What BIG bandwidth special would get your attention?
 

Hi Everyone,

On behalf of my hosting company I am just taking a survery of people's interest about larger bandwidth server packages. What type of 10-25-50-100 megabit specials would grab your interest? Let's assume that this is a high performance, fully managed server with multi-homed tier 1 bandwidth. No tricks or gimmicks, just a real top quality package deal. I know lots of GFYers burn massive bandwidth with their TGP and MGP submissions. Really, I'm just wanting to see where some of you weigh in.

I view the webmaster market as breaking down primarily into two categories of shoppers. The first is one that shops entirely on price. The second is one that shops for performance and reliability with reasonable consideration for price, realizing that quality costs. I don't think either is wrong, I believe different people make the decisions that are right for their unique business models and personalities. I'd like to hear from all kinds of people.

Thoughts? What price for 10-25-50-100-250-500 megabit including all servers and management would grab you?

:)

Brad

The best 100mbps deal I've seen is Phatservers $2500 for 100mbps plus a server.

I've received better offers for single homed verio or cogent, but nobody I've talked to will go that low for tier 1 multihomed stuff. (Two people were willing to match it, but not beat it)

How about order more than 10 new servers at once and get invited onto the yacht ;)

I second that! LOL! :winkwink:

DH

LOL - I'd like to 3rd that statement :) You should have made DH agree to keep quiet about the Yacht before letting him on.


I think that there is a division in numbers here, Brad. I'd guess that:

10-25-50
This group generally requires more management and will likely spend a considerable amount of time submitting support requests.

100-250-500
This group here requires less support as they either know first hand how to solve many problems or have a sysadmin that can resolve problems without assistance.


So, I'd think that "specials" should be split up into these categories. Obviously, the first group should get a good deal, but the second group should either see perks or significant price decreases.


Beyond that from my perspective, there is a bit of low end theory working in here. You offer a very high quality product, Brad. Yourself, Corey and Will all work very hard to maintain your high quality product. Do you really need to offer gimmicks or specials? Appreciating your customers and giving them the best deal possible without negotiation goes a long way.

Hey you guys should change the link color on p2pads.com
Can't read the lime green links on the gray background.

:2 cents:

1/2 off for exixting clients!

Wow someone is really kissing some serious ass! LOL!

Rob have you got yacht fever? :1orglaugh

DH

Whatever deal you guys come up with will kick ass I'm sure. You, Corey, and Will are awesome. I've never been more happy with a host than with MojoHost. :thumbsup

Brad (Gosse) and I are playing good cop, bad cop. :1orglaugh

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/grap.../bfstars16.jpg

DH

Brad, DH - You guys drive a hard bargain! Either that or I need to stop making deals when I'm having a RedBull-Vodka lunch on the aft deck :)

Rob - I agree, absolutely. And for us total cost of support does play a large factor into our margins. A handful of small customers, virtuals and entry level dedicated servers, can cost a ton to support. I've seen it over and over again and it can be challenging to maintain a balance. Part of my solution to this has been focusing on not selling entry level specials and virtual hosting. We have always been a host that sells on quality of service and not gimmicks or specials. The challenge is maintaining an exponential growth rate which often requires creativity when it comes to generating new business and opening up new markets.

Sleazy - That idea has me breaking out in a cold sweat! LOL LOL

Lenny2 - Phatservers has a great special going there for $2500, definitely. I am always challenged to figure out how to offer a one-off or limited special like that without upsetting the balance with our current business. I have always figured that if I offered it that it would have to be available to all new orders, especially existing clients that want to add more. Obviously, though, one can't write down their current business at the same time or they would definitely be in jeapordy.

Keep it coming! Thanks.

Brad

Yeah keeping your current customers happy is a challenge if you're going to offer a rock bottom special like that.

It always pisses me off when companies that I do business with offer special pricing or packages and it's for "new customers only".
The local cable company and my cell phone company have both done this and I'm like WTF??? I've been with you for years and you won't give me the same price as some bum off the street?

I hate it when people do business that way.

Over the years I've had at least 4 overall price decreases on the published pricing. It was always a challenge when I did that each time because I actually went through all the accounts re-rated them to the new pricing. Each time I did it it ended up being an overall write-down on gross monthly billings. However, I will say that it always did help foster tremendous good will with the customers and each time I sold substantially more new business to more than make up for new lower pricing. I don't know if that ended up being good karma or just good marketing. lol

Brad

I have always been very happy with MojoHost. You have a very good team in place Brad.

the match any other host promo nat net did last year was a interesting promo

besides that hosting falls into 2 categories good bandwith and cheap bandwith personally i use some of both :)

Thanks Brad! All you clients of mine know how happy it makes me when I know you're happy :)

How about offering a special only to my clients or verified clients of my clients? LOL Maybe something creative... like to be eligible they'd have to show me that thay are an affiliate of one of the programs I host.. or they buy traffic from one of my clients or banner spots. Offering something like a high BW special to individuals that patronize clients of mine is an interesting idea to grow everyone's businesses. Or perhaps a hybrid offer, a special price for existing clients that want to add additional service.. the same price for clients of theirs and perhaps a slightly higher special price for people that are not clients at all.

I've always been one for straightforward, no haggle pricing. I'm just chewing on different ideas to sell through the next gigabit of usage.

Brad

So then, I hear from this statement is that you would like to increase your exposure to larger clients - presumably here in the Adult world since you're asking on GFY.

Perhaps the solution could be found in traditional marketing? If my goal was to reach the high bandwidth customers, I would likely make a comprehensive list of the big player decision makers. I would carefully go through the list and try to figure out what is common between groups of them and how to cater to what each group wants. Directly and carefully marketing towards these groups may show them the level of service and quality that you provide.

Honestly, I think that you've already started this with the Yacht excursion that neither Brad nor I were a part of. What else might sway the business of each group?

I hear that Sleazy might enjoy watching his grass being cut by a strong hairy man on a hot Saturday afternoon. Is there a way to do something like that and get some more of his high bandwidth business? (just kidding Sleazy :) )

I've thought about that because I agree, it is a nice annual promotion that they offer. It's an excellent option, especially for those people out there that feel trapped at their current host - a special like that helps them maintain their budget while upgrading to top notch hosting. That's really Tony's unique promotion though, I'd rather do something that isn't just a copycat offer.

With where our pricing falls - not the least expensive, not the most expensive, I'm accustomed to often being a better value at our everyday prices. Most hosts will price match when the business would be coming from a competitor that they consider to be in the same class of hosting service quality.

Lots of large BW clients host at multiple companies because they place different values on different segments of their business. Whenever possible, I encourage clients to bring all of their business over because typically that gives them more buying power and they can have the best of both worlds - price and quality.

Brad

I would probably buy more servers if Brad paid Sleazy to cut my grass.

I have about 4 acres of grass alone, he might look good in a dress with a manual push mower. :)

All good feedback, thank you.

Having spent significant time reflecting on our industry and the different groups working within it, I have some good ideas for targeting the right people I think. You are more likely to see some "complete solutions" marketed from me that could quite easily encompass an entire affiliate program or large bandwidth mgp/tgp submitter.. and perhaps something on the "high end of the low end" for a single server with 100 megabit.

I am excited to go to Island Gathering this year, it will be my first time. I like small gatherings the best.

Brad

Oh jeez. Would you settle for a latin american tranny lawn cutting service? I could more easily procure one of those for you.

I think offering non tradtional service for the high bandwith users, ie clustered services, load balancing, traffic distribution, etc.. might open you up to others customers that normally wouldnt use your service. When i worked in IBM's Managed Hosting that was the #1 reason customers would go with us, the addtional service we could provide, and it made up most of the revenue. PPP (Ping Power and Pipe) customers dont have much of a profit margin, they are just potential clients to sell other services to.

bwaaaaahahahahah

GET TRAFFIC WITHIN 48 HOURS AND (( NOTICE IT ))
WWW.CRAWLINGCLOUT.COM

Slashed Prices = Bandwidth Rate Reality
 

Since GFY has turned a corner, I am going to offer a promotion:

Lets say 2k + server (what specs?) PCCW/BTN gigE port
35 a meg over 100mbps
We will give you gigE burstable 100mbit->110/120 etc

No more whining about bandwidth. If you beat that, let me see the coupon.
I'll beat it again. It just doesn't get better.

Email [email protected]

...What he said :)

we've made it a point to do this every day with the webair price match guarante...
we also offer cheaper type bandwidth on a separate network with failover to webair tier one lines at no additional cost. Good thread some interesting input here...

Seattle - Smart move taking "fuq Verio" out of your post. As a fan and large customer on their network, I would have found that ignorant and irritating. For thost that don't know, here's a reality check on IP wholesale-

Cogent is the cheapest
BTN/Hurricaine Electric 25-50% more than Cogent
Verio, Global Crossing, Level3, XO, etc typically 200%-300% more than Cogent
Then there are a few carriers such as MCI that are the highest priced in the market.

Cheers,

Brad

While I understand that attracting new (and bigger) clients is crucial to growth, I've found that the key to long term stability is to make one's existing clients feel worthwhile or even 'special'.
Brad & Corey have always done well with this, earning them extremely loyal clients who would not consider leaving, regardless of price.
This being said, I would happily double my order if Corey made house calls ;-)

Brad,

As you know we are also a provider of Verio Bandwidth even though mojohost.com and e5hosting.com are located at different data centers. We did a lot of research before going with them and still are impressed with them today. As a relatively new (6 months) guy to the adult market I have a lot of proving to do, and yes we have been offering some great deals on bandwidth.

It seem at some point Verio received a bad reputation so I have DynaSpain (his idea) preparing a network test that will allow all hosting companies to show how good there network really performs. I think the results are going surprise some people.

8267196-post110.html

Regards,

Anthony

100mbps WHOA! that makes my 20mbps look like crap

Why do you charge 75% more for every meg over 100?
If $20/meg is enough for the first 100, why isn't it enough for the 2nd 100? Or the 3rd?

Also to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples, how many full time techs do you employ? (Actual people on your payroll, not the cage call people at the datacenter)
Do you have backup routers, switches, power supply, and server hardware onsite in case of a hardware failure? Or are you just reselling for someone else and overselling your bandwidth like most of the idiots out there?

I disagree with you guys, Verio's bandwith is not the best by any means, there latency times are usually 40-50ms range, while most others are in the 25-30 ms range to other networks. Verio's latency times are in line with Cogent alot of times. Im not trying to knock Verio, just cant bill it as high end tier 1 bandwith.

http://www.internethealthreport.com to see the latency times for yourself

SinisterStudios

I'm not saying it is the "best" network I am saying it is absolutely comperable to the best networks with it's high availability, excellent network management and good peering arrangements. We blend both Level3 and Verio and our customers are extremely happy with our performance and uptime. Verio is premium bandwidth and their peering agreements support that. Where Cogent has failed historically and continues to be challenged is it's oversubscription at critical peering exchanges and the low priority it's traffic gets when it has to travel across other networks. Verio doesn't have those issues and that is why they are not in the same class when it comes to performance. The internethealthreport is a very nice tool but not representative of overal network packet delivery, performance and global peering.

At the end of the day the market is largely what determines IP pricing. Where Cogent typically wholesales for $7000-10000 per gigabit, Verio's pricing is minimally 3 times that. I'm not trying to discount your experience with their network but I have used them heavily for four years and we have very demanding clients and high standards ourselves. I am not suggesting that their network is like AT&T's or MCI's but they do get the job done very well and they come by it honestly.

Their network changed quite a bit a year ago for the better when they consolidated it and sold off much of the smaller POPs and their T1 business to Cogent. They are financially strong as they are owned by NTT, Japan's largest telecommunications company. If you look at the new network maps they absolutely support the notion that this network in it's current state is to support their presence and grand success in Asia. Their remaining network here in the states hits most of the major peering points in this country and their extension to Europe and beyond is respectable.

Much of the value in a network, in my opinion, is what they do when their clients need them the most, when things do go wrong as occasionally happens at all networks. My working relationship is such with Verio that I sleep well at night because they resolve and respond to issues so quickly and they work hard, always in our best interests. I have experienced many other networks and the support I've received from Verio has always been above and beyond. Simply put, they deliver our traffic consistently and we feel quite competitively when it comes to performance.

Most importantly, though, we are not single homed. Despite my preference for them as our primary traffic carrier we don't cut any corners. We also use Level3 as part of our mix and have enough capacity on that network so that if we were to drop a carrier our clients would be unaffected. Utilizing BGP, all of our inbound traffic comes in via the most preferable and natural routes anyways. Like a responsible host would, for every used gigabit I always have another that is available. When we sell through this next gigabit, I will add another two gigabit from a new carrier. I feel our network design is quite nice, each one of our gigabit connections goes to a seperate core carrier router, by design.

Hope that helps explain what our setup and views are.

Cheers

Brad

Clean, low latency bandwidth is important but I think that the majority of people here value support far above latency timing or even BGP routing and carriers.

It's easy for someone to hear "Level 3 is the best" and demand that from a host. But really, I think that for many of the webmasters, affiliates, and even program owners out there that if they don't hear that their sites are slow or down they're happy with the bandwidth.

Support is paramount to bandwidth concerns - even in the high bandwidth group of customers. A poor hosting company can buy high quality, muli-homed circuits in any number of datacenters or carrier hotels. I've always thought that a good hosting company is made by implementing a rock solid support infrastructure.



But anyway, back to your question Brad and my reason for posting:

Have you thought about loyalty programs? I know that we collect Areoplan miles here at GTS / P2P ads. I think that Areoplan is a Canadian program, so I don't know that it would be the best choice, but is there a loyalty program out there that you could partner with for little or no cost to add value or as an incentive?

Personally, I recently switched everything I could over to companies that rewarded me with these points. Silly, maybe - but I'm going to get a free flight soon and every time I fly, I get to go into the executive lounge for free liquor and a nice atmosphere.

Just a thought on how to add value and give you an option to offering a "special" without lowering your price.

Yes.That would have merit! :thumbsup

BUMP for MOJOHOST!!!!! :thumbsup


Best customer service and support in the biz!

:2 cents:

We are VERY happy to be with Mojo. Not only does Brad value our business, but he goes out of his way to prove that to us time & time again. :thumbsup

100mpbs... ;)

Can I sell you 100mbps? :pimp

Brad

I've been with MojoHost for over a year now and I can honestly say that Brad is a standup guy who has always performed above and beyond what he said he would do for me..... :pimp

With that said, Corey and the rest of the MojoHost team have Always resolved issues quickly and efficiently and I am glad I have found a new home for my sites :thumbsup

Keep up the good work Brad! & Thanks to the rest of the gang!

Wow! Thanks! :) I don't recognize your GFY nic... who are ya bud? :)

Brad

a $15 per mbs promo would be nice :)

I'll sell you 2 gigabit for $30,000 - unmanaged :) LOL

Brad