[davidw]

> A. If you are paying a monthly fee, what difference does it make if that fee is called a hosting cost or a retainer?

I have more latitude when I put the pieces together: hosting here, retainer there.

> C. If you only pay your experts when there is an emergency, there is no incentive for anyone to help you avoid having emergencies

That's a fair point, but on the other hand, it also seems that if you're paying an 'expert surcharge' on your hosting, your incentive is to get as much out of that as possible, whereas the experts, getting a flat fee, can't act as de-facto consultants without eating up all their margins that way. There's something of a conflict there. How do you guys define exactly what your role is?

Also, presumably someone is developing the code to be hosted there. The better they are, the more likely it is that they'll be able to do a good deployment and monitor it on an ongoing basis.