What Percent Alcohol Does Your Hosting Plan Have?

There are tons of different niches in the web hosting business. There are hosts that specialize in specific areas such as:

shared hosting
dedicated servers
Windows VPS hosting
virtual private servers
ColdFusion hosting
hosting in different languages
hosting for realtors

and so on. There are probably hundreds of different ways that a hosting enterprise can separate itself from the competition. So it shouldn’t have surprised me when I came across a web host that I had never seen before with the intriguing name of:

AlcoHol-Host.com

Now whether the ‘h’ in alcohol was intentionally capitalized or whether that was a mistake born of ‘one too many’ is unknown – unfortunately the site is written in a language that I can’t understand.

One facet of this innovative webhost is readable – they apparently rate their hosting plans based on alcohol content. In fact, their main product set seems to be named the ‘’AlcoHol Plan’’ with a starter plan containing ‘’Alcohol 5%’’ up to the maximum legal limit plan of ‘’Alcohol 30%’’.

The website drives home the point that to create a strong market niche is to succeed in the competitive landscape that is the modern website hosting industry – and that is great for consumers. Let’s take two hypothetical web hosting buyers: Mr. Tech and Mr. Novice. Both are looking for reliable web hosting, at an affordable price. Mr. Tech, however, needs much less hand holding that Mr. Novice – so he is content with email-only support backed up with a detailed knowledge base. Mr. Novice needs 24×7 phone support with a service department that has the patience to deal with his novice questions, and he will probably never read knowledge base articles. Two clear niches exist to serve these two buyers: a slightly more discounted brand with email-only support and great online self-help articles; and a full service, high touch web hosting brand with 24×7 phone support at a slightly higher price point.

The above example helps illustrate that web hosting allegiance is not decided based on price – or even technical specifications alone. Consumers are shrewd enough to understand that ‘you get what you pay for’ and actually expect a brand with higher service and more features to cost more money.

So whether you are a buyer or a seller of web hosting services, remember that there are many niches out there – and select the one that best fits your business model and needs.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 6:55 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to What Percent Alcohol Does Your Hosting Plan Have?

  1.  

    Good article Derek, but is it me or should they call the maximum plan Alcoholic?

  2.  
    by Derek Vaughan October 7, 2008 at 6:09 am

    David,

    They’re all ‘Alcoholic’. Maybe the 3 plans should be:

    Casual Drinker

    Alcoholic

    and

    Comatose

  3.  

    Hi Derek, here’s another type to add to the list of ever growing niches: Ethical Web hosting. Puts a slighlty different slant on the face of hosting.
    Hopefully more people with see this as a BIG benefit.
    Regards,
    Conrad

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