The cheapest host is not the only value in play. The Anarchive is hosted by a co-op today, and leaving purely on price trades away things a price list does not show. This page weighs the trade honestly.
## What the $40 Buys
Mostly not computing. It buys managed Nextcloud, and it buys a co-op that carries the pager — someone else notices at 3am. Self Host the Farm saves about €270 a year and transfers that risk to one volunteer. Price the volunteer honestly before calling it a saving.
## Co-op Alternatives
Staying inside the co-op economy does not require staying with the current service. Webarchitects, a UK tech co-operative, offers VPS hosting; the wider co-op hosting world (CoTech and friends) has more. The premium over pure-price Hetzner is the membership fee of an economy we say we want to exist.
## A Middle Path
The phases of Anarchive Hosting are separable. Trim the Coop Bill moves only bulk media to the cheapest store while the co-op keeps hosting the wiki — most of the saving, none of the exit. The question is only forced if the archive outgrows what the co-op can affordably serve.
## Links
- Webarchitects Co-operative 
— UK tech co-op hosting
- CoTech — the UK tech co-op network
# See
- Anarchive Hosting — the plan - Trim the Coop Bill, Self Host the Farm - Oneclick Orgs, Writing with Strangers — this site's earlier social research