TRICKS OF THE TRADE Value
Hosting
Australia has undertaken a lot of research and
investigation into the hosting industry, here in
Australia and overseas. We pride ourselves with an
upstanding and honest approach to potential customers
without giving misleading or deceptive information.
This
page is to inform you of the tricks and scams that some
hosting companies execute to entice potential customers
to sign up. These tricks are more prominent in overseas
companies, rather than in Australia, but you should
still be aware when choosing who to host your website
with.
Traffic
Allowance Don't
fall for it! One of the biggest marketing ploys to
entice you to sign up is the 'traffic allowance'. This
is the amount of data that visitors download from your
webpage. Scam
#1: In the Terms and Conditions - "Traffic
allowance does not include images, audio/video files or
any pages other than .html"
This
is ridiculous. All webpages include images and graphics,
with some displaying flash with audio and video files.
With this policy, you would be charged for visitors
downloading any image from your website. The only thing
that would be free in your traffic allowance is the
.html file that is transferred.
eg.
Lets say your .html file is 10k and you have 30k of
images for one page. If you receive 50 visitors per day
to this one page, your daily traffic would be 2Mb total,
but only 0.5Mb is a part of your free allowance.
If the dodgy hosting company charges 20c per megabyte
over the allowance, you would be hit with a bill for an
extra $9 per month. That's an extra $108 per year that
you SHOULD NOT be paying.
Scam
#2: Some hosting companies blatantly over-inflate
your traffic usage just to get a few more dollars from
you. Scam
#3: There have been reports lately that a company in
the US created a program that downloads your entire
website 2 or 3 times per day just to increase your
traffic usage. According to your statistics it would
simply look like you have extra visitors, when in
reality, it is your hosting company scamming you.
Scam
#4: Be VERY wary of web hosts offering unlimited or enormous amounts of traffic! Every host
around the world pays for the traffic entering and exiting their servers, and
therefore must pass on these costs to the customer. When hosts offer unlimited
traffic, please read the fine print which would state (if they bother at all)
that traffic is unlimited until you reach a certain point. If your site
becomes too popular, they will simply cut you off because you are costing them
too much money in the bandwidth your site uses compared to how much you pay them
each month. Space Scam
#1: It's
becoming common practice for hosting companies to offer
huge amounts of space, knowing quite well that either:
1) You will not use all the space anyway,
2) You are only allowed to use the space for personal
reasons, and not for businesses,
3) You can only upload webpage files and images. No mp3,
zip files, or any form of backups.
After
taking your money and you spend time uploading your
website and files, the hosting company emails to tell
you that your account will be disabled immediately for
breaching the policies. Sorry, no refunds either!
Scam
#2: OK, this gets a bit technical. For example,
'Dodgy Hosting' says you have 50Mb of space.
Conventional binary numbers state that in 1 Kilobyte is
1024 bytes*.
So for a conventional 50Mb, this should be 50 Megabytes
x 1024 = 51,200,000. This is 51.2 Megabytes.
'Dodgy Hosting' would screw you by giving you a clear 50
Megabytes. That's 1.2 Megabytes missing.
OK,
it's not that much, but when 'Dodgy Hosting' have 1000
customers, they're saving themselves 1.2 Gigabytes (1200
Megabytes) of space by screwing you!
*Binary
theory: There are only two values a computer can store
information in, 1's and 0's. Binary theory states that
there are 1024 bytes in 1 kilobyte, or 2^10 (2 to the
power of 10).
Unlimited
'This and That'
Don't
be fooled! Having some unlimited features is always
good, but always be suspicious if the hosting
company claims 'unlimited traffic allowance' or
'unlimited space'. These are ploys to lock you in, if
not being downright deceitful. Have
you ever heard of a computer hard disk with unlimited space? Wow, the
manufacturers would be billionaires! It is logical and obvious that no web host
will really let you use Gigabytes and Gigabytes of hard disk space.
And
bandwidth/traffic costs money. There is certainly no such thing as a free lunch
when it comes to bandwidth. Offering unlimited bandwidth or enormous amounts for no charge is highly
unlikely, since the web host would be charged for the bandwidth they use. Check
the Terms & Conditions, since 'unlimited' might in fact be 'unlimited until
you reach 1Gb' - technically not unlimited at all!
Uptime
/ Downtime Of course
server uptime is extremely important. No-one wants their website and emails
offline, even just for a few minutes. But be very very cautious of dodgy web
hosts blatantly lying about having 100% uptime, or even 99.999%.
If
your web host truly has 100% uptime, that means they have never upgraded their
server software, security and probably don't have many customers (thereby
questioning the viability of the business itself).
One
also has to allow for datacentre system and network upgrades, which may result
in null connectivity for short periods of time each year. With so many links in
the chain, realistically a budget web host could not achieve 100% uptime over a
6 month period.
Please note that close to or even 100% uptime can
theoretically be achieved with mirrored co-location servers at multiple data centres, all being synchronised
together. This is a very complex and expensive arrangement, which is typically
well beyond normal resources
of your average budget web host.
If
your web host claims 99.999% uptime, that means the server has
still gone offline for about 5 minutes per year. To restart the average server
after an upgrade of any software will take 1 to 2 minutes minimum. Some upgrades
also require the server to be offline, so software upgrade time could be 5 - 30
minutes plus reboot time.
You would hope that your web host is maintaining their server and applying
security updates several times a year. This would account for several server
reboots every year, even with nothing wrong.
Uptime
is usually a gimmick. We fully acknowledge that these statistics are important,
but as a customer you should be aware of some realism behind these claims.
99.999% uptime is a gimmick. An average uptime of 99.85 - 99.9% is very good and shows that your web host is
maintaining their servers and applying security patches/updates as required.
Free
Hosting or Space On 'A Friends Server'
The
old cliché 'you get what you pay for' is absolutely correct in the hosting
industry. What is the motivation of a web hosting business to maintain
their servers and ensure security and reliability if you give them no money?
Servers and networks cost a lot of money, not only to setup and install, but
also to maintain on an ongoing basis. The attitude of a lot of 'free'
webhosters is that if a server crashes, there is no rush or time priority to
fix the server. Why should they stress over a server that costs them money,
but doesn't bring money into the business? Your website could be down for
days, or as we've heard many times before, sometimes weeks leading into months!
If
you are offered free hosting on 'a friends server', you should be extremely
weary! Is this friend a professional web host or is it a hobby? Are they, or
do they have server administrators to maintain the server? Have they been in
the hosting industry for at least a few years? Do they offer technical
support? What would happen if their server crashed?
If you plan to host your business website on a friends server to save a couple
of dollars per month, you may want to consider the above questions.
Why
Not Use The Webspace Provided by My ISP (Internet Service Provider)?
This
one is easy to answer. In most cases, your Internet Service Provider's core
business is Internet access via dialup, cable, adsl etc. Their main technical
expertise is limited to Internet access. This is very different and seperate
from web hosting. Web
hosting requires specialist knowledge, technically advanced equipment,
redundant networks and requires fulltime dedication to maintaining servers.
Most ISPs only offer webspace as an 'added incentive' but the webspace is very
limiting. Usually, you cant use any scripting such as cgi, php or databases.
Usually, you cannot attach your own domain name to the webspace. If you have
technical problems with your website, commonly your ISP doesn't care to help,
since this is not a part of their core business.
Web
hosting is a specialist field. Why trust your business or personal website to
someone who doesn't specialise in the field? It's comparable to traveling in a
hot air balloon compared to a jet airplane - we're the airplane :).
Customer
Support This
is very important and when deciding who to host with,
this should be a factor that is just as important as the
amount of space or email accounts you have.
You
will need to read the fine print or email the hosting
company. If they don't respond within 24 hours, you
should move on. It is inevitable that you will require
some assistance and having access to fast support is
very important. Make sure they don't just provide
support during 1pm and 3pm on a Friday.
Make sure you have other means of support available to
you such as phone, instant messaging, forums etc.
Some
companies will just leave you out to dry. They have your
money, so they don't care anymore.
Costs
- Setup fees & Renewal fees. Everyone
is looking for a bargain, but when something looks too good to be true, it
usually is! A more recent dodgy trick has been to offer customers a very cheap
signup fee. Customers assume that this fee is the monthly cost, but when the
next month comes around, they get hit with a much higher renewal fee. Always
check for the signup and renewal costs! Make sure it is clearly stated.
Some
companies use the poor excuse of inflation to increase their prices. These
companies automatically increase their hosting fees by a certain percentage each
year on the grounds of inflation. Check the Terms and Conditions (if they bother to
mention it!). Then
there are setup fees. This isn't exactly a trick, but it's more about milking
you for more money. Some hosting companies charge you to setup your account on
top of the monthly/yearly charges. We think this a pretty low act so we do not
have setup fees on our hosting accounts. We believe setting up your account is
all apart of our business procedures and the customer should not be hit with
fees to compensate us. The
Good People at Value
Hosting
Australia
We
hope you have been enlightened to some of the tricks and
scams. Here at Value
Hosting
Australia, we pride
ourselves on earning an honest living. After all, we
don't want to be sued or abused by disgruntled
customers! Before choosing to host with any web hosting
company, we urge you to do your research.
Here
are some links to articles related to these scams. Some
company names are mentioned in the articles, so beware
of them while surfing the net:
Class Action suite against CI Host
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