Web Hosting Smoke and Mirrors

I’m a straight shooter. Instead of jumping into some grandiose and pedantic blog entry about how I plan to make the best posts ever on this blog, I’ll hit the ground running where the rubber meets the road. Today I am entering into rant mode to explain one of the greatest shams in business. I call it smoke and mirrors, but it’s more like steam and poorly-reflective glass. It is a scheme based upon customer ignorance and provider greed, and it almost always spells trouble.

On the streets it is known as unlimited web hosting. (Not sure if you could hear the cacophonous symphonic blast when you read what I typed, but I sure did!) Unlimited web hosting itself recently entered the mainstream when several prominent companies dropped the gigabytes(GBs) and terabytes(TBs) price wars to rush to the ultimate finish line. I will not mention any names or point any fingers — but if you Google them that’s not my problem. These companies are well-respected in many cases, some of them boasting growth from one or two employees into firms numbering in the hundreds of employees. These are firms that pride themselves on hard work, but what happens when they give that ethic up?

To understand the dangers of unlimited hosting, one must first understand why unlimited hosting, isn’t. I’ll give you an assignment if you’re not sure about it. Walk down to your local computer shop, Best Buy, or call a computer company. Ask for the unlimited hard drive model. If they snicker and try to give you another option, demand that they at least provide you with the computer that can handle an unlimited number of hard drives. When they laugh at you, the assignment is complete. You just performed what I like to call a fact validation. Unlimited hard drives and unlimited capacity for hard drives don’t exist, period. (Heck, even daisy-chain over a hundred USB drives and see where that gets you — and how quickly you get there.)

Bandwidth/Data Transfer is in the same boat, though arguably not as confined. Despite the wonders of new technology and the dot-com bust leading to falling prices, capacity still costs and it is by no means unlimited. Just for kicks, I wouldn’t suggest calling your datacenter up and asking for the unlimited line to be hooked up to your server.

So, that whole unlimited space and bandwidth super-special mantra goes flying right out the window, does it not?

Enter cloud hosting, and enter confusion tagging along just like the unwanted crazy chick (or dude for you ladies) at the bar. I’m not here today to discuss the cloud like everyone else. I’m here today to point out 99.5% of folks that talk about cloud hosting might as well be talking in meteorological terms of those white fluffy things in the sky. Cloud hosting is on the verge of the main stream, but that will only become a reality when the technology actually becomes available and affordable for everyone. It is getting there quick, but it has just poked its head into the door. Those who saw it do this (aka the web hosting companies) went running exclaiming that some guest is here, they just weren’t sure who.

Cloud hosting has unwittingly opened the door for unlimited hosting. Companies are ditching the price war tactics of offering hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of these to simply say they will give you as much as you can use for very little and do it better than everyone else. The cloud wave seems to make this partially true at the surface because cloud hosting theoretically enables a virtually unlimited amount of resources to be contributed and available to the cloud. Economically, this would make sense for large companies to foot the bill and make profits based on sheer numbers of scale. The key here is that only very large companies have done it up to this point, but the smaller competitors have not. The smaller ones are working on it now, but many of them are backed by larger investors and/or parent companies. This is not a ubiquitous offering.

It is the perfect time to make the jump because the confusion provides a screen. At worst, this jump can hide behind a TOS with special limits in process numbers, queries, or anything else to make sure no one uses too large a piece of the pie. Do you really want to have a service you pay for delivered only when you stay within number limits that you (the account owner) cannot even see? At best, this change is merely a step in the direction of cloud hosting; so one day you might actually have access to that true unlimited hosting you’re paying for. At worst, you are a victim of the oldest hosting trick in the book — a well-written TOS/AUP.

To counter this growing fallacy, I propose a campaign of consumer education. If your game is not to game your customers for the quick buck, take the time to explain why unlimited web hosting doesn’t exist at every corner. The example I mentioned at the start of this blog is a popular one, but there are many other illustrations and explanations that can be used. (IE: Why would I pay more for a silly dedicated server when I can get unlimited hosting for $4.99/month? Do some people just not read, and us smart ones that read the right page on the website get lucky?)

Smoke and mirrors aren’t necessary for a good business. Put an end to yet more confusion in IT. Unlimited web hosting does not exist.

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