Mark Wiens - Art & Design: Gab: Lifetime Hosting Plans

It’s time for a change of scenery. It’s time to look for a new web host. I need a place that can handle Ruby on Rails, and can handle it well. Sorry, ASO. You’re just not cutting it anymore. My site is slow and your Rails support isn’t quite up to speed in my opinion. I currently have a lifetime hosting plan with ASO and the lifetime thing appeals to me. I did a little fishing and found another hosting company that was offering a lifetime plan.

TextDrive

TextDrive currently offers two lifetime plans: The Three Martini Lunch and The Mixed Grill. I’m currently testing out their cheapest month-to-month plan to see if a) I can get a Rails application up and running, b) their online technical support is well-documented, and c) their staff is responsive. I have been successful in getting a basic Rails application up and running. I also needed to get a port number assigned for the application and their help staff responded to my request within 5 minutes. So far, they’ve met my expectations.

On top of web hosting, their lifetime plans include online storage from Strongspace and a suite of web-based applications (email, calendars, address books, and file storage) from Joyent, which are both accessible from anywhere as long as you have a computer and an internet connection. I’m not too sure what I could do with these added services right now, but once I had them, I bet I would put them to use.

But the point of all this is whether getting a lifetime plan is worth the big chunk of cash up front versus the traditional month-to-month payments that most of us are used to doing. Let’s look at some figures!

Business Hosting
Plan	Price	Storage	Bandwidth	DBs	TLDs	Users	Setup
Three Martini Lunch	$1399/lifetime	TxD: 6GB S: 30GB J: 100GB	60GB	20 ↓	5	S: 25 J: 25	n/a
TextDrive	$60/month	6GB	60GB	30	5	n/a	$25
Strongspace	$70/month	30GB	n/a	n/a	n/a	10	n/a
Joyent	$100/month	100GB	n/a	n/a	n/a	25	n/a

Shared Hosting
Plan	Price	Storage	Bandwidth	DBs	TLDs	Users	Setup
Mixed Grill	$499/lifetime	TxD: 2GB S: 9GB J: n/a	20GB ↑	20	15 ↑	S: 3 J: 5	n/a
TextDrive	$25/month	2GB	10GB	20	10	n/a	$25
Strongspace	$14/month	9GB	n/a	n/a	n/a	3	n/a
Joyent	$15/month	5GB	n/a	n/a	n/a	4	n/a

I indicate where the lifetime plan is better than the individual plans by highlighting the areas in green. I indicate where the lifetime plans are not better than the individual plans by highlighting the areas in red.

The Verdict

When we look at the Three Martini Lunch plan, we see that it costs $60 + 70 + 100 = $230/month plus $25 setup fee.

The Mixed Grill is $25 + 14 + 15 = $54/month plus $25 setup fee.

Comparing these monthly prices to the lifetime plans, we see that these lifetime plans will pay for themselves in approximately 6 months for Business Hosting and 9 months for Shared Hosting.

Of course, if we’re only really after the hosting and the additional services don’t matter too much, then we can look at the figures as if we were only paying for hosting. In this case, the lieftime plans pay for themselves in approximately 23 months for Business Hosting and 19 months for Shared Hosting.

What do you think?

Is it worth it to go for a lifetime plan? Some will argue that the company might not be around in two or three years. Or the company will be bought by another company that will not honor the lifetime plan. They may even put into effect a completely different policy that you may not agree with. I haven’t had any experience with other hosts besides TextDrive and A Small Orange that support Ruby on Rails, so I may have missed another great web host. Feel free to chime in with your suggestions. Let’s hear why you would go for the gusto, or why you would stick with month after month of paying. Maybe you know what online storage is great for. Maybe you’ve had a great experience with TextDrive. Maybe you don’t care too much about TextDrive. Maybe you don’t think they should move to Solaris. I’d love to hear it all! I’d like to sell my current ASO lifetime plan and upgrade to a great host soon.