I wonder how much a business DSL connection and a server sitting in a Buffista's home would cost...

I just know that I used to take care of a server in a company that had 100 people using it all day and All I really had to do for maintainence was make sure the backups were performed and reboot it or just SQL on occasion.

I just guess I'm frustrated by the fact we don't seem to need the big honking option so much as simply being able to reboot MySql on occasion until our team gets a chance to figure out why it should go wonky all of a sudden.

Maybe I've not been emotionally involved enough, and don't understand the database issue.

Nothing to see, move it along, never mind, I guess.

I might also have a site or three that could move to Fangeek.

Quick question: The $10/month econony plan would allow me three domains. If I have four domain names that I want to all point to the same place, does that count as four domains or one?

That would count as one domain to us. For example here, Buffistas.org and .com point to the same place and they count as one domain. Buffistas.net points to a different place and counts as a second domain.

I wonder how much a business DSL connection and a server sitting in a Buffista's home would cost...

I'd say it's worth looking into but my company, the one that pays me a salary, runs a server on a T1 and still it's slow as molasses. Also, there's no redundancy in that scenario so you should verify how reliable that connection will be.

That would count as one domain to us.

Rockin'. I don't see a setup fee on your hostplans page. Is there one? Is there a setup charge to point a few domain names to an account?

No setup fees on new individual accounts. And there is no setup fee on pointing the domains.

I think I'm sold, though I wouldn't be able to switch for a month or two.

I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. It might be wise, if we proceed, to move this board first and do some tweaking before moving over a bunch of new accounts.

Good point.

I hope it's not rude of me to ask this, but why do you need a decision on b.org by Friday?

The deal that Steven and I made came with an expiration date. Therefore, I had to pass that deadline on to you guys.

Another option we should consider is iStrata. This is the new brand name for Netgate, the guys who have been hosting my web sites for the last five years or so.

I sent Netgate support an email asking about co-location or dedicated hosting and got this response from Kevin, the guy I've been dealing with ever since I became a customer of Netgate.

With the introduction of our dedicated server products co-location almost doesn't make sense. Most people want to colo some huge box that consumes (~5U) rack space. We still offer colo, although we have removed it from our site. The cost is $200.00 per month for 5U and 100K stream.

Compare that with our dedicated servers. We can offer you a 2.4Ghz box running Red Hat 7.3, 80GB HD, Plesk hosting control panel with a 100 domain license, fully automated software updates (in other words a fully managed server, both hardware and software with root access server), 1Mbps of bandwidth (billed at 95th percentile), and optional raid 1 for $129.00 a month.

We've been selling these servers to existing NetGate customers for about 6 months and everyone is extremely happy with them. You can take a look at our beta site at www.istrata.com (we're going to be marketing these under the iStrata name). Most of the information is correct, but we still have some work to do on the site. Let me know if you have questions.

If folks have questions, ask away and I'll forward them on to Kevin.