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04-02-2007, 12:38 AM #126WHT Addict
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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
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04-02-2007, 12:44 AM #127Web Hosting Master
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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.█ | | i write code
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04-02-2007, 12:46 AM #128WHT Addict
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Thanks!
Originally Posted by siforekMatt Heaton / President Bluehost.com - Hostmonster.com
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04-02-2007, 03:34 AM #129Web Hosting Evangelist
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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.Last edited by bjdea1; 04-02-2007 at 03:42 AM.
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04-02-2007, 07:19 AM #130Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by mheaton
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
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04-02-2007, 02:19 PM #131Aspiring Evangelist
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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.
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04-02-2007, 02:32 PM #132Nerf Herder
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Originally Posted by cscertified
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 .Like passive recurring revenue you can retire on?
You focus on building your brand, we handle all support, billing, and more.
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04-02-2007, 02:46 PM #133Aspiring Evangelist
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Originally Posted by bwb
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...
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04-02-2007, 02:55 PM #134Nerf Herder
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Originally Posted by cscertified
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.Like passive recurring revenue you can retire on?
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04-02-2007, 03:07 PM #135Mr. Awesome
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Originally Posted by bwb
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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04-02-2007, 03:09 PM #136Nerf Herder
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Originally Posted by mrzippyLike passive recurring revenue you can retire on?
You focus on building your brand, we handle all support, billing, and more.
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04-02-2007, 03:49 PM #137Mr. Awesome
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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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04-02-2007, 04:00 PM #138Nerf Herder
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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 rightLike passive recurring revenue you can retire on?
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04-02-2007, 04:39 PM #139Web Hosting Master
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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...
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04-02-2007, 05:05 PM #140Mr. Awesome
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Originally Posted by bwb
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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04-02-2007, 05:12 PM #141Nerf Herder
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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?Like passive recurring revenue you can retire on?
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04-02-2007, 05:19 PM #142Mr. Awesome
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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.We are eNom PLATINUM PLUS resellers!
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04-02-2007, 05:31 PM #143Nerf Herder
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Originally Posted by mrzippyLike passive recurring revenue you can retire on?
You focus on building your brand, we handle all support, billing, and more.
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04-02-2007, 06:02 PM #144Web Hosting Evangelist
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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.█ Deasoft.com Aussie & USA VPS, Reseller & Shared Hosting + WHMreseller & DAreseller
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04-02-2007, 08:29 PM #145Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by bwb
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.
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04-02-2007, 08:47 PM #146Nerf Herder
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Originally Posted by JohnCrowleyLike passive recurring revenue you can retire on?
You focus on building your brand, we handle all support, billing, and more.
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04-02-2007, 08:55 PM #147Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by bwb
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.
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04-02-2007, 09:01 PM #148Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by bwb
Gotta love the internet and its ability to level the playing field sometimes.
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04-02-2007, 09:06 PM #149Nerf Herder
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Originally Posted by JohnCrowley
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?Like passive recurring revenue you can retire on?
You focus on building your brand, we handle all support, billing, and more.
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04-02-2007, 09:42 PM #150Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by bwb
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.• WLVPN.com • NetProtect owned White Label VPN provider •
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