Why do hosting providers charge for IPs ?
 

Seriously, yes .. you pay a fee, understandable, but at $1 to $3 per ip a month, for those of us that need more IP's than bandwidth, we are getting raped. Anyone other than Tear2Hosting provide this? This is why many have lost my business, and a couple are about to lose it. Cheaper to get a nice dedicated from a company like Tear2 and get free IP's and not get gankged $60 a month in just IP fees ... blargh

amen brother

but i donno bout whomever hosting u said, but this is such an upsell

I'm paying a shit pile for IPs else where. luckily, I'm only paying 1per but that really starts to add up after a while. So far Tear2 is the only place I've heard of that doesn't charge for them

I had to mention Tear2Hosting because I canceled VPS accounts, shared hosting, etc, pay $99 a month for a nice fucking dedicated server and get unlimited IP's ... I've saved so much, and they're the only hosting company i found that do this. Even $1 a month is to much, i pay like $25 a month at just OC3 for ip's

If you're buying bulk IPs, many will give you a discount rate. I will.

Let me ask you this. If you want a dedicated server, 1000GB of bandwidth, and 50 IPs for $100... do you really expect hosting companies to jump and accommodate that? I'm not saying you have done that because I really don't know you, but I have had several people come to me with that proposal. Or they want a $20 virtual account with 30 IPs.

Hosting companies are a business too.

Understandable -- Tear2Hosting did it for me.

Nothing against Tear2, but they're a new company, of course they're going to bend over backwards for you. Give it 2 years, they'll stop offering free IPs. I can't think of any companies that have proven themselves that "unlimited free IPs".

Because hosting companies have to pay fees to the authorities that assign and control them. In North America that is ARIN, their fee schedule is here:

http://www.arin.net/billing/fee_schedule.html

IP's are provided to anyone for free as long as it is justifiable, that's what hosting companies pay the fee for.

Charge $1 per ip - get customers
Charge $0 per ip - get more customers

More customers turn a better profit. Easy to cover the ARIN fees.

IP's are a limited convenience ... With the IPv6 adoption, it would be less of a diminishing ressources...

To make it simple, think about gas ... It is available at will at the pump, but the prices .... And we all know that eventually it will extinguish itself.


IPv6 info here

Hmm... I guess all of the hosting companies that don't offer free IPs must really be idiots!

True...

Charge $150.00 per server , get customers
Charge $ 50.00 per server, get more customers


Next go bankrupt, then more customers fucked ... :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Yes, but at that point ARIN would cease to give you more IP's. There will be plenty of heads up before IPV6 is required.

Hosting companies also have to justify their utilization of existing allocations before they will be considered for more. Not charging for IPs tends to result in customers using them for stupid, non justifiable purposes. Charging something, no matter how little, atleast makes customers think.

There is a difference between IP's and servers. You get IP's for free, you don't get servers for free.

Tear2 requires me to provide a reason for each IP I allocate, so they have that covered. I'm sure hosting companies can take 5min to deal with a client and ask, "So what do you need extra IP's for?"

In this very thread you're complaining about $20 in IP fees. Now any good business person would try to get the best prices whenever possible, but you're already complaining about standard fees, is a hosting company really going to make tons of extra money off you (like you imply) by giving you free IPs? Experience tells me no.

Because they are a commodity.

you should start your own hosting company. you would put everyone out of business, i mean... how could anyone stay where they're at when theres a company like you offering free ips?

Your experience is rather lacking then. I recommended Tear2 to several people because of the IP needs, and now Tear2 is getting /several/ new clients -- dedicated servers, not virtual hosting. Are they making "Tons of extra money" off me? Not tons, but every little bit helps (which you should know, after all, you have experience ...)

Unfortunately the customer is not always right, especially when it comes to things like this. It is a lot easier to convince customers they don't really need new IPs that they have to pay for than it is to convince them they don't need something that they think is their god given right because it is free.

No thanks, hosting is not my gig.

Understandable, you will have people that complain that they should have it because their site is justifiable. That happens everywhere with everything though, not just hosting + IP's :winkwink:

So long as the reason is justified ie ssl, dns, etc. IP's should be free. Getting one free ip for each domain you host seems a bit excessive, and there prolly should be a charge for that.

No, I pay for blocks of IP :


/28 (14 Usable IPs) 0.00 7.50 N/A
/27 (30 Usable IPs) 0.00 16.00 N/A
/26 (62 Usable IPs) 0.00 33.50 N/A
/25 (126 Usable IPs) 0.00 70.00 N/A
/24 (254 Usable IPs) 0.00 100.00 N/A



The N/A indicated that at this time, in that datacenter ( I use one in Montreal, one in Toronto, one in New Jersey ) NJ has no IP's available.

Ok, I can squeeze a few off them, but what this says is that they are keeping whatever IP they have for new boxes ( in general 5 Ip's per box ).

The other business point I want to bring is that I have to pay for a decent block of IP, and keep them unused and unbilled for a certain period of time.

If a client ICQ me now, and wants an extra IP, I need to have it in stock, allocated to the server. So some are costing but nor generating $.

If it was free, none would be left ....

You're right. I should quit. Somebody kill me now!

I have sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of hosting to hundreds of clients. But thank you for your wisdom. It is appreciated.

If you ARE a business man then you would know that every dollar counts, and if you can spend a little to turn a larger profit, then it was worth the time and effort.

you were going out of your way to tell people how to run their hosting business, so i figured you were some kind of hosting expert.

Damn. I got burned again! I really should just quit.

I have several friends that own hosting companies, so I know more than the average person.

i see where people are coming from about the paying per IP but is $1/per IP really going to make a difference either way to any company?

Another consideration is whether these Tear2 folks have an assignment from ARIN yet or whether they are still using their providers space. Their website's IP appears to be in the latter category. Will be interesting to see if their policies change when they go to ARIN for space. Also worth mentioning that this will require them to renumber all of their customers out of their provider space before they can get a second round from ARIN.

As mentioned already in this thread, it does prevent people from needing them needlessly. Otherwise people would use a different IP for every domain. When you host thousands upon thousands of domains, thats quite a few IPs, meaning quite a few dollars.

Listen guys, hosting companies don't charge for IPs to be pricks. We try to accommodate our clients whenever possible. But, hosting companies ARE a business. Everything can't be given away for free. If $1 is really too much money for somebody to spend on an IP, I'm sorry but odds are that person will never do a lot of hosting business. On a dedicated server of $100, profit is already extremely minimal. Add more IPs, you're eating away the profit even more. And let's get real, you guys who use up IPs rarely use very much bandwidth anyway.

I have many, many clients who order chunks of IPs and have absolutely no problem paying for them.

I have several friends that own a wife, but they still don't know how to fuck :2 cents:

Well said :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Yes, because the customer requesting 40 additional IP's is going to think a little longer when paying $1/ea as opposed to getting them for free or paying a dime.

precisely

just because they request them, doesn't mean they GET them. Requiring a reason other than "I've got new domains yo!, I needz IPs!" would deter people imho

And what would a good reason be? SEO? Everybody replies with that anyway, that reason would be dead.

IPv6 is a pipe dream. It's NEVER going to happen on a global scale.

IPs are an upsale for hosting companies. In todays terms many hosting companies try and undercut each other and sell incredible, fully managed dedicated servers for SUB $100 Per Month. I have seen companies offer FULL 100MBPS Unmetered Servers, Dual Xeon 2.8ghz, 1 gig Ram, 1x300gig SATA HDD for $199/month. FULLY MANAGED!!!!! How can a company profit there? Well, charging $XX amount per month for IPs, Monitoring, "off hours time". Not to mention they are in Ghetto Colo's anyway. Some maybe running off Verizon Fios or DSL in a basement somewhere :)

There is no way for a hosting company to profit there. Now, build someone a decent server (decent as in 2.4ghz p4, 1 gig ram, 80-150gig HDD, 1000 gig bandwidth) for $100-$120 per month with IP's as needed (per ARIN rules) and you tend to make a decent profit off of the initial sale. You don't need to "nickle-n-dime" your customers. Customers hate that.

You also don't need to be greedy. Something that hosting companies tend to get. I co-founded Tear2 as a second hosting company (my first one I founded in 1997 and sold in 2000) for the basic reason that hosting companies nowadays are too bent on over-charging, nick-n-diming, and flat out scamming their customers. I am a strong advocate for providing a good service thats decently priced (not under or over priced) and just being nice to people. Growing a business like that tends to lead happier clients, which leads to more clients :)

Jim

love that sig mr chris

its pretty pathetic that people dont understand the concept of supply and demand.

:hi nice of you to swing by and make a statement

Great response :thumbsup

i can make you a kewl banner for a few bucks as well see sig :thumbsup I'm crazy

Thanks :) thought I would add my comment once I got a feel for what everyone else was saying.

Jim

yeah . . . . well . . .

Also, I think that this discussion leads back to the way hosting companies are nowadays, and the way they treat their customers. I have actually given out less IPs because I give them away per ARIN justification. Why? Because I take the time to ask people, why do you need this IP? 9 times out of 10 the customer realizes that he doesn't need the IP, and when you realize the person does require it for a nameserver or something like that, then they rightfully deserve it.

Alot of hosting companies try and push the IP space as a neccessity because they make an additional $x per month off of it. Where as we at Tear2 have actually used far less IPs because we take the time to explain to our customers what IPs are and why they may or may not need them.

It all leads back to your customer support, and how far you are going to do to please a customer.

Jim