Getting What You Pay for from your Website Host

If you are looking for an inexpensive hosting solution, then make sure it is not one that promises you the world.

If a hosting company is offering everything and the kitchen sink for a few dollars a month, then something has to give. Every company has to earn a profit, therefore the cost of doing business must be less than what you pay for it. So the less you pay, the less you will get.

To meet margins, companies buy cheap servers, generally just average desktops without the advanced features or upgraded components of commercial servers. The cost difference between a basic desktop at about $200 and a 1u rackmount server with a single scsi drive at $3000 is too big to ignore.

If company A is spending $200 and splitting the server into 50 $10 accounts, the hardware cost is paid for in the first month. Basically, that hardware cost is insignificant in the overall cost of doing business.

Now company B spent $3000 and divided the server into 50 account at $10 each and it takes six months before the cost of the server is paid. But that is not the case since the cost of hosting is not based on hardware. There is a cost for system administration, space and bandwidth. A $10 hosting account would only yeild maybe $3-$5 in net after regular expenses. So paying off the server will take 12 to 18 months while the company runs at $0 profit.

Company A on the other hand has earned $4500 in profit while company B has earned nothing in the same time.

How is this possible? It isn't.

Company B has to make money and can't function for free and they can't invest in $3000 servers with no profit. So they have to charge more to make the same amount. If they raise they price to $20 they can afford to lease new machines and pay their employees.

How does this affect hosting?

Simple, you get what you pay for. There is no majick in website hosting. The more a company spends on services the more they have to charge. So if you are paying a few dollars a month, you are getting what you pay for.

If company B can't get $20 for their service then they can just host 100 accounts on their server and accomplish the same thing. But now you have a better server with twice as many people competeing for resources putting company B's service on par with the budget company A.

With shared hosting you just can't win. You don't have control of the server you are on or who else in on the server. You have a hundred or more people that have access to your website data and compete with your website for the system resources.

The companies need to make money so they try to maximize useage and add extra users to idle machines then all servers are running under constant load. That means there are no spare resources if you get traffic spikes and they turn off your website for using too many resources right when you actually get customers to it.

What a mess. All because of competition for price point. Everyone is too cheap to pay for quality they just want quantity. That pushes the quality down the drain and makes all the available shared hosting solutions just too unreliable to use.

It is getting to the point that if you run business depending on your website you need your own server and staff to mange it. But that is extemely expensive.

What is the best solution for the small business that can't afford a dedicated server and system administrator?

In comes pageBuzz.com with new technology and new thinking. By running enterpise class server clusters where all websites are hosted on one giant super computer costing well over $200,000.00, sites can be offered extensive system resources at any given moment.

The advanced technology is a closed system, so websites run all the same programming. No individual can install software that would compromise security or system performance.

Of course this severly limits what you can do. The e-commerce shopping cart can only manage 2500 items, so stores with a need for more items are out of luck. You can install your own programs, so if you have special needs, you need another host.

But for the average business, the options meet thier needs. With no system resource limits or automatic shutdowns for over useage the small business owner can sleep at night knowing that their website will stay open.

pageBuzz also runs redudant clustering so all websites are backed up every few minutes making sure that all your hard work and customer data is always available even if a server crashes. This is a sharp contrast to hosting companies that delete your pages and databases because they feel you used too much.

pageBuzz manages the size of website by limiting pages, quantities and programs. They run systems similar to companies like ebay or walmart use to manage millions of visitors an hour but rather than hosting one website they host thousands.

Anyone that uses ebay knows the difference between the performance of their website under massive user loads and a shared hosting account which is up sometimes and constantly slow most of the time.

So why would't every company do this and have good performance for everyone?

Its not what everyone wants and most companies don't have a few hundred thousand dollars to invest in hardware. Most companies don't want to limit what a client can do, they want the user to have access to the server directly to install software and run programs.

But what good are they if they don't work or the site gets shut down because too many people went to it.

The fact is, that there is a solution for everyone. But you have to realize that you get what you pay for. A system like pageBuzz costs the same but offers less features with better performance and prgramming.

If you buy shared hosting, you need to be prepared for the worst case scenario. If you run a blog or a family website, its a great fit for you. But if you run a business, you need to choose a platform that will keep you in business.

If your website is shut down or just unreachable, don't say you were not warned.