Is your Web Hosting Provider telling you everything about their Web Hosting Packages & Servers?

Last week I was doing some research into CPanel Tools when that research then made me wonder about the size of each installed tool and whether or not their installation size was justified in terms of what their tool did.

I then turned my attention to a piece of software called eAccelerator, which is not a part of the CPanel Tools but a server-side (web hosting provider) piece of software, because it was taking up too much of my web space on my NetHosted web hosting package.

eAccelerator – Too Much Web Space

eAccelerator itself is very small. Its job is to speed up the execution of PHP Scripts, amongst other things, by caching (storing) them in a compiled (ready-to-run) state; which is okay by me but not at the expense of 160MB of web space.

I have 250MB of web space and with 160MB of eAccelerator cache and files that only leaves me 90MB for my own website content. Naturally I removed eAccelerator, and I suggest you do the same if you do not use PHP Scripts that much.

One thing to note here is that I am currently using a Krystal Hosting web hosting package that does not have eAccelerator installed on it, but does have my Website Creation Help website content on its web space, whereby that server is just as fast as the NetHosted server with eAccelerator installed on it. It also has the Website Creation Help website content on its web space. Anyway, continuing with my research;

Ask A Question – Talk To A Brick Wall

I then decided to ask NetHosted how many websites (web hosting accounts/web spaces) they put on each of their servers. I cannot reminder what made me think of this question, but it must have run along the lines that I felt they were wasting web space by installing eAccelerator onto my web space.

Anything like this I feel the web hosting providers should, to some degree, either state exactly what is installed on your web space prior to ordering/purchasing and/or consult with the client first. In this case installing eAccelerator may benefit me (because it would give speedier execution of blog pages, etc) and also help their server overheads (by using less resources for example), but that is only if I am going to install/use php scripts and so on in a heavy way (i.e. have many blog and forum pages, etc).

As you will see at the beginning of the post on the NetHosted community forum I started with a simple question, or at least what I thought was going to be a simple question, only to find I would come up against someone who cannot give a straight answer. I subsequently found out that this is standard practise.

Read this article all the way through to the end because it is towards the end where you find out the truth about customer service and more precisely, in this case study, what they are not telling you.

Query #1

Hi there,

Could you please tell me the average number of websites you host on one of your servers. Also, does it depend on the hosting plan what server a website is put on. Finally, does one hosting plan get better service of server in terms of security and maintenance.

I just wondered if one server has plenty of Basic Plan websites on it whereas another server has no many Premium Plan websites on it, with the Premium Plan website servers being more secure for example.

Could you please clarify these matters so that we know what the story is?

SarahP

I am sure you will agree that they are innocent, normal, questions to be asking; especially as I am asking the question under the forum General Support. Here is the reply.

Reply #1

Hi,

I’m afraid we can’t disclose this figure, it varies between servers depending on server power, disk space and utilisation, we actively balance this to keep all servers performing optimally.

No shared hosting plans get preference over any others in terms of security, maintenance or support.

Regards,

Darryl

I take on board the reply that each server’s resources (memory, cpu and hard drive usage for example) must be preserved by means of distributing websites (web hosting accounts/web spaces) evenly across their servers because one server might not have enough hard drive space remaining for example to accommodate a really large website; However, this still does not take away from the fact that a certain number of smaller websites will comfortably sit on one server, using that one servers resources only, and therefore they could of stated:

“We have 6 websites on server 1 with the sixth website using server 1 for its main website content only. Its add-on domain space had to be put on server 23.

Anyway, to make sure I had not been misinterpreted I rephrased my question:

Query #2

What is the average minimum number of websites you currently have on one server? 20 websites? 50 websites? 200 websites? 500 websites? Surely you can give a number, between a certain range perhaps.

Reply #2

You are asking for a range that doesn’t exist! Each server is different and how many sites it can run therefore varies. There is no meaningful numerical answer to your question I’m afraid!

Thanks,

Andrew

Now I am getting somewhere! Even though the number of websites hosted on each server varies, there must still be a minimum…..right? All servers, which are only computers with hard drives at the end of the day, must have at least X Amount of websites hosted on them. Imagine buying a server and the seller says:

“It’s £1,000, but the only catch is I don’t know the minimum number of websites that can fit on it”.

In reality the seller would say:

“£1,000. That’s cheap! You can store x amount of Basic Plans (web hosting accounts/web spaces) on that and x amount of Premium Plans, but even if you mix ‘n’ match the plans you could still get x amount of them on the server”. And that is my point! Anyway, now I felt as though I was being flogged off and decided to change tact.

Query #3

Hi Andrew,

Are you telling me you cannot say to me now that; Yes!, we definitely have 20 websites running on each server or Yes, we definitely have 50 websites running on each server? I find that impossible.

If I have a large house with many various sized rooms inside it, I can tell you how many people are in a given room at a given time regardless if one person brings 10 guests into the room while another person brings 1 guest in.

If I have various sized boxes whereby some can accommodate 10 items whilst other can only accommodate 2 items, still I can tell you each box has at least 1 item inside it.

I hope I have made my point

So WHAT IS THE MINIMUM NUMBER OF WEBSITES ON EACH OF YOUR SERVERS NOW???????????????

SarahP

Jeez!! How frustrating! Let’s see the reply!

Reply #3

Sarah,

You’re just asking the same question you’ve asked twice before. We’ve given you the best answer we can.

A numerical answer makes no sense at all. Some sites use more resource than others, therefore we have no concept of a “minimum” numbers of sites per server and this therefore renders an “average” number of sites per server completely meaningless as I’ve explained before. You will gain no insight into our server performance, availability or any other metric if we say we average 1, 100 or 1000 sites per server.

Thanks,

Andrew

Notice that last line. Of course I will gain some metrics. I will know how many websites they are putting on a server, as a minimum/average, so that I can then compare those numbers with other web hosting providers.

Query #4

So let me get this straight. Computers calculate bank statements, do all sorts of wonderful maths, they produce statistics and so on using COUNTERS. And yet your system does not have a COUNTER or Excel files or whatever that takes note of each domain name, web space and so on that have been registered with nethosted?

SarahP

Reply #4

Sarah,

We of course keep track of all of the things you mention.

Andrew

Right, now we are getting somewhere.

Query #5

So if you have a Number for the number of hosting plans registered with nethosted for example surely you know where you have allocated those hosting plans (web spaces), on which servers, regardless of the resources they use.

You should therefore know you have an average number of web spaces allocated per server or some number of some sort whereby you could give me a number or range that would state; Yes we have at least 50 web spaces (hosting plans) on each server regardless of their size and resources usage. Correct? If so, what is that average number?

SarahP

Reply #5

Sarah,

Rephrasing and repeating your questions won’t change the answers already given by us earlier.

Thanks,

Andrew

Query #6

So you are not willing to say that you had x amount of hosting plan orders this year or month whereby you then allocated x amount of those hosting plans to the venus server, x amount to the earth server and so on? Not even a minimum number?

SarahP

At this point a customer replies, shedding some light on the matter.

Customer Garry – Reply #1

Sarah I have been a web hosting in the past myself with my own servers etc… (sold it some years ago now)

Each client has different needs that can affect server performance, so it is very hard to say how many client will go on each server.

It ranges from type of site they run, how many visitors, there usage etc… so it is near impossible (if not impossible) to say how may clients will fit on

to a server.

I have been a client with NetHosted for some years now (on and off) and I can say they do NOT overload/oversell there servers, this is what matters to me.

Regards,

Garry

Reply #6

Sarah,

We don’t publish the number of new orders we receive and for the reasons Garry has stated, and as we’ve said previously, the concept of a “minimum” or

“average” number of sites per server is completely devoid of meaning when each site has a completely different impact on a server and the servers themselves

vary in specification.

Andrew

Response #1 To Customer Garry

Hi Garry,

Thank you for the clarification. That is really what I wanted to clarify from Andrew but in way of numbers because if he would of said; Yes, we average x

amount I could of compared this for example with other hosting sites/resellers/etc whereby I could of then said to myself, after weighing things up,

nethosted are good because they do not overload their servers, Joe Bloggs overloads slightly because of whatever reason but he makes up for this in other

areas and Shelia Smith does not overload etc etc.

I think the public have some right to some sort of numbers, so they know what an average would be. Anyway, that will have to wait for the politicians ears

Thanks again Garry

At this stage I am prepared to accept the above. After all, no one wants to get into a rift/spat with a web hosting provider (especially not with the one they are using) regardless of what is wrongly/rightly said in a querying session.

As a final query I just want to clarify the situation with regards to a web hosting plan’s web space storage, which I feel is a valid query to ask taking into account of what was said above; Meaning, I am asking a question I am sure others would want the answer to.

Query #7

Okay Andrew, your answer is appreciated. One last question. How would the public know whether or not a server was overloaded? Speed would obviously be one sign and Uptime another but how would the public know that their server is not going to be overloaded because their web space is not fixed allocated web space, its variable/dynamic, and therefore can be used by others. Take this scenario:

Person #1 has a 50gb hosting plan but only uploads 10gb of data.

Person #2 has a 100gb hosting plan but only uploads 20gb of data.

Do your servers allocated a fixed web space of 50gb for person #1 and a fixed allocated web space of 100gb for person #2 or will person #1 and #2 use 30gb between them of generally allocated web space? If general web space is used, what is to stop you from taking 10 more customers of say 100gb hosting plans (so 1,000gb in total) whereby you believe they would only use 1gb each. In other words, some companies take more orders than necessary because they believe they can alternate between people using their services in the day and people using their services in the night but then become stuck when those customers use their services day and night.

SarahP

Reply #7

Sarah,

If you order a plan with 1GB of space, you will be perfectly able to use that full 1GB of space there is no concern in this department.

I think when most people say “overloaded” they mean this in the sense that their site loads extremely slowly or often not at all. As you can see from the comments from our clients on this public forum this is not a problem we suffer from.

Your approach is quite direct, if you are looking to compare hosts in this manner it may not be overly effective. No host will declare their servers overloaded after all even if their clients may beg to differ!

Thanks,

Andrew

Query #8

Hi Andrew,

So how would you recommend I go around getting the answers then? I have to be direct, otherwise how else can I do it

SarahP

Reply #8

Sarah,

Read the host’s website, read testimonials, read reviews on the web ask the host questions. The usual way

Andrew

At this point I would be happy with the response overall, even though I do not agree with all of their replies, and end the conversation…..if it was not for Reply #8. Meaning, I do not think “The Usual Way” was beginner-friendly and more precisely I felt it was another flog-off. If the one querying (me in this case) knew what “The Usual Way” was they would not be asking that question in the first place. Also the query was how to get a direct answer from a web hosting provider and not to be told to go around the houses looking at, “fake”, reviews and so on. Hence why I will now be a little more direct (I’m sick of being flogged off)!

Query #9

Do you have any suggested review sites? as they all differ and may be bias in some way etc. Is there an established consumer website for example that deals with website reviews?

Also, do you submit to any of those review sites yourself or is that a no-no in the trade, to self-promote?

Which sites would you look at if you were not in the business?

Any recommended review sites would be appreciated.

Thanks

SarahP

Reply #9

Sarah,

Our testimonials section is the best place to find reviews of us.

Of course we don’t write reviews ourselves.

Andrew

Query #10

but what about outside review sites? don’t you know of any good ones you could recommend?

SarahP

At this point another customer comes in to reply.

Customer Z – Reply #1

Sarah, what are you looking for? You seem to be asking some pretty odd questions for someone looking for hosting?

I’d Google for review sites and see what you find. At the end of the day you will need to make the decision. I’ve heard of some of the bigger/more well known Hosting providers overselling space because there is no other way in hell they can offer unlimited space. Just think about it.

I’ve been with Nethosted for over 4 years and have had no problems at all. Others have been for even longer.

http://community.nethosted.co.uk/testimonials-f5.html

Some hosting providers may do stupid things like promote themselves through review sites but the decent ones don’t need to. I originally found Nethosted by adslguide.org.uk

There is probably no point in Andrew suggesting a review site to look at or he’d be accused of showing you one that has favourable reviews.

I’m not sure, by the line of your questioning, whether you’re looking for hosting, writing a thesis, a competitor or a troll lol

The customer here thinks I may be suspect!! when in light of the above I do not blame them if it was not for the fact my original query was just that – a bog standard query.

A troll by the way is basically someone who goes on a forum for example with the purpose of instigating/provoking a wanted reaction from their targeted questioning. A plotter in other words. In this case though it was not, and is not, my intention to plot, provoke or instigate – A simple answer to a simple query is what was, and still is, wanted here. Nothing more, nothing less.

Query #11

I was just trying to gather whether there was a standard range or gauge that hosts in general go by, such as “We all allow upto a maximum of 1,000 plans on our servers, regardless of plan and resources, even though we can easily fit 2,000 plans on our servers, because we do not want to overload our servers”.

Andrew can only go by his word and some testimonials. Shame he couldn’t produce the just said as minimum and maximum numbers as I was requesting earlier in this post. Can no one give a straight simple honest answer anymore. Why cannot Andrew comit himself to say “we currently, definitely, have 1 plan on venus and could have up to 50,000 plans on it but as you can appreciate we cannot give an exact figure”. At least then I would know the range and gauge it against other hosts who I would ask the same questions to.

SarahP

Reply #11

Sarah,

It seems despite our best efforts that you still aren’t satisfied with the answers you’ve received from us and our customers. Perhaps therefore NetHosted

isn’t the best fit for your hosting needs.

Good luck with your search going on.

Thanks,

Andrew

Customer Z – Reply #2

In all honestly why would any business give away their business model to someone who pops up on a forum.

To me the questions are meaningless. Why would it make any difference to what you buy? If you buy a package you go on what you are sold. I can understand if you were buying into one of these unlimited everything outfits but with Nethosted you know what the true limits are to the package you purchase.

Full marks to Andrew in his replies. If it had been my business I would have told someone, in no uncertain terms, where to go by now as the questions are just ridiculous lol

At this point I am purposely going to ignore the customer’s comments simply because I do not want things getting nasty, and also because this has now really become a conversation between web hosting provider (Andrew) and myself. Hence no response made to Customer Z about their comments. Anyway, things are about to get interesting!

Query #12

Hi Andrew,

I have just been talking to Carl at EUKHosts and he has told me within the first time of asking that eukhosts, quote:

“We setup 150-200 hosting plans on the same shared server“

What do you have to say to that Andrew?

SarahP

Reply #12

Good luck with your hosting account at EUKHost?

Honestly, you can’t draw any meaningful conclusions from knowing a number like this. It means nothing, this is what we’ve been saying all along!

Thanks,

Andrew

As you can see from Query #12, and will see more of later, is that I have been contacting many other web hosting providers for their views on this subject whilst communicating on this NetHosted forum; with some of the others giving honest replies.

Customer Z – Reply #3

If it were me I’d say “well go with them then and stop wasting my time” lol

Again, I have chosen not to respond to Customer Z’s comments. Notice the childish sarcastic response of Reply #12 though. A professional web hosting provider, and more specifically its managing director (Andrew), should not reply in that way. More on this in the following query.

Query #13

A more specific reply from carl:

“You should be able to run 250-300 accounts on the same server if the resources are enough for all the accounts“

Anyway, never mind carl’s reply. I am more concerned about yours Andrew. Why are you taking the ATTITUDE of Good Luck, F*** OFF attitude, which I find offensive.

I am trying to conduct a serious review, assessment, of things. For example, Please explain what you mean by “Good Luck with….etc”.

The way your answer comes across is arrogant. Do you not know how to explain things such as “If I were you sarah I would think about not going with so and so because of this or that reason” Instead you are treating me as though I am supposed to know something you know in the trade? Why is 150-200 unreasonable or whatever it is you are snearing at?

SarahP

As you can see; I am well p***ed off now!!

Reply #13

Sarah,

Please don’t read any malice into my comments as none is intended. I’m genuinely and sincerely wishing good luck to you with regards to your future hosting

arrangements which it would appear clear from your comments won’t be with us. If anything I would have hoped this would be interpreted as a “no hard

feelings” type of response to get from us as this is how it is intended.

Andrew

Hmmm!!!! From that reply, I don’t know about you, but where I come from “Good Luck…etc” in this context is classed as Sarcastic, Arrogant and Rude.

Query #14

I have just recieved this PLEASANT answer from hostingservers.co.uk:

Hi Sarah, If you’re asking if we overload our servers which results in clients getting slow, poor service, then no we don’t, we will put no more than 300 accounts on any one server.

What a shame Andrew could not answer this way.

SarahP

Reply #14

Sarah,

I can only reiterate my sentiments from earlier. If you are happier with the responses you are receiving from other hosts then surely they are a better

choice for you going on?

I wish you once more a sincere good luck with your future provider.

It is time to bring this thread to it’s conclusion.

Thanks,

Andrew

Hmmm!!!! Looks like Andrew is trying to escape the questioning, but I am having none of it! I can feel Andrew wants to close this thread, probably because two numbers have already been given (250 – 300), so I have to avoid this in order to try and get an answer out of him in terms of numbers and averages, if I can…..

Query #15

So now you are wanting to close this thread, without even telling me what you see wrong with the numbers I have been given by others.

This is the whole point of this thread, to see what your numbers are. Even if I have to accept that you do not wish to disclose your numbers for whatever reasons, you should at least tell me what is unrealistic??? with the numbers I have been given.

Are they too high, too low or what? For example, if you say they are unrealistically high (too many hosting plans being put on the server) and that you would never put as many plans on a server I would then say “That’s great, nethosted are considerate with their servers etc” but as it it you have left me wondering if you work for the FBI or something. Anything to hide?

SarahP

Reply #15

Sarah,

We’ve been down this road before. We’ve given you our answer to this point. You aren’t happy with this answer clearly, but it is our answer. Repeating your question in slightly changed forms is not going to lead to a different response from us.

As I said earlier, it’s now time to draw this thread to a conclusion.

Thanks,

Andrew

Looks like Andrew is tiring! Well, it’s his own fault. If only he would of been honest enough to give a number or an average….. Anyway, I decided to play with him a little at this point because I realised a few replies back that he was never going to give me a straight answer.

Query #16

Andrew, surely even you can say two words with regards to the numbers I have been given and they are not F*** OFF!!! Try “TOO LOW” or “TOO HIGH” I will make it easy for you, I will start you off “TOO……

SarahP

Reply #16

They are meaningless as far as we are concerned as I have now stated around four times in this thread.

You have to accept this as our answer, nothing further is going to be achieved by you repeating the question.

Andrew

It’s time to call it a day, because it was literally late that evening and I was tired, so I decided to keep it friendly.

Query #17

Okay Andrew, I will take that as your answer even though I do not 100% agree with it. And I may even try one of your hosting plans (don’t know if I will get any special treatment after this post! In fact, I take that back because probably everyone gets the same treatment right?). Anyway, I have not ruled out nethosted despite this thread conversation.

Thank you for your time Andrew. It was interesting!

SarahP

Reply #17

I am glad this has come to an amicable conclusion

Have a good evening and best of luck with whomever you decide to go with.

Thanks,

Andrew

Just as I am about to sign out, and Andrew is going to close the thread, Customer Z decides to reply.

Customer Z -Reply #5

You don’t get it do you Sarah. Try listening/reading the answers. Those 300 accounts could be streaming video for all you know and trying to quantify a number of accounts on a server in relation to service/performance is meaningless.

If you’re going to accept what some other host fobs you off with and what you want to hear then so be it. Andrew has tried to explain it and in a professional manner but you just don’t want to listen to the answers.

Andrew then closes the thread.

Reply #18

Hi,

I think this thread has now run it’s course with all viewpoints having been shared.

I am closing this temporarily to reflect this.

Thanks,

Andrew

Although Customer Z makes a valid point about the video streaming taking up valuable resources, which include video file storage, that still does not take away from the fact that each customer only pays for a set amount of resources (web space, bandwidth and so on) and therefore you should still be able to say as a web hosting provider how many websites are currently on each server. Let’s put it this way; If the tax man was after them whereby they had to declare each website on a server I am pretty sure they would give the tax man a number or average.

Unbeknown to the above thread, I also contacted many other web hosting providers privately via email, as well as on public forums, and this is what some of them said.

Hi Sarah,

Yes, the name of the server your account would go on is renee.hostservers.co.uk and if you check out that name on whois below you’ll see the server has only 158 sites on it:

http://whois.domaintools.com/hostservers.co.uk

Kind Regards,

Fiona

I will keep this next one anonymous because this person was very honest and I feel, although they would not mind me sharing this info, they deserve privacy based on this being a private email; even though it was from a customer service of a web hosting provider.

I know what you mean about some host’s refusing too, we have had some customers in the past, cancel their accounts with us to go elsewhere, and we have often “probed” the new host just to make sure that our customer isn’t letting themselves in for a rough ride, and check their feedback, reviews and what-not, and have VERY often been flatly refused, and told “That is confidential information”, or the funniest one was “We can’t tell you because of data protection laws” It has been the case a few times that we have made alternative recommendations for customers wanting to go elsewhere, pointing them to companies that wont shaft them, it really is bonkers some of the shite these companies come out with, almost as if they forget who works for who sometimes… lol…

This next one gives a little more insight on the server side of things.

Our shared hosting runs in a clustered environment and so the number of accounts on each server is dymanic.

On our VPS accounts, our Community VPS accounts have around 60 users per node, Business about 40 users, Developer 25 users and the Enterprise has around 15.

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind Regards

Greg

Webfusion

These next three replies are from the web hosting uk forum.

HARRY

That’s correct… We have customized internal setting which monitor memory consumption of each account hosted on our server, if any account is trying to load our server we send an notification and suspend the culprit moreover we send you email notification once you reach 80% of allotted server resources (diskspace, bandwidth) to your account and advice you to upgrade your hosting package to next higher level having more resources.

I am afraid… Webhost will never let you know the exact number of accounts hosted on a particular server also you should not bother about it as long as you get excellent hosting environment & server performance

It seems that you have already answered your question!! If I have a large house with many various sized rooms inside it, I can tell you how many people are in a given room at a given time regardless if one person brings 10 guests into the room while another person brings 1 guest into another room. Same is the case with shared server, there are different hosting packages varying in allotted server resources hence it’s very difficult to predict exact number of hosting accounts which can be setup on a specific server.

We never overload our server blindly creating hosting accounts to increase revenue rather we do monitor our shared servers for resource consumption and always keep around 30% FREE resources for offering you better hosting environment & excellent server performance.

FastHost. Basically they are ********!! Another web hosting provider unwilling to give a basic answer.

Sarah

Thank you for your enquiry.

I have attempted to contact you but couldn’t get through to you on the phone number provided.

Please give me call on my direct line : + 44 1452 561 848 & I will advise accordingly.

I am in the office from 9am to 6pm, Monday through to Friday.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

What has my phone number got to do with a bog standard question? They have my email address already. I am removed their signature just so as not to embarrass them! as an individual.

So as you can see from the above; Although it is true to say each web hosting account varies in the amount of resources it uses, it is also true to say (which has been clarified above) that at the end of the day each web hosting account has a fixed amount of resources allocated for it (i.e. a set amount of web space and bandwidth) and therefore you could give out some sort of minimum or average number for the amount of web hosting accounts that are on one server.

Remember. My original bog standard query came from after thoughts with regards to the wasting of web space with eAccelerator and therefore pondered what else the web hosting provider was not telling me about. In the above case I am glad I asked the questions I did, because it revealed a whole new light with regards to customer services and what different web hosting providers will tell you (flog you off with!).

I hope this article has opened your eyes and made you want to quiz your potential, or even current, web hosting provider before buying anything, more, from them.