Number 15 of May 2010 for webhostingstuff.com. The first thing that strikes me is this little link you click on in order to get more info about (How?):
http://www.site5.com/hosting/web/
Throughout the web hosting industry, one of the biggest catch phrases and movements is the shift towards Unlimited web hosting. Some of our shared web hosting plans allow unlimited disk space and bandwidth.
As the shared hosting industry has progressed, it has become apparent that disk space and bandwidth are not true indicators of how well a website can survive on shared hosting. Instead, the real indicators are server memory and processor usage!
It is important to remember that “unlimited” does not always indicate “oversold”, so do not let anyone tell you otherwise! We monitor our servers constantly to ensure optimal operating performance.
I am going to tell you otherwise because they are flat out lying or stupid. Granted on all but the unlimited company I owned, I never oversold. But customers who bought a reseller account were allowed to. One such customer had 83 domains. Between the 83 domains he had given a total of 23 gigs, though he was only using 2 gigs. He was on a plan with 5 gigs. But once the total space used hits 5 gigs and beyond he is going to have a problem. Normally most of my customers monitored for this, but the few that didn’t were always the first to complain about their sites not working all caused by running out of space.
In order for this not to be overselling the space provided must not exceed the space available. Unlimited meaning infinite it would still be overselling if they have every hard drive on the planet available. Overselling is done under the assumption that a customer will not use all of the resources listed. Just like a all you can eat buffet, they are assuming that your not going to eat them out of house and home. Where interestingly enough they don’t out and out say “we don’t oversell”. Though they are right unlimited is a catch phrase. But they do state “We monitor our servers constantly to ensure optimal operating performance.” some how this makes it not overselling. At least hostgator.com (Who is on the same network as site5 – Theplant.com) is willing to be honest:
http://blog.hostgator.com/2008/10/20/all-you-can-eat-hosting/
We change an unlimited plan to say “unlimited” and bam — sales increase 30%, if not more. Many people will argue that “overselling” is evil and that it’s the cause of poor hosting service. This is not the case when it’s managed correctly and the proper staffing is in place. When a hosting company hops on the overselling bandwagon, their sales usually increase exponentially. Since very few companies actually have the capacity to handle a major surge in growth, their quality of service is almost guaranteed to deteriorate.
While hostgator is willing to admit to overselling, they are also doing the whole monitoring to ensure there is not a problem. Which boils down to eliminating those that are not profitable. Before signing up with their company I would take some serious time and review:
http://www.site5.com/legal/resource-usage/
Asides for the weird take on overselling, they have ratings at a company called ratepoint.com, the strange thing when you go to the homepage for ratepoint.com you can’t search for sites or companies. There is not a listing of any company using them. This seems to be a direct company you mention on your own site, and not one that you would search for approvals.
http://www.ratepoint.com/pricing.html
I am not sure why an email list plays into review site. But clearly this is not an independent review company. Though clearly their terms of service makes it clear they do not endorse their customers.
6.2 In no event shall any reference to any third party or third party product or service (including ratings thereof) be construed as an approval or endorsement by RatePoint of that third party or of any product or service provided by a third party. Likewise, a link to any non-RatePoint website does not imply that we endorse or accept any responsibility for the content or use of such website.
My question is does this company allow you to delete feed back, or for that matter approve or decline reviews before they are even online. I know there is a lot of complaints about this company, and this site shows a larger ratio of positive reviews then negative in comparison to other sites. I tried calling ratepoint and the first thing I get is someone that works at a call center for them and other companies. Apparently I need to call 8 – 5, Monday through Friday. But chances are I will still get one of these call center operators. When I called I had selected the sales dept, but before I could ask any questions I got asked my name and phone number. I stop the call operator after she asked me the phone number, as I thought it was strange a sales associate would ask me questions before I could ask my own. It looks like I will email them to find my answers. So I may have a later post about them.
