First, a preface:
Not that I believed 110mb was "misrepresenting" any information but we all know that the home page says "no ads" and ads are supposed to be on the way. We also know that the plans page (
http://www.110mb.com/plans.php) talks about running 110mb's servers in a "cluster based environment" but each box is actually only 1 server. So forgive me Andre for being just a bit skeptical about the 5 reasons page (
http://www.110mb.com/5reasons.htm)
Preface 2:
This post is about another free host. (Mods and admins look away
). The name of this host is: :-ohosthelpers
. I will not link directly to their site nor do I endorse them. However talking about a hosting company without saying their name seems kind of stupid. Please read the entire post before modifying it (and only do it if you absolutely must, I'd prefer if you didn't). The purpose of this post is not to promote hosthelpers or demean, insult, or otherwise sling mud at 110mb.
OK, on to the actual topic.
For those of you that haven't read the 5 reasons page allow me to draw your attention to this part:
Face it, free hosting sites these days are popping left and right. And if you monitor closely enough you'll notice that for majority of free hosts, they:
Sell the business within 2-4 months. (Meaning owner couldn't care less about it other then to make it look just good enough on the outside to sell it for lots of money to the naive buyer. And this is happening as we speak.
Infact we know couple of people that are buying or creating up to 5 free hosting sites a month. They get it's member count to +-15,000, present inaccurate monthly earnings, then sell. And do you think that kind of operation has any interest in giving you a word of support or even caring a spec of dust what happens to your site? Absolutely not!)
Now that they have a high & attractive client database (usually 80% abusers of those 15K), they go to sites like sitepoint.com and sell the host for a nice profit. The host by that time is so overwhelming in terms of abuse & slowness, that the new owner closes it down soon.
As a hobby, I keep tabs on other free hosting packages to see what they are offering, how their service compares to 110mb, etc. So earlier today I stumbled across this page:
http://flippa.com/auctions/73364/Amazing-Free-Hosting-Community-With-Huge-Revenue.
It appears as if the owner started the hosting on May 1. Around November 1 they sold it. So it lasted a little longer then the 2-4 months predicted.
Apparent # of registered members is ~13,000. That's about on par with the 15,000 member count and then selling.
Present inaccurate Adsense earnings. Well, they claim to make $2100 a month in advertising alone and the only cost is the shared hosting plan for the main site and $155 a month for the dedicated server to host accounts on. So cost per month is around $200 not counting labor. Some how this seems to good to be true.
(Andre, you can chime in about this part since you have experience here). Owner claims to only spend .5 to 1 hour managing the site daily tops. This includes 10 minutes processing new sign ups (not automatic), 15 minutes answering support issues, and 10 minutes checking the server logs to make sure everything is hunky dory. Now, Andre, I realize 110mb is a little bigger (to the tune of 11 servers or so) so just take the time all your staff spends working on 110mb and divide by 10 or 11. Hopefully it comes out between .5 and 1 hour. Please tell me you guys spend a bit more time keeping 110mb running.
And finally, one of the main reasons someone would want to buy this service..."Also, there is a huge potential with sending mailing lists. This is a completely untapped revenue stream as i have never sent a mass mailing" so new owner can send spam advertisements and other crap to members.
Since selling the server got hacked and every site had a mysterious iframe added to it. It took the admins forever to get it cleaned up and even then I never found a word from the admins. Perhaps they had the "don't care" attitude that is mentioned above.
So there, just thought I'd share the fact that 110mb is accurate on at least one of its pages. (and I thought people might be interested in this story since I know some people who left 110mb to go over there)
Again, I don't endorse or advertise this service. Just thought it was a newsworthy article worth sharing. Please remember that the rules state that we should not advertise other free hosting companies.
