looking for shared web hosting

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On Sunday 10 December 2006 12:20, Kevin Cozens wrote:
> Michael Hong wrote:
> > Thanks, that does look interesting.  I had a look at dothost.ca
> > and abacus.ca - they look like reputable hosts but their prices
> > are a bit higher than some others I'm looking at.
>
> One host I ran across which looks interesting is Canadian Web
> Hosting (http://www.canadianwebhosting.com/). They charge $4Cdn per
> month (including taxes!) for a 24 month plan. This gives you 500Meg
> storage, and 10 databases.
>
> I am thinking of using them. I only want to move my current web
> site to a better host than where my site is currently hosted (my
> original ISP). They offer more than I need. They seem to charge a
> bit more for your own domain name but that wouldn't be a problem
> for me. I don't plan on using a domain name. I wouldn't even know
> what domain name I would want to use. The only downside I see is
> adding ~username to the end of their default domain name makes for
> a rather long root URL.

Another downside is that if things don't work out with this company, 
URLs to your content will change, again, when you move elsewhere. Why 
not just register your own name, kevincozens.com, or something along 
those lines? Your name is not likely to ever change.

> Does anyone know anything about this host (or similarly priced
> Canadian ones)?

You should be asking, "How can a hosting company turn a profit by 
charging $4/month (including taxes)?" Are they working on the dotcom 
model of losing money on every customer but making it up on volume? 
Are they throwing you and 1000 others on a machine that would 
otherwise end up in a dumpster? If you've paid for two years up 
front, assuming they even manage to stay in business until the end of 
your contract, what assurances do you have that they will provide any 
sort of support to you should the need arise? One support incident 
can easily burn through $100. The self-service (or no support) model 
only works as long as you don't encounter a situation which is beyond 
your control and doesn't require intervention by the hosting company. 
Sysadmin time (even if you're outsourcing to India), electrical 
power, bandwidth, hardware, and ancillary equipment all cost money. 
What separates good hosting companies from the also-rans is how well 
they deal with situations when things go wrong and how much 
preventative maintenance they do.

By the way, my company provides hosting services but it's not a retail 
operation. In other words, we don't chase commodity hosting business, 
at least certainly not for $4/month. I know people in the commodity 
hosting business. They're not making any money on commodity hosting 
and are either getting out of it or trying to move to more 
specialized hosting where one can still make money. A friend who is 
in the commodity hosting business decided to roll the dice last year 
and tried to get really big in a hurry. (It hasn't worked so far.) He 
has invested thousands on software to automate billing and 
provisioning in the hopes that he can get his costs down and drop his 
prices to compete with the silly $4/month hosters. He was telling me 
that before he did that, it was costing him more to generate invoices 
and chasing slow or non-paying customers than he was charging, 
clearly an unsustainable business model. Since he has done that, he 
still hasn't been making any money because everyone else is trying to 
do the same thing. He used to generate quite a bit of business by 
taking out ads on such sites as whir.com but he's finding that he has 
to spend more money in advertising to generate fewer leads than 
before.

This isn't a "think of the poor hosters" plea so much as a "think like 
a businessperson" plea so that you can decide if it is in your best 
interest to go with a seemingly cheap offer or not.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

+1 416-410-3326
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