Why pay hosting company when you can host it yourself?

I've heard this question from people before... So here is a breakdown summary for you, I'll update it as time goes on.

Right from the front, in case people are looking for a quick answer, I will be the first to say that if it was just the issue of "cost", I would stick with paying for hosting. This is going to be (and I knew it from the start) a pricey hobby of mine. Note, cost of actual domain names not factored in, as I'd need those either way.

What I was paying (well still paying till I'm satisfied with my configuration) though www.pair.com:

For about $20 a month, this is the services I got a very reliable service, who I would trust any site on their networks. I have been with them since 1997.

- 80GB/month transfer
- 1500MB disk space
- 10 MySQL databases
- 800 mailboxes
- 10 additional FTP logins
- Access by SSH and FTP
- 24/7 Telephone Support

So from $20 a month, I have now jumped to:

$108/month for internet (with taxes/fees/ext from Time Warner Business Class's Small Home Business Package), max 15meg down, 2meg up. Actual speeds have been anywhere fro 6-12 down (usually around 9), and a pretty consistent 1.7 - 1.9 upspeed (for newbies, this is the key speed for hosting!)

I ended up paying for a domain name to be controlled through DynDNS and paid them 27.50 a year This is just the CustomDNS service, which allows mapping the domain name to my current dynamic IP address. (yeah found out later i could have done it for free. Oh well).

I'll also need to purchase Mail Relay service for my server to use, as places like yahoo reject mail coming from my IP address. So far, looking at $15 a year which will allow up to 150/e=mails sent per month though DynDNS as well. I may find other solutions.

Why do I need this? Well without having a static IP address to have reverse mapping, many mail servers that check will reject any mail from my server based on the class of the IP address.

Now these last two could be avoided by getting a static IP address, but guess what, that costs an additional $40 a month... I'm crazy with my hobby so far, but not that crazy yet.

Now for the things people don't really think of, and these I don't have prices yet:

Electric bill... Well yeah running one additional computer may not seem like much, but in my case, I have a windows server, the linux server, and I have not even yet actually set up and started running my "real server" which has redundant everything from power supplies to fans (8 total i think), 4 drives, 4 CPU's, and old enough to be before people started caring about energy efficiency. To be honest, I most likely won't even run that one.

So then on top of the electric bill for the servers, there is also the higher electric bill for AC. Ok, you may not get affected by this as much if you normally run central air... But I'm in an older duplex, required window AC, and for some reason, this place is dusty as all get out! So I also run a good air filter. This has the benefit that it sits on the floor sucking up the cooler air, and blowing it straight up, into the front of both servers.

So....

So look at all this I will be paying, compared to just $20/month for a server that is great, always up, server class connections, and no worries on my part about equipment failure or backups (well, as with any hosting, I still back up from here, but if the physical server at pair died, they would have a backup to get it running. Me at home, all up to me!.

So yes, this is my first venture into doing this from home, everyone has to start somewhere...

Like I said I will post more about my experiences on this. Maybe this would make good blog material... Maybe I'll set up a blog on the server... Who knows.

-Greg