Advice for a start-up (VPS, Dedicatedm, Co-hosted?)

I am almost completed on my website, its similar to facebook. I am expecting to have perhaps 500-600 people my first month. It's a LAMP Setup. the users images aren't too big (<20kb after I compress them, and its just really blogs and member searches)

Looking for some advice:

1) Should I use my 2 Dell Poweredge servers one a Mysql server, and the other the Apache server (specs: dual pentium III 800mhz, 1gb ram, Raid 5 and 2 Network cards, 130gb space) and host my site from my house until I get enough traffic to justify $100/month on co-location hosting. (I have cable internet) (Free, but typical cable bandwidth 65ms ping, 3megabits down, 0.7 megabits up)

2) Use my VPS III account at 1 & 1 (quad core amd (faster than my piii's), etc.. 1gb ram, 4gb burstable, 50gb space, can handle the traffice if needed, and never down) $60.00/month

3) Get a dedicated server with similar specs to #2, though there would be about 100gb space. $300?month.

My budget is less than $80.00 a month until I have money coming in from it.

Solution 1:

when launching a service, it is often easier to start very small until you get a good understanding of the footprint and your bottlenecks. Not knowing exactly what your app is, I'd opt for #2, and then see where it goes.

If you keep tiering in mind while building your application, there shouldn't be any big problems here. If you use a standard OS and solid build documents (how to get your app going on a new system from start to finish), you can usually migrate to a new host with ease.

Solution 2:

If you have an $80 budget and VPS III costs $60, then that looks like the best deal.

When you get $500/month, get the dedicated server.

Solution 3:

Don't run it from your house. In as crowded a space as "Facebook competitor/clone" is, a slow website will result in near-instant death for your site. You can't afford to lose your early adopters to a downed cable modem or 3 kb/sec transfer speeds.

Solution 4:

Consider something like Amazon EC2 or RackSpace's cloud offering. They offer you near total control of you application environment and the ability to grow very quickly if you need it.

Solution 5:

I will go with option 2 first and later option 3 if the site got very popular..