View Poll Results: Should we allow Unlimited offers on WHT?

Voters
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  • Yes

    178 29.57%
  • No

    341 56.64%
  • No Preference (I'm good either way)

    34 5.65%
  • Yes - But I'll post recommended restrictions in the thread

    49 8.14%
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Results 126 to 150 of 504
  1. #126
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    The issue of "unlimited" features is more complex - whilst technical people understand that there will be some sort of limit ( for example ISTR a 65535 records limit in a zone on bind, so there is an actual limit on subdomains / mx entries etc on a cpanel box) end-users dont always expect to have restrictions of certain things

    Unlimited emails - one argument is that even an "empty" mailbox takes up space on the server, so utilises your disk limit - this only works for CP's that count the things properly.

    Similarly there are actual, practical and performance limitations on number of DB's (unless you start having dedicated separate DB servers) and whilst the "argument" of "we can always add another disk" might make sense, it never works like that as
    a. people who use that argument never do
    b. there is a limit to the number of disks you can add

    I'd be quite quite happy to offer unlimited storage - on a pay per allocation/usage basis - at £1000/Tb/month in 10TB chunks, paid in advance of your partitions being expanded, with a 3month cancellation period, I can add SANs all day long
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  2. #127
    Quote Originally Posted by Ionity View Post
    I really agree with this.

    I think that WHT needs to do one of two things.

    1) Just let it be a free-for-all and NOT impose any rules, stipulations, etc. and just make it known to the reader that there are no rules, verifications, or requirements to make the posts. This way WHT is abstracted from the situation 100%, or;

    2) Create some actual requirements to the advertising sections (all of them). With some requirements for the posting title (i.e. not a 10Gbps/128GB Ram / 40 SSD @ $30/mo type of subject being allowed. A template that goes at the top of the post with some of the important details.

    Such as:

    What the offer is
    Where the offer is located
    When the offer expires
    the terms and conditions of the offer (new customers only, existing customers, can customer buy more at this price, etc)
    Link to the Terms of Service
    Link to the Privacy Policy
    Details of the network, facility
    who owns the equipment

    all this stuff. So that the users can truly understand what it is they are paying for. Some half baked rules about allowing vs. not allowing unlimited is not really the problem.

    Would this help some hosts? Yes!.. Would this hurt some hosts? Yes. Would the pageviews go down initially? Maybe

    Would this add more longer term value and start attracting more larger paying customers to this site? Yes!

    If you go look at other forums.. They sell products/services (maybe not web hosting), and it is not always a race to the bottom on price (like it mostly is here).

    I think because there is a lot of stuff like that in the offers section, a lot of people simply leave this site and don't come back, and if there was a better way to understand what you are getting that more people would come to this site, and there would be more conversions.

    Just like there should be a reputation point system or something that allows the potential buyer to quickly see that with the hosts (or even sort the offers by this number...

    with a few changes you could make this place a real marketplace for much larger projects, and that would change to more ad sales at a higher value ;-)
    The problem is that it's not so cut and dried. Unlimited is cut and dried. Everything else really isn't. Should I have a business license to post an ad? No, I really don't think I should be required to have that, as most states and localities don't require it. By and large, the free market and reputations should decide what floats to the top, and I think this works well. Unlimited is a special case because it's obviously always a fraudulent offer. It would be irresponsible to allow a 100% known fraudulent offer, but the same can't be said for being judge and jury in less certain situations.

    To the point of what's best for individual companies or the community, I would say "the clutter" is really a minor problem. We've taken numerous steps to make sure we stand out from the crowd, and as far as I'm concerned it has worked well. Forcing all the ads to look the same, have the same information, get approved by mods, or whatever, is going to make it harder to tell the professional hosts from the others, not easier. If my ad speaks to a customer and gets them on board, and other people's ads do not, the last thing I need is a moderator to look at my ad as a model citizen of an ad and require everyone else's ads look the same. The fact is that without the right information in your ad, people won't trust you and won't buy from you, so by and large it solves itself. The unlimited ads are a special case because there is no room for argument as to whether or not the provider could possibly follow through on the promise of unlimited: they can't.
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  3. #128
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    I voted no. Further, you should limit the possible answers simply to "Yes" or "No", as I believe a poll of this nature should be looking for clearly delineated, boolean results, not gray-area, wishy-washy in-betweens.

    That said, I think if you were to permit Unlimited offers, they should be put in their own sub-forum and made to be singled out as such from the other offers. That way you're not limiting your own business model. But definitely keep the trash out of the capped offers for sure.

  4. #129
    Voted: Yes

    Reason:
    1. If you allow unlimited hd/bandwidth then more "providers" will join this forum.

    2. Some of BIG companies provide unlimited hosting, they will join this forum and purchase a Corpy/premium membership which can help WHT/Inet to grow.

    3. More "users" will join this forum who is looking for "unlimited" hosting companies.

    4. Its a 2013, Everyone know about 'Unlimited' word.
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  5. #130
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trip View Post
    I think if you were to permit Unlimited offers, they should be put in their own sub-forum and made to be singled out as such from the other offers. That way you're not limiting your own business model. But definitely keep the trash out of the capped offers for sure.
    I think your idea is a good one should it be decided to allow unlimited offers. You would also get comparative stats via post/thread visits.

  6. #131
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    Quote Originally Posted by DewlanceHosting View Post
    2. Some of BIG companies provide unlimited hosting, they will join this forum and purchase a Corpy/premium membership which can help WHT/Inet to grow.
    While at the same time lose some memberships fees from current Premium and Corporate Members.

    I for one will definitely stop renewing my Corporate Membership.

  7. #132
    What I see repeatedly in this thread is an unrealistic view of clients out there. Overestimating the intelligence and common sense of the average customer is a mistake.

    Of all the clients I've had come to me to build their website, that had ALREADY signed up for their domain and hosting they have all signed up with either GoDaddy or an unlimited host. godaddy sign ups are because of huge advertising, while the rest are because when Mr. or Mrs. Small Business Owner looks for a webhost and sees "Unlimited" they're sold. They don't know anything about the difference in quality between providers. They're getting UNLIMITED! and they sign up.

    If you've ever had to work on a site that utilizes databases, on a host like powweb or fatcow or any of the other garbage hosts, you'd understand. the entire reason I began hosting was out of frustration of clients coming to me over and over with their garbage unlimited hosting which made everything I need to do on their sites take 5 times longer than it should...

  8. #133
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    By nature/design "unlimited" plans are misleading....The community has spoken and with 60%+ saying no, I think that draws a pretty clear line in the sand
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  9. #134
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    Quote Originally Posted by 613websites View Post
    By nature/design "unlimited" plans are misleading....The community has spoken and with 60%+ saying no, I think that draws a pretty clear line in the sand
    A caveat that I mentioned earlier, though: having 4 choices in the poll doesn't make interpretation any easier, in fact harder. This is a question asking for a boolean outcome. If the poll was correctly set up, it would have 2 choices: "Yes" or "No". Period.

    So taking that into account, one must throw the "Yes, but with an explanation I'll provide" effectively into the "Yes" category and the "I don't care" would be a 50/50 split distribution for "Yes" and "No", or thrown out altogether as the garbage vote you may see it to be, take your pick.

    So when you do your final math, take that into account, if iNet chooses to continue the poll with 4 choices.
    Last edited by Trip; 02-12-2013 at 08:10 PM.

  10. #135
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    I voted no, unlimited just simply does not exist and I do not think they need to be on these forums. Keep the unlimited hosts to those that wants quantity over quality.
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  11. #136
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trip View Post
    A caveat that I mentioned earlier, though: having 4 choices in the poll doesn't make interpretation any easier, in fact harder
    There are 2 'Yes' 1 'No' and 1 'Abstain' (for a positive change abstain usually gets counted with No votes, for a negative change they get discarded)

    So it's either 75 total for Yes and 138 for No
    or 75 total for Yes and 149 for No

    Either way if the poll was closed now it's a clear No ...
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  12. #137
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    Quote Originally Posted by astutiumRob View Post
    Either way if the poll was closed now it's a clear No ...
    I just wish it was a clear vote on what the point is, if this is being done to improve the quality of companies in the deal area there are other steps that could be taken. And it would probably help if the pool clarified that was the point of this.. (if that was the point)

    Right now it just appears to be a vote on if you -like- or -don't like- that marketing makes good use of the hunter gatherer portion of the human brain.

    Maybe the next vote can be if we want to send a formal petition complaining to the decade behind Mad Men, all while the largest hosting companies out there provide great service and use unlimited and enable more people to create online,
    Thanks, Ben

  13. #138
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    I don't want to see any more BS at WHT, so I voted "no".

    The so-called "big companies" can already join WHT, there just limits on advertising all-you-can-eat.
    We'd welcome EIG, Godaddy, etc, but the truth is they care about money, not people.
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  14. #139
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    I vote yes because it is less ridiculous than the hosts offering 1+ TB of data space for $5/$10 per month (have seen it on known reseller accounts here). Everyone states there is no such thing as unlimited, but they are the same people signing up for unlimited long distance and unlimited data on their phones. Those have similar limitations to hosting (usually more), but no one frowns upon that. Inode based models work well for lots of folks instead of defined disk space. It's just another method of advertising and I don't think it is WHTs job to stop that.
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  15. #140
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    Kris you raise a good point and we've seen Ben from Site5 articulating his thing for some time now. To both I give a nod, as you really cannot totally defeat a stance for or against overselling, on that much I would think most of us would agree. But I will say that when "unlimited" rears its head in web hosting, there seems to be more issues experienced across a full range and gamut of service tiers than when it appears in alternate industries, such as mobile carriers, landline telcos, isps, utility companies, etc. That and the industry's general distaste for concept also appears higher than in those alternate examples I mentioned. I realize my observation is purely subjective, but I do claim that now before anyone attempts to thwart the generalization.
    Last edited by Trip; 02-13-2013 at 03:43 AM. Reason: Grammar Nazi =)

  16. #141
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    Quote Originally Posted by blueraindesigns View Post
    Overestimating the intelligence and common sense of the average customer is a mistake.
    Well said. Nothing to add.

  17. #142
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    Quote Originally Posted by blueraindesigns View Post
    If you've ever had to work on a site that utilizes databases, on a host like powweb or fatcow or any of the other garbage hosts, you'd understand. the entire reason I began hosting was out of frustration of clients coming to me over and over with their garbage unlimited hosting which made everything I need to do on their sites take 5 times longer than it should...

    +10000000



    Quote Originally Posted by Ionity View Post
    Such as:

    What the offer is
    Where the offer is located
    When the offer expires
    the terms and conditions of the offer (new customers only, existing customers, can customer buy more at this price, etc)
    Link to the Terms of Service
    Link to the Privacy Policy
    Details of the network, facility
    who owns the equipment
    Years in business
    Amount of complaints during a year


    I'm still surprised when I see certain hosts being allowed to advertise when almost weekly there are people complaining about those hosts, and a lot of times with the exact same issue. No wonder the unlimited hosts win in some cases until it falls apart. Then of course you have now built a confused customer. Tried "good", didn't work, tried bad, still didn't work.

  18. #143
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    Quote Originally Posted by funkywizard View Post
    The problem is that it's not so cut and dried. Unlimited is cut and dried. Everything else really isn't. Should I have a business license to post an ad? No, I really don't think I should be required to have that, as most states and localities don't require it. By and large, the free market and reputations should decide what floats to the top, and I think this works well. Unlimited is a special case because it's obviously always a fraudulent offer. It would be irresponsible to allow a 100% known fraudulent offer, but the same can't be said for being judge and jury in less certain situations.

    To the point of what's best for individual companies or the community, I would say "the clutter" is really a minor problem. We've taken numerous steps to make sure we stand out from the crowd, and as far as I'm concerned it has worked well. Forcing all the ads to look the same, have the same information, get approved by mods, or whatever, is going to make it harder to tell the professional hosts from the others, not easier. If my ad speaks to a customer and gets them on board, and other people's ads do not, the last thing I need is a moderator to look at my ad as a model citizen of an ad and require everyone else's ads look the same. The fact is that without the right information in your ad, people won't trust you and won't buy from you, so by and large it solves itself. The unlimited ads are a special case because there is no room for argument as to whether or not the provider could possibly follow through on the promise of unlimited: they can't.
    I am not saying you can't run your own special / offer / etc.

    I am simply saying there should be some facts in the post that give some basic details about what they are really buying.

    Just like the Nutritional Information labels in the USA on food. Some standard way that people can compare the providers.
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  19. #144
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ionity View Post
    I am not saying you can't run your own special / offer / etc.

    I am simply saying there should be some facts in the post that give some basic details about what they are really buying.

    Just like the Nutritional Information labels in the USA on food. Some standard way that people can compare the providers.
    I applaud the thought, but what you propose usually only works if someone is in charge and willing to make things happen. And willing to make it a business of testing and verifying those hosts who wish to take part with open standards.

    The problem here is iNet makes good money off this forum but doesn't care what you guys discuss. And the community ownership of this forum lacks any power to make the decisions to build and enforce something like that. Without those two parts being united nothing will happen out of this.

    Might take a look at serverbear.com though, I like what they are doing and we take part on the vps level,
    Thanks, Ben
    Last edited by bwb; 02-13-2013 at 07:15 AM. Reason: learning to spell still

  20. #145
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    Quote Originally Posted by bwb
    The problem here is iNet makes good money off this forum but doesn't care what you guys discuss.
    I think the very fact that this discussion was started suggests otherwise. If iNet didn't care, this discussion wouldn't even have been started.

    Let's not make it a discussion about whether the owners of WHT care. It's obvious that they do. This discussion is about whether allowing unlimited/unmetered is going to be good for WHT, good for the people that use it, and good for the industry as a whole.

  21. #146
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    Quote Originally Posted by kris1351 View Post
    I vote yes because it is less ridiculous than the hosts offering 1+ TB of data space for $5/$10 per month (have seen it on known reseller accounts here). Everyone states there is no such thing as unlimited, but they are the same people signing up for unlimited long distance and unlimited data on their phones. Those have similar limitations to hosting (usually more), but no one frowns upon that. Inode based models work well for lots of folks instead of defined disk space. It's just another method of advertising and I don't think it is WHTs job to stop that.
    That's a good point. Perhaps a rephrase that "Clearly oversold hosts" should not be allowed to post either, in addition to Unlimited offers, would be a good twist to the thing.

    Sometimes you even see ridiculously high diskspace only to find out in the TOS that inodes and maximum size per file is limited in such a way that it's impossible at any time to even reach the implied limit they promise. :')

    Good to see this discussion. Misleading advertisements shouldn't be allowed.
    Last edited by DedicatedBox; 02-13-2013 at 12:54 PM.

  22. #147
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jamie Harrop View Post
    ... This discussion is about whether allowing unlimited/unmetered is going to be good for WHT, good for the people that use it, and good for the industry as a whole.
    Thanks, Jamie. Maybe I need to unpack my thesaurus and see if I can make that clearer next time we talk about this.

    I'll also take the advice of whoever stated it should only be Yes or No (next time).

    Why do I mention "next time"? Because we've talked about it on a few occasions. I imagine we'll talk about it again.
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  23. #148
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    Quote Originally Posted by DedicatedBox View Post
    ... "Clearly oversold hosts" should not be allowed to post either ....
    Can you define "Clearly oversold hosts"?
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  24. #149
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    Quote Originally Posted by SoftWareRevue View Post
    Can you define "Clearly oversold hosts"?

    I don't wish to speak out-of-school, but one of my last clients of 2012 came from a limitless provider. He was certain his site was doomed because backup creation failed regularly. It took me over four hours to pull a 3.5 GB tarball from a system that's load avg. never went under 10.00, the locally configured /backup was at 87% capacity and most of the service statuses were in a warning state for hours. To me, that would be an example of a clearly oversold hosting environment.

    I would imagine that specifics or something other than an accusation would be needed in order to appropriately verify overselling, but isn't it hard to expose an overseller without revealing too much? Seems like anyone could make the claim with no real data to back it up with...and supplying of such data could potentially violate certain WHT regulations, I'm sure.

    We all know they exist, otherwise there wouldn't be an option in WHMCS to allow overselling for reseller packages.

    Last edited by Johnny Cache; 02-13-2013 at 01:44 PM. Reason: Added Thought

  25. #150
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    Quote Originally Posted by DedicatedBox View Post
    That's a good point. Perhaps a rephrase that "Clearly oversold hosts" should not be allowed to post either, in addition to Unlimited offers, would be a good twist to the thing.

    Sometimes you even see ridiculously high diskspace only to find out in the TOS that inodes and maximum size per file is limited in such a way that it's impossible at any time to even reach the implied limit they promise. :')

    Good to see this discussion. Misleading advertisements shouldn't be allowed.
    I think a better way is to have all providers list out such limits clearly within their WHT advertisement so that clients can have an apple to apple comparison on not only disk space and bandwidth limits but also the CPU, RAM, Inodes, Maximum File Size, etc.

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