The biggest grumble I have in the hosting world is rip off dedicated prices!

Now, as with most things in IT you get your cheap as chips deal, and you get your 'it must be good 'cos it's so expensive' lot.

Dedicated hosting falls into the category of 'The punter knows jack about parts cost so let's rip him off big time'.

Please note that not ALL hosters are like this, but I'd say the majority are. And it's not the big ones either. There is one huge hoster who has an incredible deal on but some of the comments on service and support make you wonder if it's really worth it in the first place.

Upgrade rip offs
This is the one that really annoys me the most. The more parts you want, the more you get ripped off.

2nd Hard disk. You can buy an 80Gb hard disk for about £40 but why do hosters insist on charging a monthly fee which equates to about 10 times it's value over the course of a year?

Take RAM. You can purchase a 512Mb stick from places such as PCW for around £40. So why do hosters insist on charging £25 A MONTH, every MONTH for that part? Over the course of two years you would pay £600 for a part which costs just £40. Why? Because 'we have to support it and blah... blah...blah'. I can understand charging a slight extra premium for hard disks due to them likely to fail once every three years but ram is reliable!

It's the same with processor upgrades. The basic package may offer a 2.8Ghz P4 but upgrade to 3.0Ghz for extra £20 a month. ARGGHHH!!! You have to either support the 2.8Ghz in the first place or the 3.0Gh if the customer upgrades so why charge £240 every year extra for a part which costs just £30 extra?

Inflexible Packages
I have a requirement for super fast hardware to perform database searches but low bandwidth.

Why are hosters so inflexible such that if you want a 3.6Ghz Pentium then you must by the SCSI Raid 5 disks, and you must have the 500Gb bandwidth option?

Why can't I just choose the 3.6Ghz pentium, 2 x IDE disks, and 20Gb bandwidth? Why don't they give a discount for bandwidth not required?

Specs not Changed for a Year
Moore's Law states that processing power doubles every 18 months (or something like that), but web hosters law stats that we will sell you last years outdated technology today.

Here's a funny thing I saw recently. A small / medium webhoster is advertising "New hardware spec for 2005!!!" Hmmm, let's take a look at the hardware list.

2.4Ghz Pentium, 512Mb of Ram...

That is a joke and a con. Not only is the 2.4Ghz something like 3 years old but the 'new hardware' spec for 2005 is exactly the same as the new hardware spec they advertised as being 'new for 2004'!

That is an extreme example but demonstrates the point perfectly as to why webhosters must be raking it in.

Why are there no hosters out there offering better than 3.2Ghz? Why is the fastests P4 you can get 3.2Ghz but more usually 3.06Ghz? Why are RAM speeds PC2700? Why are bus speeds 533Mhz? These are 2003 / 2004 technologies!

Why do we have to pay for outdated hardware at the same price we did last year?

Here's another prime example.

I've been with my current dedicated hosters for two years. I'd now like to upgrade from 1Gb to 2Gb of ram.

How much should this cost? Well the parts come in at around £75-£100 and if you say 15 minutes of an engineers time (but with a minimum charge of 1 hour at £50) then the total cost should be about £125-£150. But webhosters usually offer some kind of loyalty bonus for being with them each year - you'd expect like either the parts, or the engineer's time to be waivered...

I just got a quote to upgrade. They offered me £20 a MONTH.

That's not on. It really annoys me that webhosters would want to skim £20 each month, every month until you close the account and go elsewhere.

This is just another step moving me in the direction of co-lo.

Man, I can't wait for the day when telecoms technology means we can run our own servers in our own offices with super fast reliable connections to the internet.

well if its that bad go co lo.

Then you can also sell webspace to friends etc too

I will one day. It just doesn't seem practical at the moment because of the fact that most co-lo's are London whilst there are very few (if any) in the west country / Wales. I also have some questions about it here:

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/showthread.php?t=23976

Yeah I would like to buy parts for example buy the CPU, Memory and Hard drive and just pay for the use and any extra rent charge.

Layedtech currently allow you to buy the parts, not the CPU though

yeah I do agree that we are being ripped off for dedicated though......

I've been on a mission to track down some value hosting.

I'm really dissapointed with my current hosters and am now looking to change. Dissapointed with them for a) charging an exhorbitant monthly fee for a ram upgrade, b) not doing enough of a deal for a 2year loyal customer! - to be fair, they did offer to knock a tenner off but hey, it's not enough buddy!

How ironic that whilst searching some messageboards for the current hosters I stumble across a message from an ex customer of theirs who set up his own hosting co. I'm looking at his site now and I really can't believe the prices.

I'm always looking for value for money but if I see an offer which is too good to be true the alarm bells start sounding.

In my quest to find a value dedicated server I find that this guy offers one off fees for upgrades, the cheapest dedicated server prices I can find (even cheaper than US hosters - an issue I pointed out in another thread), free network backups, there are also free 'remote hands' or just call in and work on the server yourself

Anyone heard of, or have any opinions of poundhost? There must be a catch somewhere?

http://www.poundhost.com/servers/linux.html

take a look at oneandone's dedicated plans. $50 for 500GB transfer and 40Gb HD is a much better deal.

Yes, one and one do have good prices but the horror stories of their service puts me off them.

Just had an email back from poundhost. The server upgrades are just a one off fee.

That is totally outstanding. Full credit to a webhoster who doesn't rip punters off by charging £xx per month for upgrades!

The reason most hosts will charge you per month for adding ram, hard drive, etc... is due to the fact that most hosting companies support the hardware for the life of the account. If you want to add a hard drive and they charge you $5 over cost, what happens when that hard drive goes bad several times over the course of a few years. That host is stuck replacing the hard drive without collecting any money from the customer. You also have to remember that there is a lot more than hardware costs associated with the price of a server. There is the cost of power, ac units, bandwidth, redundant power, redundant bandwidth, generators, techs on staff 24/7 etc... The pricing for dedicated servers has come down considerably over the last 2 years. The profit margins are getting smaller and smaller for the amount of bandwidth most companies offer these days.

HiVelocity, that just doesn't wash sorry. With some hosters it's blatant profiteering.

I can understand that there is a need to support hard disks, and that it is quite likely that they could fail each year, but there is no answer to the fact that webhosters are ripping customers off with RAM and CPU upgrades.

RAM is a) cheap, b) very reliable, c) is usually supported by a manufacturers *lifetime* warranty.

To charge £25 a month for a part which costs £40 outright is in no way value. It is just an attempt by hosters to squeeze as much cash as they can from unsuspecting punters.

The CPU support issue gives the game away as this is not so much an additional item to support but an option replacement. Your point is that hosters have to support these upgrades and that's why there is a monthly premium. Well how can you justify increased monthly costs for CPU's?

A Socket 478 3.0Ghz costs around £90 whilst the 3.2Ghz version costs around £120. This is a difference of only £30. So can you explain the justification for charging an extra £20 a month (total cost £240 a year - forever) for this simple 'upgrade'.

It is not as if the punter is purchasing two CPU's. It's not as if the hoster has to support two CPU's either - they don't there is only one part to support and they had to support the 3.0Ghz anyway. Charging £20 a month extra for a simple CPU upgrade is a rip off pure and simple.

On the point of the pricing of dedicated servers coming down in recent years I don't think that's happening over here in the UK.

In the US increased competition maybe bring prices down but here prices are generally much the same.

If anything customers are getting more bang for their buck. Where as 2 years ago they may have had a 2.4Gh 256Mb 40Gb for £125/mo now they have 3.0Ghz 512Mb 80Gb for £125/mo. It is the increase in performance of technology which punters are realising - not a reduction in price.

This seems to have come to an end though as no hoster is willing to take on the newer technology which is around today.

It is rare to find any hoster willing to supply a server faster than 3.2/3.4Ghz. Most of them are supplying crappy PC2700 ram whilst we are now into the realms of DDR2, PC5300 etc. Most of them are using older 533Mhz bus whilst much faster is available. Even things like PCI-Xpress are around but you will not find a webhoster who will offer this technology.

Why? Because Intel / AMD architecture these days are too uneconomical to support in a server environment. The latest Intels consume a huge amount of power and this has a knock on effect of cooling, PSU ratings and space etc.

This means that customers are losing out. Rather than mirroring the increase in performance seen in the PC market, server customers are having to either stick with two year old technology or go for Xeon's / Opteron's.

I agree that this is becoming a huge problem as it seems all dedicated hosts charge per month for new hardware. It's not a very userfriendly system, but if there are no other options...

Has anyone tried managed.com? They seem relatively cheaper overall than most dedicated server compaies (i've seen some ask for $3900 USD for something that can be purchased at $499 elsewhere).

Managed . com

Just pop along to WebHostingTalk there are just a few hundred complaints

Hmm... Lifetime warranty only applies throughout the lifetime of a product. Its not really lifetime. If the product is already no longer in production, the warranty will expire.

Hmm. If that was the case then why are so many hosters still offering 2.4Ghz P4's today? Why are so many hosters stating 'fast PC2700 RAM' when that kind of ram is years old?

They have bucket loads of the stuff and can't shift them!

Isn't it more economical that way? Getting something top of the line will be so much more expensive than a processor that is 2-3 levels below the top of the line product. The type of equipments used varies from host to host. Some hosts are offering Dual Xeon servers as their 'high-end' offers while some 'budget' hosts can only offer Pentium4 processors for their 'high-end' servers. It pretty much depends on what is the requirements. You pay for what you get.

Isn't it more economical that way?"

Yes - for the hosters but not for the customers. Who are we here? hosters or customers?

As I say. The difference between a 3.0Ghz and a 3.2Ghz is just £30 and yet hosters want to charge £20 a month for it. This is the whole beef of this thread - the fact that hosters rip off customers with unjustifiable upgrades costs, not the fact that some hosters supply XYZ technology whilst others supply UVW.

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Surely it is in hosters interests, as well as customers to drop the 3.0Ghz and just offer the 3.2Ghz instead? This will then satisfy your 'expiration of warranty' concern as the 3.2Ghz will have a longer lifespan than the 3.0Ghz.

But when there's a customer not willing to pay the $30 for the 3.2GHz, offering 3.0GHz will be justified. I have seen some people going for something cheaper instead of paying that bit more to get something faster. It seems that to them, it is already fast enough and they are not willing to pay more. Maybe that's the kind of consumer behaviour that we see that makes dedicated servers a profitable business.