
Ask HN: Which cloud is good in support and value for money for small websites? - hitr
I have mainly used Azure cloud for many of the smaller applications I run and been quite satisfied with it.My applications are on .net and I am quite familiar with Microsoft stack and was previously working with Microsoft :).I am currently in the process of building my new app in .net core+postgres and am open to Google cloud platform or AWS or any other cloud provider if it is offers better value for money stability and support.I am not really worried about the features provided by each of these providers as I always try to build things cloud agnostic and try to not use any provider specific features.I am only interested in the part where value for money for small&#x2F;medium(e.g 10 K users,100 K pageviews) web apps is good,stability and very good customer support. Has anyone here used Google&#x27;s or AWS or switched providers and got any experience&#x2F;suggestions to share?
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patrickg_zill
There are plenty of choices... in addition to the ones mentioned below, you
might want to just rent a low-end dedicated server, where the hardware is
guaranteed to be repaired if defective (make good offsite backups).
Performance will be higher in most cases (dedicated CPU and high RAM).

e.g.
[https://www.wholesaleinternet.net/dedicated/](https://www.wholesaleinternet.net/dedicated/)
(blue order buttons are in stock)

Intel i3 chip with 8GB RAM and 500GB disk - $20/month .

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hitr
Thanks for sharing this one.This is very cheap. How do we guarantee high
availability/fail over on this one in case we need it ? I am guessing we have
to make sure multiple servers like this should be bought and implement our own
fail over.Also what is your experience with tech support ?

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patrickg_zill
You tell them what distribution you want of Linux installed, they install it,
and then you manage the server on your own.

Install the needed SMART utilities to keep an eye on your disks. I think if
you can show them a SMART failure that means the drive will fail soon, they
will replace it for you.

Their tech support is competent but is mostly limited to the basics of
installing and initial configuration of network, plus taking care of the
hardware.

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daurnimator
I use+like vultr: it's like a better digital ocean. I can often fit more than
one service onto a single $5 node.

(referral link:
[http://www.vultr.com/?ref=6993536-3B](http://www.vultr.com/?ref=6993536-3B),
should give you $20 of credit)

~~~
luhn
Besides the extra memory on the $5 node, what makes Vultr better than DO?

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daurnimator

      - CPU seems to be a bit faster than DO
      - More data centres (notably for me: one in Australia (sydney))
      - Allow using any operating system/distro you want (just upload the ISO)
      - Free snapshots (for now...)
    

Otherwise I get a much better 'vibe' out of them: they've been helpful when I
request slightly odd things, have been fast to respond to security issues,
etc.

~~~
daurnimator
Hmm, I had a closer look, and most of my instances are old 3.4GHz ones rather
than the currently deployable 2.4GHz ones. See
[https://discuss.vultr.com/discussion/567/no-more-3-4-ghz-
cpu...](https://discuss.vultr.com/discussion/567/no-more-3-4-ghz-cpu-cores/p2)

Though looking at [https://joshtronic.com/2017/02/14/five-dollar-showdown-
linod...](https://joshtronic.com/2017/02/14/five-dollar-showdown-linode-vs-
digitalocean-vs-lightsaild-vs-vultr/) the current ones still aren't that bad.

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loony_nrrd
Relevant read ~> [https://joshtronic.com/2017/02/14/five-dollar-showdown-
linod...](https://joshtronic.com/2017/02/14/five-dollar-showdown-linode-vs-
digitalocean-vs-lightsaild-vs-vultr/)

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kimsalas
Cloud pricing is relatively similar. If you are not bound to any cloud it
means you are not really using anything specific. You could then check Amazon
lightsail or Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode, etc.

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kimi
We started with DO as a way to prototype quickly and ended up running a large
scale telecom service on it. Doesn't get you much "in the box", but you have
no lock-in either; works well enough and it's nice to use.

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vandyswa
I've had good luck over the years with Server Axis. For much cheaper, Scaleway
has some innovative "bare metal" offerings. 3 euros/month, it'll even fit
Apache and Wordpress. Some of my heavier PHP lifting had to move something
with a little more horsepower, though.

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sunilkumarc
I'm new to deploying applications on a Cloud. Could you guys give some
examples to 'not cloud agnostic applications'?

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eric-hu
Many cloud providers offer A service unavailable elsewhere. Examples include
AWS lambda and Google Bigquery. If you built software using one of these
services, you couldn't just pick up your code and deploy it elsewhere without
major code modifications.

For comparison, let's say you're on AWS and only use cloud agnostic
dependencies--Postgres, Redis, Memcached, and so on. You might have to change
config variables, but you could otherwise move your application over to GCP
quickly.

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sunilkumarc
I understand now. Thanks Eric.

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spo81rty
Well you can try using an Azure App Service in shared mode which is very
cheap.

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ralala
Has anyone tried scaleway?

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jbpetersen
No, but their pricing looks impressive enough to try.

And impressive enough that it leaves me wondering what corners are probably
being cut.

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jazoom
They use ARM chips.

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zuccs
The other thread said they have Intel too.

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jazoom
Cool to know. Thanks for the correction.

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cdvonstinkpot
prgmr.com

5 GiB RAM, 60 GiB Disk is $20/mo

