A quarter rack in a UK data centre starts at £119 to £250 a month on published price lists, a half rack at £209 to £425 and a full 42U rack at £259 to £695, all before VAT. Those are space prices. For a small IT service provider or software company, power is what moves the bill, so the useful comparison is the monthly total for the kilowatts you will actually draw, plus bandwidth, remote hands and the contract term.
What does a quarter, half or full rack cost in the UK?
Three UK operators publish rack prices openly enough to compare. Netwise's colocation calculator lists a lockable 10U quarter rack at £119 a month, a 20U half rack at £209 and a 42U full rack at £259, with power charged separately. VeloxServ's Midlands rack pricing starts at £225 for a 9U quarter rack, £425 for a 20U half rack and £695 for a full rack, excluding VAT, on a minimum 12-month term.
Fast2host's Cambridge colocation page lists a 10U quarter rack from £250, a 21U half rack from £425 and a private 42U full rack from £650 a month. It describes these as indicative starting prices, with the final quote depending on power draw, bandwidth and contract length, and VAT not included.
Published starting price of quarter, half and full racks
Each operator's listed monthly starting price for each rack size, excluding VAT, checked on 15 November 2026
View the data
| Category | Netwise (space only) | VeloxServ Midlands | Fast2host Cambridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarter rack | £119.00 | £225.00 | £250.00 |
| Half rack | £209.00 | £425.00 | £425.00 |
| Full rack | £259.00 | £695.00 | £650.00 |
The headline gaps are wide, but they do not compare like with like. Netwise prices space on its own, while the VeloxServ and Fast2host figures already bundle some power, a network port and an allowance of bandwidth. Read what each price includes before you rank them.
How does UK colocation pricing work for a rack?
A rack bill usually has five parts: space, power, connectivity, IP addresses and hands-on support. Netwise shows the split plainly. Power is £70 a month per amp, A+B dual-feed power with PDUs is £30 a month, IPv4 addresses are £2 a month each, a remote reboot port is £10 a month, and a 1Gbps port is included while 10Gbps costs £100 a month.
Using those published rates, a full rack with 4A of power on dual feeds comes to £259 plus £280 plus £30, or £569 a month before VAT. At the standard 20% VAT rate that is £682.80. The same rack drawing 8A comes to £849 a month before VAT, so doubling the power adds more than the rack itself costs.
How power changes the monthly cost of one full rack
Netwise 42U rack at £259 plus A+B dual feeds at £30 and power at £70 per amp, before VAT, calculated from its published rates
View the data
| Category | £ per month before VAT |
|---|---|
| 2A | £429.00 |
| 4A | £569.00 |
| 8A | £849.00 |
| 16A | £1,409.00 |
Bundled offers move the cost into the package. VeloxServ's full rack includes A+B power feeds from diverse UPS systems, a 10Gbps port, 50TB of monthly transfer or 150Mbps on a committed data rate, and four 15-minute remote hands incidents a month. Its configurator offers 3% off on a 24-month term, 7% off on 36 months and 10% off on 60 months.
Which rack size suits a small IT service provider or software company?
A quarter rack fits a firm running a handful of servers, a firewall and a switch, with room to add a storage shelf. Fast2host's quarter rack lists dual 16A A+B PDUs, a 1Gbps port and 500Mbps unmetered, which suits a small hosting or backup service that wants predictable bandwidth.
A half rack makes sense once you need a second set of hosts for failover or a separate environment for each large customer. A full rack is the point where your own cabinet lock, power headroom and growth space start to matter. Fast2host's full rack page offers 2 × 16A A+B feeds at about 6kW or 2 × 32A at about 12kW, and says it holds adjacent rack positions at signing for customers who expect to grow.
If you only have one or two servers, a rack is more than you need. UK Servers' single-server colocation starts at £44 a month plus VAT for up to 2U and 0.4A, with no minimum term, and lists a 4.5U lockable eighth of a rack with 1A of power as a limited-time offer at £99 a month.
What should CDN, hosting and software firms check on bandwidth?
Port speed and data transfer are separate things. A 1Gbps or 10Gbps port is the size of the pipe, while the transfer allowance or committed data rate is what you pay for using it. VeloxServ lets you choose per-TB transfer or a committed data rate billed on the 95th percentile, which smooths out short traffic spikes on content delivery or software update traffic.
Fast2host describes unmetered commit bandwidth on its packages, and Netwise prices a committed data rate per Mbps on a sliding scale that falls as the commitment rises. Ask each provider for the price of extra traffic, whether the port is shared or dedicated, and what a second uplink costs. VeloxServ lists a second 1Gbps or 10Gbps uplink at £10 a month.
What does compliance-ready colocation mean for banks and insurers?
No rack is compliant by itself, because regulated firms keep the responsibility. The FCA's outsourcing and operational resilience page says a firm can outsource the hosting of a data centre, and that it "cannot delegate any part of this responsibility to a third party". The PRA's supervisory statement SS2/21 applies to UK banks, building societies, PRA-designated investment firms and Solvency II insurers.
Reporting is tightening. The PRA's policy statement PS7/26, published on 18 March 2026, sets 18 March 2027 as the implementation date for its rules on operational incident and material third-party reporting. If you are an IT firm with bank or insurer clients, expect them to ask for evidence they can put into those reports.
That evidence usually means certification and audit reports. The NCSC's cloud security guidance on data centre security says a provider should disclose the security controls around its data centres, ideally certified against a recognised standard, and names ISAE 3402 among them. Both VeloxServ and Fast2host state ISO 27001 certification on their pages; ask for the certificate and check its scope covers the site you will use.
What does refreshing storage hardware in a colocation rack cost?
The colocation side of a storage refresh is mostly power, hands and time. New arrays often run alongside the old ones during migration, so budget for extra amps for a few months. At Netwise's £70 per amp, two extra amps for three months is £420 before VAT, and UK Servers charges £8 a month per extra 0.1A on its single-server plans.
Remote hands cover racking, cabling and drive swaps if your engineers cannot travel. VeloxServ charges £60 per 15-minute incident beyond the included allowance, and UK Servers lists £15 per 15 minutes. Book the work in advance and give exact rack positions to keep the time down.
Plan for the old disks too. The NCSC's guidance on secure sanitisation of storage media says any media that has stored data sensitive to your business should be sanitised before the device leaves your control, and that pressing delete is not enough.
What changes next for UK colocation buyers?
Data centres are moving into formal regulation. The GOV.UK data centres factsheet for the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill says sites with a rated IT load of 1MW or more will be in scope, with Ofcom as regulator and duties to report significant incidents. That will give buyers a clearer baseline for resilience questions at larger colocation sites.
For a small IT firm, the practical step is the same either way. Get three written quotes for the same usable power, the same bandwidth model and the same term, then compare the totals including VAT.
Sources
- Netwise, Colocation calculator, 2026
- VeloxServ, Full rack colocation Midlands, 2026
- Fast2host, UK server colocation and rack space, 2026
- Fast2host, Full rack colocation, 2026
- UK Servers, Single server colocation, 2026
- FCA, Outsourcing and operational resilience, 2026
- Bank of England, SS2/21 Outsourcing and third party risk management, 2021
- Bank of England, PS7/26 Operational incident and third-party reporting, 2026
- NCSC, Cloud security principle 2, asset protection and resilience
- NCSC, Secure sanitisation and disposal of storage media
- GOV.UK, Cyber Security and Resilience Bill factsheet, data centres, 2026
- GOV.UK, VAT rates
