Quote:
Originally posted by dektong
I don't see how you can lower the cost just because the server load is lower. What really matters is your traffic cost. The best bet for you to offer download at cheap price is to use cogent bandwith, which will be more than sufficient for this purpose. And you know, you can get much lower than $1/GB for cogent.
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Our shared hosting prices are based off of server costs. We have a general rule-of-thumb when generating plans 'based' on the bandwidth and space used. We charge a certain amount for the bandwidth and space such that it incorporates the present and future costs of the server.
If we have 150 customers on a shared hosting server all running CGIs, PHP, and Mysql, the loads will be _significantly_ higher than a server not running those; not even running apache or proftpd but specialized softeware designed specifically for mirroring and downloading (I goofed in my earlier post). There would also be no need for SCSI drives, so 2 60-80GB IDE drives would be great.
As for lower than $1/GB for Cogent, I'm aware of what Cogent-only costs... but setting rock-bottom prices leaves you with little profit margins and no room for 'deals.' We gotta eat!
Multihomed centers cost a bit more per GB, too. Cogent-only is not an option for us right now.
Ultimately, though, the server loads (in this case) do make a difference -- we can _potentially_ transfer a much larger amount of data from this kind of server than from a shared hosting server with BBs and all sorts of CGIs and SQL queries being run and called. In the end, mirrorbox generates 5mbps of traffic for $1,000 and sharedbox generates 1mbps of traffic for $1,000 (it's the principle, not the #s).
Does that makes sense to anyone? Maybe I stand alone here...
Anyway, it's not the pricing I care about right now as I have an 'idea' of what to charge but nothing in stone. I care about whether we should go through with it or not based on demand.
Not many people seem to be speaking out saying they need it...