Why does it take over $320000.00 for a simple website? Its not like the limited graphics and simple user interface requires a team of engineers.
Free Republic may be one of the last lines of defense, and the enemy knows that.
It doesn’t.
Yes, I’ve also been thinking that this seems expensive. This is a very simple website. How much do service providers charge?. I’ll make a second donation for this quarter, but i would really like to know at what point is this web site in peril. It’s my favorite go-to for news; sometimes I suffer a shocking reality check, sometimes it’s comforting.
I believe they own and operate their own servers. As far as I know, every post ever made is still up on the website except ones removed by the moderators. Posters can and do embed graphics in their post.
Free Republic has to pay power costs for however many servers and work stations they operate plus whatever ISP fees they have. I also imagine that there are also techie costs.
What does this add up to? Don’t know, but I know it ain’t cheap.
It’s honestly more like “How much does it cost to make it worth someone’s while to keep this going?”. Data centers have driven all the prices up.
i used to run a manga site, i WAS a leader of a japanese manga translation site.
you get what you pay for, it cost me at least 1k per month for the websites’s bandwidth, and that’s niche, we actually breakeven from the ad’s and rest of the profit goes to buying japanese manga each month
this site have no ads, and insane among of traffic, plus the domain itself is probably a premium due to the traffic it draws.
“$320000.00”
That’s about the cost of employing one highly skilled technical person in Silicon Valley for a year.
Server costs
Tech support
Income
A large cost is the routers and servers in hardened Data Centers.
I'm retired from Verizon Business and worked at a Data Center for a few years. It is enough to boggle your mind. Data Centers are hardened, meaning the equipment is protected in Faraday cages against nuclear blast electromotive force (EMF). You have to pay big bucks for that.
California is expensive in every way. That’s why many companies have moved elsewhere. Cost of doing business got too high.
Also, I don’t think it’s ever been claimed to be a non-profit.
no idea. the site hasn’t changed in appearance nor functionality in over 20 years. There’s not even a mobile app, which is surprising in the year 2026.
They own it
They deserve to profit from it
Why is that such an issue for some