Unethical companies?

[shockym]

I always tend to worry when someone that is not too educated on the types of service a hosting company provides, they will in turn be suckering into what many in the geek world call a walmart type company (big evil corporation, doesnt care about the little guy).

Many large companies have all started huge plans for next to nothing, there is a lot of talk about this being a shady marketing tactic when you visit web master forums. If you end up using too much of the plans they boot you off the server and tell you that you broke their TOS.

I despise the fact that people do this, for others I know that run legit hosting companies and even that you would be that sneaky in your TOS, just makes me have to remind you all: read all the print, small and not.

 

[ldcdc]

and even that you would be that sneaky in your TOS

Yes, reading the TOS is very important, but it's no surprise that the TOS is built to protect the company. Interestingly enough, generally, the TOS of budget and non budget hosts are remarkably similar. But when you're paying $50 for 50GB of data transfer, the host can give you quite a bit of CPU power, enough to be able to push 50GB with just about any type of site. When you're paying $10 and getting 1000GB, you're getting $10 worth of CPU power, which means you'll be able to push 10GB with just about any type of site, and 1000GB with a very limited types of applications (in fact, only if you're pushing raw data).

 

[miKael]

I agree that clients seeking their potential hosts should be more educated about CPU thing and actually it should be covered in the package plan and not hidden somewhere in their TOS in small print.

 

[brianf]

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't.

Think about it. If you see a host with a plan of 50Gb of storage for $5 per month, how many of those would they have to sell to pay for a dedicated server that's billed monthly? Consider this as well: If the dedicated server had just one 500Gb hard drive, they could only fit 10 accounts.

This is just another issue with overselling. The hosts can blame it on what ever they like, however, the account that's using the contracted storage or bandwidth is going to go! In their mind they can put another 20 accounts in that same space.

 

[hostingcoupon]

For shared hosting, two things are the most important limit, CPU and memory. But in the TOS, the provider will never tell you how much CPU and memory can you get for your $10...

That's really tricky, in the TOS, you only can find something like - "too high", "too much". What's "too high"? They decide it. Today, they can say it's 10M RAM, tommorrow, they can say it's 20M RAM...

 

[alemcherry]

Reading the TOS is good, but may not be of much use due to the reason mentioned by hostingcoupon. Overall, one should expect the moon from a $6 hosting package.

 

[SarahKay]

It's crappy, but the customers can be replaced so quickly at that price and it would be months before people really caught on to the poor service, and by that time the company has made money and just closes. I've seen it done and it's disgusting, but it happens, and they make good money in a short amount of time by overselling and booting people.

As a side note, I saw a poll once (i think on yahoo's main page or something similar), about how many people actually read TOS and it was SHOCKINGLY low.

 

[Rageki-John]

I agree. I hate it when hosts oversell insanely and they put in small print that there are limits in the TOS. I think they should just be honest and straightforward unless they are really craving for a customer's 1 month payment before that customer leaves.