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  1. #126

    More...

    I have edited my post above, you might want to look at it again.

    Also, I never said "all" scripts require write access to a users home directory. I am saying many of our users DO use that, and it simply doesn't work to tell them they can't. Why would I want to do that. There are certainly many users that don't need that ability and they would never know the difference, but what about everyone else that does? We have tens of thousands of clients that use this everyday. If I use your argument that they don't need it or want it then I lose a huge revenue source. I looked at it in the beginning and said to myself would I sign up for this to do my own development on? If the answer was no then I fixed it so the answer would be yes. If you box your customers in they will box you out.
    Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com - Hostmonster.com

  2. #127
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    On the topic of 200GB plans, I will say that mheaton is doing it better than anyone I know. Yes there are disadvantages, but it seems that the advantages are far more.

    Overselling is not wrong if you do it right. Most successful business oversell even outside of hosting.
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  3. #128

    Thanks!

    Quote Originally Posted by siforek
    On the topic of 200GB plans, I will say that mheaton is doing it better than anyone I know. Yes there are disadvantages, but it seems that the advantages are far more.

    Overselling is not wrong if you do it right. Most successful business oversell even outside of hosting.
    Thank you for the nice comment. I really appreciate it
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  4. #129
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    Me Again

    I'm the original starter of this thread and here's my concern:

    Its obviously getting rediculous with hosting plans going to 2000GB and being priced at something like $15/m

    Ok so many here say - well who cares? - if these buisnesses want to do it - let em. Well my point is that I feel somethings going to collapse in this industry some day in the future. I kind of view it like the stock market, when it gets WAY overvalued after a while there's a real nasty CRASH. With so many hosting companies today pushing the envelope well beyond what's logical I kinda feel somethings going to bite back on all of us.

    In effect this whole overselling thing is "misleading the public" and creating unrealistic expectations on all of us. Its forcing all of us (well a lot of us) to stretch our own plans a little more each few months to stay competitive. Without realising it we are all starting to oversell more and more and this is kinda creeping up on all of us.

    Ask yourself the basic question - why is there quota and bandwidth limiting on servers? Isn't it to protect the server?!!! Plus isn't it also to protect the Hosting Company? Since some shared plans today have quotas and bandwidth limits greater than the actual servers physical capacities - do these hosts realise they are potentially giving a single shared user the power to bring down the entire server? It could take something as simple as a buggy script to generate the huge amounts of data (either by error or deliberate evil intent) and they could fill up the hard drive pretty quickly. I see new security problems arising and its a problem for all of us.
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  5. #130
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    Quote Originally Posted by mheaton
    There are certainly many users that don't need that ability and they would never know the difference, but what about everyone else that does? We have tens of thousands of clients that use this everyday. If I use your argument that they don't need it or want it then I lose a huge revenue source.
    As I've also mentioned repeatedly, customers simply use cgiwrap (or suexec if you prefer) for those cases. This gives the customers more flexibility and better protection - default to "nobody" to reduce the privilege of the script, or let them wrap it when they need the benefits of running a script under their own account.

    It's the exact opposite of "boxing customers in" - it gives them more options and capabilities than forcing everyone to do it just one way.

    Kevin

  6. #131
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    I must say that it is very interesting to see the owner of pair and the own of bluehost boxing out. Two completely different business models. I have never really looked at pair, but after taking a look at the plans it reminds me of how things where back in the good old days when service had value. A set up fee: takes time to set up a customers so you charge for it. Package cost that actually are realistic with the amount of space the customers get. In the past 5 years or so things have really moved away from the realistic to the unrealistic.

    As the thread starter stated.. every month you have to adjust your services to keep up with the companies spending big bucks advertising packages that are just too much for the price. I have nothing against creative marketing, but people must be able to under stand that soo much for soo little, just does not make since. If all markets did this I would be able to go get a BMW for $5 a month.

  7. #132
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    Quote Originally Posted by cscertified
    I must say that it is very interesting to see the owner of pair and the own of bluehost boxing out. Two completely different business models. I have never really looked at pair, but after taking a look at the plans it reminds me of how things where back in the good old days when service had value. A set up fee: takes time to set up a customers so you charge for it. Package cost that actually are realistic with the amount of space the customers get. In the past 5 years or so things have really moved away from the realistic to the unrealistic.

    As the thread starter stated.. every month you have to adjust your services to keep up with the companies spending big bucks advertising packages that are just too much for the price. I have nothing against creative marketing, but people must be able to under stand that soo much for soo little, just does not make since. If all markets did this I would be able to go get a BMW for $5 a month.
    You are totally missing the point. Here is the point...

    1. bandwidth/diskspace = Marketing

    They DO NOT have anything to do with what you used to be actual physical limits. The real limits are cpu/mem usage and the steps taken to isolate those per user as bluehost has done. Users don't understand cpu/mem and a really small % actually use them so that is buried in the TOS/AUP while the marketing numbers are used to pull in clients.

    A BMW and shared hosting have no correlation and that was a bad comparison .
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  8. #133
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    Quote Originally Posted by bwb
    You are totally missing the point. Here is the point....
    No, actually I got the point completely...
    They offer an amount of space and bandwidth that can not really be given to their customers. If all the blue host customers used the bandwidth that they are told they can use (through advertising) blue host would go broke!!!

    The example of the BMW was a little extreme, but I think it got my point across. If you don't like. While I am sorry...

  9. #134
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    Quote Originally Posted by cscertified
    No, actually I got the point completely...
    They offer an amount of space and bandwidth that can not really be given to their customers. If all the blue host customers used the bandwidth that they are told they can use (through advertising) blue host would go broke!!!

    The example of the BMW was a little extreme, but I think it got my point across. If you don't like. While I am sorry...
    If any hosting companies customers used all the bandwidth and diskspace they would be in trouble. Overselling is how shared web hosting works. I can make up hypothetical statments too but that doesn't mean anything... how about if none of the customers used any bandwidth and diskspace, then everything would be ok .

    I don't understand what you are upset about.
    1. This industry oversells because people don't use it. Its always been this way.
    2. Marketing is done using a variety of techniques, with the drop in physical hardware prices bandwidth and diskspace has become part of that marketing.
    3. As always the only real rule in shared hosting is keep the servers stable, if your site uses too much cpu/mem to do that with any hosting company you will be asked to leave or upgrade.
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  10. #135
    Quote Originally Posted by bwb
    If any hosting companies customers used all the bandwidth and diskspace they would be in trouble. Overselling is how shared web hosting works.
    Sorry but that is 100% not true.

    Perhaps it's how your company chooses to operate, but there are many of us (mostly not here at wht, which tends to attract new/cheap hosts) out there who still have the "good old" plans and prices from the old days.

    Our market would obviously be much different then the one targeted by bluehost (and perhaps yourself)... but we do indeed offer shared hosting.

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  11. #136
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    Quote Originally Posted by mrzippy
    Sorry but that is 100% not true.

    Perhaps it's how your company chooses to operate, but there are many of us (mostly not here at wht, which tends to attract new/cheap hosts) out there who still have the "good old" plans and prices from the old days.

    Our market would obviously be much different then the one targeted by bluehost (and perhaps yourself)... but we do indeed offer shared hosting.

    Good to hear but you are in a small small small minority out of the hosting companies, can you PM me URL and how many people you put on a server to check your math?
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  12. #137
    I prefer not to conjecture about what is the "minority" and what is not.

    It is my personal experience that the micro-universe here at WHT is just a small segment of the hosting industry. For example, the vast majority of hosts in my immediate local market (Vancouver, BC, Canada) sell their hosting in the $20 - $30 range for a basic package. I recently met with a group of my peers from the Portland, OR market who have similar pricing.

    There are plenty of hosts who still operate this way. We hosts who compete in this "premium" market generally don't bother coming comparing against the company's here at webhostingtalk or publicly advertising against the cheapo hosts (ie: google, et al). It's a completely different market segment and requires different marketing tactics.

    The hosting industry is huge, and includes far more then just what you see online, at the "review websites" or killing each other for google clicks.

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  13. #138
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    Ok cool, can you PM me your site and tell me how many clients you put per server, I'm betting you are overselling and I'd like you to prove me wrong here . I got a msg from someone else in your place, ill let them post if they want to be public. They report they are not overselling.

    They put 75 to 100 clients per server:

    Their lowest plan is 500MB and 10GB transfer for $9.95. It doubles and quadruples in specs as you go higher.

    so 75 clients with that plan would be: 37,500MB and 750GB tansfer
    so 100 clients would be 50,000MB diskspace and 1000GB transfer

    And that is just their lowest plan. Would you consider that overselling?

    ps, hopefully the math is right
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  14. #139
    50GB in drive space and 1,000GB in bandwidth? It'd be overselling on any server unable to provide that I suppose. However, I'd think that just about any decent server could handle those requirements with room to spare...

  15. #140
    Quote Originally Posted by bwb
    Their lowest plan is 500MB and 10GB transfer for $9.95. It doubles and quadruples in specs as you go higher.

    so 75 clients with that plan would be: 37,500MB and 750GB tansfer
    so 100 clients would be 50,000MB diskspace and 1000GB transfer

    And that is just their lowest plan. Would you consider that overselling?
    I would not consider that overselling. But it depends on their servers and number of clients they claim to put a limit on.

    For example, on one of our brands we have 400gb drives (in a raid array) with a 2000gb bw limit. If we used the plan spec you mentioned above (500mb/10gb) we could have 200 customers (using bw as the limiter). At $9.95 per customer that is $1990 revenue per server.

    With such a plan, overselling is not needed, unless they wanted to squeeze out more profit... and what I am saying is that there are plenty of hosts who are not in this business just to squeeze out maximum $$ at the sacrifice of reliability, etc...

    I'd prefer not to give out my premium brand URL, but suffice to say that our cheapest plan it $25/month (on special) and comes with 500mb disk and 7gb of bandwidth. We do not oversell on that brand. Our average profit per server is over $2k. That's profit, not revenue.

    Overselling and cheapo prices are certainly one way to run a business. It is certainly much easier to get customers. But... it's not the only way to run a hosting business. It's just the easiest for all these kiddy hosts to get into, and that has lowered the "standard" for much of the industry, but certainly not all.

    IMHO, it's too bad so many hosts lack the business acumen to sell their product/service effectively without resorting to "barely ethical" marketing tactics such as this thread title eludes to.

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  16. #141
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    Ok how about this, if only 1 to 2% of your customers are using even 90% of the limits you place on those accounts, do you think those limits have any grounding in reality and why? Why arn't those just marketing?

    What % of your clients actually use 50% of the limits on their accounts?
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  17. #142
    I don't know what is our "per customer" utilization breakdown. However, I do know that for of all our servers under our premium brand we have an average of less then 10% actual utilization for disk space and cpu.

    Even on our most "overloaded" server, we have actual utilization of less then 50% of the total physical disk and bandwidth available.
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  18. #143
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    Quote Originally Posted by mrzippy
    I don't know what is our "per customer" utilization breakdown. However, I do know that for of all our servers under our premium brand we have an average of less then 10% actual utilization for disk space and cpu.

    Even on our most "overloaded" server, we have actual utilization of less then 50% of the total physical disk and bandwidth available.
    Ok so if your customers are only using 10% of the resources you are giving them arn't you just using diskspace/bandwidth as marketing too?
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  19. #144
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    Hello?

    Overselling on these new extreme levels == security risk, downtime risk

    If the quotas are greater than the physical capacity of the server then a SINGLE malicious user can now bring down an entire server by filling the hard drive with bogus data, by means of a simple script that writes bogus files.
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  20. #145
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    Quote Originally Posted by bwb
    Ok so if your customers are only using 10% of the resources you are giving them arn't you just using diskspace/bandwidth as marketing too?
    Everything is marketing if you're a for profit business. That is not the issue. What some of us have a problem with is when the plans specs are basically promising each and every client more resources than most dedicated servers for $5/month. This is unrealistic, as the average website using a mixture of static and dynamic content could not use all of what they purchased without violating a TOS "hidden" limit.

    We've been doing this 11+ years now, and I can honestly say we have never suspended / cancelled a client who was within the specs of their shared hosting account with us. (I'm not counting /dot events where the traffic is disproportionate for a small amount of time.) Sure, an out of control "home brewed" script might need to be adjusted or not used, but when the plan specs are in proportion to the number of clients you put on a server (For us, 100-150 clients using P4 or higher servers, 2+ GB RAM, SCSI RAID), you can run a pretty stable system and give any client at any time full use of what they purchased.

    Your price point is then just a matter of how much profit you want/need to make in order to come through 100% of the time on all the promises (i.e. marketing) on your website to be a true leader in whatever niche you're occupying.

    - John C.

  21. #146
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    Quote Originally Posted by JohnCrowley
    Everything is marketing if you're a for profit business. That is not the issue. What some of us have a problem with is when the plans specs are basically promising each and every client more resources than most dedicated servers for $5/month. This is unrealistic, as the average website using a mixture of static and dynamic content could not use all of what they purchased without violating a TOS "hidden" limit.

    We've been doing this 11+ years now, and I can honestly say we have never suspended / cancelled a client who was within the specs of their shared hosting account with us. (I'm not counting /dot events where the traffic is disproportionate for a small amount of time.) Sure, an out of control "home brewed" script might need to be adjusted or not used, but when the plan specs are in proportion to the number of clients you put on a server (For us, 100-150 clients using P4 or higher servers, 2+ GB RAM, SCSI RAID), you can run a pretty stable system and give any client at any time full use of what they purchased.

    Your price point is then just a matter of how much profit you want/need to make in order to come through 100% of the time on all the promises (i.e. marketing) on your website to be a true leader in whatever niche you're occupying.

    - John C.
    Good point, I just think its odd that other companies get mad and think somehow this level over overselling hurts them when everyone's customers barely use any of what their customers sale. If you are offering packages that have half of what bluehost offers and yet your customers only use 10% of what you offer why not just increase those packages since those limits don't matter.
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  22. #147
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    Quote Originally Posted by bwb
    Good point, I just think its odd that other companies get mad and think somehow this level over overselling hurts them when everyone's customers barely use any of what their customers sale. If you are offering packages that have half of what bluehost offers and yet your customers only use 10% of what you offer why not just increase those packages since those limits don't matter.
    You hit the nail on the head! By offering these higher limit packages, you start attracting a different breed of client, and some of them will want to use all of which you provide. With smaller limits, even if the average is 10%, there are still those that use 100% and those that use 1%. If the server can support this at the lower level, you make good on 100% of your claims.

    Now you ramp it up so the package is 10 times larger. Now you will have a few clients all using ten times more to keep the 10% rule in effect. But your server is not comfortable handling these "power" users, who really are only using what they paid for. Now you start suspending their sites, upselling them to dedicated servers, or cancelling them due to repeated TOS abuses. Now they complain, tell others, and that untarnished reputation is now tarnished, and you're spending more time, money and energy trying to squeeze more out of that server, instead of providing the stellar support your old clients expected.

    With proportionate limits, you attract the type of clients that will work for your model, and insure that these limits can be used (completely) by the average website without violating a "nebulous" limit buried in a TOS somewhere. Or, ramp up your limits, but don't forget to ramp up the prices, so you can place less clients on a server and still make good on those "promises" on your website.

    - John C.

  23. #148
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    Quote Originally Posted by bwb
    Good point, I just think its odd that other companies get mad and think somehow this level over overselling hurts them...
    There is an opposite effect to this statement as well. It is true some hosts get upset at this level of overselling and low prices. But many of the larger "budget overselling" hosts are also getting upset (hint hint...Matt) because they may have the greatest servers in the world with all kinds of optimizations no one else has, but the average consumer will not and does not know it, as the one man host that has a nice website offers the same plan features and price, or even worse, offers more for less! And only has one unpatched server he or she rents month to month!

    Gotta love the internet and its ability to level the playing field sometimes.

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  24. #149
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    Quote Originally Posted by JohnCrowley
    You hit the nail on the head! By offering these higher limit packages, you start attracting a different breed of client, and some of them will want to use all of which you provide. With smaller limits, even if the average is 10%, there are still those that use 100% and those that use 1%. If the server can support this at the lower level, you make good on 100% of your claims.

    Now you ramp it up so the package is 10 times larger. Now you will have a few clients all using ten times more to keep the 10% rule in effect. But your server is not comfortable handling these "power" users, who really are only using what they paid for. Now you start suspending their sites, upselling them to dedicated servers, or cancelling them due to repeated TOS abuses. Now they complain, tell others, and that untarnished reputation is now tarnished, and you're spending more time, money and energy trying to squeeze more out of that server, instead of providing the stellar support your old clients expected.

    With proportionate limits, you attract the type of clients that will work for your model, and insure that these limits can be used (completely) by the average website without violating a "nebulous" limit buried in a TOS somewhere. Or, ramp up your limits, but don't forget to ramp up the prices, so you can place less clients on a server and still make good on those "promises" on your website.

    - John C.
    Interesting theory, I don't agree that it attracts a new type of client as I think the pricing and the impression of quality is what does that, but I see your point. Of course by attracting the "masses" they can grow much quicker while a more conservative company grows slowly so its a trade off.

    But you have kinda proved my point, you are using bandwidth and diskspace for marketing and not as real limits, you are using them to market to more conservative educated customers. Correct?
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  25. #150
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    Quote Originally Posted by bwb
    Interesting theory, I don't agree that it attracts a new type of client . . .
    I'd agree with John, that offerring mega plan resource allocations will have the effect of attracting a certian type of client. Word gets around, and especially these days with video becoming more and more used on sites, mega high bandwidth offers will attract a lot of attention. If you put the bait out there, offerring those mega style plans, don't be surprised if you catch big fish, that might indeed use your promised resource allocations.

    I'd like to see how many of those plans Matt places per server. Let's face it, promising 300 (just a guess based on the pricing) clients that they can each use 200GB disk space and 2,000GB data transfer/mth, on the one server, no matter how optimised and tweaked, is a recipe for a volatile server.
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