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  1. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    FernGullyGraphics;

    As to your point about expensive servers being better than pc's, I understand but (and there is always a but) it does not play through when I read the general preponderance of the posts on this board and others like it. I see recommendations to build hosting companies on VPS's. I see customers admonished to move from their host that is using a four core machine to one with an eight core machine (the cheap laptop I am typing on has six cores). I see providers calling themselves "cloud hosts" that are taking several lightweight machines together, building VMs with cPanel and purporting that they can be used by "hosting companies". etc... etc...

    Truly, there is a place for "shared hosting" but technology has moved on and if this board is representative of an "industry" someone is getting stuck - it appears to be the customer.
    So basically your a snob ?

  2. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    Daniel B;

    If someone on the street wants a website, they need to talk to a provider, a consultant, that can build a website.

    Providing the hosting environment for that website requires a different skill set.

    Having the same person do both means that neither aspect gets the attention it deserves and results in a customer that at some level is dissatisfied.
    So your saying that hosting companies should not develop websites?
    Developers should stick to developing websites and doing support on the website..
    Hosting companies should stick to hosting and doing support on the hosting environment..
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  3. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    FernGullyGraphics;

    Truly, there is a place for "shared hosting" but technology has moved on and if this board is representative of an "industry" someone is getting stuck - it appears to be the customer.
    Again, I am not really seeing your point? Are you telling me that you think everyone would be better off trying to host their own websites on their laptop computers? Surely you understand that most ISP's would not allow this (at least not for your typical residential Internet connection).

    Lets not forget about other important aspects like security and as I mentioned before general maintenance and configuration of the web server (which in itself requires an indepth understanding of how the web works, which most people do not).

    Now I did notice you made a reference about people starting up web hosting companies using nothing but a VPS or a reseller account. In a sense, yes these people are essentially acting as middle men, however they are still providing a service.

    Weather someone has 1 core, 2 cores, 4 cores, 8 cores..ect is really not relevant as long as the server, vps or cloud server are set-up in a reputable data-center and of course unless you are experiencing connectivity problems or slow load times (that is where proper server management comes into play).

    Many of the people you are referring to (the VPS start-ups) are simply looking for an affordable way to provide a web hosting service to their design clients or are looking for a cost effective way to test out the market. That in-itself is miles ahead and a lot more respectable than someone who is trying to start a web hosting business with their PC in the living acting as the web server. Just because your laptop has 6 cores, does not mean it is better equipped to host a website than a server with four cores or even a vps with 1 core assigned to it.
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  4. #29
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    tleonhard;

    I am saying that any customer in the market needs the best that his money can buy. When the customer asks for a web developer, they get someone who knows web development. When that web developer asks for a hosting environment for their application, they get someone who understands the needs and can provide the correct environment.

    When any one provider takes on both of these responsibilities one will suffer. Providing support personnel that can do neither well just adds fuel to the fire.

  5. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    tleonhard;

    When any one provider takes on both of these responsibilities one will suffer. Providing support personnel that can do neither well just adds fuel to the fire.
    How do you figure? Personally I think web hosting and design go hand in hand, therefore it would only make sense that a company offer both of these services to their clients.
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  6. #31
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    It boils down to this:

    Relatively few people have the time, know-how, resources or load demand to run a their own web servers. If you do, go for it. The other 99.9% of people pay someone 5 bucks a month to provide it.

    This thread seems vaguely trollish, but that's my 2 cents.

  7. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    So you are providing consulting services to the customer and you are actually the consumer of the hosting services on behalf of your client. I was more concerned with the vendor providing the hosting service direct to the consumer.
    If you look at WHIR Magazine, you will see that most small hosting companies are focused on the SMB market; the consumer market is threatened by Web 2.0 technology like Facebook and free blogs, and the remainder of the market dominated by the mega-hosting companies.

    But its begging the point. Do you think I don't need support? My 25 support tickets in the last three months speak to my need to be able to serve my customers; while I answer 90% of their concerns, there are others that my provider has to supply.

    And I'm not the typical consumer. I've been hosting since 1999. A consumer who is like my customers, who hooks up with Mega Hosting, Unltd., has more of a need for support.

  8. #33
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    FernGullyGraphics;

    You are vacillating, at one point you say hosting companies use expensive servers so they are good, at another point you say that low end equipment is just as good. Where are we at?

    Everyone who has taken the time to post;

    Thanks for your time. I am a consultant in the IT industry and have been such for the past 12 years (28 years total in this crazy industry).

    Every day I deal with putting together talent to provide something that invariably has to do with a component of a project, if not the entire project being hosted for access over the Internet.

    I am inundated with people and companies wanting me to hire them that don't even know where the store is to buy a clue about providing content over the Internet but they know that they can lease this $100 server and call themselves a hosting company. The number of times I have heard "I don't need to know Linux or any thing about computers, it all comes pre-configured. How come you re not hiring me, I think I'll sue..." I cannot count but it is getting very old.

    I am also inundated with customers bringing me ads and URL's asking why these people do it for $5 or $20 and I am not using them for their project. The next time I have a Doctor tell me that he can email patient information through this $5 hosting site (or worse yet post it on the site) because the "support guy" told him "Yeah, it'll be fine, our system can do that". I may be forced to shoot someone.

    So I thought I would spend a little time and see just who the perpetrators were and what motivates them. The time on this board has been enlightening as well as horrifying.

    When it was just the hobby site on the pc in the den, the practices I see here might have been ok. Today, the world is a bit different, business email (even for the smallest of businesses) is serious business. There really are serious restrictions on what types of information can be sent to servers in what country. Access to customer information must be restricted, when your customer's identity is stolen and you have all of the information and the ability to read his email, they will soon know where to look.

    Please, please get educated, be more professional, don't just accept any customer because you need the $5. Realize that most of the problems on the Internet will come from inside the systems that you throw up.

  9. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    FernGullyGraphics;

    You are vacillating, at one point you say hosting companies use expensive servers so they are good, at another point you say that low end equipment is just as good. Where are we at?
    Not necessarily, I was using the hardware comparison to get the point across that there is a vast difference between your pc and a server in a reputable data center. I never said low end equipment is just as good as high end equipment (the speed of the processor matters), however you cant necessarily say that a company using a 16 core server is better than a company with a 8 core server (at least not in a shared environment), because unless you know exactly how many clients are hosted on a particular machine, how many cores, memory..ect are pretty much irrelevant.

    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    Everyone who has taken the time to post;

    Thanks for your time. I am a consultant in the IT industry and have been such for the past 12 years (28 years total in this crazy industry).

    Every day I deal with putting together talent to provide something that invariably has to do with a component of a project, if not the entire project being hosted for access over the Internet.

    I am inundated with people and companies wanting me to hire them that don't even know where the store is to buy a clue about providing content over the Internet but they know that they can lease this $100 server and call themselves a hosting company. The number of times I have heard "I don't need to know Linux or any thing about computers, it all comes pre-configured. How come you re not hiring me, I think I'll sue..." I cannot count but it is getting very old.

    I am also inundated with customers bringing me ads and URL's asking why these people do it for $5 or $20 and I am not using them for their project. The next time I have a Doctor tell me that he can email patient information through this $5 hosting site (or worse yet post it on the site) because the "support guy" told him "Yeah, it'll be fine, our system can do that". I may be forced to shoot someone.

    So I thought I would spend a little time and see just who the perpetrators were and what motivates them. The time on this board has been enlightening as well as horrifying.

    When it was just the hobby site on the pc in the den, the practices I see here might have been ok. Today, the world is a bit different, business email (even for the smallest of businesses) is serious business. There really are serious restrictions on what types of information can be sent to servers in what country. Access to customer information must be restricted, when your customer's identity is stolen and you have all of the information and the ability to read his email, they will soon know where to look.

    Please, please get educated, be more professional, don't just accept any customer because you need the $5. Realize that most of the problems on the Internet will come from inside the systems that you throw up.
    Wow, so the man finally speaks! Complete 180 from your earlier posts lol.
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  10. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by FernGullyGraphics View Post
    That's not true at all. Even if every aspect of a web hosting business is automated, I can almost guarantee that at least 80-90% of the clientele will contact the company at some point in time to ask some type of question related to their web hosting account (that is where customer service plays a big role).

    Second, what about server management? That in itself is a full time job and is an aspect that is often times overlooked by the consumer. You cant just simply lease a server and expect it to be ready to go right out of the box. Not to mention the maintenance of that server (Hardware/Software.., there really is a lot to it).
    Managing the server is like the guy in the auto parts store stocking his shelves with merchandise and paying his electric bill and his rent at the store. All necessary - but you can't really call what he does much of a service. What he does is bring products to where consumers can buy them and then put them in their own cars without any help from the store. If the store down the street sells the same stuff for less, people will go there instead. Hence, a commodity.

    I don't know if this is the OP's point any more, but my point is that few hosting providers really provide a service. Mostly, they're selling a commodity product for customers who can do the self-service thing. But few customers really can.

  11. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Atarim View Post
    Managing the server is like the guy in the auto parts store stocking his shelves with merchandise and paying his electric bill and his rent at the store. All necessary - but you can't really call what he does much of a service. What he does is bring products to where consumers can buy them and then put them in their own cars without any help from the store. If the store down the street sells the same stuff for less, people will go there instead. Hence, a commodity.
    Woah.. old on a minute. Server Administration is pretty much like the cook in the kitchen. That is definitely a BIG part of the service that is provided to a web hosting customer. Why do you think some people elect to pay for a managed dedicated box or VPS as opposed to managing it themselves?
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  12. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by FernGullyGraphics View Post
    This is assuming the customer is calling the company because something is wrong? What if the customer just has a general question about how to set-up or redirect email? Maybe the client is having some issues installing a script? Or perhaps the issue is only related to the customers website and not the entire server?
    Again, while I'm now unsure whether this was the OP's point - I thought it was! - most customers are not at the level of knowledge where they can even imagine asking how to redirect email or install a script. This is where the hosting industry generally fails, I think, because it is still stuck in the model that all hosting customers are techies who know what they're doing and are only interested in the fastest server with the most space for the least price.

  13. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    Daniel B;

    I pose to you that hosting (providing storage and bandwidth) is simply providing a product, not a service. Consulting is providing a service. Mixing it together and providing a support person that says "Yep, it is down" today and "Software sucks, I'll see what I can do" tomorrow just seems wrong. Servers don't cook and cooks don't serve and having the server say "Yep, the cook sucks" is always bad.

    At this level, hearing "You'll have to wait, Dad's using the pc" was somehow more satisfying.
    Here is where I disagree with srfreeman. I think that the way to de-commoditize the industry is to provide that service along with the product.

    IBM, for example, once only sold the machines, later computers. What you did with them was your business and your problem. Now, if I'm not mistaken, their consulting revenues are the larger part of their business, because customers don't just want hardware that works. They want to solve business problems.

  14. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by Daniel B View Post
    But there is more to providing storage and bandwidth than just plugging in some harddrives and the power. The servers have to be maintained, clients want special things done...if they can't do it themselves...they need a support tech to do it for them.

    Your view of support is rather skewed. Hosts don't offer support because we want to force it on the client, hosts offer support because the client WANTS it...

    If some guy on the street walked up to me and said hey, I want a website and I said, ok, I hooked up a server for you...it would get him no where. It would be the equivalent of selling a 3 year old a car and handing him the keys...it just wouldn't work.
    Yet this is the model of the majority of hosts today.

    Returning to my auto parts store analogy, I don't care what the owner does to keep the lights on in his store. I simply expect it. He's not selling me a lit store; he's selling me the products on his shelves.

    Hosting as an industry is, for the most part, and increasingly paradoxically so, geared only to customers who don't need service, thus missing the majority of the market.

  15. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    Daniel B;

    If someone on the street wants a website, they need to talk to a provider, a consultant, that can build a website.

    Providing the hosting environment for that website requires a different skill set.

    Having the same person do both means that neither aspect gets the attention it deserves and results in a customer that at some level is dissatisfied.
    I think a better model moving forward would be - as we see from time to time here on WHT - designers partnering with techies. That model can provide real service, whether the skills reside in one person's brain or several in the same company or partnership.

  16. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by FernGullyGraphics View Post
    How do you figure? Personally I think web hosting and design go hand in hand, therefore it would only make sense that a company offer both of these services to their clients.
    I quite agree, with regard to the majority of customers. Seriously techie customers might not need both, but others do.

  17. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by FernGullyGraphics View Post
    Woah.. old on a minute. Server Administration is pretty much like the cook in the kitchen. That is definitely a BIG part of the service that is provided to a web hosting customer. Why do you think some people elect to pay for a managed dedicated box or VPS as opposed to managing it themselves?
    Well, here my analogy of the self-service auto supply store doesn't extend as far as you'd like to take it. Now you're talking more like renting the mechanic's lift so you can fix your car at his garage. You still do the work yourself, but you need more facility power than what you have in your own driveway.

    OK, so if the mechanic agrees, you expect him to have his lift in good operating order, and since you don't have experience operating it, you would expect him to push the buttons to make the car go up and then, when you're done fixing it, bring the car back down again. But the work in between you still do yourself.

    Granted, this is a bit more of a service than the auto parts store. But not by much.

  18. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Atarim View Post
    Here is where I disagree with srfreeman. I think that the way to de-commoditize the industry is to provide that service along with the product.

    IBM, for example, once only sold the machines, later computers. What you did with them was your business and your problem. Now, if I'm not mistaken, their consulting revenues are the larger part of their business, because customers don't just want hardware that works. They want to solve business problems.
    IBM simply saw the drop in profits from some types of hardware and the increased profits from consulting. Nowhere in their system will you find the business group that tries to do both.

  19. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    IBM simply saw the drop in profits from some types of hardware and the increased profits from consulting.
    That is, hardware was becoming a commodity.

    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    Nowhere in their system will you find the business group that tries to do both.
    I confess that I don't know their internal workings, but I do expect that their consulting group works together with their hardware and other groups. Again, the services may not be provided by precisely the same people, but it is provided by the same company.

  20. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    Thanks for your time. I am a consultant in the IT industry and have been such for the past 12 years (28 years total in this crazy industry).
    Ah, a consultant. You know the definition of "consultant" don't you? Someone who steals your watch to tell you the time.

    If you had instead asked a reasonable question, like one of the examples in your post above, you would have gotten intelligent answers from some of the hosts regarding things like PCI compliance, encryption, etc. People would have pointed you to the types of services you would require for transmitting medical records or financial information.

    Your attitude is understandable now. You know that web hosting is more complex than the majority of the consumers realize, yet you started this thread in a pointed manner, attacking the idea that web hosting is anything but a "commodity" that shouldn't require support. You are, in the vernacular, a "troll". I shall choose to ignore you from now on.

  21. #46
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    fshagan;

    Thank you, please do.

  22. #47
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    Sorry, but the "auto part store" analogy is ridiculous and doesn't match in any way to hosting.

    You can trivialize any profession if you fail to comprehend the topic:
    -- An accountant is just somebody that uses a calculator
    -- A cook is somebody that just reads from a recipe book
    -- A photographer is somebody that just owns a camera

    Web hosting is the skill of running/managing computers, and renting out space. That's not as easy as checking email or typing in Word. Some hosts are terrible at that skill and fail. Many "hosts" are just kids or amateurs. The one thorn is mega-hosts who habitually screw customers and get away it, due to flimflam "unlimited" marketing lies that always lure in the next clueless sucker.

    Sites like WHT exist for people that graduate from "clueless sucker" and start to learn about hosting.
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  23. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by srfreeman View Post
    Having the same person do both means that neither aspect gets the attention it deserves and results in a customer that at some level is dissatisfied.
    At this point you are just being ignorant trying to prove your point. You are saying that one person isn't capable of providing someone with both hosting and website design...when there are plenty of people that are perfectly qualified to do both, and very well.

    Though, when it comes to a business, having a hosting division, and a separate design division would solve that issue.

    Just because one company does both, does not in any way prove that the customer is getting short changed on either.

  24. #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by kpmedia View Post
    Sorry, but the "auto part store" analogy is ridiculous and doesn't match in any way to hosting.

    You can trivialize any profession if you fail to comprehend the topic:
    -- An accountant is just somebody that uses a calculator
    -- A cook is somebody that just reads from a recipe book
    -- A photographer is somebody that just owns a camera
    No, I don't think my analogy was trivializing. There are people who fix their own cars and just need the parts from the store, maybe with a bit of advice thrown in; and then there are people who can't or don't want to fix their own cars, and pay someone to service their cars for them.

    Using your examples:
    -- there are people who prepare their own taxes, and there are people who go to accountants to provide the service instead.
    -- there are people who cook for themselves, on their own, using cookbooks, and there are people who go to restaurants where they are served.
    -- there are people who take their own pictures, and there are people who pay a photographer to photograph the wedding for them.

    In each case, it's not about the parts/forms/ingredients/camera, which may be identical if you do it yourself or pay someone to do for you. The service provider adds value in addition to the commodity items involved.

    The auto parts industry, and the other examples as well, sells the same parts to the auto parts stores as it does to mechanics at garages. The same servers can be used in hosting in a do-it-yourself model - which is what almost all hosts provide - or in a service model. The differentiating factor is whether there is an added-value service.

    There's nothing wrong with either model. Both have their place. Do-it-yourselfers, who don't need service, shouldn't have to pay for it. All I'm saying is that the hosting industry, as a whole, has gone down the perfectly logical path of commoditization of its product. And I believe that the hosts who will provide one-stop service to a smaller number of customers but at far greater value, will be paid accordingly and capture business that is currently not being tapped.

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