FileBurst is a premium high speed file hosting service for software vendors and publishers - http://www.fileburst.com

Dexterity forum members who sign up for FileBurst this month will get free $10 credit toward its first month usage. Please just fill out "Dexterity" in the WhereHeard field when signing up to get the $10 credit.

In addition to this, we're also offering you 15% discount for all of our hosting plans here: http://www.dewahost.com/webhosting.html

Please enter this discount coupon on the order form: dexterity-any

Standard hosting features:
- premium high quality bandwidth from Tier-1 providers
- web-based control panel (CPanel 7)
- unlimited mailboxes with WebMail, Spam Assassin and Anti Virus protection
- unlimited email aliases and auto-responders
- host multiple domains and free domain parking (Silver plan and higher)
- free unlimited sub-domains (Silver plan and higher)
- Perl, CGI, SSI, Python, PHP4
- mailing list support (MailMan)
- 24/7 technical support via our helpdesk
- daily, weekly, and monthly backups

Please email sales@dewahost.com if you have any question. Thanks again for your time!

How come you never had any special offers before I signed up ;)

Great service - I can highly recommend them.

We have also been very happy with FileBurst (we've been using them since December 2002). Support has always been speedy whenever we've had questions.
-Scorpio

Thanks for the nice encouraging compliments! We're very fortunate to have you as our customers ;)

While we are on this topic, what do you guys use for Web hosting/file server? I'll be in need of such a service soon and any advice would be greatly apprecitated.

Hi isp,

We're running Red Hat Linux and FreeBSD in all of our servers for maximum reliability and performance.

pricing are very high even for the great quality.
You can have the same quality for 30% of the price:
look at: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/

Originally posted by Hercule
pricing are very high even for the great quality.
You can have the same quality for 30% of the price:
look at: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/

yes, well i guess you can always find cheaper and cheaper. We get our hosting in france, we get unlimited public ftp transfer for 50$ a year. ( there is a limit though, 1200 simultaneous downloads ) That can seriously reduce your bandwidth bill.

there are other french hosts that will let you have unlimited http transfer. but the control panel will be.... in french or approximative english. :/

pat.

there is a lot cheaper (I even calculate 0.3$ for 1go, compare to 1$ of fileburst) but with a good quality it's a little more ;)
Bandwith in France are more expensive, you will find much better deal in United-State Host.
patrox what is your hosting ?

I use ovh "http://www.ovh.com" they have some plans including public ftp. Do not put files on the http side, they'll close your account. ( happened to me , i wanted to try :o) )

www.online.fr allows unlimited http transfer ( for 29$ a year ) but they will lock your website if people download too much ( downloads will work but people won't be able to view your site )

pat.

I for one would certainly pay a bit more for quality. After having to switch ISP:s 2 times during the last year, I am more than happy to pay a bit higher price to ServerMatrix for my server and bandwidth. Most "cheap" services have costs that are non-transparent and thus plain hard to measure. My previous ISP was on a couple of spam lists, meaning lost emails to some domains. If things like this costs you a few sales a month you are quite fast loosing the small saving you were looking for.

Many "Unlimited" ISP just don't bother to communicate the limit to you. They might cap the peaks for example, meaning you are unable to serve downloads when most needed. Have you ever seen a (successfull) brick and mortar shop with ungreased doors that are hard to open .. :)

http://www.ovh.com has a "hit" limit not an amont of data transfert. This can be good solution for software distribution. But I ask myself if they have enough bandwith on each server, for good download.
They have very good reputation on the technical side (uptime superior to 99.9% and not just the Network). But don't ask for any kind of customer support. They have very bad reputation on this side.

Servermatrix as a good reputation
(they have up there bandwith package to 750GB...)

Don't put files on the http at ovh ( that's what i told earlier )

they have a public FTP for that ( ftp://ftp2.quality-games.com/qualityg/pc/ for one of mine ) if you want to try. ( it is limited to 1200 simultaneous downloads )


I've been satisfied with their technical support so far... they usually reply within the hour or 2.

patrice.

Thanks for all the inputs.
I know there are many places where you can get a dedicated server with plenty of bandwidth for a cheap price. However, you should understand that these companies are overselling the bandwidth and most of the servers are unmanaged, meaning that you are responsible to manage and secure the server yourself. Unless you have the time, experience and knowledge, this can be quite frustrating and time consuming. It's better to spend the time elsewhere, like for developing and marketing your software/games :)

With FileBurst, you really get what you pay for (fully-burstable premium bandwidth, 24/7 technical support, 99.9% uptime guarantee, etc). We don't intend to lower down our pricing in the near future, unless the cost for premium bandwidth is dropping significantly.

I hope this clarifies the issue and you understand now the reason behind our pricing :)

overselling is not a problem. Too much overselling is a problem.
You add a http://www.theserverden.com/
with their start price promotion and you have a fully managed server (servermatrix already did basic things).
In servermatrix, you can push to 1000go a month, their network will handle it easily. But few need this for our little game.

There is plenty of very serious hosting compagny with very quality bandwith, which offer bandwith for less.

Your price is high, because it's only for downloading file (very simple, with very few use of cpu), and your quality are far behond the need of indie developper.
If they don't spend 20$ a month, this is like they sell 2-3 games. And for the biggest Indie, this can go to 200-300$ a month

You say you have 1000 Mbps. But just one connection of 1000Mbs?
Some compagnie bought 4 or 5 time more.

Hi Hercule007,

If I'm not mistaken, ServerMatrix limits each server port to 10 Mbps. At this cap,
your users can only download your files at max 1.25 MB/s and the speed will quickly drop to a few hundreds of KB/s if there are many users downloading the file at the same time. If your game gets reviewed on popular sites/magazines, some users may have problem downloading your game from the server. Of course I understand that this is not a common case but you'll hate to lose the extra sales if that happens to you.

Anyway, the choice is really up to you whether you want to use FileBurst or get your own dedicated server. If you don't have the time and experience to manage a server, it's best to offload your downloads to FileBurst and free up your time to focus in developing and marketing your games instead. I believe our bandwidth pricing is quite fair and affordable, considering the quality of bandwidth and service we provide to our customers.

Each of our server is connected with a fully-burstable (uncapped) 100 Mbps port (full-duplex) to the network. Our upstream has at least 3 Gig-E connections to top backbone providers.

Sorry, but this thread has gone a bit off topic. I'd really appreciate if we can get it back to the original topic about our service, not debating about other options :)

I've been using FileBurst for about half a year now, and it's been up 99.9% of the time. It's also incredibly fast.

I'm now in the process of switching my site to use them as my web host - the 15% off kicked me into doing it now, rather then later. Talk about effective marketing. ;)

Michael Sikora
Guardian Light Studios (http://www.guardiangames.com)

Go higher than 10 Mbps, that's should happen every week on every 10 Mo shareware game hey ;)

I prefer in high traffic's hours, being in 10 X 1000Mb network with just one 10MB internal connection, than in 1X 1000Mb network with 1000Mb internal connection ...

topicbut this thread has gone a bit off topic

I don't think this is off topic, you propose a service. Lot of indie developper go to this forum, and saw It.
That's advertising on public forum ...
This kid of topic are spam for me (I'm sur I'm not the only one thinking that). That's don't give a serious picture of any compagnie.

And many Indie game don't know that your solution are only use for very extrem cases. They don't need to pay luxurious service if very good (not cheap) is largely enough and don't use luxurious option even once in their life.
For example, you charge 3$ a month for one IP, is it better IP than 1$ IP of most webhost, just kidding...
You don't offer service for shareware game, only basic FTP feature. But there is many area without solution for shareware (cheap payement solution, CD distribution ...)

You garantee 99.9% network uptime, but just network ?
I didn't find lot of topic on webhosingtalk's forum, you are too small for that ?

Cheaper solution (not tested).
http://www.filekicker.com
http://www.swmirror.com/

I don't consider this topic to be spam, since this kind of service is both targeted and relevant to the people who use this forum. Additionally, FileBurst asked my permission before posting, and I approved. If other hosting companies want to offer discounts to forum members, I'd be happy to allow that too. It's the irrelevant or off-topic posts that I consider spam.

I've actually been quite impressed with fileburst's comments in this thread and the comments from the various fileburst customers who have posted here as well. I guess it depends on your perspective. I have always felt that you get what you pay for, there was a brief stint in the early 90's when you could get a lot more then you paid for online, but those days are gone. It's now been proven the hard way, that you can't give away more then you take in, and have any longevity as a company selling a product or service.

When the time comes, fileburst will definitely be at the top of my list for potential providers.

Hi Hercule007,

I'm glad that Steve has clarified the spam issue :)

If you don't like our service just because we charge a bit more than the others, that's fine and you're free to use another service. I've tried to explain the reasons to you and replied all your questions kindly so please give us a break :D

I don't think FileBurst is too luxurious for indies. You'll be surprised if you know how many indies who have signed-up with FileBurst so far.

Thanks again for your thoughts and have a nice weekend!

I think lot of customers of fileburst here, know this compagny because of dexterity Forum (one big client, with good price, I'm sur).
They find dexterity forum the first, that's why they have customer here.

. They say, that they don't oversell but they have "unlimited storage space".
They don't have there own datacenter, (I have to say, good quality datacenter). They are just like most hosting compagnie.

In hosting forum like webhostingtalk, where every big hosting compagny are, we have very few information about them. Why ?

I can make you better quality, for 3$ per GO if you want, or even 6$. If a high price make you feel the product are good, go with them.
You can find GO for 0.2 $ but, I don't advice that. I advice for 0.6$.
I search good price AND good quality for about a month.
For myself, I prefer an old compagnie with better price, good reputation, which don't need to post on public forum, and have three or four times more customers (which make the price lower for the same quality).

I just give the advice in this forum that you can find better deal, if you don't stop to your first choice. But if you don't have time, go with them, you will lose e little money, and you will find better solution when you will be bigger.

Hi Dan,

Originally posted by Dan MacDonald
I guess it depends on your perspective. I have always felt that you get what you pay for, there was a brief stint in the early 90's when you could get a lot more then you paid for online, but those days are gone. It's now been proven the hard way, that you can't give away more then you take in, and have any longevity as a company selling a product or service.


Amen, I agree with you completely :)
We also had the same thoughts when we first started out our hosting business. We've seen many hosting companies offering the service at incredibly cheap prices and overselling, but often without being followed by quality service. Some succeeds, but most have failed with this business model.

Customer satisfaction has always been our top priority and if that means that we have to price our service a bit more, then so be it.


When the time comes, fileburst will definitely be at the top of my list for potential providers.

Thanks, we'll be waiting :)

Hi Hercule007,

Originally posted by Hercule007
I think lot of customers of fileburst here, know this compagny because of dexterity Forum (one big client, with good price, I'm sur).
They find dexterity forum the first, that's why they have customer here.

You better be careful with what you say there. I really have no idea where you got that assumption from and am wondering why you have always said bad things against us since the first time we posted the special offer. Do we look that bad for you? :(

We just found out and registered with Dexterity forum a few months ago, because we noticed some of our customers entered "dexterity forum" in the WhereHeard field when signing up. The senior members in this forum should be able to verify if this is true or not. Prior to posting the special offer, we've also contacted Steve for approval.

So what you said about us in the post was totally wrong. Please do not make any assumption without checking out the facts first. IMHO, it's very dangerous and unethical.

They say, that they don't oversell but they have "unlimited storage space".


This should be taken from our web site: "unlimited storage space for your files (the first 1 GB is free!)" - which means that our customers can have as much storage space as they need. They just have to pay extra for more than 1 GB storage. See, we do not oversell the storage space at all :)

They don't have there own datacenter, (I have to say, good quality datacenter). They are just like most hosting compagnie.

Yes, that's true. We're like most other hosting companies and I'm happy to say that we've been growing at a very healthy rate and profitable enough to provide quality service to all of our customers and keep them happy :D

Well i think we're in front of a typical cultural shock here :)

a good thread to remember is the "cost of life" from jack norton...

I can understand how a french guy can find fileburst expensive, it actually is extremely expensive for french standards ( when i mean extremely, i mean insane ), . For american standards it's an OK price.

Remember pompom selling their games in russia for 2$ ? I'm sure russian people would be screaming bloody murder for a 20$ game :) that's way too expensive.

It's all about references...
pat.

I've been with at least a half dozen different web hosting companies, and there is a huge level of difference in quality. The amount I've paid for hosting has ranged from $10/month up to several hundred dollars per month. There were times when the cheapest solutions worked just fine for me. But I've learned too often that if an offer looks too good to be true, it usually is.

For instance, at one time I hosted with www.nomonthlyfees.com, which offered lifetime web hosting for a one-time fee of $200. At first everything was great, and I even referred others to them as an affiliate. But after a few months they basically started tightening the noose, providing lousy or nonexistent support, suffering increasing downtime, and stiffing affiliates by refusing to pay earned commissions. Most of those I know who signed up ended up abandoning their "lifetime" accounts for other hosts. But NMF is still there selling similar accounts, although now they charge an annual fee of $70 too.

So now when I pick a host, what matters most to me is their reputation. I won't sign up with a host unless I get several recommendations from their customers. I only signed up with Rackspace and Fileburst after hearing other ASP members' experiences with them. Nitpicking the price of bandwidth isn't a major concern for me, since bandwidth costs are less than 2% of our sales anyway. I could invest the time to find the absolute perfect provider, but it's still not going to make more than a 2% difference, even if I got the cost down to zero. And if I screw up and pick a host that causes us too much downtime, it could easily cost a lot more than 2% in lost sales. As long as I have my lengthy list of low-risk 10-50% improvements I can do, I'll ignore the risky 2% ones for now.

Maybe you can get reliable bandwidth for $.20 per GB while paying only for what you use (i.e not 500GB for $100 where you need only 50GB). I don't know. If several people I trust recommend a particular service that's rock-solid reliable, I'll certainly take note. Every week though I hear about "great deals" that end up costing people more in the long run.

Sorry I may have too much react, but I don't like advertising on a forum, even with permission, that's advertising. And I don't like when pepole just have one sound of a bell, on a particular subject.
I like opinion of customer/user.

I react also because they don't offer particular option for shareware game like temporary URL (http://www.filekicker.com), just a very good and basic FTP.

I studie bandwith price because I work on other project under GPL licence, which will be distribute for free. But the size of the file will be about 500 Mo... (already 10Mo without the 300mo compressed map) With filebust that while cost me more than 70$ for the first month without benefit, all from me and my friend pocket (if the game is not a successfull one).
I have also some project (start in an old job) of web-browse plugin. But I need bandwith not just for the software which make the data, but also for every web surfer who surf on page that use my plug-in. For making all web pages available which use my plug, I need high quality bandwith, but with special statistic and management (can't be done with simple FTP). I find lot of solution (not too good to be true offer, I never buy such offer), with as good reputation as fileburst, but on professional hosting forum. I am myself on my 5th hosting compagnie ;).
We can get some informations, from professionnals. For example fileburst use (if I don't do some mistake) datacenter of serverint, which have very good reputation.
special too late promotion (another soon, according to them) :
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77871&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

Rackspace have the reputation of being near 100% of uptime (but don't manage much).
And I don't have to test hem to know that,I just have to read.

It sounds like fileburst won't meet your needs Hercule007, but there's no need to be combative about their pricing or services. From what you say it sounds like fileburst's services will not meet your need, and that's fine. As you have pointed out a number of times, there are a great number of options available to consumers in the hosting/bandwidth market. I think fileburst summed it up nicely when he said...

Originally posted by fileburst

If you don't like our service just because we charge a bit more than the others, that's fine and you're free to use another service.

I'm combative about their pricing or services because they start a topic.
I think that's not a good solution for me, but also for most of small indie developper. I point that out several times.

If they don't want the pros and cons showed of their solution, they don't post, as simple as that...

We don't have opinion of this hosting compagnie:
http://www.filekicker.com
http://www.swmirror.com
Why ? (fileburst succeed with their advertising on this forum ? )

Hercule, you don't have to repeat the same things again and again... Once is enough.
Thank you.

Originally posted by StAn
Hercule, you don't have to repeat the same things again and again... Once is enough.
Thank you.
what I repeat ?

PS : Don't be angry

Other solutions only for file:
http://www.rackshack.net/english/virtuals.asp
https://www.wbws.net/custom.html
http://www.vnpixel.com/volume.htm

I'm not sure why Hercule007 seems adamant about comparing apples to oranges. For one, Fileburst is a service where you pay only for the bandwidth you actually use (to the exact GB), while Hercule007 is advertising both dedicated server solutions and file download services where you must prepay for the bandwidth you expect to use, whether that be 15GB or 500GB. Like Fileburst.com, Getafile.com is another service where you only pay for the bandwidth you use, and they currently charge $1.95/GB.

Thank you so much Hercule. It is always good to know many options before making a decision. :)

Hi Hercule/Hercule007,

Sorry I may have too much react, but I don't like advertising on a forum, even with permission, that's advertising.
That's very funny. If you don't like advertising, then why do you advertise other services here? :rolleyes:

If they don't want the pros and cons showed of their solution, they don't post, as simple as that...
We are very open to constructive inputs, but ALL of the negative comments you made against us were either half-true or entirely wrong. I've personally started to consider it as a direct insult to our service and business model. I've told you that if you don't like our pricing/service, that's fine and you're free to use another service.

If I am the moderator, I'll definitely ban you off the forum. Someone with such unetchical and childish attitude doesn't deserve to be in this forum IMHO.

Sorry, but I really don't mean to offend you at all, please just consider it as a self-defense. Thanks.

Speaking of constructive criticism here are a few ideas:

prepaid bandwidth ( the customer puts 10$ into his account and when he reaches his 10$ then the download ) url is redirected to the one set up by the customer

estimation builder : the customer sets a download url on your server that redirects the url to his server
example :
http://fileburst.com/countmyfile.exe redirects to http://www.company.com/realfile.exe
( we'll assume that 1 hit = 1 full download ) so that the user can know how much that will cost him ( it's like doing some sort of 'practice round' ). I think that the fear of a lot of indies is to receive a bill of 500$ of hosting, would be neat if they could know how much they would approximately pay , or if they could prepay without having the fear of their download to be cut when they reach the max of their account.
( that's another cultural thing that could get you more customers, lots of americans use credit cards ( pay after ) , lots of europeans use debit cads ( pay before ) )

pat.

If I am the moderator, I'll definitely ban you off the forum. Someone with such unetchical and childish attitude doesn't deserve to be in this forum IMHO.
Ahah this may be true...but only because of his behaviour, not for what he said ;)
this is an open forum and anyone can show its product, but it is a bit suspicious the fact that you're the only one offering hosting services here.
I am not trying to defend Hercules at all, just making some personal thoughts.
I've also noticed that the sample download file on your homepage is a Dex game... why that decision? ;)

Couldn't be a random game from another of your customers? from midnight synergy for example or others... ;)

Hi Jack,

Originally posted by Jack_Norton
Ahah this may be true...but only because of his behaviour, not for what he said ;)

Yes, that's what I meant.

this is an open forum and anyone can show its product, but it is a bit suspicious the fact that you're the only one offering hosting services here.

I think I've explained it before that we just found out about this forum from our indie customers. I'm very confident in the quality of our services so I asked the moderator (Steve) if it's okay to post a special offer that will benefit some indies on this forum and he's given the permission.

I am not trying to defend Hercules at all, just making some personal thoughts.

Sure, I understand :)

I've also noticed that the sample download file on your homepage is a Dex game... why that decision? ;)

It's just a coincidence. We were looking for a sample download file with 8-10 MB in size and one of Dex games fit that well and it's fun to play too :D

I hope this answers your curiousity. Thanks.

This thread is now closed. This thread has wandered from constructive discussion and has become mostly argumentative. There's nothing wrong with the topic per se, but the attitutude of this discussion has taken a negative turn and is inconsistent with the community style of the board.