High Conversion Affiliate Program for Webmasters

Credibility in the Web Hosting Industry

A look at the most incredible, scammer-infested industry on the Internet

Ebound Media

While browsing a dedicated server forum today, I came across a spammer who posted a link to his hosting website, along with a warning:

Do not even think about touching www.eboundmedia.com I spend endless nighs working on it. If you take any, or part of my website, i will sue you for everything you got.

This would be the first lie. He did not design the website - it is a $75 template in use by a couple other web hosts and still available on TemplateMonster.com.

After browsing the website a bit, I found more blatant lies:

The fact that Ebound Media is the hosting provider of choice for over 150,000 business and eCommerce websites in over 136 countries attests to our experience and expertise. We know Web hosting better than anyone, and it shows in everything we do.

Uh huh.

Ebound Media operates state-of-the-art data centers in Chicago IL, which are comprised of ultra high-quality connectivity, networking gear, climate control, security and power systems. The facilities are monitored 24/7/365 from our state-of-the-art network operations center.

Um, no. "Ebound Media" has no datacenter - the poor schmuck leases a server from ServerPath.com, which maintains a datacenter in San Francisco, California.

Ebound Media hosst (sic) more than 300,000 domains worldwide.

A more accurate statement would be, Ebound Media hosts one domain worldwide.

Just to be sure he wasn't joking, I played the part of an interested consumer and inquired via LivePerson, a handy dandy chat feature many hosts use to make person to person contact with a website representative. He initially confirmed that he had 30,000 customers, then modified it to 300,000 customers, and then to 150,000 customers each with two websites for a total of 300,000 websites.

"But you just registered the domain and Google's cache shows a Godaddy placeholder..."

To this he replied that Ebound Media is actually a subsidiary of another company which hosts 30,000 websites, er, I mean 300,000. ... Or was it 150,000?

"And who is it that you're a subsidiary of?"

That, evidently, is top secret.

One might ask, Does it really matter that a hosting provider lie his pretty arse off? If the service is provided as per contract terms, does it really matter?

I answer - Yes, it does matter. Because liars are liars to the core. To illustrate this better, let's take a look at BinaryBlocks.

BinaryBlocks

BinaryBlocks. Supposedly one of Canada's biggest virtual hosting providers. Operated by Jason Piercy, who claimed to have a multi-million dollar datacenter, including a $1.5 million back-up generator. He claimed over 20 employees at times, but none of these employees ever answered the phone.

Almost immediately after moving several sites to BinaryBlocks from another incompetent, now-defunct host, we noticed several instances of prolonged downtime. Sometimes the sites were down for two or three days. On one occasion, our sites were down for 5 days.

It must be your ISP. The server is up, and I have a multi-million dollar monitoring system in place to alert my staff when the server is down.

This was the standard response. And then one day, after another period of extended downtime, this message was displayed on the BinaryBlocks home page:

Disconnected For Non-Payment

This server/site has been turned off for non-payment. All the data on this server/site has been retained. If you have any questions please contact wwww.cobaltracks.com.

As it turns out, Jason Piercy's business was nothing more than a fancy website, a leased server and an extra phone line in what may have been his mother's garage. He had hundreds if not over a thousand customers who were paying good money; but instead of paying the bill for the leased server, he bought a new car.

After six months of non-payment, the dedicated server folks pulled the plug and hundreds of websites vanished.

This is what happens when you do business with lying schmucks.

Fool's Gold

The reasons for the plethora of financially unviable hosts in this industry is simple: The lure of easy money.

The math goes something like this:

A dedicated server can be leased for as little as $49 a month. A hosting website template can cost $75. A simple minded man would want to put as many as 2,000 websites on that one server, each at $10 per month, expecting to realize profits as high as $10,000, $20,000 or more per month.

There are many fatal flaws to this type of business plan. First off, a $49 server isn't going to be much better no server at all. I'd rather not host a single website on a cheap EV1Servers machine with 128 MB, or 512MB's of RAM. It just isn't commercial quality hosting.

Another thing to remember about the shared hosting environment is that vulnerabilities exist which require a server administration staff to monitor the servers full time - 24/7/365.

Pretending to be a web host may not cost much, but the operation of a professional web hosting company does cost a small fortune, and it is by no means a quick road to riches.

Avoiding The Mess

Here are a few basic rules to follow when choosing a host for your website:

Brand
Brand name hosts are brand name hosts because they've built up a reputation over time. If a brand name host screws its customers, it loses its most valuable asset - brand credibility.

Although some branded hosts do provide poor service, they will most likely not be disappearing anytime soon, and your chances are better with a branded, well-known host than with an unknown host.

Beware of Affiliate Recommendations
One thing to be aware of is affiliate recommendations. Many hosting providers run affiliate programs which offer $50 or more to webmasters who refer other webmasters. Needless to say, it provides just enough incentive to make webmasters recommend a web regardless of the host's virtues.

iPowerWeb and LunarPages operate two of the most high-paying affiliate programs, and as such they are often the subject of extremely gratuitous recommendations, despite the wide-spread knowledge of their unreliability.

Do Your Homework
The best way to find the truth about a host is to search in web hosting forums and webmaster forums such as the Webmaster Forums. Website owners tend to share their experiences, and this information will be the least biassed.

This article by John Scott.