How much would you be willing to pay per month for Furnation-like web hosting?

This is called "having connections." Those who don't have connections like you do will not have that luxury.

Aside from Furnation, what other Furry hosts are there these days?

As a matter of fact, Nexxus DOES pay about $1200 for the lines each month, plus $200 for electricity to run twelve servers and keep them cool, plus the cost of an apartment big enough to hold all of the equipment and he still has to find time to work eight hours a day as well as work on keeping the system updated.

Latest news is he might get the new SDSL lines in sometime in the next week. Once they are in and working, the site will be back.

Ever heard of a generalization?

Don't be so easily insulted. The "you get what you pay for" was directed primarily at people who host commercial (read: for-profit) sites, especially those who host them on services like Geocities, Tripod and the like. It was not directed at general, non-profit, fannish artists/writers who house their content on sites like Furnation, nor the people who provide aforementioend sides, and especially not at you specifically. I don't even know who you are. Although if you want to be insulted by my sort of "crap talk" you're more than welcome to be.

As for it being massively unfair to volunteers who give their time and/or money to help any cause, you know full well that was not the intended target or meaning of the remark, so don't even try that tactic.

But, since you've gotten me thinking about it that way, let me apply my "you get what you pay for" statement directly to the Furry fandom in general, and you in particular:

Like everything else fan-wise (this does not exclusively apply to furry, by the by, it could be Pern, it could be Star Wars, it could be X-men), be it a BBS or a list-serve, a website or a webring or a MUCK, it is a labor of love. Sites like Furnation are no exception. Labors of love are universally expensive, time-consuming and difficult to continue in because of politicking and general constraints of reality (When it comes down to paying to colocate a server and paying to have a car, it's an easy choice). Some people love it enough that they'll continue in it for quite some time, replacing HDs, writing checks and enduring abuse by people who see the need to deride the service for whatever reason (Won't allow the artist's lactating herm vixens on the page, or won't set up to support credit card transactions, or just doesn't like having some user or another on the machine who moves 1.6 gigs of data in three weeks, stepping on all the other users). Eventually everyone gets fed up with it (politics), or has a catastrophe (failed equipment that cannot afford to be replaced, lost job, etc), or has something else come up that just prevents them from continuing to persue this hobby. What happens? The site shuts down. The users got a value, all right, they paid nothing and you the provider paid everything, going in the financial hole for this thankless task. That's value to them for sure.

The individual who provides these services, be it Feren for Cornwuff.com, Nexxus for Furnation, Jake McDermott of Skunked or even you has more than a right to take his toys and go home, as far as I see it, when you're providing a service to numbers of people for free and get nothing in return but grief for your efforts and dollars. And the people who whine about it are SOL either way. What will happen when YOU lose your job, are in an accident that requires you to buy a new vehicle (or worse, which I won't talk about because I've no wish to see that happen to anybody), or have to move? You cannot honestly tell me that if it comes down to it you will not pull the plug on your services (You may do everything in your power to avoid it, but if it really comes down to it, that monthly cost or your own well-being, you'll pull it) if that's what you have to do to keep your home or your vehicle or your health.

Users can say that somebody who was providing a server and then withdraws their service a'la Skunked "didn't have their heart in it." But that's BS. They gave, and gave, and gave, and got nothing in return.

So why does "you get what you paid for" apply in this scenario? Because you are one lone person providing a service. Things that center around one lone person in the fandom, when it comes to services provided for free, rarely last, usually for the reasons listed above. With a company, they have 1)Other people besides yourself paying in, augmenting their income and offsetting expenses, 2)Because of item 1, the provider has a VESTED self-interest in continuing to provide this service (It brings them money), 3)Service contracts that make sure you, the user, do not get screwed should something go awry (As opposed to a free site, which when it shuts down leaves the users high and dry without a site at all), and 4)A NUMBER of people involved in the project, which offsets the problems that can be caused when one of them decides to move on. If one of the sysadmins at UUNet decides to move on, there are others who can cover and take his place until a new one is hired to replace him. My site does not go away just because Joe Bob found a better deal elsewhere or got tired of taking orders from his boss. Free Furry hosts do not have this redundancy -- when the person providing the service goes away, 99 times out of 100 the service does too.

You can argue that because you host it at an ISP you have that coverage of multiple employees, redundancy, service contracts and all that I mentioned. And you know what? You'd be right. But all that still revolves around one thing: YOUR almighty dollar. And when that dollar disappears, for whatever reason, so do all those features that it bought. If you go away, so does your site, because I guarantee the ISP isn't going to continue to host it for free. It's against their interest. So, again, we're back to revolving around one person, who has no vested interest in seeing the site continue (He's not being reimbursed or helped for the amount of capital he's laying out), and as I said before that is a Bad Thing for commercial sites that are trying to bring in a profit and ensure their own survival.

The moral of my story is this:

For general users and people who do not host "commercial" furry sites, things like Furnation are fine. I applaud Furnation. Heck, I ENVY Furnation in a way, because I don't believe my site will ever be as popular as some of the sites it hosts. But, if you are a commercial site (like the 70+ meg one Aureth mentioned looking for a free place to host on via alt.fan.furry), attempting to drive revenue, you better be prepared to spend a little money to ensure your ability to make a little back. Why? Well, when Joe Bob's Free Furry Site loses its DSL connection because of construction down the street from his apartment, you're losing business and customers. You're losing profit. If you'd paid for a commercial host, like Valueweb, you'd be fine because they have redundant connections to the 'net, and it's in THEIR best interest because of their contract with you to get back up and running. They have full-time people dedicated to the task of keeping you up and available, not some overworked, harried Furry trying to fix it between work and bedtime.

My apartment complex has an interest in recouping the cost of building it, so they charge me money to stay there. However, to make SURE I continue to live there and give them money that helps them recover their cost, they provide me with certain services. For example, if my kitchen sink breaks, they fix it in a right quick way. Why? Because it keeps me happy. Keeping me happy keeps my money around, and keeps them in the black ink rather than the red. My movie theater provides me with entertainment in exchange for my money. If I complain because something was amiss, I get reimbursed for my trouble -- they want to keep me happy, because they know doing otherwise will cause customers to go elsewhere and they'll ultimately fold.

Try doing that with somebody who is spending HIS money to provide YOU with a service. It'll be at his leisure, I guarantee it. He has no motivation to try to keep you around. If anything, he/she more than likely wants you to go away and get off his already overtaxed system.

Blood from a stone, my friends. Blood from a stone.

If you don't like your ISPs terms of service; shop around.

That was one of the first things I checked when shopping for an ISP. (FYI there were 5 ISPs in my small town when I went shopping. Two took themselves out of the running with terms of service, one because their site was offline when I went to check TOS, and the choice between the remaining two was made mostly on price.)