Can anyone tell me the monthly cost of hosting a massive website like ebay or amazon?

Please just the dollar facts people. I've been told web hosting can cost upto $50k per month. I just don't believe it. I may as well buy a blimming building and the web hosting system and do it my self if that's the case.

Can anyone tell me the monthly cost of hosting a massive website like ebay or amazon?
Like many people have said here, big web companies like ebay or amazon probably host and maintain their own sites and servers. Its cost effective for them since they are very big.





But if your starting out and you expect a lot of hits to your site, normally you would want to have a dedicate server for yourself. There are many companies out there who could handle this but one company that I have worked with is Rackspace.





http://www.rackspace.com/index.php





I find them to be very reliable, the fact that they have two full staffed tech guys checking and monitoring your server is great. If any issues arise, they are there 24/7 to keep track of everything that is going on. You are always in touch with the same tech guys directly if you have any questions or want to make any changes.





The expense per month varies on your business needs.


But they are not cheap...


Youtube was once their clients before Youtube became extremely big (they now host and manage their own servers)


Check them out, I highly recommend them.
Reply:The big dollars spent by those sites are for bandwidth, not the servers the site is hosted on. You'd have to build a communications company like Comcast or Qwest to not have that bill.





Unless you expect the traffic of a site like eBay, you won't have to worry about costs that high.





Not sure what they pay per month though.
Reply:yea thats putting data on their servers. GET your own servers. dell.com. then youll need a domain directing people to your servers when they type www.yourwebsitesname.com (or something else you know)
Reply:big website usually host their own sites so they dont pay monthly fees. They do however have to maintain their servers and that does cost them...