Dedicated Server Reviews

Pingdom, a provider of uptime monitoring, put another hosting-related post up on its usually-pretty-interesting blog "Royal Pingdom" last week in which it used data from a couple of sources to try to identify the "largest hosting company," as well as point out which ones are growing the fastest and might end up vying for that crown in the near future.

"When we talk about the size of a hosting company we mean the number of real websites hosted by that company."

So says the blog. At issue here is the fact that certain standards of measure don't really produce results that match with what Pingdom is trying to describe here (that "number of real websites" thing):

"Webhosting.info and some other sites relate the size of a web hosting company to the number of domain names that point to their DNS servers. This is why dedicated registrars to whom hosting is only a side business can often end up at the top of these hosting lists, because all domain names, hosted or not, are taken into account. It doesn't tell us how many actual hosting customers they have or how many real websites they are hosting."

Pingdom's answer to this problem is a formula that takes into account, in this order: number of domain names, website traffic and google search volume.

Overall, the company's analysis places 1&1 Internet as the largest host, with HostGator and BlueHost/HostMonster as the runners up, with greater growth and gaining on 1&1.

It's interesting information, but I can't help but feel like some information was left out.

Obviously, it's very important to consider how they're defining "largest" webhost. It's pretty explicitly stated in the post that they're trying to determine who is hosting the most websites. That probably eliminates some of the large enterprise hosts, like Rackspace, from the running. A big company, but probably has well short of a million customers.

But there are still a couple of obvious questions, such as:

How do we account for dedicated or colo companies like The Planet, which last I heard was hosting the servers for HostGator? Does HostGator only count as one customer? If so, I might suggest that this "number of customers" measure doesn't really account for a few of the really important distinctions in the hosting business.

What about GoDaddy? Is it really not on this list? Are they not counting Go Daddy as a hosting company because of its original focus on domain names? I think that might be more than a little bit of an oversight.

Nevertheless, it's an interesting and thoughtful post, even if the conclusions might be a bit confusing (to me).

One of the things I really need is personal finance software.  A number of industry friends have recommended mint.com.  I've looked at it several times and think it would be the right fit.  However, I'm skeptical about turning over all my personal financial information to another entity.  My major concern is not security, nor privacy (which I figure you just about give up when you sign up for any free service), but whether the company will stand behind its products.  To determine this, I looked at mint's Terms of Service.  Not surprisingly, it was disappointing.

As many of you who've seen me speak about "web 2.0" matters know, I believe that the Achilles heel of this new technology is how user's information will be used, disseminated and protected among the participants.  So in this case, will mint.com, and its sponsors protect my information once they're done using it, and will they stand behind these promises.  In the case of mint.com, it appears that the answer is "no."

The mint.com site contains significant information about how information is secured and protected, and how access and use of this information is restricted.  Indeed, the CEO points out that even if my credit card information is stolen, my liability is only $50.  However, in my view, my liability is much greater than that.  For example, let's say that one of mint.com's partners misuses my personal information and somehow damages my credit.  How will mint.com make me whole?

Looking at their Terms of Service, they won't.  Here's what their contract says:

MINT MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE CONTENT OR OPERATION OF MINT.COM OR OF THE SERVICE. YOU EXPRESSLY AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.

Further:

MINT'S LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CAUSE WHATEVER AND REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF THE ACTION, WILL AT ALL TIMES BE LIMITED TO $500.00 (FIVE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS).

So in other words, if something goes wrong, it's my burden to fix – mint.com isn't going to help – no matter what their CEO says on their website.

So what's my point?  I think that companies need to stand behind their products.  That often means thoughtfully considering requests from your customers to change the terms of your contract.  In many cases, you can stand behind your product by agreeing to broader indemnification provisions, or listing a major customer as an additional insured on your insurance policy.  Considering a carefully crafted warranty might also help.  For example in my case, a warranty from mint.com regarding onward data transfer might satisfy my concerns.

While in a consumer context it's unrealistic to assume that a company will amend their contract, in a business context, remaining flexible about contract terms may help differentiate you from your competitors, and lead to a deeper relationship with your customers.

When purchasing domain names for your dedicated server, you will need to decide almost immediately how you’d like to handle the registration for said domains. Beware of choosing an unreliable hosting provider with little to no reputation in the industry, as they could maintain control of your name! Reliable web hosts like Lunarpages will show in the fine print that they do not monopolize your domains and that you have full control.

When registering a domain, you can choose to anonymously register it, which means your name, address, telephone number, and email will all be invisible to the rest of the world. Normally your web hosting provider’s information will show up instead, though this doesn’t necessarily mean they own you domain – it just means you are not listed publicly in a WhoIs query search.

There are many benefits to registering your domain anonymously:

* Privacy
* Less Spam
* No 3rd Party Telemarketers
* Security
* Affordability

Registering your domain anonymously is something every professional webmaster should think seriously about before setting up affordable dedicated hosting.

My apologies for taking some time to churn these out. I assure you the rest will be coming up much faster. It's just that THIS interview in particular was quite the challenge to edit (for obvious reasons once you watch it).

But, the wait is worth it my friends because you get to see Michael van Dijken, the lead marketing manager for hosted solutions at Microsoft, talk about the company's recent Hyper-V technology launch (Microsoft's hypervisor virtualization engine for Windows Server 2008 that officially became available a few weeks ago. Liam wrote a great post about this here.) and Microsoft's cloud computing strategy while simultaneously playing the drums in a game of Rockband! That is talent!

Needless to say, it may have been one of the most challenging interviews he's been in and I've conducted, on a "having to focus on two things at once and not mess up on EITHER task" kind of way :)

We'll be bringing you an interview with Oliver Mauss, the new CEO of 1&1 Internet later this week as well, so keep an eye out for that.

It’s moments like these that make me proud to be a Racker! In just a year and a half that I’ve been there, I’ve seen a lot of great changes and this one is the best. Congratulations to RAX!