Cheap Hosting Accounts Users Do Not Renew?

A year ago we offered a deal where a user could sign up for $5.95/yr on a plan that was actually being sold for $5.95/month.  At the time lots of users said it was an amazing deal and we had a few hundred sign ups as a result of this deal.  At the time we expected each user would stay at least two years.  The reason we did this was to have more people talking about Hawk Host.  It worked great I might add a year later our subscriber base as easily doubled and it’s for sure to double again within six months.

What I find interesting is a year later more and more of these accounts are being suspended for not paying.  These users were receiving a $59.50/yr package for just $5.95.  The package consisted of 6GB space and 60GB of bandwidth (our standard hosting plan).  You’d think they’d stick around and renew their accounts, but a year later the majority are not paying and their hosting is being terminated.  It’s interesting to see someone not take advantage of a deal a year later.  We send our 4 emails about their invoice being due so it’s not like they should not know it’s up for renewal.  I doubt reliability is the issue with them as they’ve all been put on some of our more reliable servers that are holding between 99.95% uptime and 99.99%.  So I imagine the user either has changed their email address and forgot to update their contact information with us.  The more likely reason is the fact the users site no longer is active.  To me this shows that most of these very very very low end users are unlikely to create a successful site due to not being willing to spend the money required or put in the effort to create a successful site.  There are obviously a few exceptions but this appears to be the case.  It’s also interesting that with unlimited add-on domains they do not just put their new site if they have one on the hosting plan.

I am all for these users cancelling as they can be replaced by users paying much more.  So it’s a win for us, but it’s an interesting that’s so many of them do not renew their accounts.  It’s really interesting and as I look further very few made support tickets and some probably did not even put any content on their accounts.  They were almost like ghost accounts for $5.95/yr.  Even with this being the case I doubt we’ll ever do a promotion like that again.