Hi people,
I would have to agree with others here that say it's a good thing, however let me elaborate.

I believe that these so called cheap hosts are in fact a good thing for the honest, professional, reliable and affordable hosts out there. My rational for this is that sooner or later the general public (who are now very well educated in these matters) will come to the conclusion that these cheap hosts simply can't offer either the quality or quantity of services they claim in a professional and timely manner for such low prices.

With the above clearly an eventual outcome, this will benefit both customer and professional hosts alike. Customers will benefit by receiving a professional and quality service with exceptional support at an affordable price, whilst the professional hosts will receive the credit they are due, along with a larger customer base.

word around the net is that featureprice.com is closing up shop.

Sure would like to know what drove them out of business..

I guess there is a niche out there for $4.00/month hosting. I just can't afford to offer it to my customers. We have 24/7 phone support, toll free number, a staff to pay, and all the other essentials of a business. There is no way I can compete with $4.00 hosting so I don't even try. I have sold $25/month hosting for so long without any trouble that I don't see a need to compete with the low budget company.

I'm not knocking them, I know they have a markewt to sell to, I'm just saying that it isn't the market I target. I host business for the most part. They care more about quality than low price. People don't mind spending $5/pack on cigarettes but they don't want to spend $20/month on there business.

I wouldn't tell anybody how to run their business or what to charge. If it works for you, conratulations. It just doesn't work for me.

Hello Everyone,

My opinion of $3 a month hosting is that it's a pointless due to billing. I believe that if the host wants to offer cheap low cost hosting then make it a low yearly fee. By the time you've processed the payment it's just not worth the investment of putting them on the server and providing support for them.

Should you provide budget accounts i think it's only fair that you label clearly that it would come with limited support. I've seen companies offer $1 a month hosting and say they provide 24/7 realtime support but it takes 2 weeks to get an answer. These customers then run to the nearest hosting discussion group and bash this host and then get ridiculded by people. These people are well within there rights to be peeved because when they signed up they were promised an unbeatable service.

I know when we launch our budget plan we will state clearly that the customer will only get limited support and will be overlooked by premium accounts but we promise a reply to all emails within 24 hours.

Also, a lot of these budget hosts out there overload the server with hundreds if not thousands of accounts. This is the only way they can make money. Never put an important website that generates you money on a $1 a month host. Think about how much you would be affected if your email stopped working and it took 2 weeks to fix!

Good points Eddie. One other thing that should be mentioned is that a lot of these cheap hosts go out of business. Let's ay you sign up for an annual plan at $3/month or $36/year. You pre-pay for the year and after 1 month they go out of business. (This happens all of the time). So in essence you have paid $36/month for hosting, not such a great deal for the trouble you just went through.

But it doesn't really matter, people are still goint to go for the cheapest they can find. They don't want to hear the negatives about doing so. For the price of a soft drink a day they could go with a company that will be around to give them support and great service. Actually a soft drink every other day .

Lots of low-cost hosts go to the wall due to poor business planning. They think yeah great cheap webserver at host.com i'll use my $99 or whatever and start a host. They get loads of customers, then comes loads of emails asking for help. Things on the server go wrong they panic and cancel the server and have vanished with all the money. Customers are left high and dry ... i do feel sorry for them but some just dont learn they go find another $1 host that goes bust a few weeks later.

I am not asking this to disrespect you or doubt you, but how many plans do you have to sell to make "a lot of money" at $4 a pop. I would have to host 1,000's/ month to make a lot of money. Of course it depends on what my idea and your idea of "a lot of money" is I guess.

Try going to his site right now, lol that might answer your question, it's down and has been for quite some time.

Maybe he made enough to retire and he is on his yacht in the Bahamas right now drinking Pina Coladas.

Or, maybe he was hosted by FeaturePrice.com !

pffft maybe

I have had my 2 sites on a $3/month host for about 1.5 years. Excellent all around, including better than average support (but no toll-free number).

Good luck.
David.

Ohh - knockin the $3 hosts are we... <ahem>

We sell $3 hosting. We make money on it. Why? The core audience we market these plans to is technically savvy consumers, not ma and pa that don't know how to config their email client. *Most* of those $3/month customers contact us once every few months, if that. Plus this market generally tends to buy small to begin with, and then upgrade after that. There've been *many* who have gone from $3 plans to $29.95 plans, sometimes within days of signing up. Others just add disk space and bandwidth.

We don't offer 800 number support though - if we did, we likely couldn't afford those plans.

But there is money to be made

-David

Yes, they were...but somewhere in May last year. Its been around 7 months since they stopped bashing the $3 hosts in this 7 month old thread.

Doh! Didn't look two posts up That's what I get for posting at 4am.

-David