I made a fantastic deal on a great server with Godaddy.
Then I found out that I was going to have pretty much no support to speak of, unless I paid $150 a month for the privilege of then paying $100 per hour if I ever really did run into any problems.
Which I’m not gonna do.
I can do the basic day to day stuff… but as time goes on, if I run into any real issues, or just keeping things up… well, it’s learning hardcore server administration is really not the best use of my time and talents, assuming I could even do it.
But I don’t want to start over from scratch.
Server administration is very sensitive, obviously, so it seems unlikely to be able to simply hire at will… but… what am I gonna do? Wah.
Yes. They’ll charge about $100/hour for incident response.
Hiring out the work on a freelance basis - meaning that you’d be hiring some random dude off the street every time you have a problem - is a terrible idea. If you’re doing any kind of customization or running anything special at all, you’re going to want somebody who at least has a general idea of what your system looks like. Otherwise, every new dude is going to be starting from square zero every time, with a consequent increase in the hourly billing.
Not to mention the time wasted tracking somebody down, defining the problem, approving the statement of work, and signing the contracts. All of which would need to happen before the freelancer would even begin the troubleshooting process.
You should check to see what that $150/month maintenance agreement actually includes. Is it on top of the monthly collocation and bandwidth charges? Are they handling backups? Patches and upgrades? Security? System and environmental monitoring?
If your business is doing well enough (or is complex enough) to require a dedicated server in the first place, then it’s important enough to pay somebody to maintain the thing on a regular basis.
Godaddy is a commodity provider. Whatever they’re proposing is probably pretty close to a rock bottom price, based on what you asked for.
It’s would be like hiring someone to freelance pay your bills for you, but worse. There are too many variables (literally) on a server for someone to just log on and start “administering.”
Sure, there are a ton of people who do small business IT. They have a number of clients, they will do what you need to have done. Start with a google search, as other small business owners, or call your local independent PC repair place - that guy might moonlight or almost certainly knows someone who does.