This year (2006) the packages skyrocketed again, leaving most web hosting customers asking how or why these companies continually increase their offers while maintaining and in some instances even lowering their customer’s costs. The answer has 2 parts really, and two directions.
The last 10 years the web hosting industry has seen terrific growth and for some companies, even some maturity. Just a few years ago web hosting companies struggled constantly with DDOS attacks, corrupt user scripts which would were allowed onto a server and then would crash that server, maxing out the CPU and atrocious customer service response times. Today there are still companies who struggle with some or all of these issues however there are others who have taken a truly proactive approach and have mastered the control of negative outside influences, quality assurance and customer support.
So how are all these companies able to continually increase their package offerings in addition to enhancing the sphere of control over their customer’s web hosting service quality and why do they feel the need to make these increases? The reality is that competition is up, and the bad to atrocious turn & burn web hosting companies have forced the quality web hosts into a situation where they either meet the competition or they allow good web hosting customers to become clients of terrible web hosts who are only interested in market share.
Not all of what we saw and monitored was negative. In 2006 there emerged some great web hosting providers who have truly incredible employees, who are not only skilled at maximizing the security and functionality of the servers and routers that their customers depend on. The professional web hosting providers, those who understand the business best have witnessed their costs going down dramatically in the last few years as their overall buying power has driven the hardware and bandwidth market to offer more for less, which is then passed along to the hosting consumer. So the reality is that for some companies these Super Size packages, while not as profitable as in the past are still within the realm of an acceptable offering while maintaining truly great service.
The problem is is that in the last few years we have seen some companies enter into the hosting marketplace and they become hyper competitive but they have far too little experience and usually completely inadequate or even outsourced customer service departments to be able to handle a large influx of customers. The owners of these companies blatantly slash their prices and services to the bone just to try to entice the unwary or uninformed customer to think that their super sized package, which they mark down to unsustainable investment levels are better. What happens next is that the customer becomes frustrated with the service, has difficulty reaching a support representative and then they leave to go find a better host, and lose out on their investment.
This is personally frustrating for me to watch or hear about but luckily more of my friends on the forums and boards are starting to listen to myself and our colleges regarding good and bad hosting so hopefully in 2007 I will have to listen to less complaining regarding web site hosting.
Peace and Happy New Year to everyone out there! - Eloise Beall, International Research Manager. |
