Category Archives: Web Hosting
Which Clustered Hosting Solution is right for me?
With the amount of platforms we offer, it is often difficult for the average consumer to know which platform is best for their needs. Obviously alot of customers will be specifically looking for certain platforms for various reasons specific to their requirements. However, for those that require a little extra guidance, I thought it would be useful to provide a quick breakdown of all the various platforms in order to help our current and potential clients make the right decisions for their requirements. Before I begin, it is important to note that every platform comes with access to email services (POP3 and SMTP) as well as Full DNS control, access to 1 or more Data Base platforms as well as Control Panel access to manage the day to day activities of your account. It is also important to note that it does not matter what operating system you are using on your home or work computer. Your home or work computer will utilize a browser to call requests to our servers (or others you may be visiting while browsing the web) and it will not care what operating system is running on the server. What is most important when choosing a platform is what language your website will be or is written in.
Overselling – The Scared Cow of the Web Hosting Industry
| Overselling in the web hosting industry as been discussed exhaustively on company blogs, on forums/Bulletin Boards, in newsletters, etc… What really concerns me about these discussions is the lack of any consolidated information and the overall mis-information that is being distributed. Essentially, overselling is selling more of something then can actually be provided. Overselling is not unique to the web hosting industry and is readily practiced in several industries (ie telephone/cell phone providers, ISP’s, Airlines, Car Rentals, etc) |
Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that overselling on its own in the web hosting industry is not necessarily a bad thing (regardless of my personal opinions which are clearly set against this business model), IF, like in any other industry, it is managed properly, executed with enough underlying business intelligence to deliver the advertised services reliably and most importantly isn’t presented in a manner which is specifically designed to mislead and confuse the consumer. To oversell or not to oversell is a matter of preference for the provider and should be based on what sort of service a provider is trying to market and what sort of clients they are trying to attract – ie) the economics of the specific provider should determine how they manage their infrastructure and their resources. If a provider is targetting the general consumer market, responsible overselling can be a tool used to lower price points while only seeing a small statistical increase in the probability for issues in their given environment (however, they will certainly also limit their end users ability to burst and will be more stringent with regards to CPU utilization and will probably force upgrades to much more expensive, dedicated environments before otherwise might be required)
