[Mike]

Hosting is fairly cheap to buy from an internet company, but I have had the idea in the back of my mind that I could do it myself. The cost I could pay for a hard drive, software, and a dsl connection would be excellent compared to that of a $15-20 monthly fee on a shared server, for a period of a few years adds quickly. This would incredibly cut back on the profit of my site. Although how do you feel on an appropriate speed to host your own site on and could this handle the bandwidth?

[creospace]

I guess you have to work out what hits you're expecting. Personally If you are prepared to spend $15-$20 a month on hosting you should get some very reliable servers and great support/service so I woudl have to ask is it worth the hassle of doing it all yourself?

[quinda]

You can get DSL for less than $15 a month? Woww... I play close to the equvalent of $80 a month for my cable connection in the UK.

I would say don't host yourself - unless you can be bothered with security updates for the OS / Server application you are running. Then theres backups, uptime issues (what if the server crashes when you're in bed) plus the fact that a DSL connection probably doesn't have the upload speed to handle a high traffic web site...

For a small site that won't get much traffic, maybe it is better to host yourself, but I'd rather be secure in the knowledge that my site will have good up-time and stability.