My name is Jenn, and I'm a 27 year old married and babied chick. In addition to a husband, a seven year old daughter, and a five year old autistic son, I also have four cats, three hermit crabs, two frogs, a few fish, and one snorty little Pug. I work from home doing a variety of writing and even some web design. I love blogging, digital photography and web design.
Have you heard of the Rudolph Plan? No? Well, neither have I. Apparently it is a web hosting plan in which a one time payment of $95.00 entitles you to a lifetime domain and hosting plan. According to the web page, the hosting plan features 250gb of space, 3000gb of bandwidth, a program called Site Studio that allows you to create web pages using templates, backups, “EasyApp”, and the ability to have unlimited domains on the plan, as well as unlimited sub domains, FTP accounts, MySQL databases, email, and various email protection.
I don’t know… it seems too good to be true! I pay $30 per month for 4.5gb of space and 75gb of bandwidth. To me, that’s reasonable, especially since that is a crap load of space and bandwidth that I can use to host several domains (and I do – in fact, I have two resellers, each holding eight – ten domains!).
Another thing to think about is the domain. The cost of a domain registration for a .com/.net/.org domain is around $10 a year. How on earth can the company behind the plan (Rudolf, I believe) afford to cover the cost of a domain registration, year after year, without making any kind of profit off of a customer who already paid their $95 and isn’t obligated to pay anything more?
In all honesty, this is a plan that I would tiptoe around, and then probably scurry right past. If you are considering it, at the very least do some research, and ask questions!
Jenn, this is simply a PR move to gain awareness about our company. We are practically sponsoring the 1000 Rudolf plans. There are no tricks here.
We planned this campaign carefully, trust me on this one. The costs for 1000 domains we will sponsor are nothing in comparison with other advertising costs we’ll have to pay in the future.
I apologize if I seemed to dismiss the legibility of it. But from a consumer standpoint, and seeing different hosting companies come and go over the past few years, I’m a bit cynical. However, I am looking for another small hosting plan, so maybe I’ll give the Rudolf plan a try. So long as the domain name is in my name and under my control, I can deal with a potential financial loss.
Everything is under your control. We are not trying to cheat anyone with this plan. BTW – Rudolf ends today, because the Xmas season is over – but we’ll have something else to replace it pretty soon.
Happy New Year, Jenn!
Mig
I’ve signed up and I couldn’t be any happier ! Their support was phenomenal and I’ve talked to quite a few hosting providers out there. They out-shinned almost everyone of them. Anyway, happy blogging and a happy new year.
Cleo