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Costly/ premium hosting services - Are they really better?
To my knowledge most of the VPS service ranges from $2-$20 for unmanaged service ( 1GB RAM, upto 50 GB disk, 500GB to 1 TB bandwidth) and about $23-$35 for managed service with Cpanel. This may be the industry scenario presently and this rates are nominal rate a service provider charge for those who need the VPS service. You can browse any forum, blog and search for companies, most of the companies price range is in this range only for the specs mentioned.
But we are also seeing that some service providers charge too high for the above mentioned specs with various marketing techniques, we do see that many prefer them to host. My question is are they really doing better than the managed service providers who are offering the service at the above mentioned price range? If yes how better they are compared with normal managed service providers.
Some companies who charge premium charges for normal specs include Liquidweb, Servint, Rackspace, Wiredtree etc. How better they are compared with the hardware and network provided by companies like Linode, DO, Vultr. Are the providing better service compared with these companies. In Linode if some one buys a basic VPS with 1 GB RAM and even if he gets Cpanel for $15 the total charge is $25 per month and if its managed by some managing service it will cost $20-$29 more, in total it will be surely less than the price of the premium providers.
Which one will be better, obtained a service from premium providers or obtaining a service from normal companies and hiring a server management professional if needed.
Is it really good to go with a premium service provider?
Comments
Not necessarily better, but they can be more reliable since big budget means more staff who are paid better compared to lowend hosts, but again all this depends on the company.. Since those companies charge more they have more marketing budget as well.
Often you can end up with better support and better hardware for spending a bit extra, but that depends on the companies. A lot of the smaller / cheaper companies will run on the smaller margins but with the aim of signing up a lot more users. It also depends on how much support you expect, we for example are fully un-managed and only offer minimal assistance with VPS matters other than if its some form of mis-configuration or mistake on our part, premium services will probably offer a bit more support.
Hope you find what you are looking for
Ok for that bit more support is that pricing worth for? Also can any one comment about the hardware and networking they provide when compared with normal managed service providers?
Well it's my experience that anyone can provide a managed service for $1/m. It's a question of can they scale their business to any number of sales while maintaining their level of quality. Obviously those who charge more can scale better than those who charge less, to an extent.
Keep in mind that the business scale is not linear. A company with 15 clients that is a one man show has no need for an HR representative, or any dedicated legal team. A company with 150,000 clients and 150 employees is in a terrible position without those things.
Obviously some companies charge far more than what is required to scale their business while maintaining quality support. The companies you mentioned that charge higher prices, they focus heavily on managed support with fast response times. The cheaper ones you mentioned do not. They might have great support with quick response times, but don't expect it to continue at their price point if they grow too big.
When you charge for unmanaged, support is often "best effort" and the quality of support provided will drop with scale. This is inevitable, and definitely what the client signs up for with unmanaged service.
@jar: Thank you for the detailed perspective provided. I do know why those companies need such a payment but what i want to know is, as an end user do I really need to go with them at this price tag.
Definitely a lot of preference there. Trust is key as well. If you think you're going to brick something and you need someone with hardware access to be able to get to it fast, no matter how many sales they made this week, LiquidWeb is going to blow you away consistently. DigitalOcean, for example, hit or miss if it's just your problem, but you're given the tools to handle it yourself if you're capable.
With a big company you will be dealing with faceless cold wall :P while with smaller companies, you will be dealing with people that you might know better over time.
There are good knowledgeable and reliable people that run small business providing quality services here, like Prometeus, JMGinner, RyanArp, Jarland, DevonB, Kujoe, NickA, Anthonysmith, Serverian, rds100, Francisco, Skylar, BigTim, McPhill and many more
I personally prefer to go with them, someone with a face
@vRozenSch00n : This is my thinking after browsing the forums a lot, but thought of getting more idea into it. But I also found that even though you deal with unnamed persons the reliability as a company is there if you go for high priced companies, they will do anything to save their brand name.
Also there will be some one, either name or unnamed, to help you at the time of crisis, in one man show kind of companies you cant expect it, right?
And don't forget, there are also good freelancers or small business here who might be available for hire with reasonable prices like jHadley, infinity, and many more.
@ vRozenSch00n : Yes i do know, that's what comparing my options
on a day to day basis no not always better in terms of hardware performance, if you are a dd junky then stick with lowend stuff as you don't know what you need anyway
The big difference is when the shit hits the fan they have the staff and disaster recovery plans in place you are paying the premium for peace of mind under these circumstances.
@Jar You are very right.
We found out that expansion does not work anymore and more staff is needed while we do not offer any kind of management (apart from isolated work here and there when the customer afford our high rates).
In order to tackle this problem, we looked which services create the most problems and generate the lowest returns and we are slowly phasing them out. It is kinda hard to even answer tickets when you have 4000 customers and when there is some problem hell breaks loose.
In the end, we face a problem, expand customer base and hire more staff, create corporate-style management and all or stay small and treat it like a hobby.
Personally i know the hobby approach works and uncle has no time for managing a much larger company either, there are many of those with millions of investment, it is way better to provide an alternative to them and treat customers as friends in a family business approach for which EU and Italy, especially, have a lot of tradition.
What about their after disaster reaction ? What type of precautions they take and are there any review about Data Loss ... ?
If data loss occurs, the customer quickly restores the backup if they do not have redundancy (multiple locations with same content and replicated databases, DNS setups, etc).
If the customer has no backups, their data is not important and a simple re-provisioning will suffice.
Whilst I find Rackspace.etc are generally considerably more expensive than providers you find on forums such as LET they do have their place in the market, certainly for Corporates and Businesses who need the option to pickup the phone and talk to someone or want to make day to day running of their servers someone Else's problem they might be a good fit.
I've used WiredTree and Knownhost. Both are excellent and yes, you get support there you won't get from the best low-end providers.
24x7 phone availability, downtime/maintenance announced well in advance, handholding support for cpanel/web/etc.
Only you can answer this.
Linode, as far as I used it, is terrible. It's so unreliable, you shouldn't run any production services threre. Their nodes are unstable and they have hardware failures twice a month.
That's not everyone's experience with them, for sure. They had been pretty nice and dependable to me, would use them for production if DDoS protection were available.
@tr1cky This is the first time I am hearing this kind of stuff about Linode, they are established provider used by many for production services.
I decided to try them while they had this 50$ coupon and experienced 3 hardware failures so far.
You would not have the worry that some one will run away your money and more importantly data. They will provide your proper service and support and possibly DDoS protection.
However Companies like RamNode, Prometeus and Crissic Solutions are providing solid service from years and we hope that they will do the same in future.
IMHO, the top tier are crazy overpriced. (Particularly RackSpace in the dedicated server segment.) Moving down the ladder the lines become fuzzier. As others have stated, providing quality hardware and support does cost money. As does staffing, etc, to support growing infrastructure and client bases. So it comes down to resource allocation and automation. There are plenty of providers at the mid to higher end of the LET range that rival (or surpass) more 'established' companies such as Linode. At the bottom end, you get what you pay for followed by massive threads full of complaints.
@datarealm : Are there any decent providers in the bottom end?