And was wondering, what is about the minimun priice you could pay for one?

Thanks

Games Creation,

You will see a wide variety of pricing starting from $29-hundreds of dollars per month.

If you are looking at starting off, you can get a 1GHz machine, 256MB memory, 10GB drive, 100GB transfer for around $40 per month.

I know some people that offer servers like that. Just let me know and I will get you their contact information.

Yes, as Jonathan said, they range quite a bit and start really cheap. Some servers are upgradeable and some are not so you might want to choose wisely especially if you start small.

It's better to pay a bit more and get more quality than get a cheap one

I would have to agree hadley although if it is just for a couple of sites you would not need to get a Xeon 2.8ghz with 2gb ram

You can get a decent server that will host a couple sites fine for around $50-60/month.

It also depends on if you want a managed, semi-managed, or totally unmanaged box.

I'm going for a managed server (because right now I don't feel like my server admin tasks are solid enough to provide really good client support, so I'm "keeping the training wheels on" for a little while longer), so I'm paying more per month - but I know the network team, I know the quality of work they do, I know the quality of support they provide, and I'm more than happy with it. In a few years, I may be able to suggest moving to a different environment where the servers aren't managed and our monthly per-server costs will be lower - but until my admin-fu is much stronger, I'm sticking with a managed option.

You'll also pay less if you get an EIDE drive versus a SCSI drive. I've been trying to find someone who's used both in a shared-hosting environment and can tell me the actual differences they noted, in terms of performance; but thus far no one's talking.

SCSI drives are good for performance but for a lower cost you can get an IDE Celeron with 256meg for around $40 - and it ain't great, you'll get one disk, a bit of transfer and no backup (both actual backups & support) look into managed servers is best and try not to go for the lowest, go a couple of steps up.

How much extra (or total) would you think I'd expect to have to pay for a server with about these things:

512mb Ram
Min. 600mhz
Can be linked to an IRC server
Hard drive space doesnt really matter too much at this point

I see ServerMatrix now has $59 servers if you pay $200 in setup fee's. Hehe, I got that deal in Dec without the high setup but anyrate that is low.

turnkey,
What are the specs of servers at $59?
They couldn't be that powerful, could they?
Even with the high setup it seems very low for a server in SM

$59 Server -
SuperCeleron 2.4
• Intel Celeron - 2.4 GHz
• 1200GB Bandwidth
• 99.9% SLA Guarantee
• 1024MB RAM
• Red Hat, FreeBSD, Windows
• Orbit™ Support Portal
• 80GB ATA 100 HDD
• Control Panel Software Available
• Managed Services (Silver)

Pick Your Price:
• $59 Monthly / $299 Setup
• $79 Monthly / $199 Setup
• $99 Monthly / $99 Setup
• $119 Monthly / $49 Setup

Interesting pricing structure there. That's one way to make sure that customers who sign up are going to be there for the long haul (rather than hopping after a few months...which I suppose some people do, deal-shopping.)

How is ServerMatrix in terms of service, anti-spam (clients not finding their email blocked from other servers AND server-side spam filters), management, etcetera?

http://www.dinix.com

Nuff said. I'm sorry but I have been with many companys and by far the best has been DINIX. If people disagree with me and have a free server I will rate theirs too over a months time. But I'm sorry Dinix is the best not the cheapest but best bang for the buck thus far.

Do you know how to manage your own box?

Manage the security, updates bla bla? Or are you going to need someone to do that for you?

Because that's where it really gets expensive. If you need a manged server expect to add 50.00/m - 100.00/m just for management. (And I mean to hire someone to admin your server for you.) There are plenty of companies that offer this service.

If you need help finding a management company, or even a place where you can register an already fully managed box - just le me know. I know of plenty of them.

As for unmanaged servers... you name the company and I've probably been with them at some point.

BEST *CHEAP* servers will be found at http://www.nocster.com. Don't even bother looking at some of the other cheap server hosts like FDCServers (they attempted to scam me,) or www.Managed.com. Managed.com is just a joke.

But rememeber, when you go for a cheap server, you get just that, a cheap server.

What is your monthly budget? I will help point you to a company that will work within your budget.