Im looking to start a web hosting company. But I don't want to dish out over $1000 for a Plesk License. So im looking for a good cheap or free web hosting control panel to use on linux. What are some that you guys and or gals recommend? The more features the better.
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The best cheap or free web hosting control panel?
- Thread starter jtg1993
- Start date
Random question but,
does it cost a lot of money to start a web hosting company?
Just for the hardware im looking at ~$1700 cdn for just the custom 8x wd 750gb iscsi target, and for 2x 1u barebone servers with a intel q8400 with 8gb ecc ram its ~$1200 cdn each, and if i want a dedicated firewall for it its another $~500 cdn (1u, celeron 1.8ghz, 4gb ram), and I still need a good 24 port gigabit switch and shipping from newegg, scripts/pages that i need written, plus other random crap that will be needed. Then I need a colocation provider and that ain't cheap either (for half rack (22u) with 100mbit unmetered its over $2000/month). So im looking at a possible $6000+ just to get it going. It will be alot of work.
Thanks for that long post. Ya its far from starting, im still thinking how im gonna make it different from others and how its gonna be setup, the prices...and a bunch of other stuff. It will be quite a while before it gets up an running. I have looked at a few colocation company's and iweb.ca seems pretty good but there over 2000km from where I am currently living so shipping or driving to the datacenter will cost quite a bit. But if web hosting doesn't seem like that good of an idea after thinking it through some more, online backup would be another option.
About the Dell Poweredge's, for the price of the basic Dell PowerEdge 1950 I can build 2x 1u servers with Intel quad core 2.6ghz, 8gb ecc ram each. So 1u barebones servers looks like alot better deal.
About WebHostingTalk.com, I registered a few days ago, I just need to read through it someday.
About the Dell Poweredge's, for the price of the basic Dell PowerEdge 1950 I can build 2x 1u servers with Intel quad core 2.6ghz, 8gb ecc ram each. So 1u barebones servers looks like alot better deal.
About WebHostingTalk.com, I registered a few days ago, I just need to read through it someday.
sdotbrucato
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2005
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- 1,722
About the Dell Poweredge's, for the price of the basic Dell PowerEdge 1950 I can build 2x 1u servers with Intel quad core 2.6ghz, 8gb ecc ram each. So 1u barebones servers looks like alot better deal.
Being a SMB Network Consultant, I can't stress enough how unwise a move it would be to use cloner boxes in production. You might be paying for for the Dells, but if you pay the extra $1k for the mission critical support, youre up and running in hours, instead of days. . .
Remember, youre going to be charging people to use your hardware... when it goes down, you have explaining to do.
I use DirectAdmin. It costs <$100 for a lifetime license (if you are eligible for internal pricing), which includes support. I haven't found anything else that's a better deal so far. You can use some of the free or open source ones, but if anything goes wrong you'll either have to pay out the ass for support or rely on the community to get you back on your feet. It's my view that when you have paying customers, it's important to have support you can rely on to answer promptly and effectively. If you look at it that way, it's like you're getting the software for free and paying $100 for lifetime support. Pretty good deal, in my opinion.
[H]exx;1034070168 said:Yeah ditto on the support. I just had a drive in one of our servers go "Predicted Failure" and had a drive sent to me in less than 15hrs...talk about a sweet turn around time....and at no cost to the company!
The other nice thing about buying a Dell (or any other non white box) is that there are communities out there that know the hardware inside out--especially with Dell Linux Servers--free support on Dell's mailing list. Everything from hardware issues to Linux on Dell server issues (drivers, OS, etc). If you are trying to accomplish something (software install, etc), chances are someone has already tried it on the same server and OS version....this makes your life easier.
As for management software for the server....I can't see paying for something when there is a free alternative that is solid, tried and true! Maybe it's just me...I'm comfortable with Linux (I build our own RPM packages for some things and put them in our own YUM repo), and I have modified BlueOnyx on our servers to a great extent.
I was looking at Dell Servers and decided I should probably get a dell. I priced out a R300 with 8GB ram, Xeon X3323 2.5GHz, 2x 160GB Raid 1 and its like $600 more then a custom barebone server and it has support so its worth it. But once you go over the 8GB, X3323 and 2x 160GB the price just sky rockets.
As for BlueOnyx I still haven't tried it in a virtualbox vm or natively on my spare laptop. I better start learning redhat/centos because Im good with debian/ubuntu but hopeless with redhat even though that was the first linux os I tried.