Creating the ultimate .NET host - your help needed

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Hi all,

We're an existing Windows hosting company and are currently researching heavily with a view to launching a new service aimed squarely at .NET web developers.

We'd very much welcome your feedback on what you would like to see from a .NET host - is there anything that you feel is missing from current packages or any components or additions that make a .NET developers life easier.

e.g.

Should MS SQL be included in all packages by default ?

Should the servers run PHP / CGI or would you prefer them to be 'clean' MS machines ?

Are FP extensions important ( for VS.NET publishing ) or is this outweighed by the possible security holes inherent in FP ?

This isn't intended to be a commercial post or spam and we won't be putting any link to the company here - we'd just welcom a discussion on what YOU would like to see from a hosting provider.

All feedback very much welcomed, even if telling us to bog off :D
 
well, I've a service with a provider, the only point will be, make your prices low, comptetitive
 
Personally, I am not quite to the point yet of launching a .NET website, but I do plan on it. I currently have a PHP Post Nuke based website, which I will still maintain since my interests are in both arenas.

I will be happy to share my thoughts on what I will be looking for in a .NET host and hope it helps you in deciding what to provide overall.

Yes, I think MS SQL should be included as part of the hosting plan package. This is not to say a client is required to have a database, but if they so choose to then they can avail themselves of the opportunity.

Perhaps you would permit two or three databases for the client. I have found this feature extremely useful on my site using one database for Post Nuke and another for Moodle (on line eLearning system). Moodle isn't a Post Nuke module, has it's own datatables, and operates independently of my main site. The needs/frequency of backing it up are different than that of my main site.

I think ASP.NET should be offered but I am not personally wild about FP extensions simply because I don't use Front Page for any web design work. The type of site I am targeting to offer for the .NET hosting will be one comprised of the Dot Net Nuke cms package or the Rainbow package. I am sure cgi would be a good benefit to offer as you can still use a lot of cgi and JavaScript in the .NET environment.

Cost will be a big factor. This is one area where I have had a bit of sticker shock when investigating a .NET hosting environment compared to my PHP/MySQL environment.

Without naming names, I get 1 gig of space to be chopped up however I use it between HTML, PHP, MySQL. I get a high level of email accounts, more than my site would ever need. The price is $6.99 USD a month.

When I began looking at .NET hosting, I am finding that it takes about $20 a month to get somewhere around 500 megs of space, which you divide up between your web pages, programs, and database. Many times MS SQL ability is not in the base price and so it goes even higher per month.

Basicially what I am finding is that it will cost me somewhere around three times as much as my PHP/MySQL site does yet have only half of the capacity in terms of disk storage.

I realize there are cost factors involved and I don't think I'll ever see a .NET hosting package as low as I'm used to paying for my PHP/MySQL site, but perhaps a more reasonably comparable package would help entice others. The cost difference won't stop me from having a .NET website but I certainly will keep shopping around for awhile longer.

Hope this helps.
 
It certainly does - many thanks for your comments.

Obviously cost is a big factor in anyones decision on where to place their hosting so is something that is forefront in our minds.

However it WILL be more expensive than Linux / PHP hosting - which is all open source and essentially free for the hosting provider. By contrast the Windows / SQL licenses are actually one of the most expensive parts of our setup and we do have to pass on some of this cost to the end user. Would anyone care to expand on this and suggest the price they would be prepared to pay ? or what the limits would be ?

The idea of multiple datases is a good one, in terms of licensing it costs us no more to offer 5 databases than 1 - it's just the resources used that cost money. I think the ideal would be for us to allow X MB of SQL space and allow the customer to divide this space up into multiple databases themselves - we'll have to write some new control panel code to make it possible but it certainly is do-able.

Regards FP extensions, there are needed to publish not only from FP but from Visual Studio - though you can also just FTP the files up, personally I don't like FP ext at all as they open a real security hole :(
 
Thats the problem with windows hosting plans. They are definetly more desireable, but the pricing puts off a number of casual users.
 
Thank you very much for taking the time to make a posting here to ask the questions and get an idea of how you could make a desirable hosting solution for .NET.

Yes I do understand that .NET hosting will never be as cheap as PHP/MySQL due to the open source nature of those products. I think as long as the pricing is reasonable for what you get then I'd be a happy camper :) I am not exactly sure though what combination of things for a price is reasonable though since I can only speak for myself. Personally, my main desires lay in having disk space to allocate between programs and SQL datastorage. While email is important I don't need 30+ email accounts or anything like that. My .NET site would be more of a site to showcase my .NET web work, advertise programs I am writing for resale and storing those programs for electronic download by users who purchase them.

I used FP a few years ago for a short bit and I just didn't like the product all that much. The extensions caused me no end of headaches, but again this is just me talking here. I have used various FTP programs throughout my computing career and have no issue with continuing to do so. I have Cute FTP Pro and really enjoy it. While I did not realize you could publish from directly within VS.NET I don't know that I would be using that feature of it. The main thrust of what I will be doing is establishing either a Dot Net Nuke or Rainbow site, using additional modules and writing my own. So I think I could use FTP to upload those easily enough.

In terms of Control Panels, I have used one hosting provider who did not have such and my current hosting provider who does have one. Even though I do have a technical background and am used to doing things "command line style", I must say that control panels are really a great thing to have.

Personally, I like the ability I have to back up each of my databases separately. It places the backup on my local machine here at home. There is a restore feature within the control panel that works the reverse, lets me name a file on my local machine to restore to the hosting provider. There is a separate backup feature which lets me backup the contents of my html directory and related subdirectories as well, storing it locally also.

The control panel lets me create my databases, delete my databases, create my database users, assign permissions to the user, and assign the user to which database.

There are other features of the control panel my hosting provider has, but I have mentioned the important ones. I can't speak for existing .NET hosting providers since as I haven't seen any detailed specifics on the control panel.

For .NET hosting I would think it would also be important to provide the ability to use the various versions of the .NET Framework. I realize right now there are only two but I suspect that there will be another release in the near term future.

In terms of support, I hope there will be a way to place support tickets to the staff. Over time possibly use some of that data to provide a FAQ area or a 'search tech knowledge base' type setup to look for help before placing a support ticket.

Personally I don' t know if you should include PHP with a .NET service or not. I am a big fan of the Post Nuke cms package writting in Post Nuke. I know the plans exist of abstracting the database layer to the point you could use any SQL database so it would permit it to run in a MS SQL environment. However, people won't get the full benefit unless the Apache web server is running as well. There are programs that run with Post Nuke that are expecting to make use of .htaccess type files and IIS doesn't have a method to use them. They seem to be unique to Apache it would seem. So in the end I am not sure how much PHP usage you would see on your hosting system. While my own thoughts may change over time, at this time I plan to keep the two separate. My PHP/MySQL site for things related to it, my future .NET site for MS related things.

I have saved my bittest pet peeve for last though. Personally speaking I hope that the admins of the servers will not be left to modify server configs or settings at will or to perform upgrades on the servers without letting the users who are on those servers know they are doing this. The first PHP/MySQL hosting provider I had started out doing ok, but within a few months it was a continual thing of configs being redone without announcement, upgrades to servers being done without us knowing about it, only finding out when the upgrade didn't go right and our sites were down due to it. It finally go to the point where one month I spent more time trying to keep my site up and running than it was actually up and running. Bad thing for someone who works a full day then comes home to develop code and the website is their medium to the public at large showcasing what they have done. Finally, enough was enough and I switched providers. I have been with the new provider almost as long as the former one and my downtime has been substantially less, and I have been a lot happier :cool: I realize that everyone will have downtime, just the nature of the beast. But it is a completely different story when it is self inflicted by the sites admins just because they wanted to change the config of the server I happened to be on.

I do hope this helps you out some in trying to decide what services to provide the .NET community.
 
I totally agree with the 30 emails part.
I had an account with 20 emails, and each was allocated with 10MB of space, yet my web accoutn only had 50. I was able to negoiate, to convert those 19 email addresses to disk space, and I now have 200MB of space on my website.

I think that if people are buying a .net hosting plan they won't want mysql and php. There are .net versions of postnuke now anyway (www.asp.net). If they really wanted php and mysql then they will probably buy a unix/linux hosting plan...

Oh yes and control panels are a must have for me, espeically on unix based sites...
 
Thanks for the continued input - all appreciated and noted.

My personal view is that PHP / MySQL / Perl has no place on a .NET webserver, the basic IIS 6 / .NET implementation is a very solid beast and IMHO adding the additional services only compromises the server both resource wise and potentially security wise.

The trouble is many customers seem to want everything and the kitchen sink included (even though they'll never use it) and when comparing plans they'll prefer the one with all the extras quoted on the web site - it's a dilemma for every host.

It's my belief that you keep a faster, cleaner and more reliable server by sticking to the 'pure' MS technologies, part of this research is to ascertain whether a strong enough requirement for a 'pure' MS server exists in the market place.

The point regarding pop3 mail space is an important one and perhaps reflects another difference between Windows and nix hosting in that on most companies open source hosting platforms it's normal for each server to run apache, mysql and smtp / pop locally on the server - this makes it easy for the host to allocate simple block of space for a customer to split how they choose.

In the Windows scenario databases and e-mail are typically on dedicated servers separate from the web servers which is why you get X for webspace X for databases and X for mail - again something that can perhaps be managed through the control panel.

Please keep the suggestions / comments coming - this is proving to be quite an eye opener and I'm grateful for the time your spending on it.
 
From my perspective as a programmer and tech support person, I would say that you as a hosting provider would be better serverd to keep your services strictly MS based and not utilize PHP/MySQL.

Now, I use PHP/MySQL heavily and have nothing against them so don't get me wrong there. The point I want to drive home is that you as the hosting provider have the potential for endless issues from users who want to use their PHP based apps which utilize .htaccess files or other features that Apache handles but IIS doesn't. That doesn't make IIS bad, it simply means it is a different product and doesn't know about the native nature of a product similiar to it but still different from it.

Perhaps the matter can be overcome through a targeted marketing strategy. What I am thinking of here is things that would convey you are the specialist and your choosen speciality is MS products which provide and enhance .NET web site hosting services. Set yourself apart from the others by being the one lone force out there that chooses to be different, a leader which others will have to follow as you aren't a follower trailing behind the crowd.

I really don't know how doable this idea is, but hey you can look into it and see if it is a route you want to take or not. You ever thought about catering to the Dot Net Nuke or Rainbow content management system crowds?

If you have, you might just be a big hit if you had your control panel set so that a customer could install the package to their site with a click of a button.

There are a lot of hosting providers over in the PHP world that do this for Post Nuke. I personally didn't use that option as I wanted to upload a newer version of Post Nuke to my site than what the control panel would have installed. But it is an easy convenient way for a non-technical user to get a cms pacakge installed on their site. All they have to do then is just begin setting it up the way they want it.

Some providers, like the one I use, go a step further and have a listing of the most popular open source PHP/MySQL based programs available for one-click-install on my hosting space.

I haven't researched the .NET hosting services in depth yet, but in my initial research I haven't seen that type of catering to the public. Perhaps the best part is, with an good listing of open source products utilizing .NET that the user can see and select from, possibly their desire to use a non .NET option will diminish. True, I can still upload through FTP whatever I care to for my site, and I usually do, but not everyone works with this stuff day in and day out like we do. So it is a much nicer way to let them have their hosting space and take some of the headaches out of the installation process.

I suppose in all of this I am trying to say that if you show a potential customer all the things that are .NET based and that can be easily loaded through this super control panel they will have access to, then the need for non-.NET products isn't there since you have proven to them they can have a super site without going any further than their own control panel.

These are just some late night thoughts I've had. Certainly not trying to tell you how to run your business, just trying to give you some food for thought. :)
 
I absolutely agree that this server should be kept free of anything opensource and be purely IIS 6 with .NET 1.1, running on Windows Server 2003. You should not place bandwidth restriction on this kind of shared hosting account, otherwise the competition will win out. Either that or impose something high (like 10gigs easily upgradable).

All web hosting accounts should offer a free SQL Server database (on a different server machine obviously) with a space limit of initially 10 to 20 megs, upgradable to more on demand. The space quota for the website itself should start at 100 meg and be upgradable on demand. The sql database should be available over the internet via enterprise manager.

There should be a control panel to manage email accounts, all my hosting providers in the past have given me the option of unlimited pop3 accounts and I've never used more than 5. Your support response is vital, if someone drops you an email saying they want x directory to be made an application within IIS it should be done in a matter of hours. A ticketing system is a nice feature as far as support goes.

Of course the most vital thing of all is uptime but I don't need to tell you that. Providing an uptime guarantee will attract a lot of professional customers. I also believe these customers will be attracted rather than repelled by the "pure .net" status of this package.

I would expect to pay between £15 and £20/mo for such an account.
 
You give me a vanilla install of Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft SQL Server, and a decent chunk of bandwidth (10 GB+/month) and I'll give you $10. Now that's a deal I'd go for.
 
Thanks all, keep it coming - nice to see a few people agreeing with me that the servers should be kept 'pure'. This I think is the real crux of the issue and as you say would have to be pushed hard in the advertising with the advantages made clear.

Great idea regarding one click installs of some of the popular portals - it is a possibility but I think might be a bit unmanageable through the control panel.

Would it be enough to provide a step by step tutorial in our support area and a link to the relevant files - if we made it a real step by step beginner friendly guide and fully supported it.

I don't think we could manage to do a package like the one listed above for $10 ;) - our own costs would be close to that once you add in mail software licensing, stats software etc. but I think we could do it at around $15-$20 without having to oversell webspace or bandwidth.
 
I won't argue regarding the install of various open source apps through a control panel. You will have to be the judge of that if you can pull it off or not. While I am aware of things like Dot Net Nuke and Rainbow, I so far haven't actually installed them on my workstation so I do not know the ins-and-outs of how easily or difficult an automated install can be. The Post Nuke cms and other PHP based Nukes seem to be very easily molded to install by a script and so some hosting providers have made that available.

Since I haven't installed Dot Net Nuke or Rainbow, I also don't know what their documentation is like for users to follow. I hope to soon be getting into that so I can find out, but right now beyond downloading the zip file for each I have not progressed any further.

My suggestion was just a throught and certainly doesn't mean it is a 'show stopper' as I am sure there are plenty out there that will work with the various cms packages and get them up and going on your hosting service. So if it isn't doable through the control panel then I can understand that.

When I actually begin my .NET hosting provider shopping, the primary things I personally will be looking for is a good base configuration that will allow me the web space and SQL space to get a Dot Net Nuke or Rainbow cms site up and running. Beyond that, an email account or two with the ability to check it through the web. The true key will be the ability to upgrade my package as necessary when I find I need more SQL storage space or web space. Give me a way through the web to place a support ticket when I or my site are having difficulty. Aside from the normal things of FTP'ing files up to the site and doing backups, I think that about covers what I myself would be looking for. I think that should make me a very happy camper :)
 
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