Renee,
I'm still not following what you are proposing, sorry if I'm being thick. It seems that you want to have a professional support staff serve at your pleasure, but you're only willing to pay $16 per month for the privledge.
Even if the company is committed to providing the level of support you desire, the numbers involved make it inevitable that at some point, your going to loose to the law of averages and get no, or worse, bad support. (How many $16 per month customers does the company have, and how much staff to support those customers and run operations?)
What I do is I co-locate my server. I used to work for a CLEC, when I was there I built a room that has so much bandwidth in it that my mind is still boggled. (Its measured in Gb/s not Mb/s <devilish grin>) I rent space from them, and electricity. That costs me ~50/mo. I pay for the bandwidth I use, and of course I had an in, so I may get a better price than some, but $50 per 64Kb/s channel is not out of the question for the average Joe. There may be a logrithmic equation for pricing, so it starts out higher, and tops at $1,200 per month per t1 equivelance. I bought a couple of low priced Intel boxes from my buddy who builds them. All told my total expenses currently are around $250 per month (box payments included, on a 2 year note). I have a couple of friends who do web development, so the part they chip in currently covers all my costs (net cost = 0) and my time is my contribution to the whole thing.
And I make money developing solutions for business, and sometimes hosting those solutions at around $75 per month (to me). If I ever get into bigger bandwidth I'll make money on banner ads or something to cover the costs.
Right now, I'm no where near capacity, so I'll make a living, if I ever get there. (If it sounds like I'm trying to convince myself that I don't need to get a job, you're right. <G> I love the commute, down the stairs, and the dresscode is just right most days, bathrobe.)
BTW, I only do the hosting for some old buddies of mine who resell the service to thier clients. This was not a pitch, just a suggestion of how you could offset the costs in order to get the level of service you want/expect. How many friends do you have that would pay ~$25 per month to have a virtual web server hosted on your box if you were their sole means of support for that?
My 2 cents;
John
