[ale] Speakeasy ADSL for web/email server?

[George Carless]

Hi all,

I was wondering whether anyone might be able to give me a little advice 
on this:  I'm currently paying around $100/mo for a server at 1&1 (and 
I'm actually quite happy with them), plus an extra $60-odd/mo for my 
cable connection.  What I'm wondering is whether it might be advisable 
for me to switch to someone like Speakeasy with their 6.0/768 adsl 
package. 

This would give me better control over the server, including hands-on 
access to it (which is always nice) as well as greater flexibility (more 
ips, more options in terms of what I might like to run, etc.); however, 
I'm a little concerned about two things: 

First, and most important-- reliability.  What's Speakeasy's uptime 
like?  Am I likely to find myself losing service on a routine basis?  I 
don't absolutely need 5-9s kinds of levels of reliability (I mainly 
provide service for myself, some friends, and a handful of low-paying 
customers who, well, can deal with a little downtime every so often); 
still, I wouldn't want to be in a situation where the connection would 
flake out on a weekly, or even a monthly, basis.  So, for those of you 
who do use Speakeasy (or others; I'd be open to suggestions), can you 
give me some idea as to whether the reliability is there?

Second, I do provide my users with access to their own email accounts 
etc. through Plesk.  I'm not overjoyed with Plesk from a security and 
administration standpoint, but on the other hand it does make things 
somewhat idiot-proof for my less technical users.  Now, I suppose I 
*could* buy plesk, since it's not all that expensive, but I just 
wondered whether there were any suitably polished alternatives to it.  
(I know about webmin, but it never seemed quite polished enough to offer 
to non-techy customers)...

Thanks for any advice!
--George
--------------------------------------
George Carless ... kafka at antichri.st
Words are just dust in deserts of sound