Want a ready-made hosting company?
Word on the street is that you can buy Ekire for about $3,000-4,500. You’ll get “1200 users, 140 active servers, and almost 300 paying users”.
Unfortunately the operation is running at a significant loss. Apparently the servers are entirely rented, which means a pricey expense every month that eats significantly into the thin margins on those 300 users.
And those “paying users” may be people who have prepaid and now are owed a year’s service. 300 paying but only 140 “active”?
Reported revenue is $280/month vs $350/month in server costs alone. (The “140 active servers” are apparently the number of actively used VPSes – he doesn’t have a fleet of 140 servers).
Oh, and there’s also $150/month in an /24 lease.
Plus colo, network, WHMCS, Solus, fees, taxes..
Nevertheless, the owner posted that he’d “gotten +20 proposals and I’m choosing between them now.”
Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.
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