Question about new "Happy Hosting" plan

I like the idea that you now have a single hosting plan, but how does that affect current users? For example, I've been using the Code Monster plan for a couple years now, and I recently renewed two years pre-paid (both for the discount and to show my satisfaction with the service.) This plan is $19.95 per month, and is discounted with the pre-payment.

So, my questions are:

If I change to the new plan, what do I gain and what do I lose over the Code Monster plan?

If I change and it costs less overall, what will happen to my account balance?

I'm very excited about your streamlining things, but I'm just s bit confused with the details.

Thanks!

-Jim Barr
http://JimsTips.com

When you change there is a confirmation, what does it says ?

I'll quote a quick-and-dirty analysis I did in another thread:

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If you're on a Level 3 plan for the extra disk and/or bandwidth, again I think it's a no-brainer to switch to the new plans.

If you're on a Level 3 plan for the callbacks, it depends on how much you want to prepay:
monthly: old plan is $1 cheaper
1 year: new plan is $1 cheaper, you get extra disk and bandwidth
2 year: new plan is $3 cheaper, you get extra disk and bandwidth

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When you change your plan, it applies all the "leftover" prepaid funds from your old plan to your new plan. If you've just renewed, you'll probably have lots of leftover funds!

Thanks for the info!

I just converted from my 2-year Code Monster plan to the new plan for 3 years, and ended up with about a $73.00 credit balance on my account which I'll just use to cover some upcoming domain renewals in '08.

So let me see here...the change resulted in some very inconsequential disk and bandwidth changes, I lost the support callback feature which I never used, I extended my account for an extra year and I have a credit balance. Wow, what a great company!

-Jim Barr
http://JimsTips.com

Along the same lines the recent newsletter said in part ~

"And you'll also find out about our new "one true plan," and that we doubled everybody's bandwidth and will be eventually rolling out a doubling of everybody's disk as well!"

My question is regarding the "and we doubled everybody's bandwidth" part.

Does anyone know if that means what we currently see under the "Bandwidth Usage" area labeled "Total bandwidth provided" is going to double now (or soon)? Or is this referring to something else? Because I don't believe mine has changed at all and bandwidth usage is something we are concerned with.

Thank you!

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Does anyone know if that means what we currently see under the "Bandwidth Usage" area labeled "Total bandwidth provided" is going to double now (or soon)? Or is this referring to something else? Because I don't believe mine has changed at all and bandwidth usage is something we are concerned with.

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I don't know if DH is still rolling out this "update", but I know I received mine fairly recently (recently as in about a week or so ago).

Image of Increased Bandwidth
As you can see, I barely use any of mine, heh.

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Does anyone know if that means what we currently see under the "Bandwidth Usage" area labeled "Total bandwidth provided" is going to double now (or soon)? Or is this referring to something else? Because I don't believe mine has changed at all and bandwidth usage is something we are concerned with.

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What hosting plan are you under?

My bandwidth has been doubled. I'm on the Crazy Domain Insane plan. It doubled to 4GB plus the amount for the weekly increase.

I'm not sure whether the amount due to the weekly increase doubled or just the amount from when I signed up for the plan.

My BW just got doubled to over 10TB. I'm an exisiting L3 customer. I wonder what would happen to the BW (and future disk space when that gets doubled) if I convert to the new plan? Would I be reset back to 500GB / 5TB?

Also, what happen when it comes time to renew? Will it just automaticaly charge my credit card as if there was no new plan out there? (For 2 years at the 'old' rate)

The impression I get from looking around my billing page of the Panel is that you'll be able to renew at your current L3 plan just fine. The new plan would seem to only affect you if you intentionally switch to it.

Looking at the new one-size-fits-most Happy Hosting plan, it does seem to be in my best interests, financially, to switch from my old Code Monster plan. The difference in two years prepayment is about $170! Even switching to monthly payments with the Happy Hosting plan would be cheaper than my current prepaid Code Monster plan!

However, my concern is this; when I signed up, I remember reading something about the price being locked in -- if you sign up, you'll pay the same price forever unless you make a change to your plan. That was important for me. That told me I could count on an every-two-year bill of $382.80.

If I switch to Happy Hosting, my payments will be lower, but I'm not seeing anything anywhere about the prices being locked in. If I switch for lower payments now, will I have to suffer price increases later? Anyone see anything about this yet?

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Also, what happen when it comes time to renew? Will it just automaticaly charge my credit card as if there was no new plan out there? (For 2 years at the 'old' rate)

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I've confirmed with support that old plans will continue to autorenew at your original rate if you take no action.

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However, my concern is this; when I signed up, I remember reading something about the price being locked in -- if you sign up, you'll pay the same price forever unless you make a change to your plan. That was important for me. That told me I could count on an every-two-year bill of $382.80.

If I switch to Happy Hosting, my payments will be lower, but I'm not seeing anything anywhere about the prices being locked in. If I switch for lower payments now, will I have to suffer price increases later? Anyone see anything about this yet?

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I haven't read anything about this yet. I haven't seen the second page of the signup form. It would greatly surprise me if they didn't grandfather people into their original plans - especially with their auto-renewal policy.

That's what I expect would happen if I don't opt for the new plan -- I'd continue in my current plan, paying my current price, until I decide to change it.

But if I do decide to switch to the new plan -- which, financially, makes a lot of sense to do -- I'm just curious whether the same guarantee is applied concerning any possible future price hikes.

In other words, if I switch to the new plan today at, say, $10.95/mo, what happens if next year they raise that price to $12.95/mo? Would I still be paying $10.95 or would the price hike affect me?

I was actually referring to that. I haven't read any guarantee either, but I haven't been to "page 2" of the new signup sheet. Then again, I don't remember the original guarantee either.

What I am saying is that I'd expect them to have the same renewal policy that they've always had. Can you find the page where this was stated in the wayback machine?

Unfortunately, the WayBack Machine is blocked a a Proxy/Anonymizer on my network.

You're probably correct about things renewing as they normally do. My experience with Dreamhost thus far is that they're far more likely to give you stuff rather than take stuff away!

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In other words, if I switch to the new plan today at, say, $10.95/mo, what happens if next year they raise that price to $12.95/mo? Would I still be paying $10.95 or would the price hike affect me?

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Those are good questions. As a practical matter, though, I don't know how relevant it is likely to be.

Sure, I'm guaranteed the price I signed up for with my first "Code Warrior" plan back in 1998 - but prices have gone nothing but *down*, at DreamHost as well as the industry in general, over the past nine years. I suppose they *could* go *up* next year, but that is only likely to happen with things like ADSL, or cable, or any MS product (as monopolies solidify their crushing grip on my balls, and the competition is thinned) than it is with a highly competitive market like web hosting.

In my case, having been through three (yep, 3!) "plan reconfigurations" with DreamHost, it's really complicated whether I should change or not - my current "grandfathered Code Warrior/Code Monster" hybrid plan" has some features that I would have to pay extra for with the new plan, and the money works out to within a few dollars of being the same, for the same services, either way..

It makes my brain hurt, but it's a "nice" problem to have!

--rlparker

Just curious which features you would lose? I know the monthly callback support is one of the most talked about; is there more?

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Just curious which features you would lose? I know the monthly callback support is one of the most talked about; is there more?

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In my case there is, but I'm a little hesitant to go into all the detail of that. I don't want to start a discussion about "who got what, and when, and for how many cookies" because my plan has "evolved" to be a bit of a "hybrid" as a result of multiple reconfigurations.

I expect that exactly what might be involved will vary from user to user depending upon when they signed up, what plan they initially signed up for, and what plan changes/addons they may have added over the years.

Things like VPN users, unique IP addresses, secure servers are likely to be involved, as these features have come (and gone - but mostly come) with various plans over the years and at various times. I'm not trying to be evasive, I just don't feel the "particulars" of my "hybrid" plan are relevant.

I'm only basing what I would "lose" if I changed plans on what my panel shows as my feature set, and yours is likely to vary somewhat from mine. My price also varies, because it is presently based on the old "Code Warrior" plan, minus a "reseller's discount" from a now-defunct reseller program that was in place years ago. This places it at *more* than the latest "Code Monster" price, but lower than the old "Code Warrior" price, but with slightly different features than either of those plans.

Now, if I add up all the "addons" (or what would become addons under the new plan), I will end up paying "very close" to what I currently pay to retain the same features - hence the difficulty in deciding whether or not I want to lose some of the features, and save an almost insignificant amount of money, or keep the features and continue to pay my current price.

I will say this though: I can't imagine you ending up losing value with DreamHost. They have been very careful in every instance I have dealt with them to "fudge", if at all, in *my* favor and reward me for the longevity of our business relationship. They value their customers, and have always demonstrated that to me.

--rlparker

I had the Code Monster plan, and from what I can tell, the disk space has slightly changed as has the bandwidth, but it really doesn't affect me because I'm using just a VERY SMALL fraction of both. I also lost the 3 phone support callbacks per month, but I honestly don't think I ever used it. Other than that, there may be some subtle changes, but I can't find them.

My current stats are:
620.31 GB Disk (Grows 2 GB / week)
7.22 TB BW per Cycle (Grows 40 GB / week)

And again, I only use a very small fraction of both.

-Jim Barr
http://JimsTips.com

Edited by jbarr on 10/05/07 07:38 AM (server time).

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My current stats are:
620.31 GB Disk (Grows 2 GB / week)
7.22 TB BW per Cycle (Grows 40 GB / week)

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So it preserved your "extra" disk and bandwidth from the previous weekly growth from your old plan?

I took the plunge and switched to Happy Hosting. My bandwidth allotment fell down to around 7 TB, though I don't think I've ever even used 1 TB of it. I lost the callbacks, but never used 'em anyway (would prefer to never use a phone for anything, anyway).

However, since I was already prepaid through January, I got a credit to my account for switching to the new plan -- don't have to a pay a cent through to March or something. Thanks, DreamHost!

Reminder: when you upgrade your account, you actually renew your account. And you need to pay pro-rated charges assigned to your account after you
ended your previous hosting plan.

For example, you already have a one year plan $119.40/yr. You have had the account for half year. You have $59.70 left in your account. When you upgrade to 1 year happy plan $119.40, you need to play $59.40 to make a full one year plan.

Of course you can use your rewards to pay it.

That's exactly why I updated to monthly Happy Hosting. Whatever was left from my old plan was more than enough to cover this month & the next several, and it all works out to be cheaper per month than my old plan anyway. I couldn't afford at this time to make the switch & continue prepaid, but will likely buy up a year or three during the next round of bonuses at work.

You are smart.

I did not know that when I upgraded my plan.

Now I am looking for somebody to share the account with me.

Can you not still switch to monthly? I thought payment plans could be changed at anytime. Although, I guess if the money is already locked into your DreamHost account, switching would do little good. :

It definitely seems that there should be a confirmation screen that lays out exactly what will change if you make a switch in your plans -- financially & in terms of features!

If you just recently changed your plan and weren't aware of the financial outlay, you might try contacting support about switching back. At least one person posting here has had some success in switching back to their old plan.

Thanks for the info everyone. My plan started as "Crazy Domain Insane" back in 2005 and currently shows a total bandwidth of 5272GB. (Starting 4096, grows 40GB/week, growth so far +1176GB).

I assume this total of 5272 is the doubled amount referenced in the newsletter. When I first read it I jumped online to check, but I was unable to tell if the 5272GB was the new doubled amount, if it was going to jump up to 10TB+.

I'm still not 100% sure, but as others have said I only currently use less then 10% of that anyway. But more is always better.

Thanks again... Take care~

I just switched from a one-month old code monster plan (with no coupons used) to happy hosting prepaid yearly, now I have $245 in my account.

Can I use this money to add another hosting plan? It is extremely difficult for me to find a way to open another account, and I'm no webhosting noob...

Also, my bandwidth and harddisk changed from 3000/300GB to 4000/400GB, instead of 5000/500GB. Is that normal due to the 1024/1000 bytes thind and rounding off? lol

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I just switched from a one-month old code monster plan (with no coupons used) to happy hosting prepaid yearly, now I have $245 in my account.

Can I use this money to add another hosting plan? It is extremely difficult for me to find a way to open another account, and I'm no webhosting noob...

Also, my bandwidth and harddisk changed from 3000/300GB to 4000/400GB, instead of 5000/500GB. Is that normal due to the 1024/1000 bytes thind and rounding off? lol

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Why don't you just buy up a two or three year prepaid Happy Hosting plan? It's most unlikely that you actually need another hosting plan and you'll get a better discount by buying up for longer.

The disk and bandwidth you're quoting does sound fishy. Where on the panel are you seeing that? On the Status>Bandwidth Usage and Status>Disk Usage or on the Billing>Manage Account page?

One more question.... Do they leave you on your current server? Do you think they would switch people around? I only ask becuase the server I'm on is very good (load times usually 2.0 - 4.0) and would hate to have converting to the new plan trigger a move. I ask this becuase I know I read -somewhere- (can't remember exactly--perhaps in a wiki) that users who pay a higher amount (L3+) generally get placed on less crowded servers. If that's still the case, I'll certainly keep my L3 plan!

Yes, they will leave you where you are. Converting to a new plan does not trigger a move. Adding DreamHost PS service would trigger a move.

At least I am still in the server when I switched to happy hosting plan.

I think you will stay in the same server as long as the server has enough space for all the users. If, unfortunately, all the users switch to happy hosting plan in a server, I'm sure the server will run out of space and somebody will be moved to another server.

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If, unfortunately, all the users switch to happy hosting plan in a server, I'm sure the server will run out of space and somebody will be moved to another server.

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You don't even have to worry about this happening. DreamHost doesn't actually reserve 500GB of disk space (or whatever your current limit is) for every user, they just reserve a margin over what their users are currently using and are prepared to expand capacity at any time.

Besides, we're all NFS mounted so all the machines in your cluster share the same NFS user partition. Well, not exactly but at any rate a number of different servers do share the same partitions, so moving servers doesn't necessarily have anything to do with moving disk space. If you move to different cluster that's another thing.

For the diskspace, as noted, it's not on your specific server, but rather on NFS-mounted NAS-solutions. They sometimes move you from one storage cluster to another (I recently had my files moved from one to another), but usually you don't even notice that. Moving webservers is a bit hairier and harder, but not THAT big of a deal, either -- especially if you have a dedicated IP.

Also don't forget that simply switching to Happy Hosting does nothing to what you currently are using space- and resources wise. It takes most people a long time to transfer a couple hundred gigabytes of data to DH (or even come up with that data in the first place), it's not as if there are suddenly 100 people uploading at 1000mbit/s each ;)

My cable company caps me at 25GB uploads per month.

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