Community Hosting

[Guest]

Yeah, this is another post about the online limits on hosted communities.

It's not so much the limits, but the fact that there isn't a "pay a bit more for no online/post limit". I could just as easily get the best community package, but I certainly do not need 4GB of space for just a forum, and still have a limit. And that's almost $600/month! The equivalent cost of 3 licenses, with addons for each! It'd be cheaper at that point to rent a dedicated server (does IPS even offer dedicated servers/VPS anymore?), and even buy a brand new independent license each month. No offense, but that is just absolutely ridiculous. Even if the price is for IPS's excellent support - and, yes, it is excellent - there are other hosting companies that would just as well support their shared/VPS/dedicated hosting. You'd have to be out of your mind to pay for one of the advanced packages, I think.

Absolutely none of the community packages would work for my site, and it's not even that big. Of course, I have a full IPB license and use my own hosting (my site's actually a host itself...), so I'm never going to want nor need IPS's hosting, but just seeing the packages (or lack thereof...) is quite disappointing, in my opinion. Is it ever going to affect me, or am I going to get upset with it? Absolutely not. I will say that I would never go for one of the community hosting options, though.

Edit: this thread actually started out as a reply to someone else's similar topic, so if there is any incoherency (it's also almost 2am, and I'm running on coffee and energy drinks), please point it out.

[YounGMessiah]

I think the online users limitation(well actually all of them) is bogus.. I do agree though with everything you said.. I was looking into having IPS host my website, but looking at the prices and limitations made me close the page and look else where.

[Mark]

While you may not have a need for the community hosting, many customers do :)

We didn't just decide "hey, let's change the hosting packages structure!" it was based on feedback from customers and observations of how the majority of our hosting customers operate their boards :)
Amongst other things, customers would often say "What kind of package should I get?" - we would then ask how many users they expect to have online at a time and advise them based on that - the new way is just easier for those people.

Of course, if you had a license you could use one of the website hosting packages, which have no online user limit - and instead, have traditional bandwidth limits.

To answer your question about dedicated servers: yes. The advanced packages use either VPS or dedicated severs. Dedicated servers are also available through our custom solutions.

[Guest]

I'm sure it all makes sense somehow.

I guess my bottom-line suggestion is an option to remove the limits for a certain fee, or alternative packages without the limits; the users online limit seems to be incredibly restrictive per package compared to anything else in the packages. Take this forum for example - could it actively run under any of the community packages? The 350 would seem to be perfect, if it weren't for the online users limit. I do agree that 10 is a lot for a brand new forum, and even for a year or so, but the proportions just don't match up as the packages increase.