Hello everyone, im brand new to this board. Im looking into starting a hosting site. Want to lease a server, get a control panel etc for my customers.

My question is that the software out there thats needed is really expensive, Is anyone out there using <EDIT> some of this expensive commercial software. Im talking Coldfusion server and Imail etc..

Steelejones

Almost all commercial software now has free alternatives. That is likely one of the reasons so many hosts run Redhat -- linux is the first thing people generally think of when they're looking for a free alternative to windows, and Redhat is the first thing people usually think of when they're looking for linux.

The most common combination seem to be Redhat + Apache + Sendmail + Mysql, all of which are free; more experienced sysadmins tend towards FreeBSD + Apache + qmail + Postgresql, which again are all free.

Originally posted by Steelejones
Im looking into starting a hosting site. Want to lease a server, get a control panel etc for my customers.

You could lower your initial costs if you start reselling.

Try to get experienced UNIX admin.