Dathorn has a Corporate plan: 6GB disk, 90GB bandwidth, $40.50 a month. Theirs are reseller accounts, so you can carve up your resources into as many domains, subdomains, and add-on domains as you like.

Disclosure: I’m a customer of theirs. Please contact me offlist for further impressions.

Actually, before I got into a major money crunch I used EV1Servers.net (corps like PHP.net use them)  and loved them very much.  A basic RHE or BSD server will run ya about a hunny and you get a terabyte bandwidth a month.  Granted you can get a bit more transfers from ServerBeach, I used to use a server there and had nothing but bad experiences with them as well as a few other friends who ran their businesses there.

Depending on how linux savvy you are, you can save yourself some $$$ from most dedicated providers by not using a control panel to do your work and go command line all the way.

Plus, you can always do hosting for friends for a nominal fee to offset the costs of a deicated server.  That’s what I wound up doing when I first got my EV1Server a couple of years back (when they were known as RackShack).

Les,

Why don’t you start asking for bandwidth donations from visitors? Make it easy to give by Paypal or whatever. I think a lot of people here appreciate all the time and money that you put into SEB, and wouldn’t hesitate to give a little back to help support it.

Wasn’t EV1servers the company that signed a Linux-IP license with SCO?

I’ve got an idea that might work. We all know that Les hates to take money for this, especially from advertisers and I can understand his reluctance. Why don’t you set up a “Friends of SEB” account, Les. You could have 5 or 6 spots open a month that people could reserve to give $20. If a list was made, people could budget their donations over the year so that you would have a good idea that your charges were covered month to month. This way you could afford that 2000 GB offer and many of us would feel less guilty for burning up your allotment.

For example, I might claim a pledge spot in January, April and July. Others would choose these months and/or others.

While I have no problem with you making a profit, if possible, from this venture, I would be less apt to see it as a labor of love and more a labor of return. Please don’t allow SEB to become a commercial concern. Give us a chance to help it continue to be a unique and inspirational place to read and comment.

Then again, you could sell a tee shirt for $40.00, making that a profit generator, unlike it is now.

Elwed, thanks for the tip. I’ll check them out and contact you in an email for your opinion.

DaveT, thanks for the heads-up. I’ll definitely take a look at them, though with a hundred bucks a month I’d definitely have to get some friends to go in on it with me. I could probably get away without using a control panel if I had to. I’m not super-familiar with Linux, but I know enough to get myself into trouble.

Zak, at the moment the bandwidth overages haven’t cost me anything, but I’m not sure I want to find out how much extra a 326% utilization would run me. I may take that route in the future, though, if there’s enough interest.

Not sure if there are difficulties with an American using a Canadian host, but my provider Halifax IT does a great job for me. The website states ‘Unlimited web traffic’, but I’m not sure if he can handle the kind of bandwidth you’re talking about.

$500 Canadian a year works out to about 75 cents US I think

Wasn’t EV1servers the company that signed a Linux-IP license with SCO?

Yes, they were one of the companies that thought it was a brilliant idea to get a Linux IP license from SCO. 

...or you could run your own web server. Although I would not recommend this if you’re on Windows.

Beware of unlimited anything, particularly disk space and bandwidth.

Running your own webserver isn’t a big deal, but on which network connection?

I dunno about your own webserver, the costs may not be worth it in the end.

Where I’m at right now, with a 16KB/s upspeed, the thought of upping, on average, 2 gigs a day makes me shudder.  I don’t know what Les’s connection is.

Side note:  Is that the Santa I remember from ‘02, that you couldn’t find last year?  Or is that last year’s Santa?

Les, send an email to my friend Andy at .  He might be able to set you up with something affordable.  He hosts my site and he hosts some professional ones as well.  Let him know that Jayne recommended him.

I use PowWeb.  They offer 5 GB of bandwidth a day.  I’m not sure what your daily usage is, but that might be an option.

Know your demographic, and peddle your reputation to get the service to pay for itself, with minimal work upon your part.

Get several long-term avertising accounts, and give them only a pay-up-front-for-1-year/6months option. 

EG: A number of non-profits/ngo’s would happily advertise here for memberships/one-off-contributions.

If you have enough time in your hands, you might want to check out this:
http://www.tenue.fi/2004/?n=ti_virtuaalipalvelin

I got my suspicions on the unlimited bandwith thing with that low price (about 30€ + tax), but anyways, it might still be worth checking out. Don’t know if there is similar ones closer to USA.. I suppose these are located in Finland, which makes it quite a long distance :b

I know nothing about what’s available and affordable, but before you go commercial please consider Brock’s proposal, or something like it.  You are putting lots of time into a very worthwhile endeavor, and it deserves, and would get, support from us.

Hey, a Paypal tipping jar shouldn’t be hard to set up.

What Elwed said - a paypal tipping jar would be a good place to start, along with the previous month’s balance of donations and expenses.  And as Brock said, many of us find SEB “unique and inspirational.“ 

Good luck finding a suitable host.  I’ve never needed that kind of bandwidth. 

Les, check out 1&1, they have everything from web hosting to root servers available.  For $49 a month you can get your own Linux server with 500 Gigs of transfer.  I’ve been a customer of the German counterpart for a couple of years, and they’ve been very reliable.

Fuitadnet offers 15 GB disk space and 175 GB monthly bandwitdth for $35.  I don’t know if the limit on subdomains and the rest would work for you Les, but here’s the link to their top package
Fuitadnet Platinum Package.

They offer reseller hosting at 15 GB disk/200 GB bandwidth for $50/month too.  That would probably better than the shared hosting I linked to above.
Shared Hosting Top Package.

Les, it seems like there is but a small price increment between a high-end shared account and a low-end dedicated server with a lot more resources to boot. If you’re willing to consider getting a dedicated server, I suggest you ask around who can do tech support and who’s interested in a cost/resource sharing arrangement.

Nudge nudge, wink wink.

I’ve had my domains with Cyberwurx since 1999, and I couldn’t recommend them more highly.  Not only are their prices reasonable, but their service is top-notch.  I’ve yet to put in a service request that’s taken longer than 8 hours to fulfill, and I can’t remember a single instance of downtime.

I just went over to their site and they’ve introduced blog hosting packages recently.  Though I think there might be others that would better suit your needs.

With all that said, I’d surely be willing to kick down a few bucks a month to defray the costs of keeping SEB afloat. :D

If you do end up managing your own server in any capacity (assuming it’s Linux) feel free to ask for help if you need to.  I run my own, and wouldn’t have it any other way (though my bandwidth usage isn’t nearly the same as yours, otherwise I couldn’t afford to host it myself).

I will look into all of these suggestions, thanks. I’ve read elsewhere that there have been some problems with the PayPal Tipjar service lately. Some folks having their accounts canceled for no apparent reason or something? I know Amazon offers something similar as well, anyone have any experience with that?

I appreciate all the offers for help. It’s nice to know that SEB is as valued as it is. I’d love to just set up my own server here and run it, but it would probably eat up most of my upstream connection and my cable modem provider won’t allow us to run servers on their network. When I win the lotto I’ll just have a T1 connected to my new home and then I’ll do it all myself.