The OP's question got me thinking about the expense/cost breakdown. I had calculated this earlier but figured I'd share the numbers in case its of any help. Fo

The OP's question got me thinking about the expense/cost breakdown. I had calculated this earlier but figured I'd share the numbers in case its of any help. For my project, I bought a new server ~3 years ago which I used for development and hosted from home for my prototypes etc. I paid around 1K for it. I'm finally ready, so I looked at the cost of Amazon EC2 vs. hosting. Two months ago I also bought a switch(new) and a server off Craigslist: total cost $550. My provider has a bandwidth cap, like most. Making certain assumptions about the amount of b/w each user is going to consume etc, I believe I can support 3M users/month off my provider for a little more than $200/mo before I am upgraded to the next b/w tier. For the same amount of CPU/bandwidth etc, making the same assumptions about users I'd pay ~$1K/mo on Amazon EC2. But I'd be able to support around 100K users/mo. Yes I know this is a huge number but its less than 3M. Which is why I'm not going the cloud route. Plus in the worst case I can sell or donate my servers for a tax write-off. I'd love to hear from others as well :)