Custom Plans

[djblalock]

I had an interesting idea... And certainly there must be a way using API, but this might be a good feature to offer to everyone.

What if we allowed our customers to create a custom hosting plan, and we just set our prices (the markup price, as we'd usually set) based on how much the person is ordering on their plan.

I will gladly do one for any of my clients according to their specifications, but it seems like a "Make your own plan" feature would work better...

Opinions?

[iads]

Once an account is created they can already do that, but you may mean before they sign up. In that case you can let them know that the feature i built in to every account, that way you get a sale one way or another....might even get upgrades.

But it was still a great idea.

[djblalock]

Once an account is created they can already do that, but you may mean before they sign up. In that case you can let them know that the feature i built in to every account, that way you get a sale one way or another....might even get upgrades.

But it was still a great idea.

Yes, I'm aware of the "Upgrades" feature and inform current users of that when they need more space... But advertising a way to customize the plan before they even order it seems like it would draw their attention in.

I can advertise the upgrades they can use later all I want, but what if they want less than my lowest package offers? It seems like the custom plan would be a better advertising perk if nothing else.

[wjleong]

This is an interesting idea.

However, it's not working practically.

Because you are only allowed to create up to 20 plans.

Once your client signed up on that plan, you can't delete it even he upgraded, MBG, expired etc. It remain there forever.

So, your idea is workable for 20 clients, then finish. Create another store ?

[doneritehosting]

I had an interesting idea... And certainly there must be a way using API, but this might be a good feature to offer to everyone.

What if we allowed our customers to create a custom hosting plan, and we just set our prices (the markup price, as we'd usually set) based on how much the person is ordering on their plan.

I will gladly do one for any of my clients according to their specifications, but it seems like a "Make your own plan" feature would work better...

Opinions?

It is a good idea but good luck with it. I have already been in touch with support about adjusting the wholesale costs in the custom plan builder for resellers so everyone could be a bit more competitive but support would not go for it.

[yav0r]

In our experience and I do mean old boring statistics the plans you create don't generate more than 10% of ALL sales done through resellers (probably even less I haven't checked last years stats).

What I mean is that custom plans and more specifically plans that do not offer unlimited features are worth almost nothing.

We don't deem worth it investing in such project to make a plan builder available to end customers.

That is why we as a provider have tailored those 4 plans according to the market and I do mean according to the global market. In the era of cloud computing and overselling noone buys plans that offer specific amount of disk space/traffic. I am not saying that is cool but its the way it is Everyone wants to get more for their money and that is a fact lads.

[clivejo]

Statistic can be bent and skewed to serve different agendas and can rarely be so black or white. Sure politicians use this to their advantage all the time! Therefore I'm not a fan!

One thing I dont understand is how in reality a limited plan is more expensive to provide than an unlimited one? Now dont get me wrong, I think the unlimited plans are great and definitely great for a newbie to find their feet.

But I would also argue that the more experienced customers know that unlimited can mean abuse, overloading and overselling. There are a small number of people who will test that 'unlimited' to its maximum, abuse the resources to get their moneys worth. This then has a knock on effect for the honest decent folk who just want cheap hosting!

[djblalock]

Thanks for the informative post, Yan

Clivejo, I have been curious about the same thing (why the unlimited plans are cheaper to offer).

[yav0r]

The limited plans have the same limits in terms of disk space usage policy and CPU policy so your statement for inexperienced and experienced users is simply invalid. And yes limited plans are also a subject of overselling.

Statistics here can not be compared even remotely with political polls of any sort.
Its just the percentage of what sells and what does not. Simple as that. Whether you choose to trust in it or not is your own decision. I am just stating the obvious trend in the hosting market.

[clivejo]

Sorry Yan, I'm generalising here. Its been my experience that companies offering unlimited resources cant live up to what they are promising! I have been let down by a lot of hosts, in a lot of countries, who have tried to sell packages under this banner! RSP are the only host that have lived up to their promise.

But surely its logical that if you have an unlimited plan which is considerably cheaper than a limited plan, then your going to see more sales for the unlimited plan? The financial factor is skewing the results. What's interesting to me is why are this 10% paying MORE money, for LESS resources? as the unlimited package would obviously be cheaper for them!

Now if you have a limited plan for cheaper, in my opinion, I think it would do a lot better than 10% of sales, even if it was just a few dollars less. The Hepsia CP seems to be designed for resource auditing, is there a technical reason why limited/custom plans are more expensive?

[doneritehosting]

Well I just wanted to build a custom plan competitive with g-dad economy plan, price and features... If that company is selling a small plan like this then it must be selling for that company? I doubt a company that large is wasting their time with it?

[yav0r]

Hello,

And that is why we have created the Starter plan...

[wjleong]

I think nowaday the storage and bandwidth is extremely cheap until not considering as a cost.

And the features offering all almost the same, no differences between 2 mysql database and 5 mysql database in most of the cases.

In my opinion, the only major differences is the CPU resources, which is more crucial in shared hosting. The rest included the support team experience and uptime.

The cut off point of CPU resources in most of the hosting companies (even included the big sharks like godaddy, hostgator etc) are unclear, and you can be banned, suspended anytime for no reasons.

But here in RSP what I experience is RSP mention clearly about the CPU usage and show the statistic of 6 hoursly, so that clients can monitor and also support in RSP very helpful in helping the clients to rule out what scripts actually killing the resources.

However, I believed that majority of the clients don't even look at the CPU resources, they only think about the space and bandwidth, so they are attracted to so called unlimited resources plan.

just my 2 cents