30, 20, 10 Cents: The #1 Way to Save on Traffic

Businesses are always looking for ways to increase profits. After all, that is the nature of business- providing a product or service that helps people solve a problem at a profit. Essentially there are two ways for a business to achieve this goal. The first is to increase sales or raise prices and the second is to cut costs.

One way of cutting costs in your business is to save money on hosting and colocation services. And there's a secret to this. Not all colocation facilities are equal. If you want to get excellent service, while at the same time lowering your costs, the best way to achieve both is host your servers outside of downtown.

The Suburban Advantage

Hosting in a suburb comes with a number of cost saving advantages. The biggest reason why it's cheaper to host in a suburb is because of the high cost of real estate downtown. In order to locate their data centers downtown, providers are forced to pay high prices for real estate. And since downtown is generally perceived to have a higher value than the suburbs, companies are willing to pay this premium.

Unfortunately, that's not always an advantage for the customer. In order to cover their costs, providers are forced to distribute their extra costs amongst their customers. This makes prices per rack much higher than they would be if the cost of real estate wasn't so high.

Suburban locations, on the other hand, do not have to pay such exorbitant prices for real estate and are therefore in a position to pass on the savings to customers. Not only are actual prices per rack considerably lower, but suburban companies are able to offer additional services such as free internal traffic with an internet account and included bandwidth.

Parking

In addition to the higher hosting fees and not including any bandwidth in the price, there are other hidden areas where you'll find yourself spending more money to host downtown. One such cost that no one really considers is the cost of parking. All space downtown is at a premium, and that includes parking space. When it's time to do some scheduled maintenance on your servers, you're going to find yourself paying up to $20 for parking. Do this a few times and suddenly you're paying an additional $100 a month for your hosting fees.

In the suburbs, on the other hand, parking is considerably less expensive. Since land is more available and there aren't as many people fighting for the same spots, you won't have to pay as much just to park your car. In fact, there's usually plenty of free parking right near the facility, including designated customer parking.

Time is Money

Getting to downtown can be a hassle in itself. Even if your business is already located downtown there are still many things you will have to deal with. Traffic is terrible downtown, even on a good day. It's not unlikely that you'll spend half an hour just sitting in traffic waiting for the light to change or for someone to make a left turn. These obstacles are unexpected, but at the same time, unavoidable.

The time you'll waste sitting in traffic, looking for a place to park and then hauling your servers into the building could be much better spent. When you waste your time fooling around, you're not working on your business.

Even though the suburbs may be perceived as farther away, in actuality it takes considerably less time to get there. A simple train or bus ride, going against the main flow of traffic, will get you there in just a few minutes. Once you're there you won't have to drive around aimlessly looking for a parking spot or waste time carrying your server from your parking space to the facility. With less traffic and more convenient parking you won't end up spending your value time fooling around with unimportant things. Instead, you'll be able to get done what you need to do and get on with your life.

The #1 Way to Save on Traffic

In short, if you're looking to save money on colocation fees, the number one way to do so is to host your servers in the suburbs. Not only will you find cheaper prices and better services, but you'll also save time and aggravation as well.