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Westpoint

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This marketing strategy must work as most hosting providers (if not all) apply it to promote their services. Though, I am curious as to how much it works for your company.
 
Westpoint said:
This marketing strategy must work as most hosting providers (if not all) apply it to promote their services. Though, I am curious as to how much it works for your company.
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can you provide evidence that all hosts do this. i can if i research draw up a long list of hosts that dont offer free trials.

a majority of hosts dont do this for the same reason we do. if you offer a 7 day free trial, how many spam emails can be sent in the 7 day period if a spammer signs up and uses the time to send spam and then just leave after the 7 days.
 
A 1 penny offer will stop most of the abuse, but it just attracts those who move around a lot instead. Ultimately, neither options are really worth it long term.
 
I prefer to stay away from trial offers myself. I think offering a money back guarantee is the better way to go. Get the customer to pay upfront and then issue then a refund if they aren't happy for any reason. This will help fight off people looking to abuse or spam off your system for the short period of free trial time they can!
 
Yes MBG is a better option. We just tested a free trial option from a WHMCS addon and within the first 5 hrs we had 3 spammers sign up, so we pulled the plug.
 
Every host dose not do this at all. Most of the host that try this don't even last.. Its better if you just offer the plan for $0.50 I won't even go with a penny deal. Anyway these kinds of offerings attract spammers and abusers. If not then they will attract people that will come pay and use your service for 25 days and then leave and on top of this they wont even let you know.

Heck, I seen a plan on another site today a reseller plan for a penny with whmcs license installed. I wonder how many people signed up for that. Also plans were pretty big.

Your better off offering like 1 month free with the purchase of 5 months what not. Anyway you could try this if you want hope it works out but most likely it wont and you'll have much more better outcome of spending that time advertising locally in your area. Let businesses know about your services talk to them face to face have meetings and they will like your service. this will help in the long run as the clients are loyal because they have you manage their online aspect of their businesses.
 
An MBG sounds more professional than a free trial.

Legitimate clients aren't necessarily looking for an ultra cheap web host. The clients I cater to are small businesses who don't have enough time to learn about internet technologies. They know that the internet can help them greatly but they're just too busy to even know how to search for help.

It is our job to approach them and show them that we know what we're doing and that they can trust that we can help them. If we can convince them of just that then they will pay us a legitimate price for our services.
 
The influx of spammers and sign ups that only stay for the free period does not make offering a free trial worth the time or effort.

Personally I think there are better ways of marketing - I don't want my company to be recognised as 'cheap'.

As an end user, free/0.99 type offers don't interest me. The phrase 'you get what you pay for' comes to mind when I come across them.
 
itsmir said:
I don't want my company to be recognised as 'cheap'.

As an end user, free/0.99 type offers don't interest me. The phrase 'you get what you pay for' comes to mind when I come across them.
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so the fact you have hosting advertised at £12 a year (£1 a month) you dont call this cheap then
 
I generally find that doing any 'free' trials will just attrack bad news, it really isn't worth it.

Just have money back offers to save yourself the hassle, that way they do get a trial but they have to pay a deposit in a way.
 
Also with a MBG they have to sign up for payments like paypal the address has to match their paypal address, but offering free trials they have add any address they like and then use the trial to abuse your server.
 
easyhostmedia said:
Yes MBG is a better option. We just tested a free trial option from a WHMCS addon and within the first 5 hrs we had 3 spammers sign up, so we pulled the plug.
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We temporarily tried the same thing and we ran into the same issues. Nothing but fraudulent orders from spammers. This is one of the reasons I can't fathom running a free hosting business. I don't know how those owners put up with the trash that uses their services.
 
twikamltd said:
A 1 penny offer will stop most of the abuse, but it just attracts those who move around a lot instead. Ultimately, neither options are really worth it long term.
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One penny is a good way to lose money though, you will attract a lot of spam users who will just leave later on, your revenue is 1 cent and paypal will take all of that + $0.30 as their fee.
 
ventureer said:
Yup, and they don´t mind to attract a 90% of spammers or hackers as there is still a 10% of potential customers.
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dont i know it, we once got an offshore server as it was close to our then clientbase, but after being offline more times than i can count due abuse on the main node we gave up after 2 weeks and claimed refund
 
I offer 1 penny "free host" option, which at least requires them to be verified so if their intention is to abuse I have information to deal with it.
 
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