| HOME | FREE IMAGES | DIGITAL CAMERAS | WEB HOSTING | COMPUTER MEMORY | LINK DIRECTORY | SITE MAP | DESIGN ARTICLES |
|
|
 |
If you have a web site, or are considering a web site, you will most likely find yourself looking for a web host to deliver that site to the Internet. We offer the following information in hopes of accomplishing two things:
Don't Be Fooled: More May Actually Be Less!Much the same as an airline will overbook the available seating; many web hosts oversell the amount of disk space actually available on their server(s). The concept behind this technique is that not all of the web sites will use the amount of disk space that had been purchased which in turn makes more disk space available for the host to resell to others.Until recently this method has proved to be a successful one for both the site owner, by lowering their costs, and the host, by raising their revenues. Recently however, the competitive nature of web hosts, along with the demand for more resources by site owners, has forced a large number of hosts into what many consider to be deceptive marketing schemes to survive. Sadly, just as an overbooked airline may leave a traveler stranded and hurrying to find a new flight, site owners are left scrambling to find a new host because their current host has terminated their account. In an effort to offer "Bigger and Cheaper" services than their competition, web hosts have found ways to advertise unrealistic amounts of disk space while preventing the site owner from actually being able to utilize even a fraction of what they thought they had purchased. This is accomplished by implementing a number of restrictions that usually are not explained before the sale. To the site owner's dismay, as the host advertises larger package allowances the web site owner actually receives less and becomes more restricted! What types of restrictions are we talking about?
But how does one determine if a web host's space offering is an honest one?
The same equation with a number of other hosts is often shocking. It is not uncommon to find a host with:
"Experienced site owners realize hard drives have limits and know what restrictions to watch out for. It is the newer site owner that is often enticed by the competition's marketing scheme," said Bob Johnson, IT Service Manager for FutureQuest, Inc. "I'm just glad we held onto our ethics. I'd rather lose a few potential customers because of the competitor's hidden restrictions, than to have to explain to our current site owners why they can't use what they thought they were paying for!" I thought hosts stopped doing this when bandwidth overselling was exposed? Unrealistic amounts of bandwidth are still advertised as well. However due to consumer awareness, the majority of web hosting companies have discontinued the selling of "unlimited bandwidth". Unfortunately many hosts still turn a blind eye to the problem and continue to feed on the uneducated web site owner. Bandwidth was the first resource to experience the same problems that have been described above for disk space. It seems that as the consumer became more difficult to deceive with bandwidth, hosts simply shifted the deception to disk space. Consumers can see that hard drive prices have gone down at their local computer store and hosts are able to use that as a means of solidifying their new ability to provide more disk space with each package. It's important to note however that hosts should be using a higher quality hard drive (which costs more) and that hard drives of all varieties still do not come with an unlimited amount of capacity (though it would be nice). Choosing a web host shouldn't be this complicated! No it shouldn't, but until consumers stand up against these types of deceptive marketing techniques by educating themselves and holding the hosts accountable for their advertised offers, it will continue to be problematic. And it will get worse. The good news is that there are plenty of host directories, informative articles, and communities filled with other site owners willing to share their knowledge, freely available on the Internet. The following links will help simplify the process of searching for a web host that is right for you and your web site. After researching many web-hosting providers, the choice became obvious to is that we needed to choose We've tried other hosts, though honestly only four others. We even tried another one after being totally satisfied at FutureQuest, hoping to get cheaper database access and to spread our hosting out "just in case". What a nightmare. We are officially no longer looking for a better or cheaper host. It is not worth the hassle. If you 've never hosted with Future Quest, you don't know what service really is!
For more information on hosting with
|
Also on our site:
Coming soon: Review of free counters and site trackers, setting up forms to email, scripts to search your site, and more Stay tuned! | ||
       
|