How much should I pay for online storage?

November 1, 2005 11:02 AM

Online Storagefilter: I'm having difficulty sorting through all the options when it comes to buying storage space online. How much should I expect to pay?

I'm getting ready to serve up some additional content for my site and I'm having difficulty trying to figure out if I'm paying a fair price for storage space online? I think that I need about a 1 gig of storage space. I have three questions for my trusted fellow Mefites out there:

1) What should I expect to pay per MB or per gig for storage space.

2) Are there vendors that just offer storage, that I can access from my existing host?

3) Whom would you recommend? What should I look out for?

My many thanks.

posted by djdrue to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

You don't seem to be considering another factor, which is how often this data will be downloaded. Are you storing data for yourself or for 1000s of people? This will determine the monthly bandwidth you'll need, which will have a large impact on the price you'll be paying.
posted by null terminated at 11:08 AM on November 1, 2005

Response by poster: You make a good point. I'm not exactly sure what the bandwidth hit will be yet, and I'm aware of the different costs between storage space and bandwith space. Right now, I'm just thinking about storage, I was planning to address the bandwidth cost later, but perhaps I need to account for that now.

To make a rough estimation, the data will be downloaded in what I think will be about 40-60 mb chunks.

Thanks for helping me refine my question.
posted by djdrue at 11:13 AM on November 1, 2005

To determine a total reasonable montly cost, we would need:

1) The total amount of space you'll need (Sounds like 1gb)
2) The total amount of monthly bandwidth you'll need.

It sounds like you don't need any sort of hosting features?
posted by null terminated at 11:16 AM on November 1, 2005

Well, you can get by with something like a Dreamhost "Crazy Domain Insane" plan, which is $7.95/mo (2 years pre-pay - you're in this for the long run, right?) and gives you...

* 4800 MB
* +40M weekly for as long as you are a member.

I'm using it and it's a sweet deal.

If you go DH, show some love and tell them that 'abg' referred you, eh?
posted by unixrat at 11:26 AM on November 1, 2005

Yes the price of bandwith is the real cost. The physical storage is cheap. Mediatemple.net also has some cheap shared server options. I have a couple sites there and their service has been good.
posted by meta87 at 11:45 AM on November 1, 2005

Response by poster: I keep hearing that the physical storage is cheap, but once again, I'm not exactly sure what that means; meaning how much should I be looking to pay per month, per gig, or something like that.

Since bandwidth is aparently very closely integrated, I'll try to refine my estimate:

Say 250 downloads of a 60 mb chunk per week = 15 GB bandwidth per week

Which comes out to 60GB Bandwidth per month.

I had an addendum that I would take older content and make it available via bittorrent, to reduce bandwidth.
posted by djdrue at 12:10 PM on November 1, 2005

I'd also suggest the dreamhost $7.95 plan. This would give you 4gb of space and 120gb of transfer per month.
posted by null terminated at 12:23 PM on November 1, 2005

I haven't used it myself, but maybe using Gmail would work with the Gmail drive tool?
posted by benjh at 12:25 PM on November 1, 2005

I've been very happy with mediatemple. 2GB of storage with 30GB of "rollover bandwidth" per month will set you back $7.95/month if you're willing to pre-pay for two years. 5GB with 75GB of bandwidth is $14.95 per month. Here is some plan info. They run sales once in a while. I got in on the labor day sale (15% off).

I don't work them. I'm just a satisfied customer.
posted by wheat at 12:48 PM on November 1, 2005

Best answer: unixrat writes "If you go DH, show some love and tell them that 'abg' referred you, eh?"

A quick google search will net you discount codes worth $97 against that two years.
posted by Mitheral at 12:52 PM on November 1, 2005

As another data point, Jatol offers limited-support "economy" plans starting at $30/year for 1.5GB of storage and 30GB monthly bandwidth. They're quite highly regarded and I haven't had any problems with them.
posted by Sxyzzx at 6:05 PM on November 1, 2005

Response by poster: My thanks to everyone who helped with my decision making. I am in it for the long haul, so I think I can leverage the best cost by the Dreamhost solution.

Thanks again MeFites!
posted by djdrue at 9:23 PM on November 3, 2005

I know this has already been answered, but for 8 bucks a month (Flat, no set up fee, no pre-pay, nada), you can get 4 gigs and unlimited bandwidth at Strong Space.

Just a thought, even though I assume you just paid for 2 years with Dream Host...
posted by TrueVox at 6:44 PM on January 25, 2006