Hi All,

I have been studying this web hosting business for over a year now and have been a web host for the last 6 months and I am of the opinion that a fair bit of server downtime, overload and other horror stories are caused by CGI scripts.

So I am going to offer a barebones hosting that is geared for performance and security and basic functionality;

20MB hosting space +
10MB pop3 mail box +
500 MB data transfer +
1 FTP account

for 12$/year
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No CGI
No mySQL
No Control Panel
No shopping cart
No imagemagik
and virtually no any frills

Web server, FTP server, DNS server, pop3 server and SMTP servers are all you get
===

The server is a very stable FreeBSD 4.4 with djbdns, Apache 1.3.22 , ProFTPd, PHP 4.1.1 and qmail

PIII, 256 MB RAM and 40GB IDE

It's in the peak-10.com data center and has been up for 58 days as of today without even a reboot.

You can see
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_u=off&mode_w=on&site=inn.valai.net&submit=Examine

My own site valai.net is in a different server at nac.net [with less than 99% uptime :bawling: ] and will be moved over by this week-end

The server load has been hovering between 0.00 and 0.02 most times!

Currently there are some 20 similar sites on the server and I plan to put some 100 sites and 500 mail boxes in all with an interim upgrade of the RAM to 512 and then let a good thing alone.

For those of you tech savvy, you can ping 66.129.95.38 and test the speed

The bandwidth is non-cogent and multihomed and I buy it at a pricey 2$/GB

=========

If you have any questions you can holler

Cheers
Balaji

The server load has been hovering between 0.00 and 0.02 most times!


I wouldn't expect that the server load would be very high if you don't have many clients on a server.. :)

But, I think you've got a good idea - I'm sure there are some people who don't need all the extras, and wouldn't mind their site not being slowed down by others' sites.

- $2 is "pricey" for non cogent, multi-homed bandwidth?
If that's the case, how can you give a person 1/2 GB of bandwidth for $1/month - the way I see it, you are barely making a dime.

nleavens,

:) Thanks for the post.

Yes on actual mathematics I dont make anything - but dont forget that I sell pop3 mail boxes at 5$/year for you@yourdomain.com

Secondly I have a low bandwidth prepaid on the server and overage is billed to me at 2$/GB. So I am expecting to make a 35% profit on bandwidth utilisation [assuming 65% average utilisation]. If all my customers use up all their allocated bandwidth I still break-even and wont go broke. It's an acceptable risk for me

Thirdly I have zero-overheads and have a fairly good job [that pays for my mortgage and family bills + my server rental and also lets me post in WHT all day! ;)]

My current 21 sites used up a total of 99 megs transfer last month and valai.net pulled a third of it!

I meant pricey compared to the 300GB at 129$/mo kind of deals. I would rather pay a higher price and have high-uptime rather than offer 5GB /50GB plans - I am old fashioned and am suspicious of things that look too good to be true.

I would like my data center and my dedicated server provider to make a profit too, merely from the very selfish motive of wanting them to stay alive and be there to support my business when it grows! :)

So far I haven't lost any clients although I have refused many sign ups [ Example http://identity-solutlon.com ; I would like some one to say whether this guy is legal or not! ]

Cheers
Balaji