Top of the line hosting costs?
February 9, 2009 12:17 PM Subscribe
My boss wants to know what top companies pay for web hosting. I realize most would likely host internally, and that prices vary wildly. But lets just pretend that a Fortune 500 company wanted to outsource hosting of a non-database site. (Less than 20k visits a month, maybe 2GB space.) How might I go about figuring out what type of pricing they might come up against? Bonus for information online that might list specific top companies and what their costs are (or roughly are.)
Response by poster: Right - assuming a low monthly transfer - under 20GB. In my mind I agree with you rhizome, and am thinking max $100-300 is about right. But I am struggling to point at something that backs up my opinion.
posted by parma at 12:28 PM on February 9, 2009
posted by parma at 12:28 PM on February 9, 2009
Top companies pay anywhere from 200k to 2M a month for their internet presence...
20k/hits a month is in the user space, not the e-commerce public internet presence space.
posted by iamabot at 12:28 PM on February 9, 2009
20k/hits a month is in the user space, not the e-commerce public internet presence space.
posted by iamabot at 12:28 PM on February 9, 2009
Call Akamai and pretend to be a major company. Microsoft used Akamai extensively. So does EMC.
However, for 20K hits/month and 2GBs of storage, you're almost in shared account hosting territory that would be under $50/month. There's simply no comparison to Fortune 500 companies unless you have really high transfer rates--like offering movies for download transfer rates.
posted by fatbird at 12:29 PM on February 9, 2009
However, for 20K hits/month and 2GBs of storage, you're almost in shared account hosting territory that would be under $50/month. There's simply no comparison to Fortune 500 companies unless you have really high transfer rates--like offering movies for download transfer rates.
posted by fatbird at 12:29 PM on February 9, 2009
Does this help? Wikimedia Foundation spent $537,204 on web hosting for year end 2008 (fiscal June 30).
PDF of their financials- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4c/Wikimedia_20072008_fs.pdf
posted by Paleoindian at 12:39 PM on February 9, 2009
PDF of their financials- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4c/Wikimedia_20072008_fs.pdf
posted by Paleoindian at 12:39 PM on February 9, 2009
But I am struggling to point at something that backs up my opinion.
That's because you don't have the number that is most relevant to your question: transfer. More than 2GB storage is included in all but free hosting plans (Geocities, et al), so that's not a factor. CPU is not going to be a factor for a static site. Akamai is not a factor, since they are a Content Delivery Network and not a hosting provider, and it doesn't sound like you need a global performance solution anyway. Heck, it doesn't even sound like F500 is a factor, so I don't know why you're using that as your benchmark. What you need is something that works for your company, which has different requirements than other companies. This doesn't mean you don't want big-company performance: a multihomed provider, 24hr support, etc., but those are pretty common these days.
But from what I gather, once you possess the right numbers you should call up Rackspace and get a price from them. They'll be a pretty good indicator of the territory you're in, though likely you will be in their lowest tier of bandwidth/storage. Many large companies use them.
posted by rhizome at 1:12 PM on February 9, 2009
That's because you don't have the number that is most relevant to your question: transfer. More than 2GB storage is included in all but free hosting plans (Geocities, et al), so that's not a factor. CPU is not going to be a factor for a static site. Akamai is not a factor, since they are a Content Delivery Network and not a hosting provider, and it doesn't sound like you need a global performance solution anyway. Heck, it doesn't even sound like F500 is a factor, so I don't know why you're using that as your benchmark. What you need is something that works for your company, which has different requirements than other companies. This doesn't mean you don't want big-company performance: a multihomed provider, 24hr support, etc., but those are pretty common these days.
But from what I gather, once you possess the right numbers you should call up Rackspace and get a price from them. They'll be a pretty good indicator of the territory you're in, though likely you will be in their lowest tier of bandwidth/storage. Many large companies use them.
posted by rhizome at 1:12 PM on February 9, 2009
Bandwidth and storage space is very nearly irrelevant to this question.
The important question is: How much uptime will the host provide? 98%? 99.9%? 99.999%?
That will determine how much a F500 pays.
posted by Jairus at 1:19 PM on February 9, 2009
The important question is: How much uptime will the host provide? 98%? 99.9%? 99.999%?
That will determine how much a F500 pays.
posted by Jairus at 1:19 PM on February 9, 2009
Top companies pay anywhere from 200k to 2M a month for their internet presence...
2 million a month? I'd like to see the data on that.
posted by niles at 1:19 PM on February 9, 2009
2 million a month? I'd like to see the data on that.
posted by niles at 1:19 PM on February 9, 2009
$300 a month will get you a dedicated server and 1 TB of data transfer monthly at Rackspace.
http://www.rackspace.com/solutions/managed_hosting/configurations/index.php
posted by COD at 1:26 PM on February 9, 2009
http://www.rackspace.com/solutions/managed_hosting/configurations/index.php
posted by COD at 1:26 PM on February 9, 2009
I should mention I'm not affiliated with Rackspace in any way - it was just the first place I thought of to look for a representative price.
posted by COD at 1:27 PM on February 9, 2009
posted by COD at 1:27 PM on February 9, 2009
2 million a month? I'd like to see the data on that.
Facebook just dropped 100 million dollars on servers, and it's certainly not going to last them four years.
posted by Jairus at 1:30 PM on February 9, 2009 [1 favorite]
Facebook just dropped 100 million dollars on servers, and it's certainly not going to last them four years.
posted by Jairus at 1:30 PM on February 9, 2009 [1 favorite]
A top company will not be running a run-of-the-mill static HTML site - period. They will always be running a dynamic site that runs on some database platform, with a load balancer and multiple backend webservers (bare minimum).
See: http://www.rackspace.com/solutions/managed_hosting/configurations/index.php
View complex example #2.
There is no benchmark for this because each 'solution' is different; and I doubt many F500's actually pay for a line item "hosting cost" -- its either rolled into a support contract from a developer, hosted internally, or otherwise transparent.
posted by SirStan at 1:35 PM on February 9, 2009
See: http://www.rackspace.com/solutions/managed_hosting/configurations/index.php
View complex example #2.
There is no benchmark for this because each 'solution' is different; and I doubt many F500's actually pay for a line item "hosting cost" -- its either rolled into a support contract from a developer, hosted internally, or otherwise transparent.
posted by SirStan at 1:35 PM on February 9, 2009
If you're a Fortune 500, then you do it properly: it will reflect terribly on you if the website goes down.
Static content means easy to scale, but you still need redundant hardware whether this hardware is shared or not.
So the key here is high availability. It may be important to you to have your own servers if you are worried about confidentiality. Budget for two servers, plus a few hours admin time per month.
posted by devnull at 2:00 PM on February 9, 2009
Static content means easy to scale, but you still need redundant hardware whether this hardware is shared or not.
So the key here is high availability. It may be important to you to have your own servers if you are worried about confidentiality. Budget for two servers, plus a few hours admin time per month.
posted by devnull at 2:00 PM on February 9, 2009
We charge a certain Wall Street bank holding company $3000 per month to host a low-traffic Web site on 2 servers, and we charge a consortium of top financial-services companies $5500 per month to host a low-traffic Web site on 3 servers. These are negotiated fees on long-term contracts that include system administration (but not application support) and bandwidth, on mid-range managed servers at Verio behind firewalls managed by IBM.
posted by nicwolff at 3:06 PM on February 9, 2009
posted by nicwolff at 3:06 PM on February 9, 2009
I helped build the web site(s) for a relatiely well known industry magazing with a dynamic site, and their hosting costs -- for multiple web servers, a dedicated DB server, a backup DB server, and all the other assorted trimmings, the bandwidth, etc -- come to about $15K per month. Their contract with Akami is above and beyond that.
As others have noted, doing a static site rather than a dynamic site will bring down your costs in some ways but very VERY few top flight companies are actually going that route. In most cases, what you're paying for in that price range is really uptime and the promise of someone to call at 3am who knows your name already.
posted by verb at 3:13 PM on February 9, 2009
As others have noted, doing a static site rather than a dynamic site will bring down your costs in some ways but very VERY few top flight companies are actually going that route. In most cases, what you're paying for in that price range is really uptime and the promise of someone to call at 3am who knows your name already.
posted by verb at 3:13 PM on February 9, 2009
I don't know about a large company, but I know some small ones (serving maybe a few hundred intermittent users, reliably) that pay $500-$1500 a month. I would only hope that a Fortune ranked company would pay a lot more than that.
posted by Ookseer at 4:55 PM on February 9, 2009
posted by Ookseer at 4:55 PM on February 9, 2009
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posted by rhizome at 12:21 PM on February 9, 2009