Managed Servers for Resellers

Homer

Perch
I was looking at the pricing for a managed server for the purpose of becoming a full blown web host. I know this is totally different than the normal reseller plans, but the price of the managed accounts doesn't make much sense to me.

Assuming I want to setup a Windows hosting company with SQL server support (no Linux, no Cold fusion). Here is how I see the cost working out:

Management fee: $199 /mo
Server fee: $79 /mo
Windows 2003 Server: $25 /mo
Accounts: $3.50 each - 25 minimum = $87.50 /mo
SQL Server: $195 /mo
Total: $585.50 /mo

This assumes you're running just one server and everything is on that server (web hosting and SQL Server). I don't know where mail servers would come into this plan.

You would need to charge each of the 25 accounts about $23.50 a month just to break even. So you would have to be talking about a larger operation to support the cost of the managed server.

So lets say we'll have 500 accounts. Thats an additional 475 H-sphere accounts (at $3.50 each) for a monthly cost of $1,662.50, bringing your total cost to $2,248 a month. Divide that by 500 and you have to charge $4.50 per account to break even. Now we're getting somewhere. But, can we run that many accounts (500) on one of these servers, especially if it were serving as both the web and SQL servers? I don't think so. That thing only has 512mb of memory. So am I missing something here?

Now lets assume I want to do the same thing using the JodoHost "reseller hosting" plans. I see the cost like this:

Platinum Host Plan: $140 x 9 = $1,260

I would buy 9 of these Platinum Host Plans because each plan gives me 60 accounts and 9 x 60 = 540. Everything else that I would need (unlimited SQL, etc) is included in the Platinum Host Plan.

$1,260 / 500 = $2.50 a month for each account, which is almost half the cost of using the managed server.

Can someone explain to me where my math is wrong? Why wouldn't I just use the Platinum Hosting Plan instead of the expense of my own server?
 
This:

Accounts: $3.50 each - 25 minimum = $87.50 /mo

is just a one-time fee

3.50 one-time per control panel and you keep them and reuse them...

Forgot to mention that you can't run H-Sphere on Windows
 
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