10 dollars on hosting: 20 years ago and today
Everything is getting more expensive, and technologies are getting cheaper. Once a computer or mobile phone could afford units, now these devices are in every Russian family.
Another example is hosting. The price of a megabyte over the past 20 years has dropped several thousand times. In 1998, for $ 10 a month, you could rent only 10 MB on an FTP server, and today - 30 GB on VDS.
We have been developing panels for hosting since the end of the nineties and decided to make a little history. In this article we will look at the prices and services of previous years and compare them with prices from 2K18. We grin and rejoice at what is available today and was not available 20 years ago :-).
So, how much "hosting" could be rented for $ 10?
Somewhere in the late nineties in Russia began the history of hosting.
The Demos company brought Internet to the country, began to provide access to it, and then “website hosting services” (a great strategy, a startup for a million!). It was she who sold 10 MB on an FTP server for $ 10 . Strictly speaking, these ten megabytes cost more, because another 10 dollars had to be paid for registering a domain in the .RU zone (UPD: the third level domain cost so much, the second level domain - $ 120) and $ 15 for supporting one mailbox. Total: 35 dollars in the first month.
The average salary, according to Rosstat, was then about $ 50 (at the rate of September 98th, 1,000 rubles). That is, for publishing a page on the network that is smaller than a photo on an iPhone, the average Russian should have given more than half of his monthly income. With today's money - 20-25 thousand rubles!
It is clear that the average Russian at that time did not even know about the Internet. More or less regularly, 1.5 million people came out of Russia to the Network . Sites were like this:
But the Internet has developed rapidly, and so it did not last long.
Only five years have passed since 1998, and how much has changed. Manufacturers, following Moore's law, made more and more powerful servers. New players appeared on the hosting market, prices were falling. First, they were dropped by the “first dumping provider” Value Host, and then by the army of Pupkin's hosting, who came to a high margin. As a result, in 2003 for $ 10 you could already rent 300 MB on a disk. This is 30 times more than in 1998!
If we take into account that by that time salaries had almost quadrupled, to $ 190 or 5,500 rubles, and there was no need to pay extra for mail support, the drop is even more impressive. The average Russian citizen no longer needed to give half the wage for hosting the site, only its twentieth part. The body kit of services has also changed. Here you and CGI-BIN, and PHP 4.0, and mySQL, and subdomains. Heaven and earth.
Every day, 3 million people went online, 200 thousand domains were registered in the .RU zone. Laptops have appeared on the market, high-speed connection has become commonplace, wide screens have become cheaper.
And thanks to, for example, Macromedia Flash, the world saw Masyanya.
Now it looks crisp, but in 2003 - ooh, rrrevolution.
Another five years, and again a dash forward. But not in parallel reality, but in augmented. Hosting is even cheaper and cooler. Now for 10 dollars a month you can buy 1 GB of disk space . And not just Shared, but VDS, in terms of reliability close to Dedic. Salaries have grown from 5 to 17 thousand rubles, or 720 dollars, so it has become indecently cheap to maintain the site.
But the development is expensive, so in the top - the designers and content management systems. To help customers, hosting providers create special rates with a pre-installed CMS. Basic service packages complement backups and technical support.
In the network - 33 million Russians, in the wake of the social network, blogs in LiveJournal and a revolution in mobile is coming - the first iPhone is coming out. Sites look different. For example:
For another five years, prices have dropped about two times: now for $ 10 you can buy from 4 to 16 GB . Salaries rose to 30 thousand rubles. The change is not staggering, but in general, hosting has become more accessible.
CMS is still very popular. Protection against viruses and DDoS appears. From globally new service providers - support for programming languages. Some providers went further and took over administration. True, mostly abroad. Not even for 10, but for $ 5 in Digital Ocean it was possible to buy VDS, fully adapted to the tasks of the developers.
In Russia, they offered support for Perl and Python, less often - Node.js. But more cared about the business. For example, specialized hosting on 1C-Bitrix began to appear.
In the network - 70 million people, messengers reduce the revenue of mobile operators, many companies refuse to offline and work only through the Internet, many "go to the clouds." Sites look almost like today:
For five years, prices have decreased, but only slightly. Today, for $ 10 a month, you can rent from 10 to 30 GB on shared hosting or VDS . Moreover, in terms of rubles, the cost of hosting for the average Russian either remained at the level of 2008 or increased. If in 2013 the ratio of $ 10 to salary was 1 to 93, now it is 1 to 70. About 10 years ago, but still very cheap.
The main achievement of the previous five years is a greater emphasis on speed and stability. For example, SSD disks have become popular. They are slightly more expensive than HDD, but still available, for $ 10 you can afford (which can not be said about the clouds).
From the point of view of services, nothing special was added. But in terms of the average Russian has changed a lot. Designers have developed so much that today with their help you can make a decent website. No longer free, but $ 10 is enough to get not just a hosting, but a business card, landing page and even an online store.
The audience of the RuNet is now, by the way, 90 million people , now on the heype bots, machines and other AI. And what sites look like, you yourself know.
If you make a change, it turns out that:
What will happen with hosting in another five years? Will it become cheaper or will it finally start to go up? Will new features appear? We are waiting for your predictions in the comments! Memories about the hosting of old years are also accepted there. The older the story, the more interesting it is :).
About the company : ISPsystem is a Russian software developer for hosting providers.
Another example is hosting. The price of a megabyte over the past 20 years has dropped several thousand times. In 1998, for $ 10 a month, you could rent only 10 MB on an FTP server, and today - 30 GB on VDS.
We have been developing panels for hosting since the end of the nineties and decided to make a little history. In this article we will look at the prices and services of previous years and compare them with prices from 2K18. We grin and rejoice at what is available today and was not available 20 years ago :-).
So, how much "hosting" could be rented for $ 10?
1998 - 10 MB
Somewhere in the late nineties in Russia began the history of hosting.
The Demos company brought Internet to the country, began to provide access to it, and then “website hosting services” (a great strategy, a startup for a million!). It was she who sold 10 MB on an FTP server for $ 10 . Strictly speaking, these ten megabytes cost more, because another 10 dollars had to be paid for registering a domain in the .RU zone (UPD: the third level domain cost so much, the second level domain - $ 120) and $ 15 for supporting one mailbox. Total: 35 dollars in the first month.
The average salary, according to Rosstat, was then about $ 50 (at the rate of September 98th, 1,000 rubles). That is, for publishing a page on the network that is smaller than a photo on an iPhone, the average Russian should have given more than half of his monthly income. With today's money - 20-25 thousand rubles!
It is clear that the average Russian at that time did not even know about the Internet. More or less regularly, 1.5 million people came out of Russia to the Network . Sites were like this:
But the Internet has developed rapidly, and so it did not last long.
2003 - 300 MB
Only five years have passed since 1998, and how much has changed. Manufacturers, following Moore's law, made more and more powerful servers. New players appeared on the hosting market, prices were falling. First, they were dropped by the “first dumping provider” Value Host, and then by the army of Pupkin's hosting, who came to a high margin. As a result, in 2003 for $ 10 you could already rent 300 MB on a disk. This is 30 times more than in 1998!
If we take into account that by that time salaries had almost quadrupled, to $ 190 or 5,500 rubles, and there was no need to pay extra for mail support, the drop is even more impressive. The average Russian citizen no longer needed to give half the wage for hosting the site, only its twentieth part. The body kit of services has also changed. Here you and CGI-BIN, and PHP 4.0, and mySQL, and subdomains. Heaven and earth.
Every day, 3 million people went online, 200 thousand domains were registered in the .RU zone. Laptops have appeared on the market, high-speed connection has become commonplace, wide screens have become cheaper.
And thanks to, for example, Macromedia Flash, the world saw Masyanya.
Now it looks crisp, but in 2003 - ooh, rrrevolution.
2008 - 2 GB
Another five years, and again a dash forward. But not in parallel reality, but in augmented. Hosting is even cheaper and cooler. Now for 10 dollars a month you can buy 1 GB of disk space . And not just Shared, but VDS, in terms of reliability close to Dedic. Salaries have grown from 5 to 17 thousand rubles, or 720 dollars, so it has become indecently cheap to maintain the site.
But the development is expensive, so in the top - the designers and content management systems. To help customers, hosting providers create special rates with a pre-installed CMS. Basic service packages complement backups and technical support.
In the network - 33 million Russians, in the wake of the social network, blogs in LiveJournal and a revolution in mobile is coming - the first iPhone is coming out. Sites look different. For example:
2013 - 6 GB
For another five years, prices have dropped about two times: now for $ 10 you can buy from 4 to 16 GB . Salaries rose to 30 thousand rubles. The change is not staggering, but in general, hosting has become more accessible.
CMS is still very popular. Protection against viruses and DDoS appears. From globally new service providers - support for programming languages. Some providers went further and took over administration. True, mostly abroad. Not even for 10, but for $ 5 in Digital Ocean it was possible to buy VDS, fully adapted to the tasks of the developers.
In Russia, they offered support for Perl and Python, less often - Node.js. But more cared about the business. For example, specialized hosting on 1C-Bitrix began to appear.
In the network - 70 million people, messengers reduce the revenue of mobile operators, many companies refuse to offline and work only through the Internet, many "go to the clouds." Sites look almost like today:
2018 - 10 GB
For five years, prices have decreased, but only slightly. Today, for $ 10 a month, you can rent from 10 to 30 GB on shared hosting or VDS . Moreover, in terms of rubles, the cost of hosting for the average Russian either remained at the level of 2008 or increased. If in 2013 the ratio of $ 10 to salary was 1 to 93, now it is 1 to 70. About 10 years ago, but still very cheap.
The main achievement of the previous five years is a greater emphasis on speed and stability. For example, SSD disks have become popular. They are slightly more expensive than HDD, but still available, for $ 10 you can afford (which can not be said about the clouds).
From the point of view of services, nothing special was added. But in terms of the average Russian has changed a lot. Designers have developed so much that today with their help you can make a decent website. No longer free, but $ 10 is enough to get not just a hosting, but a business card, landing page and even an online store.
The audience of the RuNet is now, by the way, 90 million people , now on the heype bots, machines and other AI. And what sites look like, you yourself know.
Total
If you make a change, it turns out that:
- in the late nineties, for $ 10 you could buy only 10 MB, and now - 30 GB or a good designer;
- twenty years ago there were 2,000 sites in runet, now there are 5 million domains in the .RU zone, 800 thousand domains in the .PF zone;
- Twenty years ago, there were only 1.2 million users in Runet, now there are 90 million Russians and 2 million of them are site administrators.
2023 - ???
What will happen with hosting in another five years? Will it become cheaper or will it finally start to go up? Will new features appear? We are waiting for your predictions in the comments! Memories about the hosting of old years are also accepted there. The older the story, the more interesting it is :).
About the company : ISPsystem is a Russian software developer for hosting providers.
References:
- The average monthly salary in the Russian Federation in 1991-2018 - Rosstat.
- The dynamics of the US dollar and the euro against the ruble - the Central Bank.
- Hosting: information for consideration , History of hosting in Russia - Compress.
- The history of web hosting - Tibus.
- Domain name statistics in the RU domain - Coordinating center of the RuNet.
- The cost of hosting was viewed in the price lists stored on web.archive.org.
- Data on the Runet’s audience was taken from publications of various media: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 .