Member Opinion

This is really a question to see how the community stands on something. If I were to offer unmetered hosting, unlimited features etc etc for $5 monthly, who would be interested in purchasing it? I'm considering opening a host and I want to get a general opinion.

I guess my question as a "customer" would be how would you offer unmetered everything for 5 bucks a month? Sounds like a fly-by-night-reseller which I use to use when I first turned 18 Do some research, find out if starting a business is really the right thing for you. And if you are going to approach it, personally I'd lean away from the unmetered part, sell other benefits and features that might make you stand out in a different fashion.

I don't put any trust into a host that offers up unmetered disk space. That's just asking to get abused by warez and anything else that's more than likely illegal.

Will2, where are you planning on buying unlimited hard drives?

Some would say that the word "unlimited" in web hosting has been nothing more than a marketing ploy. I would agree with that, except that I would add that while there are many ways you can market a web hosting company, choosing a dishonest road by luring unsuspecting customers who do not know the difference into something that is clearly a lie, is not something I would recommend any startup.

Why do you feel like offering "unlimited" hosting for 5 bucks would make you stand out? If you are asking about the price point, then you are not going to stand out as there are PLENTY of other operators who offer absolutely the same for the same price, or even less that. The real difference, the real and only significant difference between most web hosting firms is customer service and technical support. This is how you stand out today. Offer second to none support to your clients and it wouldn't matter to them that the disk space they receive is limited in size or not.

Artashes, he used the term "unmetered" versus "unlimited" in terms of the 'hosting' (which I'm guessing he implied disk space and/or bandwidth.) It makes a huge difference there.

Never been a fan of Unmetered myself (unless I'm working on some high traffic sites that are perfectly fine with 1MB or 10MB unmetered connections (sometimes good for a file download service).

As a customer, and as our customers have told us, there's is a much higher preference for a 1Gbit connection to a pipeline and 4TB of bandwidth usage instead of 4TB cap (unmetered throughput) and being limited to 1mbps or 10mbps. Would you rather a door that is 50 feet wide so you can get 200 people into your store and back out again (you have enough checkers etc), or would you rather a 3 foot wide door with 200 people waiting outside and a constant line of people? That's pretty much how the pipeline into the server is going to work.

Unmetered has it's advantages but when it comes to hosting people would much rather see a real limit imposed.

Originally Posted by Jordan Artashes, he used the term "unmetered" versus "unlimited" in terms of the 'hosting' (which I'm guessing he implied disk space and/or bandwidth.) It makes a huge difference there.

Haven't seen "unmetered" disk space for sale, nor true unmetered bandwidth either. Everything has a cap.

Originally Posted by Artashes Haven't seen "unmetered" disk space for sale, nor true unmetered bandwidth either. Everything has a cap.

I've seen the term unmetered used just as much as unlimited. I'm quite certain I know there are literal limits, I'm just stating that there's a difference between claiming "unlimited" and unmetered. Of course unmetered (or unlimited) is never just that, ToS/AUP will always have a snag in there to prevent you from sucking 'em dry.

This is really a question to see how the community stands on something. If I were to offer unmetered hosting, unlimited features etc etc for $5 monthly, who would be interested in purchasing it? I'm considering opening a host and I want to get a general opinion.

I've been involved with numerous online service industries for 15 years, and web hosting has been a large portion of my experience. I would strongly encourage you to avoid the gimmick of offering unlimited anything. At the end of the day, less than 2% of your customers will ever come near using the industry's standard allocated limits. To be honest, the vast majority really do not care what the limits are, so long as you're able to offer reliability and great customer service. So raise your price and lower your limits. It may sound crazy, but you'll attain a quality client base and higher revenue. If the majority of other web hosts used this approach, the industry wouldn't be filled with overnight crap web hosts that one has to sift through. Start off on the right foot, otherwise it's probably not worth starting.

Originally Posted by Will2 This is really a question to see how the community stands on something. If I were to offer unmetered hosting, unlimited features etc etc for $5 monthly, who would be interested in purchasing it? I'm considering opening a host and I want to get a general opinion.

To be honest, currently I am also using a shared hosting server with unlimited bandwidth, disk space, numbers of domain to host, etc. I purchased the hosting package for $4 a month.