Colocation pricing looks like rent for rack space, but space is the cheap part. What you’re really paying for is power, delivered to your cabinet as a fixed number of amps, plus the bandwidth to reach the outside world. Read every colo quote in that order and the gaps between providers start to make sense.
Below: how the bill is built, what our own Chicago packages cost, what four other providers publish, and the fees to ask about before you sign anything.
What you actually pay for
A colo invoice usually has five or six lines. Some providers bundle them into one package price, and some itemize every one.
Space. Measured in rack units (U), where 1U is 1.75 inches of height. You’ll see 1U or 2U for a single server, a quarter rack (around 10U), a half rack (around 20U) and a full rack (40U to 48U, depending on the cabinet).
Power. The line that moves the price most. It gets its own section below.
Bandwidth and IPs. Some packages come with an unmetered port. Others include a small commit billed at the 95th percentile, with overage charged per Mbps. IP allocations run from a single address to a /29 or larger.
Cross-connects. A physical cable from your cabinet to a carrier or another customer in the same building. Expect a monthly fee per cable and often a one-time install charge. If you only use the provider’s own blended bandwidth, you may never need one.
Remote hands. A technician who reboots a box, swaps a drive or reseats a cable so you don’t have to drive in. Many packages include a little free time each month.
Setup. A one-time fee for provisioning the space, power and network. It ranges from zero to roughly a month’s rent.
Power is the bill
The rack is a shelf. Power is the scarce thing.
Power arrives on circuits, and each circuit is rated in amps at a voltage. Multiply the two and you get watts. Here’s the generic math for one common circuit (an example, not any specific package):
- 20 A × 120 V = 2,400 W on paper.
- Electrical code limits continuous load to 80% of the breaker, so plan on 16 A, or about 1,920 W.
- On an A+B redundant pair, either circuit must be able to carry the whole load if the other drops. A pair of 20 A 120 V circuits therefore gives you about 1.9 kW of usable, redundant power, not 3.8 kW.
That last point catches a lot of people. Two circuits buy you redundancy, not double the capacity.
Providers sell power one of two ways. Some price per kW: you commit to a number of kilowatts, pay a rate for each one every month, and the space is almost an afterthought. That’s normal for large deployments. The other way, and the way we sell colocation, is per package: each package comes with a set number of amps and receptacles, and the monthly price covers them. There’s no separate power line on the invoice.
For a handful of servers I’d take the package every time, because the math is already done and the bill doesn’t move. Per-kW pricing is fairer once you’re running dense gear and know your draw to the watt.
Here’s why the allotment matters more than the sticker price. Colo By The U, a Dallas provider, publishes a 1U package with 120 W of power and an add-on price of $50 for each extra 120 W. Say your server pulls 360 W under load (an example figure; measure your own). That’s two add-ons, so the $125 slot becomes a $225 slot before you’ve moved a single packet.
So measure your real draw at the plug under load before you compare anything. Then ask every provider three things: how many amps, at what voltage, and how many receptacles come with the package.
GigeNET’s published Chicago colocation packages
These are the four packages listed on our Chicago colocation pricing page today. Every package is in a locking cabinet.
| Package | Monthly | Setup | Uplink | IPs | Power included | Free remote hands |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1U | $99 | $100 | 1 Gb/s | /29 (8 IPs) | Redundant dual-circuit power | 1 hour |
| 2U | $199 | $200 | 1 Gb/s | /29 (8 IPs) | Redundant dual-circuit power | 1 hour |
| Half rack (20U) | $799 | $1,000 | 1 Gb/s, 10G available | /29 (8 IPs) | Redundant dual-circuit power | 1 hour |
| Full rack (40U) | $1,400 | $1,500 | 1 Gb/s, 10G available | /29, /24 available | Dual 20A 120V circuits | 2 hours |
All four sit in our Chicago facility with a 99.5% network uptime SLA in writing. Each package comes with a set amount of power, as amps and receptacles rather than per-kW billing. On the full rack that’s the dual 20A 120V pair; for the 1U, 2U and half rack, the exact amps and receptacle count are on your quote. Bandwidth terms on the 1 Gb/s port are set on the quote too, so ask whether it’s unmetered or a 95th-percentile commit. Remote hands beyond the free time are available and quoted on request.
Look at the jump from 2U to the half rack. Going from $199 to $799 buys ten times the space, and if you’re running three or four servers, most of that space sits empty. Several 1U or 2U packages can be the cheaper way to hold a small cluster, and we can link them on a private network so replication traffic stays off the public uplinks.
What other providers publish
Most colocation providers don’t publish prices at all. These four do, and I read every number below from the provider’s own page on 2026-09-28. They’re list prices (“from” where the provider says so), and they change.
| Provider (location) | 1U | Quarter rack | Half rack | Full rack | Power stated on the page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudfanatic (Chicago)¹ | from $159 | not listed | from $1,699 (20U) | from $3,199 (40U) | “Flexible power options,” amount not stated |
| Sucura Networks (Chicago, 350 E Cermak)² | $125 | not listed | not listed | not listed | 1U: 1 A at 208 V, A+B |
| Colocation America (US sites incl. Chicago)³ | $75 | $399 (10U) | $699 (21U) | $999 (42U) | 1U: 2 A at 120 V; quarter: 5 A; half and full: 20 A at 120 V |
| Colo By The U (Dallas)⁴ | $125 | $600 (10U) | $1,050 (20U) | not listed | 1U: 120 W; quarter: 1,600 W; half: 2,200 W; all 208 V A+B |
¹ cloudfanatic.net/colocation, checked 2026-09-28. ² sucuranetworks.ca/chicago-colocation, checked 2026-09-28. ³ 1U plans and quarter, half and full rack plans, checked 2026-09-28. ⁴ colobytheu.us/pricing, checked 2026-09-28; setup is $150, waived on a 12-month agreement.
The sticker prices hide more than they show. Colocation America’s $75 1U includes 10 Mbps of bandwidth, which is fine for a DNS server and tight for almost anything that serves users. Colo By The U’s quarter rack comes with 25 Mb/s at the 95th percentile. Cloudfanatic doesn’t state the power behind its prices, so you can’t compare its full rack with anyone’s until you ask.
My rule: the cheaper the 1U, the harder you should read what’s in it.
Hidden costs to ask about
Get answers to these in writing before you sign:
- Power beyond the allotment. What does an extra amp or circuit cost, and what’s the most the facility will deliver to your cabinet?
- Bandwidth overage. Is the port unmetered, or is there a commit? If there’s a commit, what’s the per-Mbps overage rate?
- Cross-connects. Monthly fee per cable, install fee, and whether the carrier you need is in the building at all.
- Remote hands. The hourly rate and the minimum billing increment. A one-hour minimum makes a two-minute reboot expensive.
- Extra IPs. Price per additional block and what justification the provider needs.
- Setup fees, and whether a longer term waives them.
- Renewal terms. Does the price change at renewal, and how much notice do you have to give to leave?
- Receiving and storage. Is there a fee to accept your hardware shipment or hold spare parts?
- Access. Can you walk in 24/7, or are visits escorted and scheduled?
- Gear you still have to buy. Rails, power cables, a switch once you have more than one server, spare drives.
When colocation beats renting
Colocation wins when you already own the hardware, or can buy it cheaply, and you plan to run it for years. It loses when you’d be buying new servers for a short project, or when a single box is all you need and your time costs real money. I’d rent in that case.
We ran the full numbers in colocation vs dedicated server: a 36-month cost breakdown, so I won’t repeat them here. If renting comes out ahead for you, our dedicated servers are the other side of that comparison.
One category we don’t colocate: high-density and GPU deployments. A single modern GPU server can draw more than the roughly 1.9 kW that a redundant 20 A 120 V pair delivers to a whole rack. We don’t sell high-density colo, but if you ask, we’ll point you to a partner facility built for it.
FAQ
The published Chicago 1U prices we found run from $99 to $159 a month. Ours is $99 plus a $100 setup fee, Sucura Networks lists $125, and Cloudfanatic starts at $159. Compare the power and bandwidth inside each price, not only the number.
Usually rack space, a power allotment, a network port, some IP addresses and a little free remote hands time. Ours include a 1 Gb/s uplink, a /29 and one or two free hours of remote hands; the full list per package is on our Chicago colocation page.
It depends on the provider. Some bill per kW or meter what you use. Ours is sold per package as a set number of amps and receptacles, included in the monthly price, so ask what happens if you outgrow it.
Unless you live near the data center, you’ll use them eventually. Most jobs are small: a reboot, a drive swap, a loose cable. Our packages include one or two free hours, and extra remote hands are available and quoted on request.
Yes, that’s what a 1U or 2U package is for. Our 1U is $99 a month. Check its power allotment against your server’s measured draw first.
Send us your server count, measured power draw and bandwidth needs through the custom quote form, and we’ll tell you which package fits, or whether renting would cost you less.
