The Educated Hosting Consumer

Surely you have noticed that in today's web hosting world almost every offer you see is for thousands of megabytes or even hundreds of Gigabytes of storage space and often thousands of gigabytes of transfer and what we offer seems tiny by comparison (we have even seen one offering 1,000 GB (1TerraByte) some even go so far as to promise "unlimited"... all for unbelievably low prices. So you may wonder why our plans don't offer so much.

In hosting there is what hosts call the 98% rule. That is 98% of customers will only use a fraction of what a plan offers them (most web sites are from 10-25MB and most only use 1-3GB bandwidth a month at most).

98.7% of our web hosting customers are business users, their sites MUST be fast and must be "up" when customers come.

Even one of our larger currently hosted sites is less than 500 MB and even though it has several MySQL databases, it's own internal search engine, several videos, an e-commerce "store", many background "scripting" operations, and a very active forum with hundreds of visitors a day it usually uses between 5-10 gigabytes of bandwidth (or transfer) per month (part of this is due to our use of Zend Optimizer  and eAccelerator on all our systems for optimum performance). 
This means even our Super Value plan with 500 MB of storage and 8 GB of bandwidth is far more than enough for many web sites and our larger hosting plans will cover almost anyone.

That's where our old-fashioned honesty, integrity, ethics and consumer education comes in.
We have been hosting web sites with our "niche" company for over 8 years and understand well what the average user really "uses". As an example most web sites use less than 50-75 MB  of storage space, many even less than 10-25 MB, but even our most basic plan includes 500 MB+ and that's guaranteed!
Not only is it guaranteed it's on a Fully Mirrored hot-swap RAID array for disk failure protection and THEN is still backed-up off-array nightly, weekly, and monthly. It just doesn't get any better. We use minimum 100MB/s connections (most hosts use 10MB/s) and nothing less than Xeon dual-core or quad-core CPU's with minimum 4GB ECC RAM on ANY sever!

Why does this matter to you?
Today every host knows that over 98.5% of all web sites use far less than even these average resources. So today almost all "hosts" engage in what is known as "overselling". That is the term for "advertising" far more resources than their hardware and network is actually capable of delivering. So we could easily offer our plans with far more "advertised" storage and bandwidth because it is a proven statistical fact that 98% or more of you would never use even a fraction of what we "sold" you in our advertised plans if we advertised those huge amounts.
To the uneducated consumer the question immediately arises "why should I pay $8.95 for 500 MB of storage and 8 GB of transfer when I can get the 250MB plus 1,500GB of transfer for $3.95 someplace else?".
That may be a logical first thought to those who don't know a great deal about web hosting, but in our opinion it's an unethical business practice. It is unrealistic to think a company could provide those resources at those prices and make a profit. (Think about it, 500MB is an entire, large hard disk drive, do you really think ANY host can give you your own disk drive for $5 a month?)
The same way so many people find out every day that the "free" hosting gimmick some hosts use, isn't really free at all.

We host 2 web sites with extremely busy forums with hundreds, sometimes thousands of visitors and posts a day, another "way cool" site is for a Hollywood graphics & computer animation studio (with credits like Polar Express^® and commercials like Nike^® & Dell^® ) AND NOT ONE of them used over 10GB average transfer per mo. in the last 6 months!
These are custom built sites with very high traffic! See it's just that those crazy offers for tons of Gigabytes of size and huge amounts (or unlimited) transfer are not real...they are ALL just advertising gimmicks, and I'm in the "over 50" crowd and don't believe in gimmicks. My equipment and network connections from Equinix Chicago can deliver every megabyte for every customer on every plan even if every one of them was using all of it at once. And that never happens, that's why those other people promise the moon, BUT if you use to much somewhere in the "fine print" they will cut you off.
Here you will fine no gimmicks and no "unreal" offers. Just rock solid performance if that's what you want & need from a host.

We believe our hardware and network should be able to provide every customer with every bit of the resources you are paying for even in the very unlikely event every one of our client's sites was using their maximum at the exact same time (another scenario almost statistically impossible that all hosts are well aware of).
So we offer realistic plans that can do just that; offer everything we advertise anytime you need it. We use "over-powered" servers in terms of the CPU's RAM, and RAID and network connections so that EVERY customer always enjoys blazing fast speeds plus reliability.

It is also important to know we do not offer "reseller" plans. Not that we couldn't, however often hosts camouflage huge overselling inside reseller plans. In those plans the reseller gets their own IP addresses and name servers so a check of the "host" you might do with some tools on the web doesn't show all the clients under those IP's and name servers so literally 100's of "unseen" sites may be on any server.
Don't believe it, look at what some hosts offer "resellers" for $20 or less! In fact you might be buying from a reseller on that "bargain" plan and never even know it!  In fact today many reseller companies offer integrated billing software & the entire system "white labeled" so the "reseller" can put their name and logo on their plan so your won't ever know it!

Which brings up the next question..."Why should I care if it won't affect me?"
 If an "overselling" web host is smart they will add more resources to cover themselves when their "overselling" practice eventually catches up with them. A very few do and it that case you might not ever notice. But by far most of these type hosts don't, and all their customer's (your) performance begins to suffer as an overloaded server on overcrowded connections tries to handle the loads it was never designed for.
We have seen as many over 1,000 sites crammed on a single server with one CPU by these type firms. Like any computer that's overloaded the server runs hotter at high loads and the sites get slow because the "port" or connection to the Internet is overloaded (some of these servers only have 10mbs connections, just like the DSL or Cable connection on your home PC)

NOTE: Some say nobody can really promise to not "oversell" because something will be "oversold"... CPU power, memory, disk space...something; So to prove them wrong as of Jan 27,2007 and continuing still through 2008 & on we started a continual upgrading and rotation model and now our "minimum" is 64 bit dual or quad core processor Xeon servers (or multi-processor multi-core) with extra ECC RAM and mirrored RAID hard drive arrays PLUS backup drives and 100MBs connections...on every server! As technology grows faster and more powerful; so do we. EVERY server has Mirrored RAID, ECC (error correcting) RAM, at least multi-core processors and we continue the process of advancing with technology:
And by specializing on doing one thing very well-offering top-quality "shared" hosting which is really the most efficient and cost-effective service and what the majority of web site customers really need when the resources are properly delivered at full speed!

We have the power to deliver what we promise even though our older single processor servers from 2006 recently replaced; were at less than 1/3 the capacity most hosts cram on similar servers! We replace all servers on average at 2 years or less for reliability!

Why does all this mean you will get far better performance with New Idea?

Because the same "98%" rule still applies to almost all of our sites. Most of our customers will never use nearly all the resources our web hosting plans allocate to them even though our "plans" seem much smaller--we know what people REALLY use--our hardware and network is capable of delivering the full 100% capacity we advertise.
That means when one of our servers is "sold out" it may still only be operating at 1/8-1/2 or less of it's capacity at any given time. (our newer multi-core servers usually run at 1/10-2/10 of base level load which is less than 1% of what most hosts consider a "normal" load). We also do not host sites like porn or pyramid schemes to "get rich quick" which are often fraudulent and/or prone to problems YOU don't need on a server you share with your important information...even if it's just a personal blog but especially if it's a business.
To you that means superior performance for your web site and lower "loads" on the server & network greatly increasing speed and reliability for you and everyone on the server.

Compared to other web hosts our servers are "loafing"...and we like it that way!

Even before one of our servers actually "sells out" we easily add more through our expandable resources at the top-rated Equinix datacenter in Chicago. That translates into full-time performance and dependability for our customers and still allows a reasonable profit for us (unlike the "overselling" hosts who try to make thousands of dollars per server). A reasonable profit allows us to offer better support and to expand with even more features today and room for future service improvements. (And current customers will automatically enjoy these features as they are added.) We offer the most comprehensive suite of anti-virus and anti-junk mail features available to every client (anti-virus at 6x-updated every 4 hours) as well as value-added features like Fantastico, and our incomparable Pro-Site Builder and custom easy to use control panels.

Also because our servers are never "straining" we easily have the resources to offer FREE nightly backups standard on all accounts as well as weekly & monthly backups, most hosts charge extra and some don't even offer this extremely important service. We even offer one-click backups from your personal control panel so you can compress and download your entire site and account to your PC for FIVE levels of protection.

We are so sure we can meet your needs; here is the extra "deal" we will make with you like nobody else offers.
Try our service. If you find you need more megabytes or more transfer than what you are paying for we will add it at no extra cost. This is within reason of course. But as an example let's say you have a hosting plan with 750 MB of storage and find you needed 800. Just ask and we will modify it. The same is true for transfer. Of course if you have no idea what you will need and find you purchased a 500 MB plan and need 900 MB (as an example) you will need to upgrade to our plan with 1,000 MB to give yourself room to grow. The same would be true for transfer rates. (Legalese: Final determination of "free upgrades" or the need to move to larger plan will be made solely by us, but it is simply based on common sense.)
If you are not satisfied you may cancel your web hosting  or domain name service with us at any time with no penalty and we will even keep your site files available for 15 days to give you time to save or move them all. We never use extended contracts or long-term commitments to "hook" you; even on our special offers!

Be honest with us and we will be honest with you. We think you will be a satisfied customer who will stay with us for years to come, and you will tell others about your web host, helping our business to grow and prosper. Over 98.7% of our web hosting customers from over 3 years ago are still with us. (This includes customers who closed their business or dropped their personal web sites, when you count "moved to another host" it's 99.7% still with us over 3 years!)
Our old-fashioned honest business model may not seem "right" today's web hosting world. But we are old-fashioned and really believe honesty is the best policy even in web site hosting. If you are looking for a solid stable web host with real guaranteed uptime, good support, excellent performance, and people who care, you have found your host, and we have gained a friend as well as a customer. We believe there are enough people like you to make our somewhat unique business model work, and we look forward to serving you.

About the Owner & Author of this page: I'm not a "20-something" or college student with my first business. I'll gladly email you the "long-story" about how as the owner of my own non-Internet related business over 22 years I rose to prominence in that industry presenting many seminars and continuing to teach others how to market and grow businesses in that field by providing exceptional value and honest service and how in the process became a part-time web host for that niche market. Then after a series of unexpected circumstances related to my health, led to my decision to try this experiment of using the same time-proven methods of building a full-service business based on the same principles of honesty and customer satisfaction in the world of web hosting. A business that would be unaffected by my physical limitations. If you want to know the "long version" just email me at The Owner's Story.

We keep growing & offering more. Now we offer our Updated Pro Web Site Builder, and best of all it's FREE! Build your own professional web site quickly and easily with NO need for any programming skills or software on your computer! You can sign-up today and have your new professional web site on-line tonight. It's fast and unbelievably easy and you have hundreds of "looks" to choose from. You can even import FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Microsoft Word or other work you may already have easily into your Pro-Site Builder site.
Step-by-step, YOU choose the pages you want (including forms & other "special" pages) and build your own professional web site quickly and easily. Make any changes whenever you want. Your choice of fonts & layout, easily upload your images & photos, it's YOUR site. Why pay an expensive "web designer" or buy $200+ hard-to-learn software when you can do-it-yourself with our Pro Site Builder? No one will ever know the difference but you! And no downloads or software is needed on your computer at all. Plus all pre-installed designs are customizable so you never appear to have a "cookie-cutter" site.
For those who are a bit more experienced but who want an easy starting point we also offer hundreds of starter templates to choose from and customize just the way you want them and we'll get you started with the search engines.

PLEASE NOTE: While we do not ever "oversell" our disk space or bandwidth and performance & transfer capabilities of our machines; once a signal leaves our servers it is beyond our control. We use one of the top-rated datacenters in the nation (hosting many Fortune 500 companies) and they use the top backbone fiber providers but service times may vary based on overall Internet conditions or your local service provider's ISP) network conditions beyond our control.