Consumer grade e-mail hosting options?

[David P. Schwartz]

Bob,

I've been researching that very thing.

I don't quite understand why, but the lower limit on co-lo and dedicated hosting seems to be $200/mo.  I don't see the benefit of
spending $2500 on a box to co-lo that's going to cost the same as if I got a brand new $2500 Dell server on a 3-yr contract at $200/mo.

Some places charge by the rack-inch, some by a 1/2 or full rack, plus excess bandwidth.  It's tough to find anything under $200/mo
that's either co-lo or dedicated.

However, I did find some folks with a very interesting "middle ground".  Check out these guys:

http://www.forsite.com/vds.htm

They have something called a "Private Server" option.  Essentially, you're getting 5% of a big machine that's configured so it looks
like it's a dedicated server.  It's $79/mo.  If you run out of bandwidth, though, each 5% "increment" is going to cost you and
additional $79/mo.  Which is ok, until you hit 3 units, which puts at (or over) the cost of a dedicated server.  (Which they also have.)

-David

Bob Cober wrote:

> How much for a dedicated server?  I am interested in getting a dedicated
> server at a host that has excellent connectivity.  Id like to put apache,
> tomcat, jboss, qmail,etc. on it and have the box dedicated to me.  Possibly
> even run some counter-strike server on it periodically.  I would
> administrate it myself through ssh.
>
> I was under the impression that this was upwards of $300+ month at places
> like rackspace.com.  Has anybody seen something similar for less?  Is it
> alot less if I provide the hardware?
>
> Also, any idea how much cox@work pro costs?
>
> Thanks for any info
> Bob
>