Cheap dedicated servers and service level: looking for the balance

Trying to find an adequate balance between service and price seems to be a utopia, and the increasing offer of cheap dedicated servers in the market makes the quest even harder. Generally speaking, price and quality go together: the cheaper the dedicated server monthly rent gets, the lower the service level offered is. However, many of the web hosting providers claim to have great advantages at very low prices, but unfortunately in many occasions this is not exactly the truth.

One of the things a lot a clients often complain about is that many web hosting service providers don’t offer the support they claim to offer, and that communication channels like the live chat support is almost never available.

When customers try to communicate by phone, it’s not uncommon to find an impolite employee at the other end of the line who never solves their problems, and if the inconvenient goes beyond his or her (limited) competence, a long wait must be attended until a second level technician comes and takes care of the customer’s issue.

Another complaint is that many providers lie about the uptime, saying they have 99.5% when actually they’ve got 95%, or even less.

Sometimes when the price is too low one wonders about the quality of the service, but all the doubts vanish once the terms of service are read. Many of these discount dedicated server offers do not clearly specify if the contract does or does not include control panel fees. In the end, this is like purchasing and empty box of matches: nothing can be done without them, but you can buy them separately at a very high price.

Hardware is also a major concern when looking for a cheap dedicated server.
Many people don’t look at this aspect very carefully, and as a result their web-based businesses may stop working when the amount of users, the processing needs or the traffic increases. In some occasions, providers will offer hardware configurations that may not be enough for your dedicated server to run effectively, in order to charge you with additional fees when an upgrade is needed.

In these cases, the smarter thing you can do is paying special attention to the web hosting company’s terms of service, and thoroughly read the contract to see if it meets your service level requirements.

Another interesting indicator that may help in predicting the future service level is whether that so discount dedicated server is offered in monthly-based or annually-based payments. There may be nothing wrong with a web hosting company that offers you to rent a dedicated server for a whole year, as well as they offer you more options. But if annual plans are the only thing you can choose, then you should be suspicious: this may be a strategy of poor service level hosting providers to ensure they will have you for a whole year and avoid immediate punishment.

Again, finding the right balance between costs and features may be a utopia, but many other people have searched for this utopia before. You will be able to find what other users have to say about the company they hired if you look in the Internet; this way you will be able to effectively know what a certain hosting company offers for real.

You can check several hosting-related discussion forums and other types of online communities. Some users even leave their e-mail addresses on those sites, so you may politely send a message to them asking about the web hosting provider they use.

If you take the time to do this research and learn from other users’ experiences, you’ll be able to find a serious provider that can ensure the best possible balance in the equation between service level and a fair price. Better yet, you’ll be taking your first step into a very healthy and profitable business relationship. Good hunting out there!

Henry C. Walsh
Dedicated Server Advisor Contributor