They should have to give us an estimate and (I think) a cap.

Estimate sure--cap, less so. Shit so totally happens in upgrades and migrations that I'd be mightily impressed if they gave a cap, but not that prone to rely on an estimate.

That person has been me, and with all the good will and circumspect nature in the world, estimates can soon be worth nothing.

So what's the minimum this is going to cost?

Are there any more emails between you and Kevin than the ones you posted?

Edited to add, the reason I ask is that if you haven't explained to Kevin that Buffistas is community supported and the cost is a big issue, you might want to. He might have different advice for us. If Buffistas were a money-making operation, paying iStrata to do the upgrade would be a no-brainer.

That's our entire exchange to date. Can't really hurt to explain our situation. Mightn't help, but it can't hurt.

Okay, can I wade in here? First off, Kevin ain't me. Except I am Kevin. If that makes sense.

However, I used to run a web hosting business.

If you're on Redhat 7.3 and SWsoft have discontinued support, it means there will be no security patches. This is an issue. Realistically, you could try to hold off, but you're looking at a run of about six months to a year and it'd get hacked most likely, or just plain fall over.

So you need to consider upgrading the server, or moving web host. You could sit Buffistas on any webhost which supports MySQL and PHP, I'd imagine.

Back to upgrading a server to CentOS (which is Redhat Enterprise without a paid license -- www.centos.org). It is complicated. It'd take around 2-3 hours from experience. They should be able to provide you with an estimate of time, and a capped quote. I'd also recommend taking a backup of the site files and MySQL database in case they cock it up.

Personally, though, I'd be tempted to shop around web hosts. It'd take a few hours for you to move the site, and it's a manual effort, but it'd probably be worth it. For the Serenity sites, Drive, etc, I use the reseller packages from these guys: [link]

You could sit Buffistas on any webhost which supports MySQL and PHP, I'd imagine.

We're running on a dedicated server. No way could we afford the prices at your link.

You don't need a dedicated server though, I'd imagine.

Someone wasn't here for the Hostrocket era.

Oh, there's a LOT of bad web hosts, the secret is finding a decent one. A bad one will trash a site sooner than I can cough. And I cough a lot. (A lovely vision).

Dedicated servers suffer from the obvious management issues of upgrades and such, is all, whereas if you have shared hosting that's managed for you (you just have to trust a company to do it).

I google around HostRocket and laugh, also. Seems some people don't like 'em...

I don't want to go back to the shared server situation. That was a bloody nightmare. How much money are we looking at needing to do this? I'm guessing we are probably looking at around $400 to be on the safe side.