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Ok - this month it looks like the bandwidth and maintenance costs for the site are going to be around $110-120. This is larger than normal, and we all know that. Having said that, as ever, this place seems to be steadily growing in terms of usage, and while this is a peak, it's nevertheless a peak on what appears to be a generally upward trajectory.
Here are the alternatives for hosting at pair.com - who I've been with since the big bandwidth catastrophe at netnation.co.uk (and the horrifying $700 bill, which I'm sure a lot of people remember with 'fondness').
We are currently on the 'webmaster' account which has 400Mb/day traffic allowance for $30 a month. This month it looks like the overall bandwidth we're going to have used is around 600Mb/day. The excess cost is calculated at $0.40 per Mb - with 200Mb of excess, this amounts to $80, which plus the $30 maintenance works out at $110 - which I think is about £80. Not a vast amount of money, but money I don't really have nonetheless.
The options at pair.com are:
1) Developer (500Mb of bandwidth per day at 50$, excess costs are the same so the bill for the extra 100Mb would be $40 - total bill $90).
2) High Volume (1024Mb of bandwidth per day at 130$, excess costs are $0.30 per day, but let's be honest - that's almost twice the bandwidth we're using at the moment, so it doesn't seem like we'd ever get near to it).
3) Quickserve dedicated server ($249/mon) 1024MB/Day Traffic, but our very own server. The advantages with this one are that there is no one else sharing our CGI resources, which means that the board should (shock!) work properly, we shouldn't get quite such regular server errors and there's PLENTY of room for growth (comes with 30 GIG of hard drive space). Plus it comes with 250 separate e-mail mailboxes.
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Now ANY of these is a step in the right direction, but frankly I'm beginning to think that we should move the site to a High Volume account at least - that way we can be certain to have room to move for the foreseeable future.
More information on all of these options can be found on pair.com
Which is of course $130 a month to find.
Now I can set up a Paypal thing that people can sign up to that will take a certain amount of money from their credit card or bank account on a regular basis. Clearly with 130 to find a month, we'd only need 130 of you to agree to pay $1 (net) a month. Which doesn't seem like very much at all, really. Or, of course, we'd only need 65 of you to contribute $2 a month.
Now Paypal take a cut of each transaction, so it's not QUITE as simple or cheap as it might seem - but it's not that bad. I think to receive a payment costs 2.9% + 30¢ and to withdraw it to pay the bills costs an additional $1.50.
People can cancel their subscription at any time. There's loads more information over at paypal.com.
What do people think? |
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