Price Question Options

[tkalfaoglu]

Another hosting I have is with *edit*. Their price is something like $50 for the domains I host. However, I'm paying five times as much for a server at theplanet. Granted, the server is more capable than the $50, but financially, I'm guessing that the price-per-hosting is at least 3 times more at ThePlanet.
-tk

[Jeff]

With the shared hosting industry so extremely competitive right now, shared hosting prices are rock bottom. So what needs did you have that lead you to upgrade to a dedicated server?

In my case, I needed a combination of more CPU power and bandwidth than a virtual hosting plan would provide and like the ability to have more control over exactly what software I run. So it has worked out well. But I realize leasing a server includes both financial and time costs.

To use an analogy, leasing a house is more expensive than leasing an apartment or renting a room if all you need are one or two rooms. But if you need a lot of rooms for your whole family, a garage for your cars, a yard for your dogs, etc., etc. the house comes out the winner.

Now there's probably a truth about many things in life too: you can take the highest profit but with the least comfort by running things as lean as possible (except that if you run things too lean, you can collapse, lose your business and livelihood, etc.) But if you can stand the discomfort of staying right on the edge between efficiency and foolishness, and can juggle everything to keep things running perfectly with the least cost, you can maximize profit in many situations. On the other hand, if you add redundancy and resources for growth, you end up with less immediate profit but more comfort, and with less risk that running things on a shoestring will leave in danger or things falling apart one day when you have a bad day.

[tkalfaoglu]

Thank you Jeff - we had our, then, ev1servers, purchased first, so we just kept going with that, but for our lesser-numbered windows hostings, we went with a shared system, which I actually found to be great. I just wanted to 1) Grumble about the current prices of The Planet, and 2) Give a heads up for those who have trouble justifying the extravagent lifestyle
-tk

[James Jhurani]

Personally I prefer to be the only person with root on my server. If there is a problem, its my fault. If I break/lose something, I have backups, etc.

In the shared industry your counting on the admin to keep backups, check the hardware, make sure that other sites are not getting exploited, etc.

There are ups and downs to both sides. If money is a problem, then shared is definitely a good way to go.