Hosting from office?

[MattNM3E36]

Hi all,

we're currently a bit disillusioned with our hosting company (downtime becoming more and more frequent and the tech service is poor).

We're toying with hosting ourselves, but is there a Broadband service any of you could recommend that has fast enough up/download speeds to cope with high traffic and lots of images, but would also work our more cost effective than paying a hosting company £189/mnth for a (dedicated!) server(after buying a server and spreading that cost across 1 yr)?

Also keen to hear suggestions on recommended hosting companies if you have experience of anyones dedicated server packages?

Looking for Windows 2003/SQL/.NET host

Cheers 4 your time!

[slinky]

It all depends on what sort of load your hosting would place on the connection..

Remember that most available ADSL connections are only 256 up, so you'd need to consider moving to SDSL, which as my research in the past has shown, is NOT cheap..

Why not just consider moving to another hostings firm? I'm sure there are a few PH'ers who can point you in the right direction!!

hth

slinky

[gopher]

slinky said:

Why not just consider moving to another hostings firm? I'm sure there are a few PH'ers who can point you in the right direction!! hth slinky

I would agree with slinky 100%.

I would say look at www.webhost4life.com, have got a number of sites with them, not sure if they have any 2003 servers yet but the 1.1 (and 1.0) framework is installed and it is one of the cheapest sql 2k hosts I have found. 24 hour help desk really is - I reported an issue at 8am our time so 3am at the latest with them and it was fixed in minutes.

Cheers

Paul

ps if you do use them let me pass you my refferal link first please

[JamieBeeston]

I would also advise against hosting from the office.

Its bad for so many reasons

a) SLA (Or lack of)
b) it shows.. in your reverse, and traceroutes, it looks cheap
c) the contention ratio is just not there
d) the b.w just isnt there.


As for whom to use.. It depends what you want.

Cheap, hands off, no support : uk2.net

I run a hosting company that deals primarily with large/PLC size companies whom require full management and availability, but we also have many smaller firms too.

Check my profile for details, feel free to mail me if you want a call / tour around.

Which ever way you go, I would advocate outsourcing your hosting every time.

[slinky]

MattNM3E36 said:

We're toying with hosting ourselves, but is there a Broadband service any of you could recommend that has fast enough up/download speeds to cope with high traffic and lots of images, but would also work our more cost effective than paying a hosting company £189/mnth for a (dedicated!) server(after buying a server and spreading that cost across 1 yr)?

Just done some quick maths..

Your site is currently costing £2268 a year to host..

To buy/build a server capable of looking after a high image content high hit count could cost you (rough ballpark-ish) about a grand..

So that leaves you 1200 for a connection..

Now Bulldog (if you are central london that is) provide a 4096/400 Kbps biztime connection which comes out at £1,123.32 +VAT for the year..

Leaving you @ £2123.32

Now supposing you have a hardware failure on that server, you should really factor in some resiliance, probably a backup server, so that's another grand

leaving you @ £3123.32..

Then you need to sort out someone to look after the hardware (admittedly you probably already have some tech support in house, but this will place a load on that tech support team).. so factor in maybe another grand to cover man hours for the year..

leaving you @ £4123.32

I return to my suggestion of searching out another hosting company!

hope that helps

slinky

**disclaimer - all figures bar bulldog costs, are plucked from the sky!**

[JamieBeeston]

slinky said:

I return to my suggestion of searching out another hosting company! hope that helps slinky

And thats before you account for the AirCon, UPS, Generator, Power, Smoke Detection, Free Replacement Servers, 24/7 Support ETC.

Hosting inhouse is viable for the Very Rich, or the Very poor, for everyone else, its just not viable.