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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
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    Scandinavia
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    Question what's the catch? .de vs .uk

    I'm trying to understand, what's up with massive price differences between .de and .uk hosters?

    why in the world would I want to shell out some hundreds of pounds per month, to some sodding uk company that puts IRC into the same group as child porn and spam, for a crappy server with a few hundred gigs of bandwidth if I can just get a MUCH better box with unlimited traffic for a LOT less money, say, from hetzner?

    there has to be a good reason for such treachery. what is it?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    NJ, USA
    Posts
    6,645
    Possibly overselling, which is a good probability. Otherwise, you could go out on a limb and say something in the area of that they get the hardware cheaper. They may get bandwidth or stuff from their datacenter cheaper so its less monthly also, it could be a whole different variety of things.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
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    Scandinavia
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    and is overselling bad?

  4. #4
    I think it has to do with the exchange rate for UK pounds vs USD$ or versus EUR...
    Am I wrong?

  5. #5
    Ah it's an interesting subject! I personally think it all comes down to different business models.

    Power prices are rising everywhere in Europe. So, we can rule that out. Bandwidth, Really cheap providers in the UK and in Europe are pushing most of it through peering, which is cheap. I have never tried to purchase large quantities of bandwidth in the UK. But if i was to ask a provider for pricing, let's say in Germany, if that provider is based in DCs in London I would expect almost identical pricing. Ok, bandwidth kinda ruled out. Hardware. The price of hardware isn't really that much higher in the UK than it is in the rest of Europe, infact, I would say for IT components England is cheaper. So, hardware ruled out.

    All that is left is your business plan. If you plan to make your hardware costs back in x number of months and stick to it, great. Then you need to worry about bandwidth costs and power. Some of the cheap providers could end up losing money in the long term and having a high customer turn over. If you look at high bandwidth offers in Europe saying x number available in 3 days, that's likely because someone is cancelling.

    If you take all this into account you will suddenly think, is this offer too good to be true?

    I think it comes down to if you want to make the same amount of profit on 200 servers as you do on 2000.

    Of course, this is just my opinion and I am sure people will disagree with it.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    London
    Posts
    2,409
    Quote Originally Posted by XOMY
    Ah it's an interesting subject! I personally think it all comes down to different business models.

    Power prices are rising everywhere in Europe. So, we can rule that out. Bandwidth, Really cheap providers in the UK and in Europe are pushing most of it through peering, which is cheap. I have never tried to purchase large quantities of bandwidth in the UK. But if i was to ask a provider for pricing, let's say in Germany, if that provider is based in DCs in London I would expect almost identical pricing. Ok, bandwidth kinda ruled out. Hardware. The price of hardware isn't really that much higher in the UK than it is in the rest of Europe, infact, I would say for IT components England is cheaper. So, hardware ruled out.

    All that is left is your business plan. If you plan to make your hardware costs back in x number of months and stick to it, great. Then you need to worry about bandwidth costs and power. Some of the cheap providers could end up losing money in the long term and having a high customer turn over. If you look at high bandwidth offers in Europe saying x number available in 3 days, that's likely because someone is cancelling.

    If you take all this into account you will suddenly think, is this offer too good to be true?

    I think it comes down to if you want to make the same amount of profit on 200 servers as you do on 2000.

    Of course, this is just my opinion and I am sure people will disagree with it.
    You hit the nail there - its not a question of bandwidth, compared to the high colo+power cost that we see in the UK currently, bandwidth prices are not important really.

    Countries like France (and Germany?) that base their national power infrastructure on nuclear, has a strong competetive edge here as they are not hit by the oil prices in the same way as we are here in the UK.
    Power/colo prices are 3-4 times higher than just a few years ago.


    d.
    Ditlev Bredahl. CEO,
    OnApp.com + Cloud.net & CDN.net

  7. #7
    I believe power costs are going up everywhere in Europe at the moment. I don't know if the UK is so much more expensive to start off with.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    London
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    Quote Originally Posted by XOMY
    I believe power costs are going up everywhere in Europe at the moment. I don't know if the UK is so much more expensive to start off with.
    colo/power prices for the same service from the same company (redbus) are much lower in France than in UK.
    Ditlev Bredahl. CEO,
    OnApp.com + Cloud.net & CDN.net

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Scandinavia
    Posts
    46
    so it all comes down to power expenses? or is it the sole fact of the server being hosted in UK that makes is n times more expensive?

  10. #10
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Posts
    354
    it could also be that land costs more in London (where a large % of uk hosts are located) so that would bump up the price to rent a building or buy a building/plot of land and make a building, and then the company needs to recoop that money etc

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