TOP 10 Bonehead moves for hosts

[tresfun]

Hi all, what do you think are the top 10 bonehead moves that have been done by web hosting companies or within the IT space in the last 2 years?

Keeping in general I think that everybody competing for the low cost market has been stupid. It can't go anywhere and it the profits keep getting worse for the hosts.

Another one would have to be the whole unlimited bandwidth guarantees with the fine print extra charges (a la pagecreators) -

so

1. low cost price war
2. unlimited bandwidth
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???
6. ???
7. ???
8. ???
9. ???
10. ???

[Real1]

You can add 100% uptime gurantee and unlimted disk space to your list.

[administrator]

I love when they steal their own clients credit card numbers

[monster]

(I know this is in the shared hosting area, but this is a big one!) Charging exorbitant amounts for administering colo servers in the event that the person who owns the server can't make it out to the server

[vortech]

How about the "UNLIMITED" every thing hosts. Those really suck and hurt the market and the customers they suck in.

[InetDedicated]

Originally Posted by tresfun

Hi all, what do you think are the top 10 bonehead moves that have been done by web hosting companies or within the IT space in the last 2 years?

Keeping in general I think that everybody competing for the low cost market has been stupid. It can't go anywhere and it the profits keep getting worse for the hosts.

Another one would have to be the whole unlimited bandwidth guarantees with the fine print extra charges (a la pagecreators) -

so

1. low cost price war
2. unlimited bandwidth
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???
6. ???
7. ???
8. ???
9. ???
10. ???

1. low cost price war - 3.95 hosting, where is your profit???
2. unlimited bandwidth (impossible)
3. unprofessioanl layouts
4. outdated software
5. resellers claiming to offer dedicated servers (Be true)
6. non toll free numbers
7. connectivity lies (Company: Our servers run on oc192, Customer: Where is the datacenter located and can i schedule a tour. Company: No we can't do that)
8. Unlimited services - (oh you offer unlimited MySQL databases huh? Let me create 50 on an account that i pay 7.95 a month for and see how your server load likes that
9. resellers offering 99.9% uptime - HOW?????
10. online support ONLY - yeah ok

The list can go on and on

[Eerk]

Stop kicking the unlmited everything hosts. Some of us are honest business people who run very affordable hosting solutions.

I find hosting companies who charge more then $10 a month to be the dishonest. Just because 1 hosting provider burned you don't stereo type all of them!

If you believe in the adage in you get what you pay for I'll gladly charge you $50/mo for hosting =D

[Ken]

As for unlimited hosts, if they make sure that their clients will not use too much of something before accepting them, it should be fine. As for stupid web host practices, there's a forum for that: www.freewebspace.net/forums

[craigh]

Originally Posted by bluedoorhouse

Well, my server has unlimited bandwidth... if it's impossible please tell me.

It's not quite impossible but financial wise and other considerations a lot of hosts shouldn't go down that road because bandwidth, in the end, no matter what -- does cost money somewhere. From the backbone provider(s) or from the network connectivity and routing issues that must occur when so much bandwidth is being eatten up by a single server. It's all about cost when it comes down to it and if you can offer "unlimited."

[wptech]

Originally Posted by Eerk

Stop kicking the unlmited everything hosts. Some of us are honest business people who run very affordable hosting solutions.

I find hosting companies who charge more then $10 a month to be the dishonest. Just because 1 hosting provider burned you don't stereo type all of them!

If you believe in the adage in you get what you pay for I'll gladly charge you $50/mo for hosting =D

Yes, "unlimited" is a dangerous word in our business. I would prefer to use the word "unmetered" and only use it in a dedicated server sale, Not shared. I think most people here who have small to medium sized hosting companies would agree it's not safe to use the word "unlimited". It's not that I've been burned in the past it's that I don't want my clients to get burned and I don't want my company to go out of business.