Dick, I hope something useful somes out of some of the menay suggestions kicked around in this thread.

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Mark:

Professional hosting is available for all levels of need that may be had at a price far cheaper than doing it one's self. (etc.).

I'm not convinced you can generalise that much.

I don't think my home hosting where the costs are electricity and a static IP address (I'd have ADSL anywat) that shared hosting I have/do use and some allowance for hardware replacement over time is that different. Folkinfo (although I had rather more than I needed) cost me more on the resellers account I used to use.

Both seem to have plusses and minuses.

Having now used both, on the plus side, I have far greater stability than I have had with shared hosting. This is perhaps in part due to a Linux vs Windows (I've not used Linux share hosting) thingy but also part due to not being at the mercy of other users, some of whom can go way over thier allocations (until caught) or a plain clumsy - something as simple as putting an asp script and getting the program stuck in a loop because say they forgot a MoveNext in a database operation can over time kill every user - even non asp users on the server. I also feel I have that little bit more freedam.

On the minus side, we have the what happens if something goes wrong questions. One (although since starting folkinfo, I have never had to make an unplanned reboot) the simpler what if it went down and I'm not around thought and on a more serious note, would I be as equipped as a professional host in the even of an all out DOS or other attack?

I think where costs would really tip the ballance for me is if I did something that outgrew my 256K upload limit. The costs here say for SDSL (if I could get it even) as far as I can make out would cease to make home hosting a viable option.

An alternative, to shared or dedicated hosting, I might also onsider in such a situation is co-loation. I've seen prices like prices starting at £25 pm for 1U with 100GB bandwidth in Mancester...