How visitors can trust on your hosting business?

[drmike]

I don't think hosting is a commodity


1. The production of a commodity conforms to standards


2. Commodity doesn't imply low quality nor low price


Respectfully, I insist that Hosting is a lemon market

Oh I entirely agree Hosting is indeed a major lemon market.  No disagreement on that


Here's commodity definition from Merriam-Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/commodity


Full Definition of commodity
plural com·mod·i·ties
1
: an economic good: as
a : a product of agriculture or mining
b : an article of commerce especially when delivered for shipment <commodities futures>
c : a mass-produced unspecialized product <commodity chemicals> <commodity memory chips>
2
a : something useful or valued <that valuable commodity patience>; also : thing, entity
b : convenience, advantage
3
obsolete : quantity, lot
4
: a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price
5
: one that is subject to ready exchange or exploitation within a market <stars as individuals and as commodities of the film industry — Film Quarterly>


#4 in particular.  Generic good or service with great availability (i.e. lots of companies offering the very same product).  Typically leads to smaller profit margins (because they have nothing to compete on) and so price is the last thing to differentiate, so they all go a-slashing.  


Brand name gets tossed in there and it's an interesting one, because there are more premium brands who don't play in the commodity price slashing circlejerk.   Instead the develop identity that consumers know, they might also engineer their own solution stacks (panel, ready made distros, high availability, fail over, free addons, etc.).


#5 is applicable from different angles.   #1(c) is also highly relative to the commodification of products / services that is hosting.

 

[fm7]

What is a 'Commodity'



A commodity is a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other commodities of the same type. Commodities are most often used as inputs in the production of other goods or services. The quality of a given commodity may differ slightly, but it is essentially uniform across producers. When they are traded on an exchange, commodities must also meet specified minimum standards, also known as a basis grade.


http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/commodity.asp

 

[fm7]

#4 in particular.  Generic good or service with great availability (i.e. lots of companies offering the very same product).  Typically leads to smaller profit margins (because they have nothing to compete on and so price is the last thing to differentiate, so they all go a-slashing.

I would say it is a characteristic of mature markets. Definitely not commodity.


E.g.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_titanium_production


This is a list of countries by titanium production in 2010–2013 based on USGS figures. The production figures are for titanium sponge, units are in metric tons.


Rank


Country/Region


2010


2011


2012


2013


 


 World


137,000


186,000


200,000


222,000


1


China


57,800


60,000


80,000


100,000


2


Russia


25,800


40,000


44,000


45,000


3


Japan


31,600


56,000


40,000


40,000


4


Kazakhstan


14,500


20,700


25,000


27,000


5


Ukraine


7,400


9,000


10,000


10,000


6


India


00


00


00


500

 

[drmike]

A commodity is a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other commodities of the same type. Commodities are most often used as inputs in the production of other goods or services. The quality of a given commodity may differ slightly, but it is essentially uniform across producers.

Hosting is a commodity  Most of it at least.


It's interchangeable 'with other commodities of the same type'.  Have cPanel, we can migrate you / will to one of the 110k other hosting brands that supports it / has same software stack.  Use Solus?  Your API / interface tool you use in the other 110k hosting brands works here too. Comfortable with the management interface and process of ordering and post deployment, same tools, we all win together. Commodity.


Only knit pick here is uniformity of the commodity. Without being too much of a dweeb, I'd say that the product delivered is essentially uniform:

1. They have Intel CPUs
   
2. They claim to be enterprise 
   
3. They claim to be industry standard / leading (says the guy walking behind the pack)
   
4. They claim to have RAID
   
5. They use the same software (see above)
   
6. They are on blended bandwidth with multiple upstreams (performance of we'll ignore since it's incredibly variable even in the same DC )
   
7. They are mostly in proper DCs with some security and proper environmental conditioning (some freaks violate the rules, but those are the slightly different)
   
8. They all claim / advert responsive support staffed by hordes of people just begging you to break their boredom by ticketing.  Operators are standing by - NOW!
   

Far more uniform about these companies than is different about them.  Very depthful and long term investment to prove / track their bad performance.  Which  just gets dismissed as noisy neighbor abuse and assumption that such is resolved and won't reappear again, today.  So much for you Mr. Troublemaker monitoring your hosting provider and being able to show how they go down more than a street walker with a drug habit.


That's big arse chunk of industry above.  Most wouldn't be in biz if the aforementioned software stacks didn't make it approachable.


Commodity for hosting companies stops when they drop some of that above stack as a start.  Other ways to break out also, like actually having support.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen companies boast about support then get hard tackled for what isn't even close to support (ticket hockey anyone, or do you prefer getting answers only during 80% or greater of full moon?).


Non commodity hosting companies for the most part aren't dipping down to insane giveaway prices.  They don't have to and can do basic math.  They have reputation usually, they are battle proven.  Those other guys, they are bushels of manure.   Commodity

 

[fm7]

LOL


Frankly ... I couldn't agree more. You won


Great post!

 

[fm7]

Non commodity hosting companies for the most part aren't dipping down to insane giveaway prices.  They don't have to and can do basic math.  They have reputation usually, they are battle proven.

Cloud Computing is NOT a Commodity


Timothy Chou | Lecturer at Stanford University


...


The new RB-A results are for seven compute and storage cloud service suppliers: Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace, IBM, Google, Digital Ocean and Linode. Each of them has many different types of computers, so in total 153 types were tested. In addition computers were benchmarked in Asia, Europe and North America, when available. The results discussed in the report span benchmarking over 10 months, where the performance tests was run 23,000 times. All results are normalized to a 720-hour, monthly pricing model to establish the price-performance metrics, with pricing also being derived in real time.


While some declare cloud computing a commodity, it’s still far from that, unless you think cars are a commodity and a Ferrari and Hyundai the same.


...


The absolute performance of single core computer can vary by 615% between providers. The Microsoft Cloud G5 compute cloud service is the fastest, followed by Amazon’s m4.10xlarge and c3.8xlarge. It’s surprising that compute cloud service performance can vary by over 6x. That’s more than the performance difference between a Porsche 918 sprinting to 60mph in 2.2 seconds versus the Ford Transit 350HD van getting to the same speed in 12.5 seconds.


Compute cloud service performance can also vary over time. In some cases performance can fluctuate by as much as 62% over the sample period. Interestingly, more performance volatility is more prevalent with larger computers.


Of course absolute performance isn’t everything, after all a Ford Transit 350HD costs about $50,000 and a Porsche 918 is over 15 times more expensive. Amazingly, when you factor in price, the price performance for a 4-core compute cloud service can also vary by 15x. The top three price-performance winners were Linode-4GB, Digital Ocean’s 8GB instance and Rackspace’s General 1-4.


So if you’re a cloud architect considering alternatives in the design of your new digital house you’d be wise to take these results into consideration. After all, it would be a shame to pay for a Porsche exotic and get the performance of a full size van.


For more information download the report and consider connecting with the authors Edward Wustenhoff of Burstorm and/or Eugene Ng of Rice University.


https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cloud-computing-commodity-timothy-chou

From the study (PDF,40p)


" ... we realized that because there is less control over the environment we cannot assume that every instance tested is identical at start up, over time and per location. This causes great uncertainty about the capability to process workloads consistently."

 

[drmike]

From the study (PDF,40p)


" ... we realized that because there is less control over the environment we cannot assume that every instance tested is identical at start up, over time and per location. This causes great uncertainty about the capability to process workloads consistently."

Great post  Keep it coming.  


Reading the edumacted paper rambling.  


I stand by this all being commodity, despite the academic knitpicks.  Remember it's such mentalities that mutates virtualized VPS into cloud and dances around the liberal definitions, in effect considering a Raspberry Pi potentially a cloud hosting thing, or any iOT device a cloud hosting thing.  It is boundless insanity.


Me, I remain a limited buying it audience for cloud and expect the fixings and a good dog show to buy it or belief that such is actually cloud.  Includes mature API, mature documentation with working code samples, actual community, ideally customer support that is more useful than most people are accustom to.


If a cloud company meets my standards they would also break out of being commodity in some additional manners.  Doesn't mean they are entirely non-commodity even then, just means on the spine of the matter dancing about.  But in clarity, in fairness, if someone has a redundant HA installation with NAS/SAN as the base of their buildout it's today a tier above most of the market and the commodity Xeon white box + CentOS + Solus = done.  However, what isn't commodity approach today, very well may be down the short and local road.  Tomorrow buildouts are almost out of necessity going to have to mature and change to compete in the market.  Being average, going along with the stream to get along, that's very commodity-like behavior.


Reading the first 11 pages of the PDF above, it's typical harping on performance of CPU bound tasks.  Commodity, the scripts all run on these, a box of equals, but some are less equal.  While AWS might be bottom of the pack, their tools and addon features might make it a far more superior eco system.  Inverse relationship there on raw computing is performance units per dollar, which starts to go the way of lowend* with this performs so much better for so much less (while totalling missing the features, elasticity (if it exists), etc.)... I can see baremetal-like simple boxes with direct storage (i.e. traditional VPS) being faster and also having less container shaping (lack of knowledge usually).  Of course they are faster, direct drive channel = fast, wide open cores = faster...  No IO wait to SAN, cheap to deploy... Just wait until one has to scale now, replicate now, do real near time or live-like time stuff --- it won't and cannot unless you pre-build all that yourself and create the scripts and logic to plumb it all together.


I think battles like this are comparing commodities again, just different commodities.


One is like corn (VPS)
Other is like flour (AWS, Google, more real cloud computing)


Both are related, both are product base same, will accomplish the same thing, one type is just more refined. Refined is fine, if you need it.  A Mercedes is a lovely vehicle, but a GM will do at much lower cost.


Oddly in this market, we have arguably a larger chunk of the market buy the Mercedes-like brands, at greater cost, with less performance raw computing wise and probably typically without actually utilizing the actual benefits / differentiators of those products.  Speaks to the buying habits of trained population.  Speaks to the power of branding and proper marketing (although I remain completely disgusted by Amazon and find their approach like most of these big competitors to be insanely dry, traditionally broken, unfriendly to n00bs, and artificially barrier reefed).

 

[fm7]

I'm not comfortable calling commodity a service sold by a bunch of me too companies but I certainly agree with your reasoning.


Even though many people here still believe in product/service differentiation, I believe what really matters is the company be seen as distinct from all others.

 

[drmike]

I'm not comfortable calling commodity a service sold by a bunch of me too companies but I certainly agree with your reasoning.


Even though many people here still believe in product/service differentiation, I believe what really matters is the company be seen as distinct from all others.

Oh I get parts of your anti-commodity truth in labeling


Fact is virtual services never traditionally have been viewed as commodities.   In financial sense commodities are under various weights and measures and often transacted on financial markets (mainly to wreck the wealth generation of agriculture and create added inflation if anything).


VPS is not, but with things like OnApps Federation marketplace this moves more towards that.  Also the default level of $10 per GB of of RAM is pretty much a set point DO really parked hard.


Company differentiators are indeed key.


@fm7 what companies, be they cloud or otherwise, in the hosting industry, strike you as distinct brands?

 

[fm7]

Oh I get parts of your anti-commodity truth in labeling

Agreed.

@fm7 what companies, be they cloud or otherwise, in the hosting industry, strike you as distinct brands?

Fortune 500: IBM, Microsoft, Oracle


CDN: Akamai


SMB: Rackspace


Startup: Amazon


Developer: Linode


Consumer: Apple, Google


For the record, I think VMware vSphere is the best virtualization solution and Azure the best "public cloud".

 

[cristipuc]

Small companies are ok because they try to fix any problems and provide low cost.


1. First impact, you need to see clear information and nice design without bugs, if you see problems on theirs website then you can expect problems for provided services.


2. Second, search for reviews and create your own opinion about them, any companies can have some negative feedback's but depends about how much true is there.


3. Buy a Small Package, also see if any weekly packages are available ( this is a plus, because you can test it for a week and you should not expect any refund,  )


 


 

 

[RombelIrk]

Small companies are good only if you're planning a small project, like a promo site or blog. If you need a hosting for any commercial activity, it's better to address to well-known, time-proved providers, even if they provide a higher cost. I'd rather pay some extra money to avoid (or to minimize risk of) any possible issues at the provider's side in future, so that I could do the business in comfort.

 

[graeme]

I have to disagree with @RombelIrk. Big providers are not necessarily safer - if an AWS server failure takes your VPS down  it is just as down as if a small providers server fails. In fact, AWS may be less bothered about a single instance failing because they are primarily catering to people who design systems with no single point of failure.

Good small providers tend to provider better customer service to small customers (which is most businesses). If you are not large enough for running your own data centre to be a viable alternative, you are a small customer as far as the big providers are concerned.

@fm7 those are a list of major global brands. There are also strong national brands (in every country) and brands that are strong in particular markets.

 

[buildmyblock]

being in the hosting industry before ive had a few key things ive picked up on


first thing is it takes time your going to loose alot of money before making a profit but clients like to see established business's and also like to see how they have handled upset clients always respond to negative reviews or feedback even if its on a forum google your business name and find any possible signs of negativity and try to correct it


also a professional looking website noone is going to buy from someone that just sticks up any old page make it look unique and also integrate with your billing system


from my experience ive had alot of clients come on livechat questioning the host servers configuration always be willing to share information to clients about your hardware this makes them trust you more that your not keeping it a secret

 

[copperhost]

I put question then answer below to each question.
 



If you are a customer then how and why you will trust on a small hosting company?


- If website functions properly and has phone number and has a professional look then I can trust.


Do you prefer big company or small company? I don't like big company for many reason.


- small because most of time they care about keeping customers and to give good customer service


where as alot of times with big companies the employees don't care at all.


1. Why new visitor will trust on your company?


- same answer as above "If website functions properly and has phone number and has a professional look then I can trust."


2. How can you increase trust, what you need to do?


- To be on top of customer service.

 

[kunnu]

Small companies are ok because they try to fix any problems and provide low cost.


3. Buy a Small Package, also see if any weekly packages are available ( this is a plus, because you can test it for a week and you should not expect any refund,  )


 


 

Wow, Weekly plan is a really great idea. Thanks. I will work on it.

I put question then answer below to each question.



- If website functions properly and has phone number and has a professional look then I can trust.

I will add a phone number for increasing trust. Its a really nice and I will also check alternative option.

 

[farhanideas]

You must give good support before sale and provide demo for checking which help to get trust of that customer on your website

 

[SGraf]

> 1. Why new visitor will trust on your company?
Its not about just "getting trust" so that people purchase stuff.
Provide a solid service,preferably something unique and if you keep doing good work, customers will find you

If you just provide the same thing everyone tries to do, chances are you are going to be unhappy and eventually quit.
(if you get there, drop me a mail, i'm happy to take some of that burden off your hands)

2. How can you increase trust, what you need to do?
See #1 you are focused too much the model

get trust=> sell products

instead focus on

provide a unique/niece service at good quality => help people find you

 

[Host4Biz]

I think that worth to be honest with clients and do not oversell.
Doing your best every day will help to gather good results.

 

[HostMines]

I think you should try small companies if you have a small/ medium size website so save your web hosting cost on unlimited plans.
sometimes big companies are costly to you because they pay heavy affiliate commission upto $100 per signup.

It's better to choose a small host in this case and you will also get personal attention when support is needed.