Why it is smart to avoid unlimited hosting

please put your hand up if you have ever brought a computer? please put your hand up if you have ever gone to school or learnt to read and write? anyone?
if so, you should be able to understand concepts such that the computers you have at home have limits. there are limits in the maximum number of programs they can run before it slows down. limits in how many movies / music you can store before drives full, you understand there are costs in software, power bills, and also costs in replacing hardware / upgrades, this would also mean that you understand that when you upload a file, your limited in varying degrees. the more things from a single computer that you want up upload (or download), the slower the uploads / downloads are. This is pretty simple stuff. Hopefully 1 or 2 intelligent people are out there understand these concepts.
But how does this relate? simple, budget unlimited hosts still have to meet costs, and they have to do this by overloading the server full of sites, and cutting corners in order to stay afloat.This usually means you see alot of overloaded servers -> even hostgator has (or had while i was there) severely overloaded servers. You will not get good performance from a server if it is heavily overloaded.

Now send this message to a dozen DEDICATED server providers:
"Hi, i am interested in purchasing your most expensive dedicated server. what is the cheapest price for your backup space"

Now, they are going to tell you $1 per GB. Ask about 10 of them, it does vary between $0.80 and $1.00 for BACKUP SPACE only.
now why is this important? most hosting companies, will use hardware suppliers. For example, hostgator is a multi-million dollar company and was using softlayers servers, and as such, if the hosting company provides that service (and hey, backups are kinda important) then they have to pay the cost price, being (or being close to) $1 per gig.
now what about the servers drives? do you want fast - raid 10 ssd drives perhaps? (puts storage at a *guestimated* $2 per gig)
or are you happier with slower drives with raid 10 15k drives - (puts storage at a *guestimated* $1 per gig)
or are you simply happy to have no raid, and have a single 7.5k drive for performance - (puts storage at a *guestimated* $0.50 per gig)
(please note i dont want to argue these numbers, they are for educational purposes only)

ok so looking at the above, STORAGE alone, we can put a base price per month of being around $2-$3 per gig (with raid 10 setup and with backups)

what about cpu usuage? what about ram? what about covering support tickets? what about the software costs that the company has?
For ANY hosting provider where you are paying under $3 per gb for storage, be afraid. Be very afraid.

now you tell me, what service do you really expect for just $1 per month for unlimited storage? Do you think the server is really protected by a raid setup? do you think he can afford to pay for backups when it will likely cost him more to do it then what you pay? Taking into paypal fees, taxes and so on, what is left after $1 per month? I guarantee that if you are using over 1gb of space, that a proper backup service *could* cost him more per gig, then what each account pays for.

so tell me, what service do you really expect for your $1 per month? to be honest, i would not expect much at all.

If you are using a budget service to run a site in shared hosting, you should not have an SQL database over 500mb, and you should not have a single email account over 500mb, and your website should not be over 500mb -> and all together, the max you should be using is 500mb combined -> and i would not expect it to be backed up. and even this modest requirement is really pushing what you can expect at $1 per month.

Here is something that you dont know. In 3 years, i bid on alot of different hosts (mainly on wht forums and flippa). And yes, I have taken over a few. But this has given me a lot of insight into the industry as a whole. One particular company / person who has posts (and possibly clients from this very forum) and he revealed to me that he had a secret limit at 1gb. Anyone that reached this was instantly terminated, and no refunds.
and guess what, nearly every single unlimited provider (and the ones that offer stupid storage amounts for nothing) had the same thing. Some had the secret limit at 500mb, some 1gb, some had unlimited bandwidth, yet only a 10mb unmetered port.... the whole thing is a joke.

Keep in mind in the last month, at least 2 different budget providers shut shop and vanished, and this alone should highlight the need to be prepared to spend more to get better quality. Spending less is only a gamble

To anyone that uses budget unlimited shared hosting, you do not have the right to complain.

 

I would agree with you in all fairness about the point you're trying to make, but when you have a host that jerks people about when they're just trying to create some websites, then tells them the technical difficulties are emanating from them, and then refuse to do anything about it when they're shown graphic evidence of it - this is UNFORGIVEABLE, Matt 62. As I detail in my article that I refer to in my post above this, I spent more time trying to get the service to the sub-par level just to be able to even put in a placeholder that was functional for something at least as simple as a lead capture landing page. And, Matt 62, please make no mistake, when I decided enough was enough, I scraped up some cash and got with another provider. And just to be sure I wasn't being overly whiny and paranoid, tested both web spaces against each other, to see REAL-TIME that my ex-host sucked a big moose turd. AND, the problems that I'd laid out to them (with graphics and all), were soundly ignored. I'm not going to bother re-detailing that here (as you can read the story in the link I've provided above). Matt 62, I have the right to complain if my needs are not met and the problems causing my dis-ease are emanating from my host, and I fervently disagree with you about PRICE. The ex-host in question was 2x the price of my current host. Matt 62, because I WAS paying the money, I'm not asking anymore from them than they were self-billing. When I made the decision to move up to paid hosting, I was investing in myself. I didn't make the choice soley based on price (as I'd made that mistake previously and got screwed for it - Mea Culpa). What I didn't expect was to get the most insane runaround that stopped me dead in tracks. Story (in full, graphic detail) at the link above.

 

PS, Matt 62 - I sure as Hell wasn't paying $1/mo. If that were the case, I'd have been outta there faster than bacteria when the anti-biotics showed up (lol!). And with the current hosting, you can believe I did due-diligence to death before I even thought about making a decision (which is why I'm gladly an affiliate with them now).

 

which plan were you on when you were using them?

the point i was making, was not specific nor limited to the host you were with, but in broad terms applies to all hosts in this region. nor do i know about who you are affiliated with. I dont take any plans from any host that provides any unlimited plan.

Regarding some of your chats with them, it might very well be that they cannot afford to hire skilled technicians. One of my techs that is on call for me for whenever i need him is from the US, is very highly skilled, and charges $50 per hour. Theres no way a budget host would have that sort of money. I very much doubt that anyone from m2host is cpanel certified, but i did not come here to specifically attack them, but at any rate I have said everything I came to say.

 

It's a funny thing, that, Matt 62, you come on with these sweeping generalities applied to a situation that you weren't in, and then, when called on it, attempt to back-pedal away. From your reference to my assertions (which I have bothered to chronicle blow-by-blow), it shows that you've read what I've detailed (in living color), but attempt to downplay it in a calculatedly dismissive manner. It's all well and good to cite your experiences in this field, but your OPINION will still not replace the FACTS of the situation for me. And the quotation of your ANECDOTAL experiences are neither applicable to the discussion at hand nor indicative of the emotional toll taken on those whose fiduciary resources are limited by WILLFULLY ignorant negligence. I'm glad you want to add something to the conversation, but you'll not be minimizing the negative impact these excuses for service providers have had on me and others. The funniest thing about your non-argument is that it's indicative of the sorry state of affairs that honest, industrious people find themselves in time and again, because those with low moral fiber decide that they have enough wiggle room to set up shop, provide inferior services, and then skip off having supplied neither value nor their contractual obligations. If you REALLY want to be engaging about this, you'll void the "business-as-usual" smarminess. This is why consumer protectionist laws exist - to give recourse to people who find themselves, through no fault of their own, in situations that over and over, victimize them by picking their pockets. This is NOT the simple, "I bought a bad product/service, booooo on me. I should've been smarter". Please go back and READ the chronicling I've provided. When I have to repeatedly make a point that I have PREVIOUSLY emphasized, that's what raises the specter of willfully ignorant negligence IN - MY- EXPERIENCE.

 

lol what? when was I called in? I said everything i came to say. And no, this is not your thread. What makes you think you are so high and mighty that i came to this thread specifically to talk to you? Do you really think that highly of yourself? Do you really demand that everyone that posts in this thread has to read your 100 page rant of m2host before they have your permission to reply to this thread?

You still have not mentioned what plan you were on. but let me make it clear. It does not really matter. It is still a budget host, paying 50cents extra (or whatever it was) still makes it a budget service.

ok, my opinion is that with a cheap unlimited host you can expect poor service. the FACTS you speak of, is that you personally had poor service with a cheap unlimited host.
Please explain how my opinion is wrong when your facts prove my opinion?

Exactly, but why are these people not in prison? i am sick of every week hosts vanishing with peoples money. I think that all people who have been ripped off should do something about it. Take them to court, and hold them responsible for their actions. If we all did this, it would rid the industry of the scammers.

i agree, i feel like i have to repeatedly make a point that i have PREVIOUSLY emphasized, and that is that you should avoid budget unlimited hosts.

 

OK, Matt 62,

What in the name of all LOGIC are you referencing with that statement? I didn't bother to create the article deliniating what my experiences were to hold accountable a scaborously scammy host who stole time/money from me with their WILLFULLY - IGNORANT - NEGLIGENCE? Since you put yourself out there as the telepathic expert on what I have on my mind, let me pose this question to you; if I bother to assemble GRAPHIC evidence of the state of services that I happen to have been paying for at the time, offering a way for the host to login and check things from MY perspective (even though it SHOULDN'T be necessary), wouldn't you opine that it comes down to non-provision of services (leading back to my allegation of willfully ignorant negligence)? MY response was to recreate that scenario blow-by-blow so that there'd be no doubt as to where I stood in that situation.

I NEVER approached them as an budget unlimited host, and, in fact, I opted to pay for a package two levels above THAT to save myself the trouble (since it IS my experience that you get what you pay for). You're assuming that I hadn't considered any other factor BESIDES price - SHOW ME where I made this statement.

AGAIN, you're positing the assumption that my motivations were based SOLELY ON PRICE. And, am I not free to factor in PRICE as just one parameter of my search for a suitable home for my enterprise? You quote me the fact that you retain a US-based tech working at the price of $50 USD, while you conveniently assume that I know nothing of how the hosting industry works. FOR A FACT, I KNOW this is a ROCKBOTTOM price, being from NYC with SEVEN friends and associates who found their way to that industry, and who DON'T EVEN CONSIDER a job unless it's offering $350 or better - per hour. If I'm promised a level of service based on what a company advertises, you can BELIEVE I'm going to factor in price as one of facets of whether I accept their deal or not.

Again, there's that telepathic fail. SHOW ME where I referred to you as being "called in". I CLEARLY stated that I'd "called you ON" an assumption. I'm making points based on MY SITUATION with this scaborously scammy host, which I bothered to have all facts in place BEFORE the article was written. And the more we talk, the more I'm convinced that you didn't even bother examining the text of my argument (it just looked like one hundred pages). It's not "High and Mighty" to assume a posture of outrage and indignation after having been robbed of time and money. My intentions in this were to spare at least one person the heartache by relating my experiences. I don't expect that someone is going to stop what they're doing JUST to read my "rant". And, NO, this is not my thread, but what I take umbrage at is your smirky attitude when it comes to the experiences of those populating it. You ever had something stolen from you? Then you'd be just as rip-shite as the rest of us! And, if you'd said EVERYTHING, then why are you here trying to minimize my experiences? You accuse me of being price-driven, then you bandy them about ($1, $50, $0.50).

Yes, I effin' do, Matt 62, enough that I won't lay down and just take the screwing. Growing up, I was always told that you get EXACTLY what you accept. I refuse to let them get away, scott-free, after having suffered the crap that I bothered to put into glorious color. And (mostly) everyone here in this thread has the nasty-taste-in-mouth that comes from having been dealt with in such a low-brow fashion.

 

whatever drugs you are on, you need to double the dosage as you are completely and utterly lost. your rants do not even make sense anymore you are not worth my time replying to.

FACT, i was not talking to you when i came to this thread. And i did NOT read your crappy website prior to posting on this thread.

here is what i said,

and your response to what i said

sweetie, you have a real attitude problem

 

I'm not yer friggin' sweetie, Matt 62, and, just so you know,

And - YES - I DO have an attitude - your problem, not mine. I'm not going to stand to be jerked around - AT ALL, for ANY amount of time and money. PLEASE, by all means, call it as you see it, and I'll agree to disagree. Your volley....

 

I dont know what is worse, the fact that you continually misquote me, or the fact that you failed to understand anything i said.

the fact that you still think that i came to this thread and posted on this thread to talk to you, shows your level of intelligence.
Go and seek professional help.

 

You're talking to me right now. Who needs professional help - not I (lol!).

 

Guys, Guys. Cool it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion whether it's based on facts or pure fantasy. However, Matt_62, your arguments don't hold water. I don't host at Softlayer, but I can bet they aren't using SSDs or 15K SAS drives for backup - why would you need that kind of disk performance for backup? To even suggest that show a certain amount of naivety. Also, why would a company like Hostgator pay for a backup service rather than run their own?

We run our own backup servers and it costs nothing like $1 per GB for backup. I can build a 24 drive backup server with over 70TB of backup for around $6000. We're using SATA drives because they are what make sense when it comes to backup - big GB for little money. We run some with hardware RAID and newer ones as JBOD using Windows Storage Server to manage the storage space. When it comes to backup, it's all about spindles, not the native speed of each drive (SATA are more than fast enough). It's about being able to segregate backups from different areas/servers onto different groups of spindles to maximize and maintain disk I/O since backup read/writes are heavy on disk I/O. We offer backup to our clients for nothing (well built in to the price, but a genuine service with no additional charges).

Since your title was initially about unlimited, then I have to disagree with you again. With SANs diskspace is the absolute least of our worries. We can supply more diskspace than a customer could EVER use up. When diskspace is limited to the physical disks on a server then there are ultimately limits, but with SANS the idea of providing as much diskspace as a customer needs is a reality. Same when it comes to data transfer. Bandwidth is now so cheap that we don't even bother about it most of the time.

Would I be happy is a single customer user 30TB of diskspace? No, but no customer ever will. What it they need 40GB - well that's just fine. We'll look at really heavy user to see what's going on but we rarely have issues with customer usage. Some customers might end up with 100GB of diskspace but that's rare for it to be legitimate usage and it hardly happens. We'll look at it, but if there's nothing untoward then mostly we don't mind. They may be using more than they are strictly paying for but hosting is about numbers and averages. The vast majority of very small resource users are paying for those that use more than average - is that fair? Not for me to say but most services operate the same way. As long as our total resource reserves are within the limits we expect, then we don't micro-manage our services.

We're not totally "free for all" because we are strict about customers using more than their share of CPU resources, RAM, and disk I/O but that's because they are largely limited parameters where overuse can adversely affect others. The total amount of diskspace used and data transferred (to an extent) isn't directly related to these other figures and since we have LOTS of these resource available then we don't bother about usage too much.

We're not an "unlimited" hosting company - and that's in the strictest sense. We don't even offer things like unlimited email accounts that other people seem to think are acceptable yet they moan about unlimited disk space. So, we're not a supporter of "unlimited" because people aren't really being sold what they think they are, but in terms of whether providing enough of something that a customer will never run out or reach a limit is possible, then of course it is possible. And that is "unlimited" no matter how you look at it.

 

thanks for the reply. I actually appreciate the depth you went into your reply.

I admit, this thread is written a little haphazard, (partly as it was written in another thread in response to people continually getting screwed on unlimited hosting, and has since been split from the original thread where it was first posted). However, I think you misunderstood what I was saying in regards to HDD. In no way was I referring to using SSD for backup space. I meant you have backup costs which is one thing in itself (in your case, its low), and then you also have storage space for your webhosting (which would be ssd, or whatever)

You know, your company might be doing the right thing, but the vast majority of unlimited hosts you see running around on forums are pretty much doing pump'n'dumps -> if you are dropping $6k on hardware for backup storage, then you are NOT in this category.

 

matt_62, you're possibly (probably) correct about many unlimited hosts who are likely to be reseller of larger companies and who have no real control on how services are provisioned or supplied, and where "unlimited" or even genuine backups are possibly a fiction. However, larger companies like Hostgator are more than likely going to have their own backup system.

At a cost of $1 per GB that sort of pricing would be unsustainable for a large company yet maybe more than reasonable for a shared hosting company or possibly even a reseller. The problem is that buyers of hosting services don't have an easy way to discriminate between hosting companies with their own large infrastructure, those with one or two servers/vps, and those that are resellers with no hardware and an investment of a few bucks per month to run their company (We started out with a reseller account so I can't say they are all bad).

The web is a great leveller in that respect where small companies can compete head-on with large ones, but it doesn't make it easy for buyers. Since there is no way to really discriminate between companies, then who can blame people for thinking $1 per month for unlimited everything is nothing but a massive bargain being offered by a company with great cost control compared to others. They don't know that the service being offered by cowboy company A is different from that being offered by company B who is a massive host with great service, uptime, and facilities. The web hosting industry is less regulated and controlled than the wild west was. That's both a good and bad thing but it does attract its share of crooks, charlatans, and idiots, and I can't see that changing any time soon. The "unlimited is bad" naysayers are largely preaching to the converted, but this message isn't reaching the much (MUCH) larger crowd who don't know any better, who don't read AUP's or Terms, or who simply don't care and only see the price being offered. Until that changes the unlimited providers are going to have a selling advantage over those who do limit their resources but provide great services. There's also the fact that much of the unlimited part of the offer (diskspace and bandwidth/transfer) can almost be unlimited at very little cost to the supplier where large number of customers are involved and that is going to continue to be easier to sustain rather than more difficult over time.

 

If you're getting unlimited traffic, in the sense, then you've probably got the cash for a few dedicated servers, with any website. Otherwise, it's not unlimited.