Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : host2own.com - - Anyone?

[DC]

Has anyone tried the services at http://www.host2own.com ?
I received an email from them and looked at their site.
The e-mail states:
- Free Cobalt RaQ Servers
- No setup fees
- You own your server in just 24 months
- Management Fees only $250/mo.
- And if you order on-line, you'll be up and running
in just minutes . . . Guaranteed!

We Guarantee - Your Cobalt server will be up and running in less than 10 minutes, or we'll give you $100 off your first month's fees.

Another choice is a PIII-733, 128 RAM, 15GB HD, 400Gb Data $500 Setup/No Contract
There is no hosting charge and the server is your very own after 24 months. All you pay is $250 a month for Technical Service/Support with Unlimited Incidents

To be able to setup all of their servers in 10 minutes they would have to be a big company with a lot of servers lying around.

Any opinions?

Thanks
DC

[Félix C.Courtemanche]

Or they are a small new company that bought 20 raq3 and hope to set them up asap

This sounds like a new company to me... too much 'unlimited' 'free' and similar... Every other old company that I know is much more carefull in its terms... because 'unlimited support' can turn you into a full time admin. And $250/month for a fulltime admin is a joke

Just be carefull (especially because they e-mailed you) and ask them questions.

[diyoha]

Yeah ... it is on the "too good to be true" level

they do not talk about bandwidth issues. Which costs.

sooooo

Free server (or low setup)
Unlimited bandwidth (apparently)
Unlimited admin help
...And you own the server in 2years ...

all for $250/month

pretty amazing ... and scarey ... I am not sure I would trust my company in such a situation (IMHO)

BUT I may just be too cynical. Ask for references ... ask around like you are doing ... and then in the end the ball is in your court!!!

David

[cbaker17]

Too tell you the truth its not a good deal at all! If you look further into the site in the contract it advises you only get 400gbits thats hardly any transfer at all. And as a side not their secure server certificate isnt even valid???? Leads me to wonder. Just be careful. I think you could get just as good of a deal as some place with better reviews.

[DC]

Thanks to all that replied, I thought it sounded to good to be true!

Many Thanks!
DC

[stat_man]

actually 400 Gigabits of transfer can be anywere from 25 Gigabytes to 50 Gigabytes, that's not to bad, for the price and the fact you own the machine. But do be careful of new comapniess. Also, their web site can be a good indication. A company that spends time on how it appears to the public always gets a more careful look. Don't EVER trust a hosting company that puts up a web site that looks like it was done in a day! As far as these guys go, they get a good hard look because they come across as professional.

[Wazeh]

Look carefuly into their offer. The server as it is offered with $250 a month is useless to a web hosting company.

Upgrades cost an arm (or a wing ) and a leg.

An example gathered from their web site:

200 accounts:
DNS ($1 x 50 + $50 for domains 51-200) = $100
Bandwidth. You can only buy in bulks of 50GB at
$150 + $100 service fee= $250 for 50GB of bandwidth
IPs: Class C @ $100
Management Fee: $250

To summarize what you get...

Setup: $500
Total monthly: $700 for
PIII 733
128MB Ram
15GB HD
100GB Transfer
256 IPs
name server for 200 domains.

Terrible deal at best

[diyoha]

Depends on the use of the dedicated server

I would use my dedicated server to serve applications. In that case I would only need 1 IP address and one dns entry. So it would be okay for my needs. But overall I still think the deal reeks of uncertainty ...

But you are correct. If the machine is to be used for hosting it really sucks ...

later

David

[brainbox]

Hi,
I signed up for a cobalt raq with host2own and have to input my two centavos here:

1. They have the best support I have ever been privelaged to use.An example: We sent off an email to their tech support, we couldn't get any domain names to resolve to the server, they called us within 10 minutes because we put that it was urgent in the message.

2. They do nickle and dime you to death. An example of this, we thought that their 250 permonth seemed quite reasonable, the we found out, that the mysql that they had installed on these raq's were only the client and if you needed a mysql database, it was available at a one time setup fee of $50 or 75, then 10.00 per month for each database. We were putting 25 of our clients on the server and couldn't see passing along the extra 10.00 to each client, cost prohibitive. ChiliASP they told us was also required on the server for the mysql aspect, another 75.00 setup fee. Another example was their charges per domain, to setup a domain on their dns required another 1.00 per domain, when we talked to tech support about their zoning, they told us it costs nothing to setup domains on their zoning system, finally came out when we cancelled that it would be an extra 25.00 for those 25 domains.

3. They refused to tell us how to uninstall the mysql client so that we could install the mysql server from cobalt pkg file.

4. Again their support is what your really paying for, and they have the best in the industry, 24 hour phone support for emergencies (ie couldn't get our domain names to resolve).

We cancelled our account with them 2 weeks after signing up, why? We found that the server with only 128mb ram was going to be way underpowered for our and our clients needs, our mysql database systems for some of our larger clients require a minimum of 1mb per 1,000 entries in the database, and some of them had over 500,000 items in their database, compile all of those sites together and you need one hell of a machine.

So, in conclusion, No, I wouldn't go with them again because I hate being nickle and dimed to death.

Brainbox

PS. After thought, as far as for hosting, your all right, it sucks for that, because the cobalt admin softwar doesn't offer any way of having people signup automatically, which means it's harder to get clients to signup, I signup with them because my server was setup in 10 minutes, I wanted for any extra clients to be able to do the same, unfortunately you can't do this on their raq servers, I queried them about this, and they told me that they are working on a way of doing this, but at this time they have no ETA on when this kind of feature would be available

[Edited by brainbox on 11-11-2000 at 01:40 AM]

[host2own]

Host2Own is very real, and very serious! We are a large wholesale Internet provider with our own data centers in San Diego and Los Angeles. We operated as cari.net for 3 years, and host2own is a DBA (demonstrating our renewed focus on managed services).

I'm intrigued whether the comments in this thread are from competitors or customers? Why?

-Where else can you host Raq4's for $250 per month? $ 0 Setup?
-Where else can you actually own the server? We invented the concept of SAR: Service Added Reseller!
-Where else can you get the above deal without signing a contract?

If it is not possible to answer the question, then you must be a competitor, because if you truly are interested in Cobalt hosting, then we've left little reason for you to go somewhere else.

This is precisely why we are Cobalt's original and perhaps largest hosting partner in the country. Call Cobalt and verify... we're posted on their web site and also sponsored their annual ISP Con party (best party at the show!).

If there are real reasons to Cobalt-host somewhere else, please share it with us so that we may be competitive.

Thanks.

Clarifications:
-I read something about DNS pricing. The Cobalts do DNS on the server.. this is INCLUDED at no charge. Virtual DNS is a separate service for general dns (access, hosting, mail pointers, etc.)
- 400 gbits/month = 50 Gbytes/month = 154 kb/second sustained...that's ALOT of bandwidth!)
-If the Cobalt is not beafy enough for specific database apps, then most customers lease one of our custom Red Hat servers... still only $250 per month.
-Additional IP address are $1/mo, not domains. The Cobalt handles 250 virtual domains, meaning the wholesale price for domains is $1/month ($250/250 domains)
-If we only had a couple RaQs, how could we guarantee instant activation (I just checked and in the last 5 hours, 3 new customers activated their Cobalt online)
-And so forth...

If you're still skeptical, you MUST be a competitor.

(By the way, if the deal seems to good to be true, then wait till you see what we roll out next month!)

Host2Own Manager

[host2own]

Ok Wazeh, Wazzup!

What did you read on our web site that made you think that you pay $750 per month? That is incorrect. If it is confusing, let us know what needs to better-worded.

Cobalt Hosting is $250 (virtual domains do not need additional ip's.. the ip address for the box is included)

Red Hat linux hosting is $250

If you host with us for awhile we reward you by giving you the server. Not bad!

So, wazzup! Are you perhaps a competitor?!

Host2Own Manager

[brainbox]

Originally posted by host2own

-Where else can you host Raq4's for $250 per month? $ 0 Setup?
[A]Cobaltrack.com offers Raq4's with ASP, and MYSQL alreadyinstalled on the box. Unlike Host2own that installs the client Mysql so that it can connect to their Mysql Servers. Again when queried about how to uninstall the client, we were told, they can't tell us how to uninstall anything. Meanwhile on the Cobalt Raq server, we used the admin section and had the cobalt mysql full pkg file installed in under 5 minutes, whereas we had to compile mysql on the host2own server.


-Where else can you actually own the server? We invented the concept of SAR: Service Added Reseller!
[A] I havnt found anyone else where you own the server at the end of the lease, though its a good idea and inviting on the surface, the fact is that this server in 2 years is highly outdated and worth nothing at the end of 2 years.


-Where else can you get the above deal without signing a contract?
[A] If were talking about not owning the server at the end of 2 years, then there are quite a few places that you need not sign any contract for, especially for cobalt raq servers.


If it is not possible to answer the question, then you must be a competitor, because if you truly are interested in Cobalt hosting, then we've left little reason for you to go somewhere else.
[A] Again it's the nickle and diming that burns me up about you folks. For a company that will have just a webpage and maybe some cgi scripts it would be fine for them, but then again if that's all they need then virtual hosting is fine for them, so their not in your market anyway. As for a webhosting company, nope, your not for them either until your tech support or cobalt comes up with a way of automating taking orders and setting people up on their servers as a virtual host such as Alabanza's control panel, if you had had this we might have stayed with your folks and gone with the redhat linux server, but that also requires a $500.00 setup fee, which for us anyway would be cost prohibitive as we are just restarting in the webhosting business by ourselves after leaving our partners to deal with Alabanza and the mess that they got themselves into with the price increase.

This is precisely why we are Cobalt's original and perhaps largest hosting partner in the country. Call Cobalt and verify... we're posted on their web site and also sponsored their annual ISP Con party (best party at the show!).

If there are real reasons to Cobalt-host somewhere else, please share it with us so that we may be competitive.
[A] Don't nickle and dime people, give them ASP and MYSQL on the server not a client that will connect up to your database servers at $10.00 per database, have your tech support explain that the server can be used as a DNS not instruct the person to setup zones thereby charging extra money each month. I realize that your in business to make money, but nickel and diming people to death is not the solution.

I wish I could have stayed with you folks, but what started out as $250.00 per month would have ended up being $427.00
$250 base hosting
$150 $10.00 x 15 databases
$27.00 for zoning charges

No automated signups for virtual hosting, so it's a no go for webhosts unless they want to manually process everything, as well as lose business because they have to tell people that their accounts will be setup in the next 24 hours.

Bbox


<snip>

P.S. As someone mentioned above too:
And as a side not their secure server certificate isnt even valid

I also found that to be true when we signed up but we are the trusting kinds so we went through with it anyway.

[Edited by brainbox on 11-13-2000 at 01:54 AM]

[host2own]

Thanks for the critique, we will address these issues ASAP in the following order:

1) Automation for customer records - currently DONE
2) Automation for customer billing - due by end of Nov
3) Auto signup for domains - end of Nov or first week in Dec
4) MySQL on box vs outside box. - we do both, however our experience tells us to do it outside - why? if the "box barfs," no lost databases - we will work on better bulk pricing for MySQL

<<MOD EDIT>>
You are going to have to ask this to your current customers.
<</MOD EDIT>>

Host2Own Manager

[Edited by Chicken on 11-14-2000 at 07:51 PM]

[brainbox]

While I can't comment on the one low flat rate plan that your thinking about, I will just say, that I do have faith in Host2own, if the managment says they are thinking about something then I believe that they are. I come to this conclusion by the excellent support staff that they have onboard. It seems all to often these days that you signup for service somewhere and the support is excellent the first time, the next time its lower and lower until it's almost non existant. If I can judge a business on their support services, then Host2own.com would be number 1. It's especially usefull for those people that are setting up their own ded servers for the first time.

I hope that you work things out and make an attractive pricing plan for someone like myself. I will of course look into you folks when I am in need of a second Server, right now Im with Cobaltracks.com and while their support is definately not the best, their pricing plan of $199.00 per month is acceptable to me, better that extra $227.00 is in my pocket than my raq providers ;-)


Now as far as the Mysql on the box, and if the box barfs, well so be it. I can tell you from experience that when a host loses your information they claim no responsibility whether or not it was their fault, or negligence or whatever. So, if the clients of my sites are not willing to 1. take the time to backup their database info through the phpmyadmin or is it myslqmyadmin, well whatever it is, the program that allows them to do a database structure and data dump to save it, or 2. Arn't willing to keep us on as a monthly maintenance contract, then if the box does go poof in the night, it's not our responsibility. This goes not only for mysql data but also for regular website data. All hosting aggreements that I've ever signed and there have been quite a few over the past 6 or so years, have stated that they are not responsible to make backups, nor are they responsible in case of "acts of god", so in other words, your on your own baby if anything happens to their servers. Proper backups are the only way to go.

Bbox