The Cool Breeze

In running my business I frequently have people say to me “but, XXX hosting company offers 100x more than you do, at only a $1.99, why should I choose you”. The answer is quite frankly, that we provide a better service. We don’t pack too many sites on the server, where it can’t handle the load, and the server goes down (for the record ALL our shared hosting servers load is less that 0.9). Plus, we have qualified people to keep the running, patched with the latests and greatest (sable versions). AND we have smart people ready and able to answer questions ranging from “how do I configure my email account” to “why doesn’t this script work”. In some cases you really do get what you pay for. If you just don’t care if your site goes down for a little bit here and there, or that the support is a little “under par”, then these “cheap” places are for you. But, if you want to have a server (and company) with a good uptime, and want to be able to talk to someone knowledgeable, this consider paying a little more.

To illustrate my point, Andy Owen, has written a wonderful artice about his experence with Go-Daddy, please click Read More to see his article.

Note: I normally just link to stories, but I wanted to copy this one, so I would always have it. The original article is here.

The Truth About GoDaddy’s Economy Plan

Background:
In late November i purchased two months of hosting from GoDaddy.com . The whole reason for purchasing hosting was to host a web site to serve a podcast from. I would offer a podcast of about 70 mb every weekend. Some of you may know which site i am talking about, i choose not to spam my link and stick to the facts. I thought the 5GB of storage and 250GB of transfer plan would be great. There is no way i would go over 250gb of transfer in a month, and there is no way i would ever fill 5gb of storage. I thought wrong. This is not a publicity stunt. I just want GoDaddy to admit they cannot provide what they promise. Some of you may be saying “OF COUSE you are not going to get that much transfer for that price”. I understand, that is common sense. But the fact is if they OFFER that much hosting for such a low price, they should PROVIDE that much hosting for that price.

The Problem:
At first i hosted the whole site off GoDaddy’s servers. Then when the PHP became unstable i switched to only hosting the podcast off of them. Now i cannot even do that. The downloads will cut off for users after 3-6% of the download. GoDaddy would not acknowledge the problem. They blamed everything else but themselves. They said it was the users’ ISPs, my fault, or just the way lift was on a shared server. They even tried to get me to upgrade my account when i hadn’t even used the allotted storage and transfer i paid for! See for yourself. Sorry for the lack of formatting but i wanted to get right to the point. You may contact me here.

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Email #0:

Question:
In the global use policy it is stated:
“Go Daddy may review every account for excessive space and bandwidth utilization and to terminate or apply additional fees to those accounts
that exceed allowed levels.” If i purchased an account with 250 GB of monthly bandwidth, and i use it within a month, would that be considered “excessive”. Also, do you disable the account when it reaches its transfer limit or charge me more fees? If i can choose i would like it to be disabled when set bandwidth limit is reached. A lot of hosts say “unlimited” bandwidth or state an extremely high amount of bandwidth availability (such as 250gb) and then go back on their word. I just want to make sure this company keeps it’s
promises. Thanks.

Their Response:
Thank you for contacting customer support. Please note that if you stay within your bandwidth limit, it is not considered excessive. We will not notify you of a bandwidth overage and you will be charged for it. You can however pre-purchase extra bandwidth.

(pre-overage)Cost $3.95 per 1gb (1000mb)of Bandwidth.

If you have bursted your bandwidth, the cost will be $5.95 per 1gb (1000mb)of Bandwidth.

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Email #1:
Customer 12/05/2005 05:49 PM
Question:
I am using the Economy 5GB Storage / 250GB Transfer plan. When i first saw the plan i thought it would be perfect for my podcasting site.
However, I’ve been having problems every weekend when i release it. Either it will not start downloading at all or the download will die at
a random time during the transfer. Since i am paying for 250 GB i should get 250 gb. Users download 10% of the file, it dies. Download again, at 30% it dies. Every time they do this it racks up the GBs of data transfer, not to mention make my site look unprofessional. I understand
i am using “economy”, but i still expect the services promised. Nowhere in the contract did i read “Since you are only paying 3.95, we may kill
your downloads at any time”. Is this going to happen every weekend? I serve about 600 unique users a week and the podcast is roughly 150 mb. It only seems to die during peek usage. If i try it in the wee hours of the morning all is fine. Is there something on your end you can fix so
that i get what i paid for? I don’t want a refund right now because it is a good deal, i just wish it worked properly. The hosting account in
question is “striker12]11.info.” Thanks.

Their Response:
Thank you for contacting customer support. Unfortunately, this is the nature of a shared server hosting account. Because your hosting account is located on a server where multiple hosting accounts are being served, then there will be times when slowness will occur. In order to have more control over this functionality, you may consider a virtual dedicated of dedicated hosting server to service your site.

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Email #2:

Customer 12/06/2005 02:01 AM
Ahh, nothing like bait and switch… Couldn’t I just get what I paid for, no more, no less? I understand legally you are covered by your TOS… But
still. Why advertise 250gb of bandwidth when you can’t even deliver half of it without failing. You knew that this high transfer limit would draw high bandwidth customers, as it did me. Yet once they are drawn in you say “you get what you pay for”… Hmm…

Their Response:
Thank you for your email. The bandwidth allotment is intended to be used throughout the month, not all at once. At the rate your site is going, you will go over your bandwidth allotment well before the month is up. As stated by the previous rep, a shared hosting account is located on a server with several other accounts and there is bandwith management in place to prevent your site from taking down other sites on the server.

If you have several users downloading these large files, you may wish to create a torrent file and use that to distribute your file instead (google search for “torrent” for more info). This will distribute the task of downloading the file amongst the people downloading it and is much more efficient than having everyone hit the same server at once.

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Email #3:

Customer 12/06/2005 10:10 AM
Thank you, your response (*Name here*) was a lot more helpful than the last representatives. The reason I have used so much bandwidth this month is because I have been offering both a h.264 AND xvid encoded release of the podcast. Now I am only offering the xvid version which is half the size.
This has helped me ration my bandwidth. With this new encoded video I will stay under 250gb for the month. However, I would still like the xvid to be successfully downloaded by my viewers and not die halfway through. Could you explain why it dies? Is there a max-throughput on accounts so that I don’t go over X mbps total, or some other kind of filter/protection. I would just like to know these things BEFORE I put the site under the load and maybe others would too.

Their Response:
Thank you for contacting customer support. We are not showing any issues with why your visitors should not be able to download this file all the way through without interruption. We do not have a max throughput limit in place at this time. It is highly possible that the issues with some of your visitors download the file could be the file size itself as many ISPs have file size limits out there that could interfere. You may want to simply try to break your file up into smaller file sizes and have visitors download the file in multiple parts. Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

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Email #4:

Customer 12/06/2005 03:00 PM
Normally I would have said it was the visitors problem but then I myself tried it and it would not complete. I don’t believe I can break it down into smaller parts without it looking very unprofessional. The download dies at 5 to 10 mb, so that would be about 10 parts the user would have to download.

Their Response:
What is the URL of the file that you are attempting to download? I need to be able to attempt to download this file in order to determine if I can reproduce this issue. Please respond to this email with the full URL of the file that you are having difficulties downloading so that I may investigate this issue in more detail.

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Email #5:

Customer 12/11/2005 10:22 AM
The file I am attempting to download is: http://www.striker1211.info/0023–2005-12-01–small-xvid.rar
It is dying for my users right now at about 3%

Their Response:
Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately I could not duplicate this problem. I was successfully able to download your file without issue.

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Email #6:

Customer 12/13/2005 11:40 AM
What browser did you use to download? FireFox will complete the download because it will try resuming when the download dies. If someone uses cURL, wget, or even Internet Explorer the download will die. I am having issues once again, here is an email from a user of my site:
“Safari 2.02 stops downloading this weeks vid after 6mb, curl doesn’t work nor speed download or Interarchy (saying it a invalid url). Firefox 2 does work though.” Thanks for your time and let me know.

Their Response:
Thank you for your email. We are using Internet Explorer 6. I was also able to successfully download your file. I even tried it through https://proxysystems.net. It was slower than our internal connection but still downloaded in about 5 mins. Unfortunately I don’t have access to other browsers to test it with.

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Email #7:
It is cutting off once more. However by the time you check this many people will have given up getting the file and its usage should be decreased enough for you to fully obtain the file… I would almost have to email you BEFORE the problem for you to recreate it. Do you not have any access to server logs? I’m sure they would show many time-outs or throttles.

Their Response:
Thank you for contacting customer service. I have contacted our hosting department, and found that while there are no server problems at this time, having multiple users request large files from the same account tends to use a lot of resources, and thus, isn’t really ideal in a shared environment. Their suggest was to break up the files, if you wish to use a shared hosting account.

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Email #8:

Customer 12/17/2005 10:02 PM
Too large? Does your company really expect to offer FIVE GIGABYTES of storage and have someone fill it with JPEGs or blogs? It would take about twenty-five THOUSAND pictures to fill up this amount of space. It seems like you never expected someone to take you up on your offer. Even if I split the file up (as I stated to another customer service rep) it would be too tedious for my visitors. Just admit you cannot deliver what you advertise. I am staying within my 5 GBs of allotted space AND my 250GB of allotted bandwidth. It seems I expect too much. I contacted you BEFORE I even selected a plan and a member of your “team” assured me that you would provide 250gb of transfer as PROMISED, even on the shared plan. Would it be possible for you to upgrade me to a better, less shared, server for free or a lower cost? If not how would I go about getting a refund for my unused month. Sorry if I come off rude. It’s only that downtime reflects negatively on me, as a webmaster. Thank you for your time.

Their Response:
Thank you for contacting customer support.

We would be happy to request a refund for your order. However, we will need you to first cancel the service in question. Once the service has been cancelled, please reply with the last four digits of your payment type on file, as indicated in your account under “Credit Card & Payment Info” from the “Customer Info & More” dropdown. Upon reply with the requested information, we will submit your refund request.
(and so on including instructions on how to cancel my account)

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The End.