webmaster hosting wishlist

democrates

What things do webmasters who develop and support sites for their customers want from a hosting provider? I'm hoping if we discuss our needs here that providers might make our dreams a reality.

One area I think they need to work on is the relationship with developers who bring them customers. Every provider I spoke to tried to push their reseller package and encouraged me to masquerade as a hosting provider by putting my own branding on. I find that ludicrous. In fairness once I insisted on my way no-one was turning down business. I think channel partners not using reseller packages but simply providing a setup service to customers should be better catered for.

For me a key wish is to get away from packaging. Why should my customers and I pay for more than we need? I'd prefer a granular usage-based billing arrangement, billed per Mb of transfer and per MB of disk space used per month. I'm guessing that for this to be feasible the provider would need to go through some hoops in order to dynamically allocate these resources efficiently, and maybe the technology isn't there yet (leaving aside say an IBM mainframe using vm which would jack up the end price defeating the purpose).

Overall I've a feelgood factor wich hosting, bang per buck keeps going up.
What would others in the business like to see?

steve-hosting36

From the hosting side, I'd be very interested in this discussion. We've just put a dedicated Channel Manager in place and are working on new channel-focused toys and strategies, so the timing is great

Figment

I am looking for an easy system to set up an account for a customer and then transfer all details and controls over to that customer when the project is finished. Its a bit of a messy process at the moment.

democrates

I've just discovered both blacknight and 365hosting selling windows hosting cheaper than linux. How can that be?

mneylon

We've got Microsoft SPLA licensing agreements

democrates

Obviously MS are incentivising more effectively than say the Red Hat Hosting program. I must say it caught my eye because it looked very fishy and reminded me of one of ms's past misdeeds : strongarming pc vendors.

Put that on my wishlist as well, Linux hosting cheaper than ms hosting

steve-hosting36

Basically, MS are offering 'promotion' and 'marketing' in return for a Windows biased special offer for shared hosting.

PixelTrawler

Its only a small niggle for me but hosting companies charge a certain amount amount for a package for a year ( and the prices can be very good in my opinion for what you get. Theres some very competitive pricing out there). Or you can pay by the month but works out dearer.

This is annoying. I want the package but i have a very tight budget so it suits me to pay by the month but I am penalised for doing so. It can be 20% extra to pay monthly for the same product.

An example ive seen: ( dont want to name the company )
Monthly payment
Only €20

Annual payment
Only €200

I can understand the strategy behind this, get people to pay up front, and its not just the hosting industry that does it but its one change id love to see...

steve-hosting36

The problem is basically that of discounting - pay more in advance and you get a discount.

democrates

That's standard practice in fairness, annual gives the hosting provider better cashflow, the money generates greater roi as it is invested in the business sooner, and there's less billing/credit control etc overhead involved. Hence I offer my customers similar billing cycle differentials.

It's good to have the monthly option for customers with tight cashflow requirements.

HelterSkelter

I'd like a cheaper basic package that just includes storage, monthly transfer & eMail. There then should be the option to add on the extra features you want, like mySQL databases, ASP.NET, PHP, etc. I find I don't use many of the features that come with the current packages.

steve-hosting36

Cheaper than € 3.75 a month?

HelterSkelter

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Cheaper than € 3.75 a month?

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I am currently on a package that comes with 2 mySQL databases. In the future I might need an extra one but that means moving to a package that has 5 but is a lot more expensive. It would be better if the user can choose a basic base package and pick and choose what they need. Similar to the add-ons mobile phone providers offer.

democrates

I've seen another take on resellers, you sign up, and get a discount on packages you resell from the entire portfolio (and for which you become the billing contact). It would be a good alternative to reseller packages which are in fairness a good way of outsourcing the small fry to resellers who are already managing all those relationships anyway.

Now how about...
If a headline 'thrifter' package is created for say (mad guess), €20 a year, 20MB disc, 200MB transfer, ssi, php, 2 email accounts, you get the picture, fully automated setup, but support calls (how do I... etc) via a premium rate number. Webmail, antivirus, spam filtering and other products can be upsold (using the right encouragement) as people progress through the order process.

In any event the better the user forum and knowledgebase the lower the inbound call traffic, and thereby costs. Crucially the content for the knowledgebase should be continually updated by people who take support calls and know what current customer issues are, even if someone else takes their problem=>solution articles and publishes them to the kb.

From my dealings so far, lots of micro-enterprises express an interest in having a website, but find it too expensive (and yet they've sky sports at home!). I can alter my initial work and support service to match what they're willing to pay. In time I'll get my cost per job further down through code-reuse, but content pre-production is always going to be labour-intensive.

I can rationalise most prospects past initial fees, it's the total per year thereafter that often leads to the end of the conversation. I appreciate that below a certain level it's not worth the effort, you'd make a better living if you spent that time delivering pizzas.

Ziycon

less moving around, for example:

If your on a certain package with the hosting company and you decide to upgrade or downgrade, a lot of hosting companies will get you to upload your whole site again due to your hosting moving onto another server!

It just very annoying if your clients want there site changed to use certain functionality or they want to get rid of some functionality and pay less.

steve-hosting36

Hi Ziycon,

On our platform , at least, you can upgrade and downgrade to your hearts content, as long as you dont change operating system, you will never have to upload your site or manually intervene in any way.

PixelTrawler

democrates wrote:

That's standard practice in fairness,

as i said i understand why, i just find it irritating.... almost enough to make me want to look around for a company that doesnt do it

maybe they all do it...?

steve-hosting36

They all do...

dahamsta

It's not just a standard practice in the hosting industry, it's standard practice in any non-monopolistic (i.e. not An Post) industry. The more you buy, the cheaper you get it. It's just economics, a fact of life.

mneylon

We all do it. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't do it

PixelTrawler

well theres a suggestion for a new marketing ploy for ye instead of offering the same as everyone else...

want to differentiate yourselves a little? might make the difference in getting a few customers... and you need every advantage in a competitive and fairly crowded market ( Blacknight theres one reason... )

Ken Shabby - you are not buying more with a hosting package to get a discount, you using a different payment method for the same thing and getting it cheaper ( and I know others do it - insurance companies for instance ) - although i guess we are splitting hairs here:)

steve-hosting36

Prepaying a longer period / buying more, generally results in a discount of some type. Are you asking for the same discounted price, but then spread again over a 12 month period (for example)?

PixelTrawler

thats what im hinting at...

except there wouldnt be a discounted price as such so dont think about it that way - you could market yourself as the only company that doesnt discriminate against people wanting to pay monthly

you have a common price - split monthly or pay at once.

some businesses will continue to pay yearly for the convienence - i dont think you will lose business ( this is the risk of course i guess ) over it and might get new customers

i see the problem for existing businesses though
i guess for you though since you are already established you would have to offer what is a discounted price to monthly users and then yearly people may complain they no longer are getting a discount so i guess you are stuck in a pricing structure - so it would be a trade off on the business you might damage with what you might pick up....

anyway ive probably taken this thread far away form the OPs intention ...
( think im fighting a losing battle on this one anyway... )

steve-hosting36

Well, we offer annual payments as 10x the monthly (so 3.95 a month is 39.95 a year) - it's a healthy discount and not something we could roll back on. And besides, 40 euro a year for hosting is not something most people balk at

jjmax

The other point of view is that I (and probably most people) expect to pay less when buying in bulk.

Bob the Builder

As was discussed at the beginning of this thread, about overdone on features. I currently have 5000 E-Mail addresses to give away to 40 club members.
I had a perfect package but I realised that I had 2 mySQL d/bases, every fantastico application uses mySQL(whats da point?) then i had to upgrade to the Companies Power Plan
I am 13yrs old and have been a web designer(leisure) for 7months.

I cant wait until I see the day when people are able to build cheap packages using their own needs for themselves whre I can choose not to be paying for 5000emails when all i need is 200-Max

Does anyone wanna back me up or say that I am being too choosy?

Only for I am a rookie designer, I would (or shud) hav went to Bluehost.com

I would get the same features on BlueHost for $3 cheaper, as it is i pay 4 useless features $9.95 month

steve-hosting36

Hosts packager huge amounts of things that cost less to provide - bandwidth, webspace, email accounts, are relatively cheap. Databases are not as cheap and are restricted more.

TimTim

nevf wrote:

I had a perfect package but I realised that I had 2 mySQL d/bases, every fantastico application uses mySQL(whats da point?) then i had to upgrade to the Companies Power Plan
I am 13yrs old and have been a web designer(leisure) for 7months.

Don't be so lazy and install stuff manually then. Use the same database for everything and just use a prefix when installing stuff into the database.

My first host I used only gave me 1 SQL database and it worked for me.