Chicago colocation — from 1U to full racks, in a SOC 2-certified facility.

Our Chicago colocation pricing comes as four flat packages. Each one has a monthly price and a one-time setup fee. The monthly price already covers the rack space, the power that comes with the package, a 1Gb/s uplink, a /29 of IP addresses and some free remote hands time.

The sticker price is only part of it. Five things decide what colocation really costs you.

Space. A rack unit (1U) is 1.75 inches of height in the cabinet, and you pay for the units you reserve whether they’re full or not. The big step is from 2U to a half rack: $199 to $799 buys ten times the space. If you’re running three or four servers, several 1U or 2U packages can cost less than a half rack that sits mostly empty.

Power. We don’t bill per kW. Each package comes with a set number of amps and receptacles, and the monthly price covers them, so there’s no separate power line on your invoice. The full rack gets dual 20A 120V circuits. For the 1U, 2U and half rack, the amps and receptacle count are on your quote. Measure what your servers draw under load before you pick a package, because power, not rack space, is usually what caps how much you can fit.

Setup fee. A one-time charge for getting your space, power and network ready: $100 on the 1U, $200 on the 2U, $1,000 on the half rack and $1,500 on the full rack. You pay it once, not every month.

Bandwidth. Every package has a 1Gb/s uplink, and the half and full racks can go to 10G. Bandwidth terms are set on your quote, so ask how the port is billed before you sign anything, with us or anyone else.

Remote hands. Our on-site engineers can reboot a server, swap a drive you’ve shipped in or reseat a cable. The 1U, 2U and half rack include 1 free hour, the full rack includes 2, and extra time is quoted on request.

For the long version, with how power circuits work and the fees to ask any provider about, read colocation pricing explained. If you’re still deciding whether to own hardware at all, our colocation vs dedicated server cost breakdown runs both options over 36 months.

A 1U slot is colocation at its smallest: one rack-mounted server, 1.75 inches tall, in a locking cabinet in our Chicago facility. It’s $99 a month plus a $100 setup fee.

It suits a few kinds of people. You own a server that’s been living in an office closet on a business internet line, and you’re done worrying about it. You run one box that has to stay up, like a mail server, a DNS or monitoring node, a backup target or a small database, and you’d rather it sat behind UPS and generator power with engineers on site around the clock. Or you want to try colocation before you commit to a rack. One slot shows you how shipping hardware in, remote hands and support work with us before you move anything bigger.

Here’s what the $99 package includes, straight from the card above:

• 1U of rack space in a locking cabinet
• A 1Gb/s uplink
• A /29, which is 8 IP addresses
• Redundant dual-circuit power
• 1 hour of free remote hands
• A $100 setup fee, charged once

Two things aren’t on the card, and they’re the two to ask about first: how many amps and receptacles come with the 1U, and the bandwidth terms on the uplink. Both are set on your quote. Send your server model and its measured draw under load through the colo quote form, and we’ll tell you whether it fits the 1U or needs a bigger package.

One slot isn’t always the right call. If you’d be buying a brand-new server just to colocate it, renting a dedicated server is often cheaper over a few years; the 36-month cost breakdown shows where the break-even lands. And if you outgrow one slot, you don’t have to jump straight to a half rack. Add a second 1U or a 2U, and we can link the packages on a private network so traffic between your servers stays off the public uplinks.

We’ve been in business since 1998. The packages on this page are for our Chicago facility; our data center locations page covers the rest of our footprint.