Hot on the heels of the BlueFur $10 web hosting special comes Top Hosting Center with a deal that will give you hosting for life. That’s right, hosting for life! How can they do that? That’s what this ReviewMe review will explain.
For a one time payment of $95, the Rudolph deal from Top Hosting Center will host your blog or website for as long as you’re alive. If you’re nice, they may host it even after you’re dead. The deal is limited to the first 1000 people who order and is available in both Windows or Linux platform. The full plan includes the following:
- One time fee of $95 US
- 250 GB disk space, 3000 GB bandwidth
- 1 free domain name registration included
- Instant blogs creation
- Unlimited MySQL databases that will allow you to create as many blogs as you want
- Host unlimited subdomains
- Host unlimited domains - transfer all your other domains to your Rudolph lifetime hosting package
- Instant backups
- unlimited FTP accounts
- Web mail and unlimited email aliases
- 99.9% Uptime
All Rudolf Special Hosting accounts are paid for up front. You can cancel your account within the first 30 days and get a full refund. But, if you registered a new domain name with the account and choose to cancel after two days of service, Top Hosting Center will deduct $9.95 from the refund for the cost of the domain registered. You will maintain full ownership of the new domain however.
Can They Really Offer Hosting For Life?
The short answer is yes and no. Yes if you remain a good little blog. No if you start running serious traffic. The Rudolph plan is Top Hosting Center’s $4.95 per month plan. By prepaying for 19 months, you won’t ever have to pay again. However, Top Hosting Center has a few clauses built into its TOS to make sure they are protected from customers like me.
If your usage ever exceeds fifteen percent (15%) of system resources, your account may be terminated immediately and without prior notice. In addition any domain that exceeds 20 gigabytes of bandwidth traffic can be terminated without prior notice. Usage of scripts or other utilities to direct pointed domain names to subdirectories is not permitted and is grounds for termination of the account. For sure, THC will invite you to transfer your domain name to a dedicated server for your convenience before terminating your account without notice.
While this blog may never use up 250 GB of space or 3,000 Gigs of bandwidth that the Rudolph plan offers, It’s safe to say that I will blow pass 15% system resources (more like 100%). And with that, THC will tell me to upgrade to a dedicated server or get out. I found it unusual that the plan offers 3,000 Gigs of bandwidth but the TOS clearly state they can terminate your account at 20 Gigs. This is why you should always read the fine print. I should note that every web host has a TOS similar to Top Hosting Center so they’re not trying to pull any funny business.
While getting hosting for life sounds like a great deal, I have never been a big fan of these types of plans. However, I wouldn’t qualify for a hosting for life plan anyway so it’s really a moot point. If your goal is to build your blog to A-list level size, then the Rudolph plan isn’t for you. You’ll be booted well before you’ll get your $95 worth. You’ll be much better off ordering the THC $4.95 per month plan, then upgrading to one of their dedicated servers later. If your plans are more modest, then the Rudolph plan is well worth a look. As long as you keep your site running for more than 19 months, you’ll come out a head.
Top Hosting Center is Webhost Directory Award Winner in the category of budget web hosting. THC’s CEO Eric Vanier is a really nice guy and adheres to the Web 2.0 principles of collaboration while providing Web 3.0 support, speed, stability and quality.
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(12 votes, average: 1.83 out of 5)
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Interesting. I moved my host after they offered me only 3% of the system resources :S. Would be interesting to see what happens to blogs after we die….
What I wonder is..the deal is on who’s life time? Their companies life time, our life time, owners of company life time, machines life time, on who’s hell of a life time is this deal based?
I wonder if people THINK before they try to promote something, and worst..i wonder if people think before they purchase similar deals. I would advice anyone to carefully read the TOS of companies that offer similar “life time” or “unlimited features” hosting deals, there is no such thing as unlimited and who’s life time does the deal base on actually?
The web hosting business is becoming really scary, heard about the WebHostPlus scam?
Moral of the story - 1. Read the fine print and 2. Anything long term, keep your options open to walk out. The latter seems to be a bit dicey. What happens if their service does not come up to the user’s expectation, after say a couple of years?
If your blog is fantastic, then you should just leave and get a better reliable trusted hosting > straight forward answer….
If it say “your life time” it’s definitely a scam. Thanks John for your very honest opinions and pointing out their tricky TOS. I like you for being able to do a fair review even though they paid you $400.
On such deals services is not the only thing a user should worry about, but it is indeed the first. If I see a company launched on 2006 and already offering me life time hosting services for the cost of peanuts it makes me think twice especially if “Life time” is not cleared on what it is based.
Also a more attention should be paid on the TOS of hosting services that offer huge (overselling) plans, if they give you 300GB of bandwidth they will MOST LIKELY limit you on something else which can turn to be VITAL for your site, such as CPU if you are using MySQL database as backend or any other type of backend that does eat resources of a server. JohnChow.com is hosted by its own on a dedicated server (I presume, or maybe with another or two other small sites), think about hosting 2-3 sites like that in one same dedicated server and don’t even go beyond thinking about hosting 10 or more similar sites/blogs.
The harsh becomes that companies will not live your site alive and give you the time to move onto another host (unless you are moving on their dedicated servers and they be courteus than), in the worst cases it can happen that a hosting company will even remove your files from their servers, and thats when all your hard work has gone bye-bye.
I did read twice the tos of bluefur before I signed up with them, sent them an email with 5 questions, if they (Gary) failed to be precise on answering to only those 5 questions I was not even going to think about singing up with them, but before I even signed up I made sure to read their tos (which seemed fine to me, as for the moment).
Good write-up on WHP. Always good to do your research before you send money/personal data to a random company online.
I’m sure they won’t be hosting anything if the companies dies
On the other hand, they wouldn’t know if you die or not so I would say the answer is right there 
You know John, not everyone has as much visitors and traffic spikes on their blogs as you do, so don’t discourage anyone from purchasing this wonderful hosting package. Building a A-list blog isn’t as easy as it seems…you just got a huge boost from Agloco to start you off easy
-Mike
Web Hosting Plans like these (CPU exceed restrictions) are a joke, especially for blogs as PHP is CPU intensive.
I recently signup with another host who also offer 300GB p/month as my site does +35Bg p/month, yet my site was always displaying a CPU suspend message. Luckily for me the get out of jail free card is the 30-day money back clauses so definately read the TOS.
Unfortunately, these all you can eat servers… aren’t always up to scratch… It’s better to pay a little more and get something worthwhile.
Kenneth
Hosting for life? This is the first time I have seen that kind of offer. If I was unsatisfied with my hosting I would probably give it a shot.
Then what? You get stuck with the new one for a life time? These long term deals tie you down and if you want to quit, you lose the down payment made upfront.
Same thoughts, its the first time hearing a life time hosting
I really don’t like the idea of lifetime hosting. I bet in a year’s time there’d be problems.
just my .2 cents
It is a great offer, i’ve got several smaller “support” type sites that will never reach a-list status because they’re not supposed to. I have them only because they’re required by law. (Open source software demands you make verbatim copies of original code available for anything you sell). I’m going to check this out.
This post has me wondering how many people have been booted from large hosts like Yahoo! I read their TOS and don’t find any limitations but you know they have to exist. I’ve got a site with Yahoo that i’ve just begun building that offers free downloads. If it gets to a-list status I can pay for the plan using income from the parent sites easily but Yahoo! servers will take a beating. Would they boot me too? Great review John.
Dedicated servers are the way to go with your flagship site(s) and projects but after reading the small print about this offer… i’m going to give it a shot with three small sites.
Personally, I like to go with a good reseller account, and have more flexibility, and the ability to sell hosting myself, without the cost of paying for expensive server management.
Another thing though, is when it comes to blogs, most blogs are not A-list, and get no-where near the traffic that John gets, so perhaps in the long run, the new customers will keep the hosting company in the green. Personally I think something yearly but cheaper would be better, say $30/year, for the same quality of service.
The benefit of hosting, is the recurring income after-all, isn’t it?
wow! That’s a great deal indeed. Too good to be true!! A lot of bloggers will surely grab this opportunity.
Good advice. Its so easy to just blow by the terms with offers on the web, but this shows its always good to read the fine print. I’ve always been leary of this type of offers. If you are trying to make money on a website or blog, its always better to ensure that your hosting will b e able to support you once you start generating a little traffic.
That is interesting. Initially I thought, how the hell is this company going to survive with that sort of deal… After reading the clause, then everything became clear….
I think, people with big plan who knows about the clause would not take this…
Yes, always, read the fine print.
That simply shows we have to be very careful when it comes to a very very good offer!!! Ain’t it?
it just the way too manipulate thinking..
but good deal come with big price
I never understand what ‘for life’ means. And that sounds like a lot of fine print to me….
Sounds like a slick offer. I’m always leary of offers that are “for life”. I’m not sure how the customer service would be since you’re not really a paying customer after a while. But for $95 it’s probably worth trying out if you’re looking for hosting.
Im using hostgator
Is it good?
Anyone want to buy a package and see if we can upload 250 GB of files?
We could do a pool to see who gets the closest.
Stay away from these guys they are liars! Who wants to buy from a company that lies to?!?
I’d say this was a bad move on their part. If they followed the blog, they would have seen a great hosting deal posted a few days earlier.
Sounds like a good deal but I am so over trying to save a buck on hosting. NEVER seems to end well and just makes me kick myself whenever I give it a go. Would be fine for small “spam” type sites but I’m never putting a site I care about on budget hosting again lol.
It’s great that John showed the fine print on the article
I bet that cut the signup rate of this review by 95%!!!
Great hosting plan and offer, they should find many customers for this price.
nice review but i had to laugh at the last part you wrote “adheres to the Web 2.0 principles of collaboration while providing Web 3.0 support, speed, stability and quality.”
where in the world did you pull that one out of?
web 3.0 is not properly defined yet, still fuzzy and you are telling me that this web host company provides it with support, speed, stability and quality?? common John, just trying to use some big buzz words out here are we?
When I see the words Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 (if there ever was one company out there yet) … it opens my eyes more and I’m always interested to hear more about it. However, you just didn’t explain much about it there at all. I would think the collaborative efforts would be a BIG selling point if there was one.
Web 2 and Web 3 elements will make it one of the first of its kind in the hosting market. IS IT REALLY Web 2 or Web 3 or are you just throwing some big buzz words out in the article because you felt like it?
BTW: if it is truly web 2.0 and web 3.0 (which i highly doubt), THAT should be highlighted as that could be the areas that do attract someone and is what differentiates them everyone else.
You realize you are arguing with yourself about two imaginary things, right?
I think shared hosting is fine as long as you’re not doing anything too DB intensive. For example on one of my shared hosting accounts I host 9 websites which combined get more than 25,000 uniques a day and can peak out at over 50,000. My host has never moaned about shared CPU/memory usage etc If I redesigned them as PHP/MySQL monsters then I’d probably be booted within a week.
Not bad offers here. Really worth considering.
hey john ….can u pleez elaborate a little on what the 15% system resources mean ???
thanx !
I’d have to say that sounds pretty lame. Hosting for a lifetime yeah. But you can’t ever have any serious traffic.
I think it’s a great offer
Thanks John!
John - I don’t think I would go for this offer. As you know yourself - cheapest isn’t always best.
Would you prepay a restaurant for 2 years in return for meals for life and hope they didn’t serve you dog food?
“For sure, THC will invite you to transfer your domain name to a dedicated server for your convenience before terminating your account without notice.”
Doesn’t without notice mean without notice? So one day your site is up and the next day its gone. But wait… they did send you an email inviting you to upgrade.
So will I wonder if any invitation to upgrade infer that my site may go down the next day? Does the invitation say I’m exceeding a limitation? If it does, isn’t that a sort of notice?
just don’t sign up for ixwebhosting.com . . . . they stink . . . i wonder what’s the actual cost per signup for hosting companies . . seems like an interesting business . . selling virtual realestate . . like slumlords kind of
I use ix webhosting.. they are alright.. why do you think they stink gary?
Considering that one can get web hosting for as little as $4.95 per month without tying oneself up, I would not advise anybody to go for such long term deals. The cheap can become very expensive if the company goes bust, say, after 2 months!
I just talked about web hosting on my blog!
I use Westhost, which was reviewed here and have had little problems with them. What I love is that they have online support for sales, account, and technical support staff who are usually able to fix your problem within the same or next working day. Its hosting fees are more expensive than this Rudolph deal by a few dollars a month, but then I’m not about to risk a good customer experience for another service provider just because they are “cheaper”.
The top part of your post was interesting..
But the end made all dull
How can it be 15 or 25% when you 100% is a feature of the plan.
I got in the BlueFur deal ! Is working great.
P.
Sounded good on the surface but not so sure this is a good deal. While most people would never expect to get as big as you, it’s hard to justify not having enough room to grow.
Echo other people’s comments, cheaper is not always better.
doesnt sound that great.. Im using godaddy which probably isnt the best option but it works…