Why is Hosted Disk Space So Expensive?

dhclab49 asks: "Recently, I wrote a data-driven web application for a customer, and when it came time for them to select a hosting company, what I found was that most hosting companies charge a LOT for disk space. Most of them have accounts for $10-$30 per month, a bit more if you add in a database account. However, they almost all limit you to around 250MB of disk space, with extra space costing like $1/month per additional MB of storage. The app I wrote manages the customer's workflow and is meant to allow them to generate PDF documents and store them online, so I really need a few gigs. In an era where hard disks cost about a buck a gig and are getting cheaper by the day, how can hosting companies charge $1000 per gigabyte per YEAR?! And are there any alternatives out there for hosting a data-driven website at a reliable datacenter with a few GB of space for under $500/mo?"

Comments

cost of backup + admin?

[blackcoot]

disk space for gigabytes worth of data is a relative non-issue --- it's possible for home machines to hold a terrabyte or more worth of data. the question is, how much does it cost to back that data up? my dad sells storage area networks and tape backup systems and i can tell you that there's a lot more than just having some monkey cpio / tar the filesytem --- there's a lot of potentially very expensive hardware and software involved for full backup stuff. just my $0.02

There is a lot more than just HD cost

[GenBradly]

Anyone who has or currently works in the hosting industry knows there is a lot more to the cost of operations than just HD space. Of course, when you use the word, "Datacenter" are you then talking about high-speed SCSI drives in some sort of RAID array? With that, even HD's can get expensive. Colo is the way to go, just setup a cheap server with big IDE drives and maybe an ARAID or something and get someone to stick it in their room for $200 a month.

Look At The Whole Picture

[nathanh]

In an era where hard disks cost about a buck a gig and are getting cheaper by the day, how can hosting companies charge $1000 per gigabyte per YEAR?!

Because disks are cheap but backups, power, controllers, arrays, racks, floor space and *technicians* are all still expensive. Be very wary of any company that offers "cheap" disk storage; they're almost certainly inexperienced and/or untrustworthy. $1000/gig sounds about right.

Because people pay it

[linuxwrangler]

I have noticed the same thing - cost for disk space seems way out of line but the answer in part is that it costs that much because people are willing to pay for it.

But don't assume that raw disk cost is the most important factor. ISPs generally host lots of sites on a bunch of pretty generic standardized boxes.

Here are some other factors that will drive the cost up:

Good hardware: RAID/hot-swap/SCSI is going to cost a lot more than a discount IDE drive.

Maintenance: It's not just the cost of a single drive - it's the parts and labor cost of replacing failed units as well.

Backups: Whatever you store they have to backup so they have to consider all the costs associated with data protection.

Machine capacity: If they have sized their standard machine to host, say, 200 sites and partitioned out the data space accordingly then you can think of someone who uses 10 times the normal data quota as really using up 10 users worth of capacity on that machine as a whole. Where there are bandwidth guarantees a similar situation exists.

I'm sure there are other considerations as well but considering the price pressure on ISPs these days I'm sure that you could find plenty who would offer cheap disk space to get you as a customer if they would make money doing it.

Providers

[pipingguy]

I'd like to see some kind of online comparison of the major providers' services.

-cost/month
-control panel?
-MBs
-monthly traffic
-how many subdomains
-how many email/aliases
-can I do stuff.example.com vs. example.com/stuff