Question about potential web hosting.

[Jumpy09]

I am not personally looking for web hosting, I am just simply tired of Hosting Companies spitting out "Unlimited" like they actually mean it.  Technically it should be considered "Unmetered", but even then it is just simply false advertisement.

 

So I decided to do a TON of research, pricing, and realized relatively quickly why hosting companies actually oversell their servers.  While most of them claim to not "Overcrowd", that still doesn't mean they are not overselling.  One company only has about 600GB of space on a server and through various comparisons of the server price, I came to the conclusion they would have to oversell that space by 360% to make enough profit to snag another server when one gets full.  The server they had could run 360% oversell, but who is to say they don't oversell by a lot higher percentages?

 

Basically I wanted to start a hosting company that doesn't oversell and the package you pay for is guaranteed allotment of Space and Bandwidth resources.  If everyone maxed out their specific package, the entire server wouldn't catch on fire nor really effect any other account.

 

My question is would you pay $3.49 for 1 GB Space and 20 GB Bandwidth?  For each 1GB space extra would come with 20GB Bandwidth extra, multiply the amount of GB by $3.50 and take off $.05 for subsequent packages.  As you can tell even though the price looks kind of small, as you need more bandwidth allocated you would end up feeling the weight difference in your wallet.

 

I decided on the following specifications for servers:

 

Processors: 4 x AMD Oct-Core ( 8 ) Opteron 6128 at 2.0GHz

Memory: 64GB DDR3 SDRAM

Primary Hard Drive: 2 x 256GB SSD Drives in RAID 1 Configuration

Secondary Hard Drive: 6 x 600 GB SAS Drives ( 15,000 RPM ) in RAID 10 Configuration

Back Up Drive: 2 x 2TB SATA Drives ( 7,200 RPM ) in RAID 1 Configuration

Operating System: CentOD 5 64-Bit w/ CloudLinux

Control Panel: cPanel / WHM

Bandwidht: Unmetered Port - 100 Mbit/s

Extras: Lightspeed Web Server, R1Soft Continuous Data Protection® 3.0, Fantastico or Softaculous, and some others I will eventually find.

 

I would be running Lightspeed PHP which is similar to FastCGI from what I can tell, Also offers suEXEC which is similar to suPHP.

 

Through CloudLinux I would set a maximum usage of 50% of a Single CPU Core, plus a maximum of 1024 MB of Memory per hosted package.  Since there are 32 Cores and 64GB of Memory, that higher amount allotted for maximum use should be perfectly fine.  That is my initial considered limitation, I have not personally worked with CloudLinux, but if it is possible to alter Limitations per Package the larger packages would receive higher limitations.

 

I would not have any iNode Limits, if you wanted to use the space as a personal computer back up, or possibly a File Sharing site, that would be perfectly allowed.  The only discrimination is against anything with an Illegal, Fraudulent, or Immoral purpose.  Porn Sites would not be permitted!  Sorry guys.

 

So I have come here, a website with people who know what  I am talking about when I say "4-Socket Motherboard", to ask if anyone would pay $3.49 for a package with 1GB of Space and 20GB of Bandwidth Allocated to that package.  2 GB of Space and 40GB of Bandwidth would be $6.95 and so forth.

 

No overselling!  The total allocated bandwidth per month to the server would be how everything was based.  Reducing the Bottleneck by placing the OS on a SSD Drive, plus all accounts on 15,000 RPM SAS Drives, would enhance performance.  The server would have more cores and memory than any other hosting company I have been able to find, and may honestly be overkill.

 

But with so many cheap options out there, is it even worth attempting to start up this Web Hosting Business just because I am tired of overcrowded or oversold servers with companies who have ridiculously acceptable performance standards?  CPU Power, Memory Resources, and Hard Drive Space can be scaled in any way imaginable, but the primary bottleneck to any Web Hosting Company is shoving way too many websites on a single 100 Mbit/s connection.  Yeah they may claim Unlimited or Unmetered, but a 100 Mbit/s connection only allows for so much Data Transfer per month.

 

So would you pay the price to be guaranteed what you are allocated on a server which may in fact be overkill?  ::  OR  :: Would you pay the cheaper price from some company that gives you all the information you need to prove they actually oversell / overcrowd, even when they claim they don't, on a server, while capable, may not be acceptable to handle higher spikes of traffic for all those websites hosted?

 

Thank you.  I ask nicely to be gentle: I'm well aware the prices are redonkulous, but I figured I would give it a shot and ask the community what they thought.

 

P.S. No the company is not active, the servers are not purchased, and I am not advertising for my potential Web Hosting business.  I am doing Market Research on the other hand and would appreciate both sides of the "HOLY CRAP" or "THAT'S GREAT" fence.  Debating is excellent, but this will most likely help hammer the final nails in the coffin of another one of my mentally unstable ideas.

 

P.S.S. If I can nail some Advertisements I would be starting this out as a Free Webhosting Community which you would post to host.  Largest package would be 1GB Space, 10GB Bandwidth for 100 Posts per month.  There are 4 packages in the Free Hosted portion, so if you didn't need the resources of the Paid Packages, you can get the Free one.

 

Kindest Regards,

Jumpy09

[premiso]

The real kick is going to be bandwidth, but given you are only allocated 1 GB of space, I dunno if that would matter, but for a high density site, neither the space or bandwidth would suffice.

 

Personally I would rather pay $15/year for a 128M VPS with 20GB of space and 500GB of bandwidth, for something that your server would accommodate and have full root access, choose my own OS and yea, have full control. However, I am sure some people wouldn't mind the specs and would want maybe a CDN server. But really, there are VPS servers out there, that cost about the same and give you quite a bit more flexability etc.

 

Just my 2 cents. 

[Philip]

But really, there are VPS servers out there, that cost about the same and give you quite a bit more flexability etc.

 

I agree with premiso. I like having choice over what I can do with my server.

[AyKay47]

I personally use a VPS for the moment.. it really depends on the volume of traffic that you expect and how knowledgeable you are with server configurations.. VPS and dedicated servers offer many more configuration options and flexibility, root access to the server etc., while shared hosting is much cheaper and are good for starting out, but you are constricted to the default server settings for the most part..

[Jumpy09]

Yes, I agree that VPS Servers are primarily the way to go when it comes to having more control.  For the most part though, someone hosting a website wouldn't exactly need access to the root or have any need to have anything other than the default server settings.

 

I do suppose, using HostGator as an example, if you wanted to use the APC Caching Module for PHP you couldn't because they use suPHP.  They do offer the option to choose on VPS and Dedicated, so you would have more potential to do so.

 

Premiso, did you mean $15 / year or month?  If you have a VPS with those specs for a year, I suppose you are doing pretty good.

 

If we take VPS into account, a typical 24GB Server can break down into 192 - 128 MB VPS Servers.  That gives you dedicated Memory, but they would still end up selling 96TB out of 32TB if on a 100 Mbit/s connection.  They are still overselling their bandwidth limitation which still puts your website at a bottleneck if all of those VPS Packages try to take full advantage of their allocated bandwidth.

 

I do suppose that not everyone actually uses all the space nor bandwidth they are given, which is why most Hosting Companies choose to oversell those resources and then move people around if needed.  But if your site ends up taking forever to load, most of the time I don't see the CPU or Memory actually playing a factor.

 

Yes you may get root access, but is your VPS really any better than shared hosting at that point?  If they broke it down and gave dedicated Mbit/s from the connection, then it wouldn't be as bad.

 

Honestly my VPS Packages would end up being incredibly expensive, just about enough to get a Dedicated Server with.  Although the allocated CPU / Memory for them are comparable with Dedicated Servers, but I feel that most income generated would be at the lowest level instead of the higher levels.

 

AyKay47:  This is considering the fact that people wouldn't have the money to actually pay for a Dedicated Server, some higher level VPSs would also be excluded.  I am simply suggesting entry level packages, where VPS and Dedicated Servers are not particularly needed.

 

 

I had the thought cross my mind to skip Reseller all together and just offer a larger variety of VPS Servers, but if the $3.95 price for 1GB / 20GB is too high, I really don't see anyone aiming to pay for the more expensive VPS Servers.

 

I have another idea!  How much would you feel comfortable paying per 1 GB Space / 20 GB Bandwidth if you knew the server was being oversold?  If you wanted a 25GB / 500GB Package it would be 25x as much as the 1GB Space / 20GB Bandwidth package.

 

I suppose it doesn't matter if the server is oversold or not as long as packages are rearrange properly to ensure stability in case of some users taking full advantage of their bandwidth allocation.  I still don't think it is right, nor practical as you still have a per minute / per second limit on how much data you can actually transfer on the connection.

 

I'll await more responses, maybe someone out there would see why the price increase would be worth it.

[premiso]

Premiso, did you mean $15 / year or month?  If you have a VPS with those specs for a year, I suppose you are doing pretty good.

 

$15/Year.  BuyVM, I actually have 6 128's for various items.

[AyKay47]

care to share a link where you found this premiso? wouldn't mind looking at this.

[Adam]

http://buyvm.net/

[AyKay47]

thank you Adam.. have not looked at this site yet.. honestly this looks too good to be true..

[premiso]

honestly this looks too good to be true..

 

It is...but luckily it is true. Been with them since March and after a move from HE to Coresite in July, still going strong, 61 days uptime.  I have a WP Blog hosted on one (not much traffic to it). One for a VPN, one for a development box, then I have some bigger boxes that host my major sites and my backup data which goes to CrashPlan automatically.

 

So yea, they offer a great service and I am very pleased with all of my BuyVM Boxes

[AyKay47]

so it looks to me like you can purchase an OpenVZ plan.. then upgrade that plan with either a KVM or storage plan.. is that correct?

[Jumpy09]

I am glad you guys decided to use this thread to talk off-topic about the cheap VPS Plan.  I would ask if you could move it to Private Messages as it is off-topic and no where near related to the question I asked.

 

Personally I do not see how they could offer 128MB at $15 / year unless they are paying an incredibly low price for their server / colocation.  There is no possible way to charge $1.25 a month and make any type of profit without figuring out a way to circumvent it.

 

Let's take a 4 GB Server and divide that by 128 MB per package.  That is 32 Packages at $1.25 per month racking in a whopping $40 per month.  Even if they have a relatively low grade server, they can't realistically have a high end connection to that server.  10 Mbit/s possibly, but it doesn't matter what Data Center you go with, or if you end up having your own, you cannot realistically make money guaranteeing at those prices.

 

A comparable server would cost $369+ per month and co-location would cost around $200 for a 10 Mbit/s connection.  Either way it is ridiculous to even consider that kind of packaging unless you are just trying to offset some costs on servers you are using, but not utilizing the full capacity of.  Either way they would need a 50 Mbit/s connection to dish out 32 Packages with 500 GB / month.  For each 4GB Memory they would need another 50 Mbit/s, which for the price is just ridiculous.  There has to be something serious going on behind the curtains for that to be realistically plausible.

 

Look the question was simple, would you pay a higher price for hosting to know you were ACTUALLY dedicated the allotment you were given?  Not "IF" it comes down to it you would be moved to another server just to allow for you to obtain what you were promised.  Granted the majority of websites may not utilize more than 3.375 GB of Space and 20 GB of Bandwidth, which that space obtained would be using the average size of a file x 250,000 iNodes.

 

So how bout I throw another question:  Would you pay $5.95 / month for Unmetered Bandwidth and a 250,000 iNode Limit for Shared Hosting?  The only way VPS Prices can be lowered is if the Servers were purchased by the company offering it and they Colocated.  The price per month would be drastically lower, so VPS Prices wouldn't need to be as high to offer decently priced VPS Packages.  But either way I wouldn't be starting VPS Packages anytime soon, I am just trying to do some Market Research to see whether or not my conceptual pricing structure would potentially be successful.

 

It would either come down to Guaranteed Allocation where the bandwidth was used as the Primary target in package allocation at $3.49 for a 1 GB Space / 20 GB Bandwidth, or $5.95 for a 250,000 iNode Limit and Unmetered Bandwidth.  Prices would be per month, scaling out at 5% off for 3 months, 10% off for 6 months, and 15% off for a year.

 

So could you either take the BuyVM.net talk into Private Messages, or just leave my Thread alone?  I'm not trying to compare packages to other companies, I am simply trying to see if anyone at all in this world would actually pay the extra price to guarantee themselves against overselling / overcrowding on servers that honestly would be too powerful for what they would need to be used for.

 

Thank you though AyKay47 for the observation that it may be too good to be true, I strongly feel that as well.  I'm not quite sure how the allocation of those resources would be plausible on a full scale operation.

 

Kindest Regards,

Jumpy09

[premiso]

I am glad you guys decided to use this thread to talk off-topic about the cheap VPS Plan.

 

No problem. All in all I was just explaining WHY I would not use your service. Simple as that. And yes that VPS Provider is true, as I am a customer with them and my sites on the 128M's work great. 

 

So yea, maybe a bit off topic, however, the origin of it pertained to the topic at hand. No I would not pay that much for it. Why, because I know of a provider that offers me more for way less. Comparing your setup to theirs those is Apples to Oranges. You offer far less space, and bandwidth, but potentially better Website access without it being bogged down. I get that and you do not offer a VPS type solution, it is more of a "managed hosting". Where as that VPS is unmanaged, which reduces the costs significantly. So for the average user, that might be a good deal.

 

However, I am not an average user, and I would not buy into a hosting plan like that. My 2 cents on it.

 

Done and done.

[salathe]

Jumpy09, please don't get all upset because someone points out an alternative service in your "market research" thread that is "not advertising for my potential Web Hosting business".  Discussions and alternative business plans (or lack thereof) are an interesting topic, and since you're conducting market research it should be invaluable to you to hear that such services exist, people are using them and people are happy with them.

 

Back to your topic, since I took the time to read your sprawling posts, no I would likely not use such a service.  The limits, price, resource allotment seem completely arbitrary (though I'm going to assume you've put a lot of thought into it), and quite frankly those other services which may offer more, or be cheaper, serve me just fine.  You're trying to compete in a very, very tough market by reducing your selling points — there is only so far you can stretch to "hey, but we don't oversell" angle.

 

P.S. Please do not put on the moderator hat and ask for discussions to remain in-your-favour. Also, please take a minute to refamiliarise yourself with Rule 14.

[The Little Guy]

I like my host (See signature (get a discount)).

 

They are fast and reliable, and for $15 extra dollars you get a vps, and they don't monitor your bandwidth/space (Number Apache requests are monitored on shared servers).

 

I am currently using 12GB of space and 115GB of bandwidth (for this month). I have not noticed any downtime.

[Jumpy09]

Salathe, I am not getting upset nor am I putting on this "invisible" Moderator Hat to try to push the discussion in my favor.  I'm not sure if you noticed but I did ask Premiso whether it was $15 / year or $15 / month.  I do feel the mentioning of it was valid, but the continuation of discussing BuyVM.net was in fact off-topic and I suggested that they take it to Private Messages.  I did not suggest they were breaking rules, nor act in any way that would make me appear to act as a moderator.  If you feel this way, I do apologize, but I am very confident that I don't need to familiarize myself with Rule 14.

 

I had come here with the understanding that people would in fact not pay the higher price for lower resources even if the back-end performance could be better due to not overselling nor overcrowding.  I'm not sure why you believe that the price, resource allotment, or limits are arbitrary, because it is a very valid point to any web hosting package.  You want to get the most for your money and personally I would pay for a lower allotment of resources to be given some form of assurance that the other few hundred people I shared a server with wasn't going to adversely affect my website.  Not to mention I wouldn't really be very happy if my website ended up spiking in traffic and instead of me being able to know when I would be nearing the end of my bandwidth allocation, I just get dropped like yesterdays trash for abusing their "Unlimited" plan.  I do understand that other people may not feel the same way, but my attempt was to see if anyone actually would.

 

Premiso, I do appreciate the link to the cheap vps package as it did in fact prove valuable to Market Research.  I apologize to anyone who may have thought I was getting upset, but I was just pointing out the obvious point that the discussion was getting off-topic and suggested it to be taken to Private Messages.  I am however disappointed that an Admin of a Forum, who clearly sees that off-topic chat is occurring, chooses to take a stand against the OP instead, regardless if I had in fact pushed the limits of breaking Rule 14.

 

Salathe, I appreciate your insight that you believe I am reducing my selling points.  I do thank you for making it clear that people don't quite notice a lot when it comes to the back-end of a server, such as the Web Server, or the Operating System used.  The shear fact that most hosting companies only host on 12GB or 24GB Memory servers, I mentioned 64 GB Memory, and it was also not seen as a very strong selling point.

 

I do believe that sums up my Market Research all in one post.  No one cares about allotment, server specs, or anything else for that matter.  As long as the cheap package they pay for is able to work in a semi-stable environment, it doesn't really matter if a company overcrowds or oversells. 

 

No I am still not upset, I do not quite see how you could make a Behavioral Observation based on text and text alone.  I don't think any of my words were done in uppercase nor did I use a lot of exclamation points.  As I said I clearly stated the blatant observation it was getting off-topic, and made the suggestion they move it to Private Messages so that this Thread doesn't end up completely bloated with non-related information.

 

I do apologize for yet another sprawled out post, I tend to have a good deal to say and want to make sure I convey everything I need to.  Also I do understand if you want to put on your Admin Hat and take action against the words I have decided to write, even if done in such a way you may actually think I was retaliating against you.

 

---

 

To everyone else,  I do understand you all use Virtual Private Servers and that you may not be an Average or Typical user of Web Hosting Services.  The discussion was relatively targeted to if you were to use a Shared Hosting Package.  Would anything I said have made any real difference to the decision to purchase web hosting on a shared environment?  Typically most advanced users have been around the block quite a few times and have settled into their favorite hosting company, dedicated server, collocation, or may even have paid for a much larger Internet Connection and purchased their own servers to manage.  Seeing as you are more advanced users of Web Hosting, why would you even contemplate moving from a VPS to a Shared Hosting Package anyway?  The shear mentioning of Shared Hosting should have you crawling in your skin, because since you are on a VPS you have a quite stable hosting service already.  The object of this thread was to see what people would think about Lightweight Virtual Environments where you get the Performance of a VPS in a Shared Hosting application.  In my example a simple 1GB Space / 20GB Bandwidth would be able to utilize up to 1.0GHz of the CPU Power, and burst to 1GB of Memory without adversely affecting other users.  I do understand the price consideration is a bit ridiculous and no matter how I try to do allocation, the price is still considerably high.

 

I do have alternative business plans for methods I could utilize to still get into the Web Hosting Business and since no one would pay a higher price for lower resources for a service that could run more effectively, I have decided to go with plan B.  Thank you all very much for your invaluable insight, it was very very helpful to my Market Research and I'm glad that my thread could help other people potentially find a nice VPS system.

 

P.S. Salathe, I would like to report someone for spamming.  I'm not 100% sure if that is considered spamming in your would, but in the unlikely case that it is, could you possibly do something about it?  In my personal opinion, not trying to act like a member of the staff, I feel that it would be a violation of Rule 5 under Forum Rules.  In fact the rule itself states: "Advertising and Spam are not allowed and is under a zero-tolerance ban/removal from PHP Freaks Forums."  So now I am even more disappointed that I was the primary concern of your post and not the inadvertent advertisement of the cheap VPS Package.  I do know you intentionally pointed out that I stated I was not "Advertising" for my "Potential" business which doesn't even "Exist" currently, but I'm not quite sure why.

 

P.S.S. Salathe, I do apologize for not sending you a PM regarding what was written in P.S.  I feel that since you would be coming back, you may notice what was mentioned.  However I don't personally feel that it would make any real difference if I PM'd someone about it or not, I'm sure you would understand why.

 

Kindest Regards,

Jumpy09

[AyKay47]

this thread I feel is now a bit humorous.. invisible hats!! 

[Adam]

I just read your post, and it is far too long to even remember, but I will say I do websites / web software for people beyond work, and I generally set them up with a cheap shared host- simply because it fits the need. You can get them cheap, and in these kind of situations you don't generally need much more from it beyond the basic PHP/MySQL set-up. If you have a highly demanded service, or one that requires any kind of server configuration, then really that's the point you move to a virtual / dedicated server.

 

To cut to the chase, shared hosts aren't for websites with any substantial requirements. That's why hosting companies get away with unlimited/unmetered claims, because no one with such a demanded service will ever use a shared host.