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Show HN: Please review my startup - www.webieu.com

4 points by medius ↗ HN
I have been working on my startup for a few months now and I would really appreciate some feedback before I proceed any further.

Please review Webieu - http://www.webieu.com

Webieu allows you to search and compare hosting plans from different providers. Currently, the website can search only Linux VPS plans, but I plan to add Windows hosting, dedicated servers and possibly cloud services.

If you could help me with some feedback, I would really appreciate it. Specifically, any suggestions in the following areas will be very helpful.

1) Is the intent of the website clear when you first see it? What could be changed to make it more user friendly?

2) Are there any important parameters that I should add when choosing a plan? What else do you look for when shopping for a hosting plan/provider?

3) Are there any important features that you would like to see when comparing the hosting providers? (You can compare the features, plans and description when you go to "All VPS Providers")

I am actually an electrical engineer by education and this is the first time I am working on a website. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

13 comments

[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 40.1 ms ] thread
DanielStraight
How is this a startup? Where, if anywhere, are you planning to make money?

For my part, hosting providers are close enough in "features" that what I really care about is reliability and service. It's simply not worth worrying about a few mb of ram or a few gb of disk or a few dollars if the servers are going to be down when you need them, or if there's not going to be anyone to talk to when there's problems.

medius
Currently, I am using affiliate programs of the hosting providers for revenue, but I am looking into putting some ads as well.

Reliability data of hosting providers is something I definitely want to add. I agree that saving a few dollars should not be the priority, but the search at least narrows down the choices from thousands of plans to a select few.

DanielStraight
I guess what I'm getting at is that I want reviews, not data. I'm with Linode because lots of people love Linode and because they seem to treat customers well. I wouldn't switch hosts even if someone was offering the same thing (in terms of ram, disk and bandwidth) for free.

For comparison, if I made a website for picking a hotel and it showed the price, square footage, sheet thread count and number of TV channels, would I be able to take traffic away from TripAdvisor? Of course not. A hotel could offer a 1000 sq ft room with 1200 thread count sheets and 500 channels for $5 and it could still be the worst hotel on Earth.

medius
I completely agree with you. In fact, I use Linode too and am very happy with their service even though there are cheaper options out there.

Webeiu supports reviews, but it's difficult to have a lot of reviews when starting out. If there was a reliable website with reviews (like Yelp for restaurants), I would show the ratings from that website. Most of the review information about hosts seems to be scattered around in forums, comments, blogs, etc. I have added Alexa and Google ratings to the website pages. These don't mean much for hosting providers, but if people are talking about them, then they will probably have better ranking.

I would definitely welcome any suggestions about a good source of reviews and ratings.

DanielStraight
I would say try to do what Raveable does with hotels (aside from the hopelessly broken UI). Parse and quantify the reviews that are out there. Crawl the scattered reviews in forums, comments, blogs and find a way to analyze, weigh and present them in an easily digestible form.
jackpirate
Great idea. I was just a few weeks ago looking for this same type of service myself for my project idea. I ended up going with the AWS free tier, though. Your site has a very clean design, and it's obvious what it does when you first look at it.

One thing I don't like is that when you click on "see plan details" it just takes you to the service's main page. It doesn't actually show plan details like you claim it will. This is particularly annoying for the first two choices, which are both take you to the same page on ChimeHost.

I also don't see any significance in the "ieu" part of the name. It's kind of hard to pronounce and not very memorable.

medius
I agree on the "see plan details" part. I wanted to get the site running as quickly as possible, so I did not pay too much attention of adding the plan URLs in my database.

For the revenue, I am using the affiliate programs of the hosting providers and will possibly put some ads as well. The affiliate links also make it a bit difficult to go directly to the plans page as the affiliate URLs don't always allow for that.

The name has been a bit of a problem for me. I had spent so much time thinking about the name that it was becoming a major bottleneck in my work. I just decided on something reasonable and started working on the website. I probably should revisit it. Any suggestions?

cschmidt
How about hostpikr.com. It's available. (Hostpicker is parked, so you're not competing against anyone real.) You're helping people choose a hosting service, so having "host" as the base makes more sense than "web", which is kind of generic.
medius
Yes, that makes more sense. I will try something with host in it.
dumbphone
Rackspace Cloud is (sort of) missing on your list. "Sort of", because Slicehost is on your list, but Slicehost was bought up by Rackspace, and Slicehost will eventually be moved into the Rackspace Cloud brand, as far as I know.

Also missing: Gandi.net.

medius
The list of providers on the website is not comprehensive yet. I have a big list of providers offline that I plan to add. I wanted to get the website functional and get some feedback before I go too far. I will make sure that these two are in my list.
pewpew
someone beat you to the punch and did a better job http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2661272 (don't you just hate when that happens?)
medius
Yes, Marcin is doing a very good job and it does look great. But that just means I need to improve and make mine better. I have seen hundreds of ideas already "done". Maybe my website won't be any better than what's already been done by others, but I am still going to give it a shot.