Yeah, well, I did what I did mostly 'cause i recognize that I don't have the name recognition to carry off the setup fees... your points as to the customers perception of setup fees are all very valid.

Really, it's less about margin, though, and more about credit. If I had more, it wouldn't really matter... but I don't, so it does.

for a while I was renting out whole servers at nearly co-lo rates... with the catch that the customer needed to pay a setup fee that would cover the parts cost of the server up front.

It was pretty popular, actually; I only stopped doing it because it put me in a bad place as a provider... thing of it is, sometimes you really do need to fire your customers. I don't want to be in a position, though, where I get a bonus for firing my customers.