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Wouldn't It Be Great If There Were a ModernBill/StatCounter Mashup?

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 19:57:00 -0400

Over the past decade, I've bought and sold many millions worth of online ads. When I ran ISPcheck, I had no real answer for prospective advertisers who wanted to know what results my customers were able to achieve. And when I became responsible for RackShack/EV1's ad buys, I found that there was no easy way to measure ROI.

All I wanted to know at the time was how many visitors from TopHosts versus TheWHIR signed up. But as I've subsequently learned from Ted Smith at Peer 1, I should have been tracking customers throughout their lifecycle. If my cost per sale from Site A is 20% less than Site B, but the average account gets canceled 50% sooner, B would be a better long term investment.

A couple of weeks ago I convinced Ben Gabler at HostNine to install StatCounter, the better to look up new customers and find out where they came from, and which parts of HostNine's website they visited before deciding to sign up. (I've also used Clicktracks and Google Analytics, which provide aggregated data on visitor behavior, but don't allow you to drill down to each visitor's click path.) It just occur to me that it'd be very cool if this functionality were built into ModernBill.

Imagine being able to generate sales reports that tabulate order amounts against referring sources? Or pinpoint content on your site that's most-viewed by your most profitable new customers? Better yet, what if you could instantly compute the lifetime ROI from those $20 Google Adwords bids? Wouldn't you like to know if customers who clicked on your "cPanel hosting" ad stick around 3x longer than those who came through "cheap hosting"?

HostNine already gives all of its resellers free ModernBill licenses, and being able to automate signup/provisioning is awesome. But what if every $19.95 hosting plan came with a business intelligence system that delivers up-to-the-minute knowledge on what website copy and ad venues work? Wouldn't that be something?

AND, what if ModernBill could collect and publish aggregate, industry-wide data on how profitable TopHost-referred customers are, relative to those who came through TheWHIR? Having been on both sides of the table, I think that would really help both ad salespeople and media buyers.

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SnapNames, Register.com Renew Deal

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000
SnapNames, an Oversee domain name aftermarket subsidiary, and domain registrar Register.com announced on Thursday that they have renewed their exclusive agreement.

Featured the hosting company Items

I've been with hostgator since around August of 2004. I signed up with a
reseller account to use as hosting for both myself and clients. My problems
began about a year ago with them, sometime in February or March of 2005 when one
of my sites was getting too much traffic. Now, I'm no fool. I understand that
shared hosting oversells and anyone who uses too many resources, even if still
within their quota, gets kicked off. What really shocked me, though, was no
warning. Not even emailing me after they had done it. Nothing, nada. I found out
by a member of the site that was suspended, someone I didn't even know, tracking
down my phone number and calling me.

I went to a dedicated server after that, but I kept my hostgator account for the
sites that were already hosted on it - about three client sites, as well as this
site right here.

Two days ago I come to post a blog and hmm, I get the suspended page. That's
weird. I check my email - no notices there. I log into their billing system -
nope, account not past due. What the heck? So I go to their online support chat
and ask them what's going on. I'm informed that I haven't paid my invoice. What
invoice? I have no invoice. I check my bank and I see that I in fact have not
paid them since January. But man, I could've swore I put it on automatic pay.
And hey, if there's no invoice, how can I pay anyway?! Isn't this a problem on
their end? They tell me I need to email sales.

Okay... so I email sales. 12 hours later, they email me back and inform me I
have an invoice, charging me all the way back to October. Uhhh? I KNOW I paid in
January, I have it in my bank statement. I check their billing system, and they
don't even have a backlog of that payment. Something really funky is going on
now. Their system is screwed up, but no matter who I talk to (and oh, I've
talked to everyone) nobody seems to know what's going on. Sales doesn't talk to
support, online support doesn't talk to phone support, so who the hell knows.

Strangely enough, while on the phone with a support guy who informed me I just
need to pay the invoice and then dispute it afterwards, I received an email from
a different support person that my account had been reactivated, and thank you
for the payment. Whaaat? Uh, whatever. At this point I'm just going to take what
I can get and run. Now I at least have backups of all my sites and am moving
them.

It's just astounding how bad a service this has been. I even posted on their
forums about it, in their "Customer Review" section, and it gets MOVED to
another section because I can't post a bad customer review simply because I
haven't paid. HELLO. I WANT TO PAY, JUST NOT MORE THAN I OWE. I NEED AN INVOICE.

Other problems I've had? Well, let's see. About a week ago my sites reverted
back a day and I could get no explanation on why. I had JUST looked at my access
logs the day before, happy about a new site that was already getting hits, and
the next day - logs are back to a day before. Weird. I contact online support
(bad idea, since it's always horrible support) and they have no idea. I guess I
imagined things?

UPDATE 4-20-07: Well, they finally just simply decided to take their bogus bonus
from my credit card that was filed with them, despite the fact that it's
incorrect, I didn't approve of the payment, or anything else. I've never seen
such bad service, support in my life. I can't even be bothered to dispute it
it's just so amazingly horrible.

UPDATE 10-18-07: I'm still with them, why? I don't know - so lazy when it comes
to my own websites. Anyway, so a couple days ago I notice my "main" reseller
account, the site is completely missing. Email is no longer working. I log into
Cpanel to see that it appears my whole site has disappeared. Cute!

Click Here to go to hostican website.

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