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Colocation Bare Metal Storage Gaming Contact
// Colocation vs Cloud

Stop Paying
AWS Tax.

AWS, Azure, and GCP charge you for every CPU cycle, every GB stored, and every byte you move out. Colocation and bare metal give you the hardware. You keep the savings. Columbia Colocation: bare metal from $99/mo flat with zero egress fees — vs. $400–$800+/mo for a comparable AWS instance.

Get Bare Metal for $99/mo → See Server Specs
AWS Comparable Instance / mo
$400–$800+
m5.2xlarge on-demand — before egress
→
Columbia Colocation Bare Metal / mo
$99
Dedicated server, flat rate, $0 egress
→
Your Annual Savings
$3,600–$8,400
Per server, conservative estimate
// Side-by-Side

Colocation / Bare Metal vs. AWS

Cloud has real advantages — but for stable, compute-heavy workloads, you're renting a Toyota at Ferrari prices. Here's what the numbers actually look like.

What You're Comparing Columbia Colocation
Bare Metal / Colo		 AWS / Azure / GCP
Cloud VMs
Monthly cost (8-core, 64GB) $99/mo — flat $400–$800+/mo
Egress / Data Transfer Fees $0 always $0.09/GB+ (adds up fast)
Predictable Monthly Bill ✓ — same every month ✗ — variable, surprise spikes
Hardware Dedicated — not shared Shared hypervisor, noisy neighbors
Contract / Commitment None — month-to-month Reserved instances for best pricing
OS / Software Freedom Any Linux distro — you own it Limited to supported AMIs
Root / Hardware Access Full iDRAC, full root No bare metal access on standard VMs
Storage I/O Local NVMe/SSD — no throttling IOPS limited, extra cost for provisioned
Colocation (BYO hardware) From $75/mo — your hardware Not available
Local support Direct — Quincy, WA staff Ticket queue, no hardware access

⚠️ The Egress Fee Nobody Warns You About

AWS charges $0.09 per GB of data leaving their network. If you're moving 10TB/month, that's $921 in egress alone — on top of your compute bill. Azure and GCP have similar structures. Columbia Colocation: $0 egress on every plan, forever. Not a promotional rate. Just how we're priced.

// Real Numbers

What You Actually Save Per Year

These aren't cherry-picked comparisons. These are realistic workloads and what they cost in cloud vs. what you'd pay us.

// Scenario A: Dev + Staging Server
Compute (8 vCPU, 32GB)~$280/mo$99/mo
Storage (1TB SSD)~$100/moincluded
Egress (5TB/mo)~$461/mo$0
Annual savings~$10,100/yr
// Scenario B: Game Server (64-player)
Compute (8 vCPU, 64GB)~$550/mo$99/mo
Storage (1TB NVMe)~$115/moincluded
Egress (10TB/mo)~$921/mo$0
Annual savings~$18,700/yr
// Scenario C: Storage + Backup Node
Compute (4 vCPU, 16GB)~$140/mo$99/mo
Storage (20TB S3)~$460/mo$200/mo
Egress (3TB/mo)~$276/mo$0
Annual savings~$7,200/yr
// Scenario D: Colocation (BYO Hardware)
Rack space (4U)—$199/mo
Equivalent AWS compute$600–$1,200/mon/a
Your hardware — paid off in1–2 yrsthen $0/yr
3-year advantage$20,000–$35,000
// Honest Comparison

When Colocation Wins. When Cloud Wins.

We're not going to pretend cloud is always wrong. Here's the honest breakdown of which approach fits which situation.

✓ Choose Colocation / Bare Metal When...

  • Your workload is stable and predictable — not spiky
  • You're running the same servers 24/7 anyway
  • Egress fees are eating into your budget
  • You need full hardware control — iDRAC, raw disk, custom kernel
  • You're running game servers with high outbound bandwidth
  • You need offsite backup storage with no retrieval costs
  • You own hardware that needs a home with power and connectivity
  • You want a flat, predictable monthly bill
  • You're in Central Washington and want local latency

✗ Cloud Still Wins When...

  • You need to scale up/down rapidly and unpredictably
  • Your traffic is extremely bursty (viral campaigns, etc.)
  • You need dozens of short-lived compute environments
  • Your team needs managed databases, CDN, WAF baked in
  • You're running serverless functions or event-driven workloads
  • You need 99.999% SLA with multi-region failover
// The Offer

Dedicated Bare Metal. $99/mo Flat.
Rack Space from $85/mo.

Bare metal: Intel Xeon E5-2440 v2, 64GB DDR3, 1TB SSD, iDRAC, Rocky Linux 9 — $99/mo, $0 setup, month-to-month. Colocation (bring your own hardware): 1U from $85/mo founder, 2U $150/mo, 4U $260/mo. All pricing and details on the colocation page.

Colocation Pricing → Bare Metal Details → Get a Quote
Bare Metal Server
$99/mo
AWS comparable: $400–$800+/mo
Dedicated · $0 egress · $0 setup · Month-to-month
Colocation (BYO Hardware)
$85/mo
1U founder · $150 2U · $260 4U
24-month rate lock · $0 setup · Full pricing →
// Get In Touch

Ready to Cut Your Cloud Bill?

Tell us what you're running on AWS and we'll show you what it would cost here. No sales pressure — just numbers.

✓ Got it — we'll be in touch shortly!
509-906-1250 [email protected]
Operated by Crescent Bar Internet, LLC — Veteran-owned ISP on Grant County PUD fiber, Central Washington.