How do you compete with all these hosts that are offering 100GB Space and a Terabtye of bandwidth for just $5.95 a month. People are buying them for $5.95 a month and not a reasonable package such as 750MB Space and 10GB Bandwidth.

How do you compete with these hosts if everyone buys what clearly is stupid from a host who is clearly overselling

They cant cover 1TB of bandwidth for $5.95 and thats nearly a servers allotment.

How do we compete against it?

What are your views?

I get much critsism on my pricing because Im priced reasonably and not at the oversellers level of 100GB Space and 1TB Bandwidth for $5.95

Its stupid

I don't compete against it. Try targeting the local market or using your personal network to gain clients. Why would you want to compete on a price level that doesn't give you a normal rate of return for your efforts?

its my first time that i hear this. i dont know any hosting doing it !!
maybe they are limiting something else somewhere !

Charge what you need to charge to stay afloat. Many new/lite users will go with over sold plans but over time they will learn what to look for and what is realistic.

As cywkevin said, target local clients and niches and you will do better.

it is impossible to compete with them, I personally do not thik they run any standards of business, its good to have customers coming to you FROM such hosters

The more overselling hosts there are out there, the more business for the rest of us when they dissappear out of existance.

If people purchase oversold hosting and dont get what they "payed for", they soon learn.

Not every person is going to go with those hosts... So target them...

We certainly don't compete with them, nor would we want to. We target a different market.

They cant cover 1TB of bandwidth for $5.95 and thats nearly a servers allotment.


And with most of these price oriented dedicated servers, that 1Tb "allotment" will be oversold 10:1 anyway !

The only way hostee's will learn is when they get burned by their overselling host, sadly they then "expect" hosting to come with impossibly high limits for peanuts and just onto the next overseller.

Best not to compete at that level and have something more to offer your clients that Gbs of space and Tbs of transfer

What I've noticed is that a lot people that need hosting services don't understand what hosting really is.

Initially, they will sign up with a discount host because it's cheap and that may be just fine for some - but others eventually realize they need to pay for attentive service. It's just like an airplane - there's coach, business class and first class.

You can compete with all the "coach" discount hosts by plastering ads everywhere or you can target the other classes.

Live in my country where people still tend to be ackward and a bit turned off with online transactions much more with credit cards... plus the fact that most local hosting providers here charge an arm and a leg.. i need not compete but rather concentrate on my targets and goals and client satisfaction.

There's no need to compete..clients with those companies don't last long..they'll leave after downtimes, slow overloaded servers..etc..

Go ask one of your friends or family members (that are not knowledgeable of the hosting industry through past experiences) who the biggest web hosting company in the world is. I can guarantee you they won't give the right answer if any answer at all.

That is how you compete. A VERY large portion of the potential customers have no idea who to use. They will likely pick whomever they can strike a relationship with and feel comfortable with. In many situations they don't care about size of the company, bandwidth, disk space, etc... They just want to be assured their site will be safe and work properly for them.

Despite what most people think, the web hosting industry is one of the easier markets to deal with competition because there are no HUGE brand names.

Consider other markets as a comparison. If you were to start a new cell phone company how well do you think would fare against the likes of Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T?

In my opinion the large companies in the web hosting industry have completely missed the boat to this point and have missed out on a large opportunity to take a large market share.

Target a different market, and provide superior support and server reliability. A good chunk of our clients are refugees of one of these horrendous hosts looking for greener pastures.

The best way to compete with the ultra-low-cost hosts is to not compete with them. Charge what you need to charge to make a reasonable profit, and provide realistic account specifications.

thehostinglist guy is absolutely right. Because we're involved in this industry too much we can't as they say 'read the label from inside the bottle'.

We think everyone understands GB and MB and bandwidth and all those hosting terms. We think our customers go around comparing features and allowances when so few of them actually even understand what they mean.

Regular people do NOT choose hosts based on that. The heart of the competition is not allowances and features but UNDERSTANDING what a client needs, addressing his concerns, building TRUST, explaining your offer in a language they can understand...

that's your only competition...

It's not just bargain-hunters out there. CHEAP to alot of people is a TURN OFF to begin with.... cheap may LOSE you more sales than reasonably priced service....especially after they've been under a couple of cheap hosts before...

Surely no one can even fill 100GB it would take far too long to upload that amount of data. It may be cheap but no one needs it.

95% of the users don't use anywhere near those limits offered by most of the big hosting companies. Why do users pick them then? Because they think they are saving money and most likely are but compromising quality.

What I meant by the above post is that hosting market is over saturated, and a new company will never survive unless they target a niche or unless they have big bucks to advertise & oversell. Find a niche and target that, and start local.