Definitely it is shady. It's something I wouldn't do if I ran a hosting company and I certainly wouldn't want my host to do. I would also leave my host for some place better if they said this was the policy.

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Mark Blair
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Agreed. I never said I agreed with the policy. Just simply that you have a choice in where you do business and as a consumer there are certain things you should research before using a service.

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Hmm, i have to disagree with you all.

Do you pay for backups as part of your monthly fee?
Do they state that they will provide backups free?

The thing is, that setting up a backup system takes time, money (for additional hardware) and if you not paying for that backup in your monthly fees, then where are they going to make the money from having backups?

Considering that i have seen thousands spent a month on having good backups (30 minuite database and file snapshots) $75 is not that much. Granted it is a lot for what you wanted, but if that forum was making you $5000 a month, it wouldnt seem so much.

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I'm not a tech guru, but I would imagine that setting up a system which will create a single backup of each account once a day is not going to be a huge burden. Now, that is just a simple system...If they back up more often and store more copies in different locations (locally, remotely, etc), then that is different. But in this case, all angisson needed was a single backup. Furthermore, he didnt need a backup for a 500,000 post forum...he needed one for a relatively small forum. If he was making $5,000 per month, then sure, $75 would be nothing...but it wouldnt surprise me if angisson wasn't even in the green...paying $75 for a mere backup is a very big deal.

That said, how many hosts out there provide daily backups for free? A lot of them...I would say that vast majority of quality hosts provide free backups...That's why I say charging $75 for a backup is absurd

If it is costing a host thousands per month to keep these backups, odds are they have enough customers to bring in 100 times that much per month

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