Currently BOINCstats and PrimeGrid are hosted in a datacenter in Capelle aan den IJssel and I'm hosted in Roosendaal which as you can see is not very convenient.

In a short time there will be a brand new datacenter in Roosendaal, six minutes from my home. I can think of numerous advantages, but the most important one is, if there is a problem, I'll be there in no time.

Considering the business this company's business is (apart from datacenters they exploit communication towers for TV, Radio, Cell etc) I think power and temperature will be better than what we have now.

Of course, there's also a catch. It's more expensive (current pricing makes it twice the price of the current hosting). We now have a half rack, 24U, they only offer full racks (so no price reduction there). Price can maybe go down a little bit, but never as low as what we pay now.

I have one idea to overcome the price difference, which is to "rent" space in the rack to BOINC projects looking for hosting. They could pay their part of the power and the space they use. However, if that's as big a success as the BOINCproject service then it's doomed.

So, what do you think? Should we do this? Ideas about how to overcome the price difference?

Willy:

Your convenience and free time are important. . . try to get someone to share a rack with us, if not, I'll have to do more begging. . .

I don't know how many total members of Boinc stats there are,maybe if all donated at least $5 whatever currency this would alleviate for quite awhile your server/bandwith/local datacenter concerns. I will be donating some money here soon to try to help out,as I know every penny counts

IF you can be sure of filling that 1/2 rack to other systems, (and make sure they pay their share), then all well and good.
However, if there is any doubt, I'd stay exactly where you are.

Funding is tight all round at the moment, even begging may not produce the goods . . . . .

€ 320 / month is a lot of money. If you can't bargain a much lower price, I wouldn't do it.

Besides the mentioned sharing the rack/costs and more begging, you could consider to recruit permanent donators.
They should make their small amount donations directly to your banking account by a standing order payment every month or every quarter.

Of course in the year total this should be a bit more than what they normally would do once or twice a year,
but more often a smaller amount of money doesn't hurt too much and it cannot be forgotten.

One would also save the Paypal transaction fee.
Within the Netherlands and most of the EURO-countries this could be done without extra costs.

Would people be willing to pay (subscription) for an ad-less BOINCstats? Of course, the same thing can be done with an ad-blocker.


The nice thing about Paypal is that I can automate it fully. Via bank has to be done manually (or we would have to pay for a very expensive connector). Nevertheless, bank transfers withing the Netherlands have a better netto result than Paypal, but for other countries a fee may have to be payed by either the payer or the payee.

BTW: if people are wondering what I'm doing with the ad income and how much it is: it's used for emergency repairs to the servers, extra costs for which I do not ask donations (domain names for example), covering the taxes I have to pay over the donations I receive (!) etc. The how much I can not answer, afak this is prohibited by the Adsense policy.

Personally, for sure, and I think a good number of people will also. Although I suspect that number in the great scheme of things will be relatively small. When it comes right down to it, despite public pronouncements to the contrary, many will reach for the Ad-Blocker. In the latter lay a possible route, if the subscription price can be pitched less than the cost of an Ad Blocker then you might get better results (obviously some of the less good Ad Blocker's are free anyway).

Given the numbers that use BOINCStats and the level of support you have, might be worth thinking of a new level of Contribution Acknowledgement. At present donations of any size are given the same acknowledgement - the yellow crown. Worth thinking through a two level arrangement, possibly calling the second one "regular donor" with maybe a different coloured Crown. Need to pitch it carefully to make sure the infrequent/one off donor does not feel left out in terms of recognition, however there is a need to acknowledge regular donors who do donate much much more than a badge chaser who tosses in one euro just to get a badge.

Need to think it through a little more, perticularly the level of donation needed for the higher level Crown, and need to avoid getting sucked into more levels - that would be daft, it should just be regular and one off donors and thats that. Lots of variations on that theme, but the Crown colour change should be easy to impliment, just the donor level and its detection that needs thinking through. Recognition is a powerful tool, and a split level reward Crown would pull in more if pitched correctly.


Regards
Zy