Global Hosting Talk

I’m one of a two man company that caters for small businesses and making websites etc. So far I’ve been on a reseller plan with a company and its been working out OK (~$400 a year) which includes Plesk8, SQL Server 2005, IIS6 and hardly any problems (excellent customer support!).

I’m wondering about moving to a VPS because some of the jobs we’ll be getting next year will require us to manage our servers as they expose bits of functionality that reseller plans cannot offer. I’m willing to put $600-800 per year on this.

Our requirements are (minimum):

Windows 2003 or Windows 2008
Plesk
SQL Server 2005
MySQL (I guess we can install this)
20Gb HDD
50Gb Bandwidth
Suitable backup plan

Ideally hosted in Australia and the company should have a track record.

The reason for Plesk is that we’d like to offer our clients the ability to manage their own sites if they want to, but ultimately have control over them (like Big Brother – without the trashy bogans!).

Do you think I’m shooting myself in the foot by going to an unmanaged VPS and attempting for <$1000?