Ok. What happens when the 3rd party service is acquired and shuts down, or shuts down due to lack of funds? I've got several machines that have been running non-stop for 3-5 years, and I've had several services I've relied on that have shutdown after being acquired, so there seems to be a need for a backup solution either way. People that derive their income from providing 3rd party services seem to have a bias in favor of 3rd party services for everything.
Edit: Why am I not surprised to learn that you work for a hosting provider? I'm not trying to pick on you, I've just noticed a trend that makes little sense to me.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but someone that disagrees with you.
I run multiple servers, at this minute there's 8 web servers online and 1 mysql server. Each server has a different purpose, some are long term and some are short term (taken offline after purpose served). Having to manage the cron jobs running on each server is a pain, having 8 servers all running different things is fine if you have the time and want to save money, but for me I'd rather pay $20 a month and outsource it to someone else. It's the same reason I use Postmark (http://postmarkapp.com) for my email. I could manage email myself but I value my time, same deal here. Same reason I use google apps for personal email, same reason I use Linode for servers instead of buying hardware and colocating.
Time is my biggest constraint not money, so spending an hour to save $20 isn't worth it.
>Having to manage the cron jobs running on each server is a pain
Agreed, that's why you would use a single, cheap Atom box sitting under your desk managing all of your cron jobs.
>spending an hour to save $20 isn't worth it
This isn't saving $20, it is saving $240 per year, so having your own hardware is break-even for year one. Year two is essentially free.
>it's the same reason I use Postmark [...] for my email
Email is an entirely different beast, dealing lots of config files, blacklists, and a kludge of MTAs/ MUAs. I completely understand outsourcing that piece of operations.
>instead of buying hardware and colocating
There is no reason such operations need to be run from a datacenter/ colo. Any office/ business connection should be adequate to run cron jobs.
The only reason I'm putting these thoughts out there is because I want to understand why things do not work out the way that makes sense to me. When people just down-vote, I can't understand what I am getting wrong. Please help explain what I'm missing, it would help a lot, thanks.
Nothing to do with work. I've been "in technology" for my entire life and professionally for the last 18 years. I have learned that whilst homebrew is satisfying an itch, sometimes there are people who do things better. I've had companies go bankrupt on me and that's why I have contingency plans in place to remedy things, but I sometimes like the fact I can pay someone to do a specific thing for me better than I could do it myself (or at least as well). I'm past the point in my life where it seems useful to spend my time doing something because I can, I'd much rather spend that time on something else (other work, family, friends, hobbies) if there's a viable way that makes good business sense.
Edit: Why am I not surprised to learn that you work for a hosting provider? I'm not trying to pick on you, I've just noticed a trend that makes little sense to me.