Why is it that over and over again in this thread people assume that those using virtuals are not growing their business and or they are not hosting large or intensive sites on them.

My virtual accounts are primarily used for my free sites that are built for SEO purposes. True now I am doing some niche blogs on virtuals as well now but they do not number no where near the free sites I have on virtual accounts.

As I stated already I do have a few dedicated servers as well. Though thinking larger, dedicated only, and more expensive is the way to go for every marketing strategy is just asinine.

There are plenty of companies out there that sell virtual accounts and treat the customers just right. I rarely get down times on my tiny sites and if/when I do it is solved very fast; often before I even noticed it was down.

Essentially what we're stating is that you should not put all of your eggs in one basket. Your example is generally the exception, not the rule. If you're only doing it for linkbacks or otherwise, that's perfectly fine.

The majority who come into the business seem to start with a $10/mo vhost, then stick 500 domains onto it - which isn't really suited for a single dedicated, either.

Time for a new host if they even let you do that.

My example is of the smaller business which has become a larger business. 10 years ago, virtualhosting was essentially all that you had available. The larger companies don't even wish to admit that they're still hosting it, because it's tenuously draining upon their resources.

I did not mean to imply the people renting half a rack were encapsulated within this statement, my apologies.

Phatservers keeps my signups coming in

CPanel and DirectAdmin usually default to about ten.

i love reading ur posts :1orglaugh

do hosts treat customers equally regardless of plan cost?

They should.

I am a Linux system administrator (thats my real job) and I manage over 500 servers for more than 100 hosting companies, I've seen everything, and I can assure you it always depends on the company. There are some companies I would never recommend and others that I would. I've seen companies that worry because a server has a load of 3 and buy another box to distribute the accounts, others have 10K accounts in a cPanel server. Of all the hosting/server companies I know, I would recommend only 4 or 5 (one of those is mine).

:2 cents:

When I left my shitty virtual hosting and put my shit on a dedicated at www.GotWebHost.com I ended up making cash coming our of my ass instantly.

Uptime was 99.99% from 68% or so.
One server, one account, less time moving all over the place (theoretically speaking).
Full access to my server. No waiting for customer service.

Sure it cost me about $80 more than what I was doing but I made 2000% more the next month since I was up ALL THE TIME and not some of the time.

dreamhost hasn't had dedicated servers available for years now, so they hardly are using the virtuals as a stepping stone to them

I like the fact that I make relevant threads... No matter how much time passes.