This isn't the first, and won't be the last time I rant against shared hosting, SaaS, and all the other 'I want to be a landlord' scams out there.
This time in shared hosting: friend of mine wants to set up a tech stack for their new agency. Website, email, CRM, the works.
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Starting with the basics, we talked a bit, and arrived at the conclusion that, since they're not very tech literate, it would make the most sense to just buy a domain and set up with Google Workspace (easy!) and Google Sites (easy!). That's about $15/mth. The domain is about $20/yr, which gives us a total of $200/yr for that simple set-up.
A reasonably speedy VPS that would handle this load would be about $60/yr, plus domain we go up to $80-ish a year... but you only break even on this after two years of use (not including maintenance costs if you'd hire someone for that.) Note the amounts are cumulative.
| Year | Google | VPS |
|------|--------|------|
| 1 | $200 | $280 |
| 2 | $400 | $360 |
| 3 | $600 | $440 |
| 4 | $800 | $520 |
This is based on a quick estimation that setting up a VPS, domain, website and email server (just the tech, no content or graphical design) would take a few hours of sysadmin time. Let's call it $200.
The actual figure is only mildly relevant, as we can clearly see that as time passes, renting a VPS is much more affordable and sane.
Plus, you get to grow and expand your tech stack at no additional cost. There is a [long list of available free alternatives to garbage software.](https://github.com/RunaCapital/awesome-oss-alternatives)
And it gets much worse...
When they asked their friendly neighbourhood web designer about setting a server up for them...
They got the following offer (verbatim):
- SSL
- 5GB space
- 1TB bandwidth
- 3 emails
- unlimited use
- free FTP
All words which the average person doesn't understand. How do you even begin making sense of this if you don't grasp how the Internet works?
The price tag? A very not cool $50/mth. _For shared hosting with ridiculous limits._
I can't fathom how a person can justify having these restrictions on a $50/mth plan. For that money you can _easily_ rent a top of the line VPS that'll dance and sing to any tune you play.
**And how does it stack up? $600/yr makes for 600, 1200, 1800, 2400... you get the picture.**
For **the worst service** at the **highest price.**
This is right on par with SaaS and vendor lock in terms of how bad this is.
