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why does web hosting typically suck so bad? · by Rafi Kam
Aside from an outage from last year’s Florida hurricanes and some ideological differences about MP3’s, I’ve gotten along pretty well with my web host. They’re very cheap and fairly responsive when it comes to support.
Months back I was planning on splitting over the MP3 disagreement. Keter suggested his host and I actually signed up for their services but cancelled my account after a few months. I had been too blazy (busy + lazy) to actually follow through with the site migration.
I don’t think Keter would make that suggestion today. Based on the repeated stories of his web host’s transgressions including the most recent outrageous one, I see my procrastinating ways have once again served me well.
Now in the same week as Surf Speedy goes ahead on their own and upgrades their customer Imageyenation to a costly dedicated server, I also see outages at 33jones, Philaflava (of course) intermittently going offline all week and every typepad blogger in the world complaining that they’ve lost some posts from an outage.
What is with all these 2-bit web hosts? My own theory is that these outfits are trying to debunk the words of Mark Cuban who blogged this week that “the Internet is old news and boring”. How about a little site outage and data loss to spice up your life?
Mark Cuban is right. Your internet use is not cutting edge technology. It’s supposed to “just work”, as he says, like a utility. You turn a faucet on the sink and water comes out, you point your browser to a web address and the data is supposed to come out. How are web hosts fucking up several times a year and still thriving? Imagine your power, phone or water being out as often as your website. People would go apeshit. It’s real commonplace though in the world of budget hosting.
Comments for "why does web hosting typically suck so bad?"
All of these shared hosting providers oversell their capacity and then just hope that their usage is pretty low. Because most clients will never put a dent in the server.
— Beek Jul 13, 09:17 PM
Came a little late to this discussion. Probably because I’ve been spending so much time arguing with the techs at my half-assed web hosting company (brinkster). I get service outages about once a week with them. During one of their system backups, they actually replaced my database (which holds my blog posts) with a week-old copy. After I suggested that I would find a new webhost if they didn’t fix the problem, they responded by shutting my site down for 12 hours. The only good thing I can say about them is that they don’t care about the mp3s (not yet, anyway).
— fresh Jul 14, 10:39 PM
I’m apprently doing more than denting their server. The thing is, in my opinion it’s still a relatively modest ammount of traffic. Like I’m only now to the point of feeling confident about the ammount of regular traffic we get. I still think there’s alot of room for growth. And I’ve bought a hosting plan that’s supposed to cover that growth. But ( for what I assume is exactly the reason Beek mentioned in his comment ) it seems like the hosting company has no intention of actually offering that quality of service. It’s essentially a clasic bait-and-switch sort of situation. “Oh, we’re gonna sell you these services for this price… but then we’re gonna FORCE these other services on you for another price.” Looking at the sort of outtages these other sites Rafi already mentioned and the woefully scant features offered by many hosting companies I’ve looked up doesn’t give me much confidence in finding a new host.
— El Keter ben Tzadik Jul 15, 03:28 AM