I agree. Hosting a revenue-generating Web site at home == No vacations + No sleep + No support.
Cheap (or free) hosting is the most expensive hosting possible in terms of the long-term costs:
No redundant internet connection.
No redundant power source (unless you own a generator already).
Poor environmental controls (cooling, air filtering).
Poor physical security (usually).
No backups (unless you do them yourself on a strictly-followed schedule)
No fallback server if your machine fails.
No security specialists on call.
No help desk.
Please consider all of these factors carefully before hosting at home. Hosting at home is inexpensive until you have a problem related to one of these factors. If/when you have a problem, then it becomes very expensive -- perhaps even fatal to your business.
Additionally, be sure your ISP *allows* you to run a server. Most consumer-grade internet service is optimized for download speed and not for upload speed. Realize that a server is the opposite of a client, in that it receives very short requests and sends comparatively large responses. Therefore, the impact of running a server on consumer-grade internet service with limited "upload" capacity can be quite large, and most ISPs do not allow it for the sake of their other customers.
Some ISPs will cancel your service permanently if you violate their terms of use, so be very careful...
Jim
