I’ve seen a lot of articles about how it costs a lot of money to stand up a SharePoint server. I will show that this is simply not the case. In fact, you can stand up a production SharePoint server for less than $1100 USD, including both hardware and software costs. Now, I am specifically refereeing to doing so in production environment, so while you can use MSDN licenses for development, you can not use those here. Still, $1100 for hardware and software with NO MONTHLY FEES is not too bad at all. Let’s see how…

We need to start with the base operating system. SharePoint runs on the Windows Server operating system. Most SKUs of Windows Server require a client access license (CAL), except for Windows Server Web Edition. Windows Server Web Edition retails for $470 USD per server. The only catch is that the 2003 version of Windows Server Web Edition does not allow you to install the database software SharePoint uses for its database. You can of course run the database on a separate SQL Server instance, but that is more costly. Since we want to do SharePoint on the cheap, I will show you another option.

Next, we need SharePoint. Since we’re doing this on the cheap, we’re obviously not looking at Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (SharePoint 2010). We’re looking at Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) or SharePoint Foundation. WSS and SharePoint Foundation are FREE add-ons for Windows Server. There is no additional server license cost or CAL associated with WSS. Once you pay for Windows Server, you get WSS or SharePoint Foundation for free, $0 USD.

Finally we need some hardware. Thankfully hardware capable of running WSS has really come down in price over the past few years. Windows Web Server edition can handle up to 4 CPUs and 32 GB RAM. while the more quad-processor systems are still on the expensive side, you can pick up a dual-processor, multi-core system with up to 16 GB RAM for a very reasonable price. And, if you go for a refurbished system from a reputable reseller, you can walk away with a steel. My colleague found this advertisement on Buy.com: Dell PowerEdge SC1425 Dual Xeon 3.6GHz 4GB 160GB CD 1U Server with 4 GB RAM onboard, expandable to 12 GB RAM for $320. Max out the RAM with an additional 8 GB for $260 and add an optional 3-year warranty for $50, and you’ve got a very capable SharePoint server for $630 USD.

Here’s the final price list: