Competitors

[Magicman]

I'm a very satisfied FutureQuest client. I LOVE their service and features, and have not had a single problem yet. My question is this: what is the difference between FutureQuest (14.95 a month on the basic package, 50 megs, 5 GB transfers) and POW Hosting ($7.95 a month for 200 megs space, 12 GB transfers). It seems that they are offering greater or equal features than FutureQuest is. I am curious of why FutureQuest is almost double the price. Again, I LOVE FutureQuest, but this is somewhat of a tempting offer:

http://www.powweb.com/index.html

Any responses?

[Joe]

Magicman, I've no idea how good/bad/indifferent POWWEB are, but what I do know is that there are hundreds (probably thousands) of web hosts that offer packages that are cheaper than those here at FutureQuest. So why doesn't everyone leave and go to those cheaper hosts? Everyone has their own reasons, but reliability, service, these forums, value for money are just some of the reasons. FutureQuest themselves have said, many times, they are not for everyone, but once you know they are for you, most people find it difficult to go elsewhere.

[Magicman]

Joe,


I see what you're saying. I love FutureQuest, it's just that POW has similar forums, 150 Megs more space, over double the bandwidth amount, and telephone technical support-- all for like half the price. It's tempting, but I'm probably going to stay with FQ for now because I haven't had any problems at all yet.

[Aaron O'Neil]

I've never tried the host you have mentioned, but I started with a local ISP hosting me. Sounded good, was a lot cheaper, more features... Turned out to be a nightmare. Thing didn't always work as promised, pages often were served up incredibly slow, my site would go down somewhat frequently with amazingly long periods to get it back up.

FQ doesn't seem to let their servers get overloaded. I know I've read that they pay attention to that somewhere although I don't remember if it was just on the boards or in the feature list -- I do know I've never had any issues with my site being slow while hosted on FQ though.

I've never had any problems with lack of phone support here. In fact, I've never had a host that replies so fast to email. It doesn't seem to matter what time of day I send an email, I get a response typically in 20 mins or so (even at 2 or 3am pacific).

I used to constantly check my site when hosted elsewhere just because it was down so often. They weren't capable of figuring stuff like that out on their own and your site typically stayed down until you told them about it. There have been a couple of times where somebody has emailed me about my site being down here, but it was for a very brief period (other than scheduled maintenance) but that is over the course of a year and a half or so here -- that's a good thing, not complaining, the uptime here is pretty incredible.

I'm sure I could find a cheaper host, but I'm not sure if I could find a better host. I'd much rather pay a little more money and never have to worry about the state of my site than to deal with the constant headaches that can arise with some other hosts.

I'm not saying the one you mentioned is bad, I don't know anything about them, but I have had experience with a couple of other cheaper-than-here hosts and I'd never want to go back to that sorry state of hosting.

I guess it mostly depends on your own needs. I don't make any money with my site, it really doesn't matter a whole lot whether it's up or down, but like anything I do with my name on it, I want a positive reflection on myself. I don't like my software to crash or have nasty bugs, and I don't want a website that's constantly down or not working right for people to associate with me.

I get the feeling that Deb (and others) have the same feeling about Futurequest and how it reflects on them. They work hard to keep everything running smoothly (can tell just from browsing the boards) and seem to care about the business and keeping customers. I think the cheaper-bigger packages are more concerned with quantity and the fact that because they ARE cheaper they will make up for any lost business by sheer numbers. I'm sure FQ is very concerned with making money too (what business isn't), but I haven't ever had the feeling that they let the making money part get in the way of customer service and reliability.

Well, that came out longer than I inteded. I'm turning into a windbag as I get older.

Aaron

[chilihorse]

Magicman,

With extremely limited funds, my business partner and I have had a long series of discussions about web related expenses. Bottom line is that we figure we are charging our clients x dollars per hour. If we move elsewhere that is half as expensive, then how many hours of screw ups is it going to take to make up for our time to fix something that is not currently broken. A high end example, but we produced and shipped a few projects in less than a day last week that generated more gross profit than a year's worth of Gold level services at FQ (of course, we had Monday completely down, Tuesday chasing bad debts).Basically, we feel our time is better spent improving our page and getting visitors than fixing something that is not broken.

If we were pushing the limits of our package as far as space or transfers, we would still apply the same logic. Although we might be paying more per month for an upgraded package, we are as sure as can be that it would work while we were doing something else more important to generate revenue or save the world or whatever.

Why is it that I can run all this through my head or discuss it with our accountant and still be able to instantly convert the dollars into beer case equivilants?

[JoeRT]

What the cheaper hosts don't tell you is how many sites they put on a server. It's easy to cram double the sites on a server, but it hurts the performance of everyones site (slow load times, increased down time due to renegade scripts, etc.). You have to figure there is a trade off... better performance, more cost or marginal performance, low cost.

[Rich]

I'm a very satisfied FutureQuest client. I LOVE their service and features, and have not had a single problem yet

This is the difference.

[ryount]

Before we came to FQ I had tried a number of hosts. The first host we had back in the early days was pretty good but they were bought up by someone, who was bought up by someone else, who was then bought up again. When I called for tech support they really had no clue who I was or what server my site was even on. When I moved the site it took 6 months to get them to stop billing me. The last host I used had chronic email problems, but whenever you called they would say "It looks fine on this end, that's our newest server". We have been with FQ for a little over a year now and couldn't be happier. There's a nice community here. Our new ISP here at the office provides free hosting with our account, but the sites are staying right where they are.

[tjlid]

but whenever you called they would say,
"It looks fine on this end, that's our newest server".I'll bet they also said "It auta work". How many times have we heard the Auta Work statement from other Customer Support departments?

You pay peanuts, You get Monkeys.

[Marbledog]

When clients ask me that question I tell them: 1) really high uptime % 2) reliable communication and advance notice of potential problems whenever possible and 3) THE most efficient, knowledgeable and friendly tech support I've encountered in the 18 years I've been playing with computers - the best by leaps and bounds.

What I don't tell the clients is that I get cool t-shirts and get to meet great people and help them find E.T. and can ask really stupid questions without embarrassment and almost always get the answers and so on and so forth.

[songdog]

Originally posted by Marbledog:
...I get cool t-shirts How do you do that?

[Marbledog]

Bribe the parrot.

[lepton]

Be sure to read the fine print on any host you're considering. In the case of powweb.com:

Do you offer telnet or shell access? (category Pre-Sales Questions)
No, PowWeb does not provide shell access.

Might not be important to you now, but it's on my "must have" list.

[jimbo]

Originally posted by Marbledog:
When clients ask me that question I tell them: 1) really high uptime % 2) reliable communication and advance notice of potential problems whenever possible and 3) THE most efficient, knowledgeable and friendly tech support I've encountered in the 18 years I've been playing with computers - the best by leaps and bounds.

What I don't tell the clients is that I get cool t-shirts and get to meet great people and help them find E.T. and can ask really stupid questions without embarrassment and almost always get the answers and so on and so forth. As an-ex (and hopefully future) FQ'er, I must say that's the most comprehensive and accurate description of FQuest I've ever seen. Right on!

Jim
-- Does polly want one cracker, or two?

[songdog]

Originally posted by jimbo:
-- Does polly want one cracker, or two? A cracker?? Jeez! How 'bout a new play buddy for when your "mom" is at the computer all day & night? :pirate2:

[Deb]

How 'bout a new .... Ahem.... I'll refrain from sharing, it's probably best for a different thread 8}

Echo (the squawker) does not read the forums ... I have no idea why... but he does read his email (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=11858#post11858).

Deb
- Disclaimer: Getting to the Post Office while they are open has proven to be quite a task for me ... so expext delays %)

[PaulKroll]

Does Echo get spam? I'm picturing "Increase your beak length in 5 days" and "Hot tropical chicks (and geese, and ducks, and they scurry!) at PlumageExposed.com" all of a sudden and just want to know how carefully targetted the spam gets... :)

[Deb]

Well, he does receive plenty of spam that's for sure... however I did get a chuckle when one popular online bookstore sent him an email asking that he "migrate" to them from another popular online book store. Yahoo spam tells Echo his income could "soar" with blah blah... He's been begging me to let him sign up for a credit card since he's been "Instantly Approved" so many times this year... Maybe I'll break down and let him have a PayPal account...

Deb
- Ok ok...I know I know... I'm Hushing!

[jimbo]

Originally posted by Deb:
Maybe I'll break down and let him have a PayPal account... I don't know - I've heard that people are flocking from Paypal... ;)

-jim

[frankc]

Originally posted by Marbledog:
Bribe the parrot. Why do I now have a sense that that's the new catchphrase at FQ when someone wants something? :P