Renewal Time: The Quandry of the Mini-Quandry


CharlesM

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To quote Tony Baird's blog posting of June 25th, 2008, "First of all the title was just to catch every ones attention."

 

I'm not really in a quandry, but web hosting renewal time is almost upon me, once again. Keeping an intermittent eye on how much web hosting resources that my web sites use, I am debating whether to just do a standard renewal of the current service level that I have, an upgrade of service levels, or a changing of web hosts.

 

The latter of the three isn't a consideration that's prompting me for inclusion into this list based upon any particular consternation or lingering dissatisfaction. Rather, I visited an old site that I used to frequent, a long while back - WebHostingTalk.com. There, I happened upon the following posting:

 

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=8366b79bddbb1f5094ed930683d6bbc5&t=1307877

 

Specifically, this is what caught my eye: Unlimited Bandwidth

 

In a recent forum posting here in these HawkHost forms, Cody responded to a forum user asking about the change to unlimited bandwidth.

 

As recently as September 26th, 2013, Brian, in response to a forum user's question about buying extra disk space, responded, "In most cases it ends up being cheaper upgrading your entire account and getting the additional bandwidth than just doing a disk only upgrade."

 

So, since Ton's WebHostingTalk forum posting in question was dated September 27th, 2013, only one day after Brian's response to that forum user asking about buying additional disk space, it would seem to me that unlimited bandwdth will render that part of the web hosting equation moot, with disk space once again taking on renewed importance as a web hosting consideration for webmasters such as myself.

 

Cpanel currently shows my disk space usage in the orange, at 1,992.37 / 3,000 MB. Hence, why I have an interest in disk space issues, at this particular moment in time.

 

When I click on the Service Status link in Cpanel, my web hosting account seems to be all green, except for Swap Used, which is red and listed at 99.99 %.

 

ACK!! That can't be good, and the worst part of it is that I don't know what it really refers to, or how I should proceed, in order to fix it, so that it might return to green, as well.

 

But, that's likely a different matter, albeit an important one to me, having now become aware of it. Having no desire to be a server resource hog, it will likely stick in my draw, for those of you who know what a craw is.

 

All these many years, web hosts galore, including many wise men of web hosting, have schooled into my brain that unlimited bandwidth is a bad thing. Now, I am aware that FrogHost, a HawkHost subsidiary of sorts, utilizes the unlimited bandwidth selling point. But, then again, neither the FrogHost blog nor the FrogHost forum links seem to work, this morning, when I clicked on them. Why do I find this to not be reassuring?

 

I want to better understand the decision by HawkHost to embrace unlimited bandwidth, in light of the fact that HawkHost not offering unlimited bandwidth nor unlimited disk space factored into my decision to go with HawkHost as a web host, initially, a few years back. I am familiar with Brian's recent blog posting on the subject of unlimited bandwidth, titled, "Unlimited Bandwidth For Everybody! – Shared Web Hosting & Semi-Dedicated Web Hosting," dated the same date as Tony's recent WebHostingTalk.com posting that I referenced, above.

 

Is the decision driven by reality, or by marketing ploys?

 

Has technology and infrastructure progressed the point in the year 2013 (that's the present, for those of you not paying attention to life as it passes you by) where disk space is seemingly king, once more, in web hosting considerations for webmasters?

 

I know that many factors are important. What I don't fully comprehend, after having read through the various postings that I have cited, is the "why" behind the decision for HawkHost to embrace unlimited bandwidth in its shared web hosting plans.

 

Can somebody on the nest side of things enlighten me? Not trying to ruffle any feathers. I just want to understand the underlying reasoning behind the change.

 

Separately from that, it was nice to visit the WebHostingTalk forum, again - though I really don't feel much in the mood to invest vast quantities of time there, again, anytime soon.

 

Thanks in advance for any response!

 

- Charles -

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When I click on the Service Status link in Cpanel, my web hosting account seems to be all green, except for Swap Used, which is red and listed at 99.99 %.


This is on the server itself, not your account specifically, and is also not something you need to think twice about. It's something that the most recent version of the OS we use (CloudLinux) tracks but due to how our servers are configured it has absolutely zero impact on anything.

But, then again, neither the FrogHost blog nor the FrogHost forum links seem to work, this morning, when I clicked on them. Why do I find this to not be reassuring?


That decision was made based on utilization. The Frog Host forums were rarely (if ever) posted on, same with the blog. Most news that applies to Frog Host was also relevant to HawK Host so we made the decision to redirect them to Hawk Host. Right now the redirects aren't working fully due to internal infrastructue maintenance but they'll be back soon.

Is the decision driven by reality, or by marketing ploys?


100% reality. Tony, Cody and myself spent a *lot* of time looking at our global bandwidth usage, how much bandwidth the average account uses, and then how much bandwidth we were committed to with our providers. After running the numbers extensively we realized we were very over-committed and had a lot of unused bandwidth sitting around. We made the decision and are 100% confident that we can offer unlimited bandwidth without impacting any service quality.

Has technology and infrastructure progressed the point in the year 2013 (that's the present, for those of you not paying attention to life as it passes you by) where disk space is seemingly king, once more, in web hosting considerations for webmasters?


In my opinion disk will always be king. Bandwidth, in a sense, is a non-physical asset. You can increase your bandwidth capacity/commit (assuming you've setup your infrastructure properly from the start, which we have) on a moments notice. I could email one of our providers right now and within the day have our bandwidth commit tripled. The same isn't true with disk space. I can't send an email and change a 1TB disk to a 2TB disk.

Can somebody on the nest side of things enlighten me? Not trying to ruffle any feathers. I just want to understand the underlying reasoning behind the change.


Don't worry about ruffling feathers, we planned on having to answer the "Why?" part of this decision. There is sound logic in place and this isn't a "shooting from the hip" type decision. It was well thought out before we made the decision public.

Separately from that, it was nice to visit the WebHostingTalk forum, again - though I really don't feel much in the mood to invest vast quantities of time there, again, anytime soon.


It's a great community, no doubt about that. Also a great tool for us to gauge a number of factors regarding both our business and the industry.

Feel free to PM me or email me (brian @ ourhostingcompany.com) if you want to chat in private about this :)
 
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No need to chat in private about it, Brian. That was a good, solid response.

 

I don't really foresee changing web hosting companies, nor do I have any particularly persuasive reason to do so. It's been a long while since I did any comparative research on various web hosting companies, and I'm certainly not current on what various web hosts are offering as far as their standard shared hosting packages.

 

I did look up MDD Hosting, a web host name that stuck in my memory from the old days as offering reliable web hosting, and for their basic package as of today's date, they are offering 5 GB of disk space and 250 GB of Premium Bandwidth (as distinguished, I guess, from non-premium bandwidth, whatever that might be. Marketing terminology of choice aside, for $6.38 per month, it would still cost more than if I upgraded my HawkHost web hosting package from Basic to Standard.

 

I'm still not at my disk space limit, yet, with my current HawkHost Basic package. Maybe I should just renew, and worry about upgrading later, when I actually approach the allotted disk space limit.

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