Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Customer perspective: Unmetered versus month allowances

[TheWiseOne]

We are in the process of re-designing our plans to be even more competitive and an idea that has been thrown around has been to offer unmetered bandwidth so users never need to experience overage charges. Virtuozzo has built in support for this, so it is trivial to implement.

So to the people out there who buy VPS accounts, would something with 1.5-3Mbit/s which can transfer 350-700GB/mo outgoing and unmetered incoming up to 100mbit/s sound attractive versus something like 150-300GB/mo? You can pay to upgrade your cap at any time at competitive Mbit/s increments. Note, the Mbit/s is capped which is just fine for most applications, but not too good for sites that with lot of burstable traffic.

[Yaroslav]

For my needs, I'd go capped unmetered, but check twice (and thrice) that the provider won't cap me even more if I do much traffic. There are stories, you know, when provider drops the bandwidth when he sees you use your link for 100%...

[sshepherd]

It really depends on the customers needs whether they need/want that high burst for outgoing traffic, or if they prefer unmetered for a large volume virtual server with less spiking.

Marketing wise I think unmetered would sell better, but a fair amount of savvy customers knowing what they need would probably want metered as well. Why not offer both?