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Thanks all, keep it coming - nice to see a few people agreeing with me that the servers should be kept 'pure'. This I think is the real crux of the issue and as you say would have to be pushed hard in the advertising with the advantages made clear. Great idea regarding one click installs of some of the popular portals - it is a possibility but I think might be a bit unmanageable through the control panel. Would it be enough to provide a step by step tutorial in our support area and a link to the relevant files - if we made it a real step by step beginner friendly guide and fully supported it. I don't think we could manage to do a package like the one listed above for $10 ;) - our own costs would be close to that once you add in mail software licensing, stats software etc. but I think we could do it at around $15-$20 without having to oversell webspace or bandwidth.

Thanks for the continued input - all appreciated and noted. My personal view is that PHP / MySQL / Perl has no place on a .NET webserver, the basic IIS 6 / .NET implementation is a very solid beast and IMHO adding the additional services only compromises the server both resource wise and potentially security wise. The trouble is many customers seem to want everything and the kitchen sink included (even though they'll never use it) and when comparing plans they'll prefer the one with all the extras quoted on the web site - it's a dilemma for every host. It's my belief that you keep a faster, cleaner and more reliable server by sticking to the 'pure' MS technologies, part of this research is to ascertain whether a strong enough requirement for a 'pure' MS server exists in the market place. The point regarding pop3 mail space is an important one and perhaps reflects another difference between Windows and nix hosting in that on most companies open source hosting platforms it's normal for each server to run apache, mysql and smtp / pop locally on the server - this makes it easy for the host to allocate simple block of space for a customer to split how they choose. In the Windows scenario databases and e-mail are typically on dedicated servers separate from the web servers which is why you get X for webspace X for databases and X for mail - again something that can perhaps be managed through the control panel. Please keep the suggestions / comments coming - this is proving to be quite an eye opener and I'm grateful for the time your spending on it.

It certainly does - many thanks for your comments. Obviously cost is a big factor in anyones decision on where to place their hosting so is something that is forefront in our minds. However it WILL be more expensive than Linux / PHP hosting - which is all open source and essentially free for the hosting provider. By contrast the Windows / SQL licenses are actually one of the most expensive parts of our setup and we do have to pass on some of this cost to the end user. Would anyone care to expand on this and suggest the price they would be prepared to pay ? or what the limits would be ? The idea of multiple datases is a good one, in terms of licensing it costs us no more to offer 5 databases than 1 - it's just the resources used that cost money. I think the ideal would be for us to allow X MB of SQL space and allow the customer to divide this space up into multiple databases themselves - we'll have to write some new control panel code to make it possible but it certainly is do-able. Regards FP extensions, there are needed to publish not only from FP but from Visual Studio - though you can also just FTP the files up, personally I don't like FP ext at all as they open a real security hole :(

Hi all, We're an existing Windows hosting company and are currently researching heavily with a view to launching a new service aimed squarely at .NET web developers. We'd very much welcome your feedback on what you would like to see from a .NET host - is there anything that you feel is missing from current packages or any components or additions that make a .NET developers life easier. e.g. Should MS SQL be included in all packages by default ? Should the servers run PHP / CGI or would you prefer them to be 'clean' MS machines ? Are FP extensions important ( for VS.NET publishing ) or is this outweighed by the possible security holes inherent in FP ? This isn't intended to be a commercial post or spam and we won't be putting any link to the company here - we'd just welcom a discussion on what YOU would like to see from a hosting provider. All feedback very much welcomed, even if telling us to bog off :D