The hosting industry has started to take a down fall in regards to trends of providing large amounts of space and bandwidth for next to nothing.
I can find hosts that will provide you with a 200 GB of space for less then $20 a month. They claim to sign-up 1000′s of customers a day and no doubt I am sure they do.
So do customers feel that hosting is only about space and bandwidth?
I assure you our service is more then a server which provides space and bandwidth. Here is a few services we do:
- Pay for qualified staff to monitor all support requests 24/7.
- Provide control panels for our customers that make it easier for them to manage their sites.
- Spend hours of time updating, troubleshooting and monitoring services to keep the servers online.
- Build a large knowledge base, forum and blog to help customers.Â
As you can see all of these things are services which I am sure why most of our customers are staying with us.
The hosting industry in my opinion is a service industry. What do you think?
Matt
August 4, 2007 11:25 pm
For me, I don’t think hosting is all about space and bandwidth. It’s also about the quality and reliability of the service, the support an the features. As long as I’m getting a reasonable amount of space and bandwidth that fits my needs, then I don’t care about how much space and bandwidth I’m suppossedly getting. I don’t need 500GBs of space and 2TBs of bandwidth, that’s just overkill, and overkill I don’t want to pay for.
Dr. Cossack
August 5, 2007 10:10 am
I honestly can’t believe that web hosts who offer, as Matt said, 500 GB of space and 2 TB of bandwidth can be anywhere as reliable as what companies similar to BlueFur can offer. As such, I’d rather select a company which offers realistic hosting packages over one that obviously oversells to death. Reliability is very important to me.
Matt
August 5, 2007 5:09 pm
Most are overselling, yes, but it is technically possible to actually offer that much space, if you use clustering. But, most hosts who aren’t advertising clustering and give you insane amounts of space, they’re most likely overselling.
blogadmin
August 5, 2007 5:54 pm
I know some control panels it is not physically possible to provide the space advertised.
Linus
August 6, 2007 10:07 am
Hosting is about way more than just price, space and bandwidth. I tried a couple of other companies before I found Blue Fur, and they were cheaper (way cheaper in one case). However, I couldn’t count on them being there when I needed them. I know all hosts will have some downtime (it’s inevitable with computer technology being how it is) but one of the companies I tried was down for a week with no explanations and no apologies. Blue Fur has been quick to help the odd time I’ve had a problem and has never blamed the problem on me, even when it was clearly my fault. The reliability and customer service keep me with Blue Fur.