their pricing, would be like saying that the local "Mom & Pop" store who charges $30 for a home-made sweater is ripping off people who can go down the street to walmart and buy one for $10.

Even if the quality of the sweater is the same, the Mom & Pop shop needs to charge higher prices to survive, because they don't have the throughput or buying power that a conglomerate giant like walmart has.

Same thing goes with web Hosting. Any schmuck can buy a $99 server, slap cPanel on it, and call themselves a web host and sell web hosting at $5/mo for gobs of space/bandwidth. And they might even do a good job supporting it as well. Then you have web hosts out there who actually purchase good hardware ($3000/server), and co-locate to build their own stable network, and have real office space with actual walk-in clients. Obviously the 2nd host isn't going to charge the same as the first.

Well put Aaron. Price in and of itself means nothing unless put in the context of the market to which it belongs.

For example, we charge over $100 per month for a shared hosting account that has less than one fifth the disk space, and less than one third the transfers then site5's $6.95/month plan (to put it in WHT perspective). We offer ecommerce with it (so does site5 for less than $7/month), but do not do any design or development for the client. Are we a ripoff? Well, our clients do not think so, and less than 4% are from our local area, so it's not a scenario of the uninformed "local" clients.

Pricing is something that can be used both high and low to achieve a marketing goal. For us, our higher prices actually help to sell to the market we are trying to capture. Granted pricing must be within reason as compared to other competitors offering similar services, but being high priced has its advantages.

In regards to the company being discussed in this thread, it seems the price as compared to the service that is not being provided by the host speaks for itself. ;)

- John C.

One thing to keep in mind is that in a lot of cases for the "consultant" type businesses that 6PM is talking about, the companies providing the products usually either provide a hosted website for their consultants or they farm that out to a third party, which on my brief reading of the thread appears to be what this particular situation is.

In almost every case I've seen, the costs associated with hosting these sites is almost ALWAYS more than standard market prices. In some cases the product company will not LET you host a website anywhere else per their consultant agreement. In other cases you can, but the advantage to hosting with their own service or their "preferred" host is that you get a store with all their products and everything loaded in without having to do all the work.

I know this because my ex-wife had a number of different consultant businesses so I'm very familiar with the situation. :)

That being said, in some cases they have you over a barrel (if their consultant agreement doesn't allow you to have your website anywhere else) and in others it just makes more sense from a time standpoint.

Anyone who has a lock on a particular segment of a market is usually going to charge more for their products/services. That's just the way it works... it's the law of supply/demand. The supply side is constricted in this case because they are the "preferred" host and most people don't want to bother setting up their own stuff.

The only time you can truly call a host a "ripoff" is when they are doing something illegal or unethical. I haven't researched this so I can't comment on this particular company and whether they are doing either. But if the market will bear their prices, then I don't see anything wrong with it.

The hosting market is customer-driven and if their customers don't pick up and go somewhere else, that's their fault.