Wow, it has been a busy couple of weeks with the new baby in the Muise house-hold. I have not had much time to formulate ideas for new posts or let a lone to put my ideas down into somewhat comprehensible sentences. Today I read a post at The Webhosting Show that triggered a topic I wanted to also touch upon, to add my thoughts on this practice of hosting companies that are promising the world for a very low price, but not having the ability to actually provide it (or support it).

The webhosting business is an industry that has been infiltrated by the masses. Competition is stiff. Not only are prices dropping for hosting services, but the costs of going into the hosting business is next to non-existant. As is the technical expertise required to get into the business. Anyone can go to someone like ResellerPanel.com and become a hosting company for free. Yes FREE!. But the thing is having the ability to resell hosting and being a good hosting company are two separate things. As a customer looking for hosting you run the risk that your hosting company of choice is nothing more than a young teenager running his own business from his parent’s basement looking to make cash rather than build a stable business. Selling services at bargain prices with huge storage and bandwidth hoping to get as many customers as possible and cash out, leaving you in the dark.

Unfortunately in the industry this practice is not just taken by the teenager in the basement analogy. Some “legitimate”, want to be in business, folk also take this route. There are countless companies out there who offer excessive storage and bandwidth for very low costs. How do they do it? Well its like this, most of their users will never ever reach anywhere near the amounts being sold. So the hosting company is never really tested. Now these companies are not necessarily bad companies to do business with. Some may be stable, that should be made clear. The issue I have with these companies though is the ones that seem to come and go tend to fall apart as a result of two things. One being that their user base is growing far too fast and they have no clue or resources to manage them. Two being that these companies who are all about selling low also tend to be also about cramming as many customers on one server as possible to save a penny, degrading quality and stability.

So beware if you are using a company or looking at using a company that seems to offer excessive specs for low costs. Research the company, ask them questions direct, browse user forums. They are, whether they like it or not, a part of a larger tier of the industry that also includes fly-by-night operators, you can’t be too cautious.

And something that always makes me weary is when storage or bandwidth is sold as “UNLIMITED”…. Really, unlimited??? Sure.