| Switching to business, contract lockin? Hey ya'll,
Currently a residential customer. My wife started a small business and I am once again looking to move our web server off a commercial host and into the home. I would probably switch to a 30M business setup with a static IP added on to the price. Once on that plan do they do anything wonky like lock you in or say a few months down the road I want to upgrade to a faster speed business plan will they allow that?
Thanks!
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Fed Up With Crummy Cell Coverage?
Please Map Your GSM Coverage! Save someone else some grief! |
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| The first year i was locked in then after that i upgraded as i will no problems the only reason to do contract is to save 3 whole dollars not worth it imo. |
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zed260Premium
join:2011-11-11
Cleveland, TN Reviews:
 ·Charter
| reply to rahlquist
technically speaking your locked into a contract but they will allow you to upgrade from say 30 to 50 etc but they wont let you cancel before contract ends thats the main purpose of the contracts to keep you as there customer
bussnuss contracts dont have early termination fees
however currently charter is offering 54.99 price for internet if bundled with phone on 30 meg
theres one thing you might consider depending on bussnuss wife runs you can also get a 1-800 number and a listing in the yellow pages |
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 DaSneaky1Done wall to block them allPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
The Lou
·Charter
| reply to rahlquist
Horrible idea to move your web server from a hosted solution to into your home. First, you're not on a 30mbps connection, you're on a 4 or 5mbps connection for the rest of the Internet. Also, you lose redundancy in power, network access, and equipment in the house.
If this website is for your wife's business, wouldn't reliable access for her customers be a greater concern over the perceived cost savings? |
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| said by DaSneaky1D:Horrible idea to move your web server from a hosted solution to into your home. First, you're not on a 30mbps connection, you're on a 4 or 5mbps connection for the rest of the Internet. Also, you lose redundancy in power, network access, and equipment in the house.
If this website is for your wife's business, wouldn't reliable access for her customers be a greater concern over the perceived cost savings?
You raise some good points, but this isnt my first tango. The only reason I had been hosted was for years my provider didnt allow me to run a server at home. Once I move to business class I can do so. As to redundancy yes I dont have multiple BB connections however the server that would be utilized, has specs comparable to the VPS I host on now, is on a ups that will last 30 mins holding that server and all associated network gear. The server is an existing one that sees virtually no use so this would be fine by me. As to the cost savings my VPS which hosts 5 domains for me (mostly under 100 hits a day in traffic) , costs me about $55 a month. Where if I moved it in house it would drop to zero.
The most demanding use would be the email server it (the VPS) provides and even that only handles 3000 emails a day (84-98% spam dumped by spam assassin). The wife's site at this time is still not complete and 99% of her business comes from Etsy and Facebook.
Since my home BB account is no longer in promotional pricing switching to 30mbps business class with a static IP would only be $10 more a month in BB costs.
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| Charter Business now offers no contracts. You just sign a month to month agreement. Plans start at $55 for the 30/4 and $10 for the static IP. You can get 50/5 for $100 per month. |
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 MooJohn
join:2005-12-18
Milledgeville, GA | reply to rahlquist
I'm a happy Charter Business customer and would never go back to the old way. Get their telephone service too; I save over $150/month by ditching landline business phone & DSL service and the speeds blow away anything the phone co. can offer.
I have no complaints about uptime and they don't block any ports. I like being hands-on with my servers too and 3-4 meg outgoing is plenty for the average site.
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John M - Cranky network guy |
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DaSneaky1Done wall to block them allPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
The Lou Reviews:
·Charter
| reply to rahlquist
Well, take the precautions I'm sure you're aware of and have a blast with it. It can be rewarding to have your services so close. Colocating is a little dated now, as shared hosting in the cloud (local control with cloud resiliency) is the next step.
Check out "Cloudflare" for more info on it.
Best to you and your plans. |
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| Thanks, and I appreciated you lookin out! |
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Reviews:
·Charter
| reply to rahlquist
electricity cost of running a server 24/7 is a cost to think about. also, remember, while your download speed is 30mbps(if they can even manage that, some areas, even business customers cant), your upload speed, the speed that you will send stuff to your customers at, is about 3mbps, which if you were getting 100 hits per day, is not enough. If the site is only 1MB, that means it takes about 5 seconds to send the site to the customer, which is a bit on the slow end, and the system would choke even worse if you get more than 1 hit at a time(imaging a worst case scenario that 5 hits at ones, everyone is going to load slow and probably time out). I would stick with a hosted site. if it was a family site, sure, but for a business, keep it hosted. remember, since its for the business, you get tax deductions on your expenses that are solely for the business. If you use the internet connection for anything else, for any personal use at all, you cannot claim it on your federal taxes. |
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| I think that is a bit untrue. I have a server co-located at a data center. I run several 100+ hit per day websites, a teamspeak server, a minecraft server (takes up bulk of bandwidth), and an IRC server with 2000+ concurrent connections. My average upload is around 6Mbps (I am connected to 100/100). So, really, 4Mbps is not bad. Take in consideration that a T1 connection is only 1Mbps and for a long time many small and medium business ran their entire business off of it. I think for what he is doing, it should be fine. |
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| reply to rahlquist
said by rahlquist:said by DaSneaky1D:Horrible idea to move your web server from a hosted solution to into your home. First, you're not on a 30mbps connection, you're on a 4 or 5mbps connection for the rest of the Internet. Also, you lose redundancy in power, network access, and equipment in the house.
If this website is for your wife's business, wouldn't reliable access for her customers be a greater concern over the perceived cost savings?
You raise some good points, but this isnt my first tango. The only reason I had been hosted was for years my provider didnt allow me to run a server at home. Once I move to business class I can do so. As to redundancy yes I dont have multiple BB connections however the server that would be utilized, has specs comparable to the VPS I host on now, is on a ups that will last 30 mins holding that server and all associated network gear. The server is an existing one that sees virtually no use so this would be fine by me. As to the cost savings my VPS which hosts 5 domains for me (mostly under 100 hits a day in traffic) , costs me about $55 a month. Where if I moved it in house it would drop to zero. The most demanding use would be the email server it (the VPS) provides and even that only handles 3000 emails a day (84-98% spam dumped by spam assassin). The wife's site at this time is still not complete and 99% of her business comes from Etsy and Facebook. Since my home BB account is no longer in promotional pricing switching to 30mbps business class with a static IP would only be $10 more a month in BB costs. Consider DR / BCP - how much do you depend on your web business? Your hosted center has 24x7 monitoring, a genset configured to run for extended period of time if a power failure - normally 48 hours or more with contracts for fuel delivery, inert gas fire suspension, backup to other locations, redundancy of internet connections in case of a failure of the primary connection, either by using additional access vendors or bonding of their existing data circuits. Most importantly a hosted center will normally have a DR / BCP plan in place that they test either quarterly, semi-annually or yearly depending on their SOP for it. |
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| reply to Chubbysumo
said by Chubbysumo:electricity cost of running a server 24/7 is a cost to think about. Server has been up 24/7 for 3 years in this location so this wouldn't be a new cost.
if it was a family site, sure, but for a business, keep it hosted. remember, since its for the business, you get tax deductions on your expenses that are solely for the business. If you use the internet connection for anything else, for any personal use at all, you cannot claim it on your federal taxes.
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| reply to wingrider01
said by wingrider01:Consider DR / BCP - how much do you depend on your web business? Your hosted center has 24x7 monitoring, a genset configured to run for extended period of time if a power failure - normally 48 hours or more with contracts for fuel delivery, inert gas fire suspension, backup to other locations, redundancy of internet connections in case of a failure of the primary connection, either by using additional access vendors or bonding of their existing data circuits. Most importantly a hosted center will normally have a DR / BCP plan in place that they test either quarterly, semi-annually or yearly depending on their SOP for it.
Downtime happens, to just about everyone eventually. They may be able to mitigate it a little better, but nobody is perfect. Look at the infamous 365 Main outage and the Equinix outage last year that took out SalesForce.com.
In all truth if it gets to the level I need to be that majorly concerned then I can always migrate back. In all truth my wife will be lucky to pull $15k this year and 100% uptime just isnt needed all that much. Its an embroidery site.
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Fed Up With Crummy Cell Coverage?
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MooJohn
join:2005-12-18
Milledgeville, GA | reply to rahlquist
I used to run a college's network with 1000+ internal users and all the typical servers (web, email, etc.) and our connection to the world was a single T1. During my time we grew that to three T1s, costing several thousand dollars a month. That was ~ 10 years ago.
Getting the same outgoing bandwidth today in your home for $150ish is more than adequate for an embroidery website. It's not like you're streaming videos or doing file distribution with it. I would say my Charter connection is down for under an hour a year which is acceptable for the price point.
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John M - Cranky network guy |
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