CoreSite pricing

With colocation, the servers belong to you, but the space they sit in belongs to someone else. You pay for the floor area your machines occupy and the electricity they consume in a facility the provider operates. CoreSite runs 30 data centers totaling over 4.8 million square feet spread across 11 US markets, and its buildings host over 44,000 direct customer-to-customer links, per CoreSite.

Of the 48 metros we track, CoreSite shows up in 10 of them with 28 sites, according to PeeringDB. Los Angeles LA1, at One Wilshire, is the most connected of the bunch with 335 networks and 4 internet exchanges, enough to rank among North America's five most connected colocation buildings.

CoreSite breaks a colocation price into 4 pieces: space, power, connectivity and services, per its pricing guide. Power is measured in kW, which just means how much electricity your gear draws at any moment.

There are 2 ways to get billed for it. A flat rate plan has you promise a certain number of kW each month, and going past that can trigger extra fees. A metered plan bills you for the power you actually consumed, so the total shifts from one month to the next.

Picture a rack as a tall metal frame holding 42 equipment slots; a slim server fills just 1 of those slots, called 1U. To get the monthly figures below, we start from a published list price for a full rack and then add the going local rate for every kW of power beyond the base, drawing on CBRE data. Treat them as rough guides, not firm offers.

City	CoreSite sites	Asking rent per kW, monthly	Monthly cost, full rack at 5 to 10 kW
Silicon Valley	7	$200–$275	about $1,450–$3,090
Northern Virginia (Ashburn)	5	$190–$235	about $1,420–$2,790
Los Angeles	3	$175–$250	about $1,390–$2,900
New York	3	$190–$235	about $1,420–$2,790
Chicago	2	$195–$225	about $1,440–$2,710
Atlanta	2	$185–$200	about $1,410–$2,520
Denver	2	$155–$175	about $1,330–$2,330

Racks pulling 10 to 20 kW cost more, since extra power is what drives the bill: expect roughly $2,110 to $4,080 monthly in Denver, and in Silicon Valley the range runs to roughly $2,450 to $5,840. A cage, a fenced, lockable floor section that fits many racks, running 100 to 250 kW lands around $15,500 to $43,750 monthly if it's in Denver, or $20,000 to $68,750 for Silicon Valley.

CBRE quotes those rents for deals of 250 kW and larger, so we lean on them to gauge what extra power costs on a single rack. Vendr has found Equinix billing $150 to $300 for each kW a month beyond a cabinet's included allowance, which matches those rent levels.

A full rack isn't required. Providers post list prices for their smaller packages, and every one bundles in a small amount of power, so the local per kW rent only applies to whatever your equipment draws past that.

They aren't. Nothing locks you into a term, and the services simply renew each month, per CoreSite's billing documents. Each service bills once at setup, and after that you pay by the month for as long as the service stays yours.