Perspective, Realigned

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 19, 2006

Filed under: Links 11 comments

Thanks to everyone who left so many comments on the post earlier today. The big thing that I’ve learned is that bandwidth is much, much cheaper elsewhere. I use HostingMatters, who I chose because they have a good reputation for uptime and customer service. These were my main concerns after leaving ANHosting, who were lacking in both.

Tirgaya linked to Dreamhost, who offers 2TB(!!!!) of transfer a month, for a fraction of what I’m paying at HM. Hang on, let me get the calculator…

Poke. poke. poke.

Okay…

Hosting Matters = $0.52 per gigabyte.
DreamHost = $0.004 per gigabyte. (No, that isn’t a typo, it is really four thenths of a cent per gig.)

I’m speechless. The price difference is ridiculous. If these numbers are for real, then I could easily run this site for eight bucks a month. Without the #@%#@ ads. Without killing my comics with JPG abuse. This… this can’t be right.

Let me run the numbers again…

Okay. The numbers are for real. Really strange. This sounds too good to be true. What the heck? They have a $50 signup fee, so I don’t want to do anything rash, but this looks like it would solve all of my problems if it actually works.

I’m not going to do anything just yet, but it looks like I have lots of options. One way or another, I think I can get back to the days of careless and rampant bandwidth comsumption.

Thanks for the advice, and the numerous offers for help, the offers for spare bandwidth, the encouragement, and everything else.

LATER: Okay, maybe Dreamhost is a bad idea. Still, somewhere between 52 cents and .4 cents there ought to be someone half-decent.

STILL LATER: I get it. The $0.004 per gig is allowed, because what they DON’T tell you on the features page is that you are also limited by CPU minutes per day. It looks like the 2TB limit is a sham, since apparently you’ll hit the CPU limit WAAAY before you get anywhere near the bandwidth limit.

Sneaks.

 


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11 thoughts on “Perspective, Realigned

  1. Batmanintraining says:

    I don’t mind the ads, but still, if you can find another hosting service for that much cheaper, it would make zero sense(or cents) NOT to switch.

  2. Nate says:

    I’ve been a Dreamhost customer for over a year now. I’ve been really happy with them, their features, their terms, and service. Some people complain about downtimes, but I haven’t experienced any in the last 1.5 years. Admittedly, I don’t run “mission critical” stuff, just a few blogs and mostly online storage and backup for my files.
    The bandwidth and storage increase-over-time is real (and they have more than doubled my hosting allotment in the time I’ve used them), and they are on the level. If you want a discount on your first year, current dreamhost customers can make “coupons” for you with discounts.
    Let me know, I can hook you up. Or google and get 10,000 other dreamhost customers willing to give out coupon codes. :)

  3. Nate says:

    oh yeah, I forgot. They had a major power failure a few months ago. It didn’t bother me (since I’m just running blogs and photo pages, mail, etc), but I take it some people were very put out.

    I’ve never bumped my head on the 60 CPU minutes per day limit either. I guess I’m just not a power user, or trying to use my web host as a computing cluster, or something. I guess you might be able to close in on the bandwidth limit if you were serving large static files. Long PHP or MySQL access processes would eat up the CPU limit before the bandwidth, definately.

    Yeah, well, DH has been fine for me, but you know your site stats and needs. Good luck finding something you like/can use.

  4. Cineris says:

    From what I’ve heard Dreamhost is a pretty good provider. A few months ago I read an essay by one of the Dreamhost heads and he mentioned that pretty much every hosting company “oversells” — ie, they will sell a package with X amount of bandwidth knowing that the average customer isn’t going to use even a fraction of it. This is pretty much true. I also investigated Hosting Matters, and while they’re highly recommended they’re also one of the most expensive I’ve seen. My own hosting company (GoDaddy.com) has done pretty well for what I want it to do and offers way more storage and bandwidth than I can reasonably use — If I ever end up wanting to do more with the hosting than my blog and other things of limited interest and appeal then I’d probably consider looking into more serious options.

  5. Tirgaya says:

    CPU Limit… figures. Had to be too good to be true. That CPU Limit would kill ya with WordPress and other SQL based sites. Good catch.

    I use PHP to generate static pages, so while this is an issue, it won’t be until I am serving a lot of pages. And I do mean a LOT.

    Still… if you place just your images on one of their servers, you might be able to solve your problems. Would that work with WordPress ?

  6. Shamus says:

    Tirgaya: Good one. I’m betting hotlinking doesn’t use much in the way of CPU. :)

  7. ShadoStahker says:

    I have to plug both Bluehost (http://www.bluehost.com/ $6.95/mo, 999 GB transfer) and Hostmonster (http://www.hostmonster.com/ $4.95/mo, 999 GB transfer).

    I’ve never used them, but will be using Hostmonster for a non-profit website soon, mostly due to the price.

    I’ve heard a lot of good things about Bluehost. I know that http://www.gamepolitics.com uses them. (Your url icon is set to theirs by default, which gives away your usage of their serivce, but you can change it anyways.)

  8. Pixy Misa says:

    60 CPU minutes per day is actually pretty generous. You’d have to be doing a lot of pages in WordPress to hit that. (Or be running buggy software, of course.) Well, unless they’re using 300MHz Celerons or something…

    But Hosting Matters will have spoiled you for most hosting companies. I haven’t used them myself, since I’ve been running my own servers since 2002, but I’ve seen their tech support in action and they are excellent. You do pay for that, but their reputation is well-earned.

  9. Pixy Misa says:

    And do please email me. I’d love to help you out here.

  10. Pixy Misa says:

    I sent you an email, so if you haven’t seen it, check your spam trap. :)

  11. jed le page says:

    u do wot was your email ?

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