Server Host.

[Zamthos]

Hello guys, Harbinger's Safehaven got 50 or so people on today and the lag was horrendous, is there anyone out there who knows of a cheap company with good hosting, or that will host the server for free? I've talk to one person, they want an arm and a leg for a host, hopefully someone can help out, I think the server is going to expand like crazy and we'll need a dedicated host, thanks! ~Harbinger Zamthos

[Akkadius]

Originally Posted by Zamthos

Hello guys, Harbinger's Safehaven got 50 or so people on today and the lag was horrendous, is there anyone out there who knows of a cheap company with good hosting, or that will host the server for free? I've talk to one person, they want an arm and a leg for a host, hopefully someone can help out, I think the server is going to expand like crazy and we'll need a dedicated host, thanks! ~Harbinger Zamthos

I'm sorry but what I charge is NOT an arm and a leg, I actually pretty much give away hosting for the price of what server OP's get because I want this community to thrive. And I do not give VPS's away for free because ass-hats who have no concept of appreciation for a host have pissed me off and burned that bridge with me long ago, and once again I did that for the community.

My lowest VPS starts at $50 a month and that is incredibly reasonable with un-metered bandwidth and that hardware that drives the VPS and I host many in the community and that is pretty much giving it away. If you have a community that pitches in to help, it really is NOTHING. Kingmort paid $200+ a month for the longest time for his VPS. There's something to be said about reliability and performance.

I'm glad that your server is doing well, but you really need to check into the market and get a realistic mind frame on what dedicated hosting costs.

Expecting someone to be a free host is asking for trouble especially when you don't really know who is offering the service and the reliability of the host.

For < 100 people you can live on a 5-10 mbps upload and a fairly decent machine out of your basement like Hunter did for the longest time and pretty much still does, though he runs into bandwidth problems because he doesn't co-locate his hardware in any facilities that can support his upload traffic.

And if you think I'm being an ass, I probably am a bit, but I've done plenty for this community without asking for hardly anything at all and I continue to do so.

[Aonelyn]

50 bucks? That's 50% lower than anything you will find.

[trevius]

Yeah, you will not find a more affordable VPS that can come anywhere near the services Akka is offering. And, if you get someone else to host it for you for free, there is a high chance that they could decide they don't want to do it anymore, or somehow mess up their server and you could lose everything.

I use Akka's hosting and have for quite a while now. I used to run my server from my house, and I have put a ton of time into it, so it took me a while to even consider letting someone else host it. But, since I switched to using Akka's hosting, those concerns have gone away. His service is always available if any issues arise and the hardware and connection are extremely stable and reliable.

You probably couldn't even find professional hosting for a server for less than $100 unless it was extremely crappy. And even in the $100 range, you would still mostly be getting bad stats on the server and connection. Granted, it doesn't take a ton to run an EQEmu server, but decent upload bandwidth helps, especially as you get more players. Also, you don't want bandwidth caps unless they are maybe in the 1 terabyte per month range. With about 100 players on the server average, you will easily break 250GBs in upload bandwidth per month.

[Zamthos]

When I said arm and a leg I was saying that right now $50-$100 is a far stretch, however if I had the cash I know that would be the way to go, and yeah, I understand that some may have taken you for granted.

[Drajor]

Zamthos, grats on reaching 50 players! Clearly people are enjoying your server.
As your population increases, reliability and uptime become increasingly important - you will not grow without them as players will become frustrated and leave. Reliability and uptime cost $, it is really that simple. After you have done your research I predict you will be arrive precisely where you started.

[Zamthos]

Well, currently we're changing hosts, one of the other developers has 16GB of ram and better internet and he doesn't lag at out, we're just sorting everything out, and hopefully we can run around 100 people if necessary, this isn't permanent, just until we can get the flow of donations to buy a host from Akkadius, but yeah, thanks! The players make this server work, haha. ~Harbinger Zamthos