Intro
Our economy web plans were created to offer an alternative to people
who perhaps don't need the features in the standard plans, or who
are looking for an even more inexpensive alternative. Perhaps
you are just starting out, and you want to try out this web thing
without committing as many resources. If you just have a small web site and
you don't need all of the fancy aliases or forwards, one of our
economy plans can get you hosted for much less cash outlay. How
much less? A small web site with no e-mail could save $6/mo ($60-72/yr)
over our Bronze web plan. A small web site with one e-mail address
could save $6-9/mo ($60-108/yr) over our standard Bronze web and e-mail
package.
Why?
Why would we want to create even cheaper versions of our already inexpensive
hosting plans? Because we know that one plan does not always fit all,
and we are altogether too familiar with what it is like to live within
a tight budget. We wanted to offer more options to you, and by doing
so, expand our appeal to a broader range of people. Someone who may
have previously done without web hosting gets a service they desire
and we gain a new customer. Everybody wins!
How?
How are we able to offer hosting cheaper than our other plans? When
you purchase web hosting, you are essentially "renting" our system and
network resources. Your web pages and e-mail consume disk space while your
e-mail messages and web site visitors consume network bandwidth. The
limits built into the economy plans mean that you consume less
of these resources, and therefore we can charge you less, because it
essentially costs us less to host you. In effect, the economy plans
simply ensure that you are not paying for resources which you aren't
using.
What's the catch?
As you may have gathered after reading the previous paragraph, the
"catch" is that the economy plans are more limited than the standard
plans, to cause them to consume less resources. However, this is
really only a "catch" if you need to use these resources in the first
place. If you do, the standard plans are always available for you.
The limitations on the economy plans are as follows:
- Less web space (10MB vs 200MB)
- No control over e-mail addresses at your own domain; with the full
e-mail plans you get unlimited aliases and forwarders
- Subject to bandwidth limitation
The first two limitations are pretty self explanatory, but the third may
need some explanation... With the standard plans, we do not artificially
restrict the bandwidth to your web site. "Our bandwidth is your
bandwidth", so to speak. By default, this is also the case with the economy
plans, BUT... if a web site hosted via an economy plan were
to take up an inordinate amount of bandwidth, we will "throttle" the connection
to that site such that it is only allowed to use a percentage of our bandwidth
if other sites hosted via the standard plans are trying to use that bandwidth
at the same time.
(What this will mean to your visitors is that your web site may load
more slowly than it normally would.) In other words, when it comes to
bandwidth allocation, the standard plans are our first priority.
The details
So, how is an economy plan different from the standard plans? Well, first
of all, with the standard plans you choose a web plan and an e-mail plan
individually. With
the economy plans there are only three plans available, and you cannot
"pick and choose" your web separately from your e-mail. The three plans are as
follows:
- EconoWeb
- With this plan, you get 10MB for your web site, and no e-mail. You
will need to use your existing e-mail address (at your ISP, for
example).
- EconoMail
- This plan is the same as EconoWeb except that you also get a
"forwarding" e-mail address. What this means is that we provide
you with one e-mail address which will forward anything sent to
it to your existing e-mail address. (The one you got from your ISP,
for example.) You also gain access to our SMTP server, so you
can send outgoing e-mail through us if you prefer, rather than via
your ISP.
- EconoPOP
- This plan is the same as EconoMail except that your e-mail address
is not a "forwarding" type address; you get an actual POP3 mailbox,
so that your e-mail is delivered here, and you download it
from us with your e-mail client. (Eudora, Netscape, Outlook, etc.)
If you would like your e-mail address to forward elsewhere,
(same as with the EconoMail plan) you can do this as well. Note
that if you were to elect to permanantly change your e-mail address
to a "forwarding" type, you might as well save the few dollars and
get an EconoMail account instead... :-)
Another difference between the economy and standard plans is that you do
not have the control over aliases and forwards like you do with the standard
plans. In the standard e-mail plans, you can define as many aliases and
forwarding addresses as you like. With the economy plans, you're stuck
with only one incoming address (except for EconoWeb where you have no
e-mail), and mail to that address will either forward to somewhere else
(EconoMail) or go into your pop3 mailbox (EconoPOP).
Beyond that, there is no difference between the economy and standard plans.
You still have access to the
Account Manager, you can
upload CGI scripts, you have FTP access to upload and maintain your
web site, etc. All features are the same except for the changes noted on
this page.
Upgrading to a standard plan
What if you have an economy plan and later decide that you want to
upgrade to a standard plan? No problem. If you are paying by the
month, you would be upgraded and your next month's fee would be that
of the standard plan(s) you chose. If you have paid for a year's worth
of service in advance, we will simply credit the un-used portion
of your payment to your account, using a straight "divide by 12"
method, rather than pro-rating at the monthly fee. (See the
Yearly Rate page for more info about
this.)
Economy plan summary
| Economy Plans |
EconoWeb |
EconoMail |
EconoPop |
| Disk Usage |
10 MB |
10 MB |
10 MB |
| Transfer limit |
Subject to restriction |
Subject to restriction |
Subject to restriction |
| FTP (and SCP) access to update HTML? |
YES |
YES |
YES |
| Your own CGI-BIN? |
YES |
YES |
YES |
| You can upload CGI programs? (C/C++, sh, perl, python) |
YES |
YES |
YES |
| Is PHP supported? |
YES |
YES |
YES |
| Access to your raw log file? |
YES |
YES |
YES |
| Web log analysis reports? |
YES |
YES |
YES |
| FrontPage Extensions? |
NO |
NO |
NO |
| Access to outgoing SMTP server? |
NO |
YES |
YES |
| E-mail forwarder? |
NO |
YES |
YES |
| POP3 mailbox? |
NO |
NO |
YES |
| Can read your e-mail via the web? |
N/A |
N/A |
YES |
| Java Servlets? |
YES |
YES |
YES |
| Price (Monthly Basis) |
$4/mo |
$6/mo |
$9/mo |
| Price (Yearly Basis) |
$40/yr |
$60/yr |
$90/yr |
| Savings if you pay yearly vs monthly |
$8/yr |
$12/yr |
$18/yr |
| Setup Fee |
None |
None |
None |
Additional disk space beyond the 10 MB included may
be purchased in blocks of 5 MB for $1/month per block or $10/year per block.
Example: You want 25 MB
of disk space, but no e-mail. You will need to purchase the EconoWeb plan
for the initial 10 MB, and 3 additional blocks of 5 MB at $1/block/month, which is
$3/month for the 15MB. $4/month for the EconoWeb plan plus $3/month for the additional 15MB
would be $7/month, or if you wish to pre-pay for the entire year, $70.00.
($10/year * 3 blocks = $30; + $40/yr = $70/yr. You save $14.00/year.)