Render farm vs just buying more cores from KeyShot

[CodyBrown]

I currently have the 32 core network rendering plan from KeyShot and have been looking to render out for customers a little quicker. we started looking into render farms, but the pricing on them seems to be almost insane compare to the price to just buy the extra cores for a whole year as opposed to paying hundreds for a few jobs that need done. one called KeyShot Farms which i think is ran by or partnered with Luxion has a render farm of 64 cores and a 6 month price is $4,999. this seems crazy compared to just buying the 64 core plan for a year for less than $1,000.

i know using a render farm takes all the upkeep and management of the software off of our end, but our IT department is pretty good at already taking care of all that stuff on our end. can someone elaborate how a render farm is more effective than just buying the core space and having the farm in house?

Thanks

[DerekCicero]

It really depends on if you are "constant use" renderer or a "peak use" renderer. If you are basically using all the cores constantly all the time, then building your own makes sense. For some companies they really just have peak load times, where they might need 32 cores most of the year but need a ton of cores for 3-4 weeks of the year, so having that excess capacity not being used all the time is a waste. Also, some places have distributed teams where they don't have a central location they can build out.