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  1. #1

    Is there a market for HA shared hosting?

    That's what I've been thinking.

    Is there a market for high-available shared web hosting?

    My hypothesis is there isn't.

    The consumer will pick whatever is cheapest.
    Companies have migrated to VMs for their needs.
    Small businesses (1-5 people) will probably also seek the cheapest provider.

    Right now I have the option to sell 8GB of web storage + 8GB of mysql storage for 1,50€ / month + VAT.
    But if I make it high-available I'd have to ask 3€ / month.

    For me, if I wanted to host a site personally I'd pick the high-available option. 3€ / month is nothing and 8+8GB is enough for even the most demanding needs.
    But in the past I had customers who would argue over prices even if I sold web space and all inclusive without limits for 1€ / month and they found a 11 cent cheaper host.
    And there are many people like this former customer.
    They just seek what's cheapest and don't consider that their site should be available even if 1 server goes down for upgrades.

    If I want to sell something then my shop needs to be accessible 24/7, no outage ever. Ever minute of downtime could mean a lost sale or lost conversion.
    There are people who pay thousands of Euros every day for advertising and even 1 minute of downtime means lost money.
    Like I said, I would pay the price.
    But there are people who wouldn't.

    And then performance is an issue too.
    Say I have softraid1 (yeah I know what you're thinking) then I can offer this price, but if I'd like hwraid the cost bumps up to 3€, non-HA, and with HA that would be 6€/month for 8+8GB.

    I also thought about a file hosting service. But personally I can't beat dropbox' prices. 1TB for 10€ / month.
    I can't get anywhere near that.
    I could probably assemble cheap servers with a low end cpu and little RAM and softraid and distributed filesystem but even then I couldn't put them anywhere since any colo is ridiculously expensive.
    And let's not even start with traffic, which is the biggest cost factor of them all.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Fremont
    Posts
    90
    Usually small business and individual would choose shared webhosting plan.Serious e-commence web owner will choose cloud/vps hosting that's more stable and shared with less tenants.So in my option,we can think about HA shared web hosting is equivalent to vps hosting.
    Everything is not dedicated.
    HostFirst.com - Your First Choice
    Windows VPS | Web hosting | Cheap Domains

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Posts
    524
    All shared hosting should be highly available in my opinion, that's what you are paying a company to do :-)

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Posts
    1,789
    I'm assuming your referring to replication and automatic failover. I'm not sure how you intend to keep the data in sync and that's going to affect your cost.

    I'm just not sure if the systems are readily and cheaply available to make it feasible. Would there be a market for this? Probably. But the cost is going to be a lot more expensive.

    If there were systems that would easily make this possible, then I think there would be a market for it. As it stands now, I don't think there's much difference between a $10/mo hosting account and a $2/mo hosting account. Sure, a $10/mo hosting account (should) be hosted on a more premium network and in a more premium datacenter, but even those have downtime. The gap between what makes a "premium" network and what makes a "cheap" host has narrowed considerably. Paying $8/mo more might guarantee you 5% less downtime (figure total made up), is that worth it for most people?

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by SPaReK View Post
    I'm assuming your referring to replication and automatic failover. I'm not sure how you intend to keep the data in sync and that's going to affect your cost.
    drbd

    Quote Originally Posted by SPaReK View Post
    I'm just not sure if the systems are readily and cheaply available to make it feasible.
    CentOS & drbd are FOSS. Only thing that makes this expensive is the doubled hardware.
    It would cost 496€ / month incl. VAT
    That's
    front end: 2x
    E5-1650 v3 (6cores/ht)
    128GB RAM ECC
    1Gbit/s line with 50TB outgoing each
    2x4TB HGST

    database: 2x
    E3-1270 v3 (4cores/ht)
    32GB RAM ECC
    200mbit public, used for MTA
    2x4TB HGST

    private network

    Quote Originally Posted by SPaReK View Post
    Would there be a market for this? Probably. But the cost is going to be a lot more expensive.

    If there were systems that would easily make this possible, then I think there would be a market for it. As it stands now, I don't think there's much difference between a $10/mo hosting account and a $2/mo hosting account. Sure, a $10/mo hosting account (should) be hosted on a more premium network and in a more premium datacenter, but even those have downtime. The gap between what makes a "premium" network and what makes a "cheap" host has narrowed considerably. Paying $8/mo more might guarantee you 5% less downtime (figure total made up), is that worth it for most people?
    I don't know if it is, that's why I'm asking

    I was calculating with 256MB for each domain, round about 500 domains = 8GB+8GB/domain
    100% profit (which isn't a lot)
    = 1.99€ + VAT / month
    domain not included
    self support (kb/forum)

    affordable, but with 500 customers I'd like automated billig (incl. checking incoming transfers and reminders), automated domain name registration, automated everything.

    but if I take marketing costs into consideration

    There's a big and well known provider that sells 25+1GB for 4€. They use SAN for storage.

    I don't know. It's a risk.
    I could afford it for a while but I'd need customers fast. Like 200 in 3 months.
    And full "server" in 12. And that would mean at the very least 300€ / month advertising

    And worst case I'll have none. And that's the risk.

    And the non-HA variant, half the costs, more profit. Adding HA/LB later won't work for psychological reasons and because of contract.

    The least risky route is a cheap server without ECC RAM and 64MB / domain.
    I'd like to offer quality but the truth is even a single cheap server is able to handle enough customers to make a profit, if your support is good.

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