$1 per month - why?

[alias2002]

I noticed that others hosting sites offer $1 per month. What is your opinion about that hosting sites?

 

[sander k]

I noticed that others hosting sites offer $1 per month. What is your opinion about that hosting sites?

That "other hosts" proberbly oversell.

 

[wswd]

I noticed that others hosting sites offer $1 per month. What is your opinion about that hosting sites?

This is actually a really good question, and I'll ask that the moderators move all these to a new topic, so as not to infringe on the OP's post.

Web hosting costs for providers, are generally very much the same. If you colo, the server hardware costs are going to be pretty much identical. You might get a small discount if you buy in bulk, but it isn't greatly going to affect things. Motherboards cost the same, processors cost the same, RAM costs the same, etc.

If you rent servers, the costs are again very much the same. Again, you might get a discount if you have multiple servers with a company, pay yearly, etc., but the costs aren't going to be that different in the grand scheme of things.

So that in mind, a couple things have to happen with low cost hosts (i.e. $1/mo.)

1) You overload/oversell the server, because you need more accounts to break even and make the server profitable.
2) You put cheaper hardware/features in your server. I.e. you'll see a lot of budget hosts only run RAID1.
3) Support becomes non-existent or slow because you can't pay for the same number/quality of support staff another company could.

So if you see a $1/mo. host (only around $0.67 after PayPal fees, bank fees, etc.), one of those HAS to be happening. On a $200 server, not accounting for any other costs, staff, administrative costs, etc., you would need 300 accounts on a server just to break even. Nobody goes into business to break even. So are you now up to 400 accounts? 500 accounts?

On a $5/mo. hosting plan, you're only talking about 45 accounts to break even. You might find double that on the server, to make a decent profit. So you're sharing a server with 100 other people as opposed to 400 or 500 other people. Makes a huge difference when it comes to CPU, Disk i/o (that's the big one), etc. Generally makes for a better hosting experience all around.

 

[alias2002]

That "other hosts" proberbly oversell.

Yeah, that's may be.

 

[wdc]

well ICPH offers $0.5/mo. plan with a tiny web space (100Mb) and data transfer (1000Mb). It is covering server costs. The earning is made by a bigger plans and virtual private servers. Nowadays there are extremelly powerfull servers which can handle really thousands of account at same time.

but if someone offers like unlimited disk space or 50gb disk space for such a price i would be cautious, anyway you always should backup your website data no matter on which hosting you are using

 

[anonymoushost]

The main reason for doing this is to maximize there sales which ultimately help then in making profile on bulk sales. There is another reason on the same time that they try to cover the expenses so they wouldn't be paying from their own pockets so simply they just open it to customers

 

[SKISLAL]

I disagree with some of the comments above. Many personal blogs, SME web sites do not consume much resources. Under 1000 visits a day, most of web sites put very little load on the server. A dedicated server, which is getting cheaper and cheaper since 2000s, can host a lot of web sites with few visitors and pay its own bills and make money for the hosting business with $1/month.

We sell for 1 dollar from time to time with promotions etc. One of our servers have more than 400 accounts and around 1.5 load in average. Of course, this is true for web sites with few visitors. For customers which demands more resources, we have other plans/servers which costs more. And for that kind of web sites, I agree with the comments above. That is simply overselling and overloading the server.

 

[[JSH]John]

I'll never understand why any host would only charge $1 when it's impossible to cover costs at such a low price. The thing is, a lot of customers will still sign up for $1 hosting...

 

[Imbahost-Andy]

It is a good marketing strategy, mostly by startups, so a nice research about the company and reviews is recommended before signing up with them.