Idea For Hosting - Pay Only For What You Use?

Discussion in 'General Business' started by Black Nova, Dec 21, 2008.

  1. #1
    Alot of hosting companies offer huge packages they realize no one will ever use, sell them to way too many people on a single server and then dump you if you actually use what you pay for. So here is my question:

    If a hosting company came out and sent you a bill every month based on what you had used, would you signup with that company?


    Example:
    - You Use: 100 MB of storage and 50 gb of bandwidth, they charge you $1.89 for that month.
     
    Black Nova, Dec 21, 2008 IP
  2. dopiitv

    dopiitv Well-Known Member

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    #2
    would work, but there's something about it that would turn people off. I think people like the idea of just paying one flat monthly fee. I mean you'd really have to have prices like $0.01/gb of B/w and that's crazy.

    You also wouldn't make much profit because you would not be able to sell somebody more than they need or over-charge. The way hosting companies make money is from people under-using their resources.
     
    dopiitv, Dec 21, 2008 IP
  3. yousellstuff1

    yousellstuff1 Active Member

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    #3
    I have actually seen this before. I will try to find the website, but this is not knew. But it is true that they will make a lot less money
     
    yousellstuff1, Dec 21, 2008 IP
  4. mentos

    mentos Prominent Member

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    #4
    Yes its a good idea and i'm looking forward to it implementation coz its more cost effective in customer point of view.
    Beside that,hosting company also can keep their server healthy by not overselling their server.
    So,its a both win win situation.
     
    mentos, Dec 21, 2008 IP
  5. tradester

    tradester Well-Known Member

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    #5
    Well not necessarily. That fixed fee model of charging for underutilisation is old model which will be overturned as with any traditional models.

    A variable fee model may create more demand and therefore give you much higher capacity/ occupancy rate. Whereas the fixed fee may give you a much lower occupany. Since when you charge variable fee, you will normally have a certain margin when your usage/ capacity goes up you also make more:)
     
    tradester, Dec 21, 2008 IP
  6. Ziveeman

    Ziveeman Peon

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    #6
    Nearly Free Speech does that sort of thing. I believe it works out for them.
     
    Ziveeman, Dec 21, 2008 IP
  7. GBN

    GBN Peon

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    #7
    GBN, Dec 21, 2008 IP
  8. MeniacMachine

    MeniacMachine Peon

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    #8
    Of course.. I want this..

    Like electric bill..

    You will only pay for what you consumed.

    But of course, web hoster will surely be in trouble if their customers won't pay.
     
    MeniacMachine, Dec 22, 2008 IP
  9. Clive

    Clive Web Developer

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    #9
    ...Or if they get a couple of have traffic websites hosted on their servers which are aimed to handle shared hosting plans. You can't expect much if your website is generating lots of traffic and consumes server resources. I doubt that the webhost will continue to feel comfortable with the "charge per GB" scheme, you'll most probably be advised to swich to a VPS or a dedicated box anyway.

    So at the end of the day, most will probably stick to a flat fee shared hosting package, and move to a VPS as soon as their site takes off at higher speed.
     
    Clive, Dec 22, 2008 IP
  10. pitagora

    pitagora Peon

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    #10
    The new windows Azure will be something like that. Host the website in a cloud, scale it up as much as you like and pay the bandwidth and cpu you used. It will make hosting a lot cheaper and more efficient.
     
    pitagora, Dec 22, 2008 IP
  11. Clive

    Clive Web Developer

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    #11
    Is that a web hosting service to be introduced by Microsoft?
    Interesting. Yet, I am mostly sure that web hosting service users will form 2 divisions. One that is happy to pay for what they use and another one feeling comfortable with a fixed price for unmetered or huge bandwidth allowance. I'll definitely be joining the second team. For the extra peace of mind.
     
    Clive, Dec 22, 2008 IP
  12. ceemage

    ceemage Well-Known Member

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    #12
    I can second the recommendation for Nearly Free Speech - www.nearlyfreespeech.net. Worth spending some time reading their FAQ, as they are so different from a traditional "oversell and underprovide" web host.

    Oh, and that's not an affiliate link, as they don't have them. I'm just a satisfied customer.
     
    ceemage, Dec 22, 2008 IP
  13. Kwaku

    Kwaku Well-Known Member

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    #13
    Ehm... Amazon is market leader into this space. http://aws.amazon.com/ They offer everything you need and much much more. But you need to have a brain to use it though. The service is solid, worldwide and is simply brilliant in it's execution (as is everything Amazon does btw). I often simply start a server, do a bunch of data processing and then pay like $0.34 for that.

    Also the Google Appengine offers pay-per-use, but on a much more select scale (you need to write special apps while on Amazon you can use anything).

    There are a bunch more but none as mature, solid and high quality as Amazon. The rest are just sad rip-offs atm.
     
    Kwaku, Dec 22, 2008 IP
  14. jryan54

    jryan54 Peon

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    #14
    The other thing that will likely sink this idea is the cost of payment processing. Paypal and others all impose a minimum fee amount so that a 10cent or 20 cent transaction becomes unreasonable. Even most merchant accounts charge a percent and then like 50 cents or so a transaction.

    This would likely kill a business model that involved "micro" payments
     
    jryan54, Dec 22, 2008 IP
  15. Kwaku

    Kwaku Well-Known Member

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    #15
    There is nothing to sink; there are companies making profit with pay-for-use hosting. Millions of $ /month actually.

     
    Kwaku, Dec 23, 2008 IP