myhosting raising prices - no notice

larryc

New member
Look at what I found in my mail box. A 50% price increase with less than 4 days notice. What were they thinking! I was paying $9.95 per month. Now I'm getting bumped to $14.95. Why such short notice. Sounds very fishy.

------

I wanted to take this opportunity to inform you about some changes to
our hosting plans which will be in effect as of October 1st, 2007. We
will be increasing the Disk Space and Data Transfer allotments. We will
also be upgrading all of our existing customers to our improved plans so
that they can immediately make use of these increases of disk space and
data transfer. At the same time, the price schedule for our plans and
services will also be changing. The net result is that some of our
customers will see a decrease in their monthly bill while others will
see an increase.

Here is a table of some of the new prices and plan features:

Plan Price Features
---- ----- --------

Windows Basic $14.95/month 4 GB Disk Space
50 GB Data Transfer
100 Email Accounts

Windows Professional $29.95/month 6 GB Disk Space
100 GB Data Transfer
200 Email Accounts

Windows Corporate $49.95/month 8 GB Disk Space
150 GB Data Transfer
500 Email Accounts

Windows Enterprise $89.95/month 12 GB Disk Space
250 GB Data Transfer
1000 Email Accounts

Linux Basic $7.95/month 2 GB Disk Space
50 GB Data Transfer
100 Email Accounts

Linux Professional $22.95/month 6 GB Disk Space
100 GB Data Transfer
200 Email Accounts

File Hosting $7.95/month 2 GB Disk Space
50 GB Data Transfer
1 Email Account

These changes will allow us to continue to provide you with the reliable
service and 24/7 customer support you have come to expect from
*************. In the past 10 years, we have absorbed the cost of
infrastructure upgrades and increases in operating costs without
changing our prices. However, in light of the recent economic events and
the falling value of the US dollar, we need to make these changes to our
prices without sacrificing our high reliability, availability, quality
and customer support standards. We believe that the costs our customers
would incur would be much higher should we sacrifice any of these
standards. We charge our customers in US Dollars, though we incur our
expenses in mostly Canadian Dollars due to the fact that we are based in
Toronto, Canada. The drastic impact of the falling value of the US
Dollar against Canadian Dollar is clearly visible within the below
chart. As you will see, during the last 5 years, US Dollar lost more
than 50% of its value and this has direct impact on our bottom line.

Click here to view the chart -> http://softcom.biz/blogphotos/dollar.jpg

I sincerely hope that as a long time ************* customer, you would
understand the reasons behind these changes and extend your support to
us in these times. Thank you for your continued support and if you have
any questions please contact our 24/7 Customer Support at 1-866-289-5091
or by email at support@*************.

Best Regards,

Tony Yustein
Executive Chairman
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.
 
A 50% price increase with less than 4 days notice.
While I can understand their reasons for the price hike, I do think that their decision came suddenly, and customers should be given a notice with sufficient time ahead. This is not something that they couldn't have foreseen a month in advance.
 
Last edited:
My personal take on this is the following. I have witnessed price/resource plan changes a few times before, and all those times existing clients were not affected by such changes. Reason being most clients are not going to use (in other words they do not need) more space and bandwidth that they chose previously, so for them larger resource allotment does nothing. Obviously they will see it as just an excuse for a company to get more dollars out of their pockets, which is fair to expect.

My suggestion that if you are not happy about this change, that you are pretty much being "forced" to upgrade on such short notice (I think it was intentional to be honest, and I would have loved to investigate into why this happened), move to another company. You are paying very competitive rates and you will be able to find a lot of hosting companies out there offering even more resources for what you are paying.

It would be great to receive some sort of official comment from a company here.

Sorry it happened to you.

Regards,
 
always read the terms of service and make sure you are protected from price changes like that
 
Last edited:
Like has already said this price hike is not right, giving notice of 4 days, I also believe they email that they upgraded they servers also make no bit of difference to your package, we did a simliar upgrade to our system about a year back, we used has a provider a host that had a limit of 500 megs per a account which was not practicle, so we changed provider, and we could set our own limits, what we did is sent a email to every saying a free upgrade.

Thanks
John
 
hmmm this is a very interesting topic... I guess the GOOD news is atleast they didn't shut down and run off :p

The price increase.. well "usually" good hosting biz will tell you ATLEAST 1 month in advance. The only reason I can see them doing it on a short notice is either, they didn't expect it and HAD to place it on short notice or, they did it intentionally because they would lose customers.. or atleast revenue for an extra month if members knew 1 month in advanced and moved out earlier.

Either way.. when something like this happens and YOUR not happy with it, the answer is VERY simple... Just move. There are TONS of hosting biz these days, so moving is usually not a problem. That's the best answer these days, if something bother you via hosting.. just move. There are TONS and TONS of hosting businesses, you can easily find a new host.

All the best of luck.
 
True there are many other hosting companies to move to, which I have already starting looking into to. The real issue to me, and to others I have corresponded with, is the lack of proper notice. If they did this, what stops them from doing other things, like disclosing information to 3rd parties? I know they have a privacy policy that prohibits that activity, but after this incident you never know.

I hope this information is helpful for anyone looking for a web hosting provider. They should do their research into any company they ultimately use, not just accept what it says on the website. Until this past week I had a lot of respect for myhosting, as they offered reasonably prices services with reasonable quality. Now, I will continue the process of finding another host, which should be done by the end of this week.
 
Artashes said:
move to another company. You are paying very competitive rates and you will be able to find a lot of hosting companies out there offering even more resources for what you are paying.

Yes I would advice moving to a another company, I think it is unfair for them to be forcing high prices on existing customers.

Dre,
 
Artashes said:
My personal take on this is the following. I have witnessed price/resource plan changes a few times before, and all those times existing clients were not affected by such changes.

Agree 100% there's nothing wrong with a price hike as the cost of living is soaring all over the world Lolz :devil: but i don't think its a smart decision to increase the prices of your existing customers as well.

When you buy hosting, always look for the "Price Freeze or Price Lock guarantee" other wise u will never know when your web hosts increase their prices
 
back in the day, when we ran a hosting service, we had a price freeze guarantee for up to one year. In other words, if we needed to make price adjustments it would not affect existing customers until one year after the change.

Now, the one downfal with a Price Freeze Guarantee is that in order for it to be generally legally binding it must work both ways. For example, if you increase pricing from $4.99 to $9.99, your existing customers won't pay $9.99 for a year after the change. However, since it works the other way too, if you drop your price from $4.99 to $2.99, your existing customers won't get the new lower price for a year either.

While I disagree with what this particular host did by providing only 4 days notice, I'd have to wonder if instead of increasing your bill 50% they lowered it by 50% if 4 days notice would have been sufficient?
 
If you cant afford a few more bucks a month for hosting your site on a quality host then dont sign up for hosting. While i agree they should have let you know. They are probably just trying to stay afloat.
 
jmcallister said:
If you cant afford a few more bucks a month for hosting your site on a quality host then dont sign up for hosting. While i agree they should have let you know. They are probably just trying to stay afloat.

The question is not whether he can afford it or not. It is about the notice period. What they have done must be okay legally, but one would expect them to be a little more fair while dealing with the existing customers.
 
The short notice is unreasonable to current customers. It will be interesting to see if they reduce their prices if the dollar once again gains value… I doubt they will.

I would think they would also have servers located in the US to hedge against currency valuation fluctuations.
 
Back
Top