
Ask HN: Where do you get your cheap servers? - Smithalicious
As per the title, where do you guys get your cheap servers? I mean subscription-based, not server hardware. I&#x27;m a student and I&#x27;m looking for something cheap for hosting personal experiments and websites. Thought that people on HN might have the answer and be interested in the answer, too.
======
shpx
There are at least 5 providers that will rent you a $5/month server:
DigitalOcean, Lightsail, Linode, UpCloud and Vultr. There's a guy that
publishes benchmarks of their $5 instance regularly

[https://joshtronic.com/2019/09/02/vps-showdown-
digitalocean-...](https://joshtronic.com/2019/09/02/vps-showdown-digitalocean-
lightsail-linode-upcloud-vultr/)

DigitalOcean is by far the most popular. Personally, I like Vultr because they
also have $2.50 IPv6 only instances and you can upload your own ISO file if
you want to try a less popular Linux distribution. Both services have similar
user interfaces that are pretty good.

That being said, $60/year is still a lot. If you can get away with just a
static site, try GitHub pages
[https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/). You only get one
(unless you create GitHub organizations) but it's free. You can still have
your own domain pointing to it with TLS (free through Let's Encrypt). You miss
out on the fun of managing a Linux server unfortunately.

~~~
52-6F-62
Yep. I use DO and it’s been just fine for low traffic websites. They’ve been
great to work with and very easy to use. But I only host personal projects and
internal tooling projects with them. Can’t speak to scaling but my experience
has been positive.

~~~
pnutjam
For cheap hosting, nearlyfreespeech.net is where it's at, cheap and full shell
access on bad.

------
core-questions
It's all about the pre-cloud hosting providers.

Check out the Black Hat SEO forums - the people there generally are running
all manner of sketchy services, bots, crawlers, etc. that need the cheapest
compute available.

The old hosting providers often have deals that can get you more power than
the equivalent Amazon machine for the same price. If you're looking to be able
to host something that other people might use, this is a solid way to go; just
make sure you build something that it's easy for you to re-deploy elsewhere
(i.e. at the very least have all your code in a separate revision control
system, and some mechanism to back up any databases / locally created files to
your home machine).

If you're really just looking for something dirt cheap for personal projects
that won't see use beyond yourself, the free / up to $5/mo tier of the big
cloud providers is a reasonable thing to check out.
[https://vncoupon.com/5-usd-vps-compare-linode-vs-vultr-vs-
di...](https://vncoupon.com/5-usd-vps-compare-linode-vs-vultr-vs-digitalocean-
vs-amazon-lightsail/) is a bit old now, maybe there's a newer article helping
you sort that out.

~~~
chatmasta
Also look at webhostingtalk.com (that’s where all the BHW vendors are buying
from anyway)

------
balkierode
Google cloud free tier gives everyone (not just students) one 'always' free
vps instance. It works great for me.

Oracle promised 2 instances but got an error 'out of capacity' error instead.
Support staff confirmed they dont have hardware in my region.

~~~
ac29
Just remember Google only gives you 1GB of egress network traffic free, per
month. This might be enough for a small personal project, but even a low
traffic website will easily surpass that - doing a Show HN or something will
blow through that quickly.

~~~
rcarmo
Put CloudFlare in front. Works fine for me.

------
rumanator
Hetzner.

They offer VMs with 1 vCPU and 2GB RAM for 3€/month. Quite a deal.

~~~
ar-jan
I second Hetzner. Their smallest VPS has been reliable for me and is even a
bit cheaper than OVH. More importantly, should something go wrong or you have
a question, you can expect a quite fast reply.

------
blfr
OVH, Hetzner, and the whole Low End family

[https://lowendstock.com/](https://lowendstock.com/)

[https://www.lowendtalk.com/](https://www.lowendtalk.com/)

[https://lowendbox.com/](https://lowendbox.com/)

But nowadays you can get servers for free. AWS, Google, and even Oracle have
free triers:

[https://aws.amazon.com/free/](https://aws.amazon.com/free/)

[https://cloud.google.com/free/](https://cloud.google.com/free/)

[https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/)

~~~
mstolpm
IIRC, at least the Amazon EC2 free tier is limited to the first 12 months.
There was a point at which I got billed for the instance that was free before.

------
tomcooks
Lowendbox, lurk 3+ years offers during blackfriday and you'll pay 1-5
dollars/year for a 2gb ram VPS with unlimited traffic in a non 13-eyes
country. Payable in bitcoin.

------
nickjj
I use digitalocean.

Not because they are cheap but because they are great. It just so happens they
have a $5 / month plan for a 1 CPU core / 1GB of memory / 25GB SSD server.

~~~
jppope
agreed. I also use AWS for certain projects... IMO- Don't put all your eggs in
one basket

------
_bxg1
Heroku is free if you don't need constant uptime (it shuts down your server
when it's idle for a while and starts it back up when a request comes in).
Then the cheapest paid tier is $7.

It's also really pleasant because you deploy by just pushing your code; no
SSHing or cron jobs. You do _code_ an entire server process; you just don't
manage it. So it's like halfway-serverless.

The downside, other than being $7 instead of $5, is that that's only for a
single process; you can't run multiple low-compute servers within that $7. The
file system also gets wiped whenever you deploy, so it's not appropriate for a
database.

------
Palomides
AWS, azure, and digitalocean all give free credit to students

[https://education.github.com/pack](https://education.github.com/pack)

vultr, hetzner, and OVH have sub-$5/month VPS plans

Personally, I use digitalocean.

------
lordnacho
Just get a Hetzner. Costs very little, good exercise to set it up with a
usable config. I even have one that I barely ever use.

------
kylec
You can find cheaper options than Linode, but honestly you can host lots of
stuff on a single $5/month instance, and you get the benefit of their
infrastructure and support. I remember being a student and paying $20/month
for a SliceHost VPS with a fraction of what you can get today for much less.

------
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
OVH, Hetzner, Digital Ocean

------
eldavido
Had an account on asmallorange
([https://asmallorange.com](https://asmallorange.com)) for a while. Can't
vouch for their compute power, but if barebones shell access is what you're
after, they do well.

~~~
gregoryca
A Small Orange was acquired by EIG (Endurance International Group) in 2012[1]
and has reportedly gone downhill since[2].

[1] [https://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/site-
updates-n...](https://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/site-updates-
news/the-who-what-when-of-endurance-international-group-eig/) [2]
[https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/01/19/the-rise-and-
fall-o...](https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/01/19/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-
small-orange/)

------
mateioprea
I'm using scaleway.com. For $3/month you get 2vcpus, 2GB RAM and 20GB ssd.

~~~
rumanator
I've tried Scaleway once when I applied for their 500€ 1-month credit
campaign, but they demanded a CC and to add insult to injury charged me an
activation charge that wasn't given back. Twice.

Can't say I recommend them.

------
Havoc
LowEndTalk offers

Very cheap but don't be surprised if a supplier goes out of
business/disappears so strategize accordingly.

Plus then of course all the major cloud provide a intro credit. So that should
cover about 3 years worth of basic VPS

~~~
peterwwillis
I love the lowendbox/lowendtalk forums. Dig in and you learn all kinds of
inside information about the various discount hosting companies and their
bizarre drama. You also learn how to spot actually reliable, professionally
managed services, versus the fly by night people just looking to take your
money and bail.

------
_nalply
Assuming the question is an XY problem and you are really looking for a very
simple solution for an Internet server you operate: Have a look at FFTH.

If fiber is offered for your home then you can host your server in your
bedroom. This is what I do for my websites, and this is really liberating.
Hell, you could serve from a RaspberryPi or if you think this is too extreme,
from a mini PC like Gigabyte Brix.

If fiber is not offered, but you plan to relocate anyway, try to optimize for
FFTH. This is what I have done, I moved more than a year ago and specifically
looked for FTTH.

------
pera
[https://prgmr.com/](https://prgmr.com/)

I have been using their VPSs for about 10 years: it's one of the best services
I've ever had the pleasure to use.

------
anonthrowaway28
VPS:

\- [https://bytemark.co.uk](https://bytemark.co.uk) (VPS, colo and leased
physical by competent & responsive folks (in Manchester IIRC))

\- [https://linode.com](https://linode.com) (more than just Linux)

\- [https://pair.com](https://pair.com) (24/7 phone support in North America,
has FreeBSD offerings too, been in business a long time)

Bonus: And physical servers:
[https://unixsurplus.com](https://unixsurplus.com)

------
hmart
I have my important VPSs on Linode since 2008, good experience, almost zero
downtime in 10+ years, very reliable, great customer support. They have a
$5/mo Nanode 1CPU, 1 GB Ram.

------
ignoramous
Vultr: 1 vCPU / 512MB RAM / 500 GB bandwidth for $2.5 a month [0]. I ran a VPN
with them, once.

[https://www.vultr.com/products/cloud-
compute/](https://www.vultr.com/products/cloud-compute/)

For webpages, I have been using [https://1mb.site](https://1mb.site) (free
custom domain and TLS) and [https://netlify.com](https://netlify.com)

------
DizzyDoo
I've been on Digital Ocean for a few years, pretty happy with them and have no
plans to move on. I was on Hetzner before them, but moved away because the
pricing was essentially the same yet Hetzner's control panel (at least back
then - I'm talking before 2015) was a bit of a pain, and DO's is all shiny,
and I find what I'm looking for quickly, most of the time. Hetzner's admin
panel might have come a long way since then though?

------
breakerbox
Great experience with Amazon Lightsail. The smallest instance is only $3.50 a
month, and you can add a swap file if you need a bit more than 512 MB of RAM.

Lightsail is like swimming in the shallow end of the AWS pool. Doesn’t have a
drop down with 50 services like AWS, but has enough to run a small or medium
sized web app.

------
sv12l
There are many options mentioned already and one I haven't seen so far is
[https://www.ssdnodes.com/](https://www.ssdnodes.com/) been using it for some
time, fares well.

------
pnutjam
Time4vps has some of the best prices I can find for storage. I've been using
one for a could years with no problems.

Virmach seems to have comparable prices, but I haven't used them.

------
peterwwillis
For websites, just use GitHub Pages. It's totally free, very reliable, and
extremely easy. It feels like a nerdier GeoCities, but without the composing
tools.

------
segmondy
If you're looking for really cheap, then use the free servers. Google, AWS
provide free tiers that are more than enough for a hobbyist.

------
rtomanek
Linode. Cheap but not too cheap, still reliable.

~~~
ja27
My choice too. Been pretty reliable and perform well. Easy to find a $20
credit for new customers on podcasts and other ads.

------
throwaway_bad
Take advantage of student credits!

Even when you run out of credits, all cloud providers have a pretty generous
free tier.

For example see haveibeenpwn.com's cost breakdown for running a hugely popular
api for less than a dollar a month: [https://www.troyhunt.com/serverless-to-
the-max-doing-big-thi...](https://www.troyhunt.com/serverless-to-the-max-
doing-big-things-for-small-dollars-with-cloudflare-workers-and-azure-
functions/)

------
TrAnn3l
Netcup, very cheap and reliable [https://www.netcup.de](https://www.netcup.de)

------
xcircle
I use netcup.eu , a German Provider. They have cheap hour based plans so that
you can cancel your plan everytime.

------
joe_bleau
Sounds crazy, but the Orcale free tier might work for you. Enough to run two
small Linux VPS instances free.

~~~
marvel_boy
Do you mean Oracle Cloud?

~~~
tim333
I think this thing
[https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/FreeTier/resource...](https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/FreeTier/resourceref.htm)

some forum discussion [https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/160260/oracle-
cloud-fr...](https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/160260/oracle-cloud-free-
tier)

seems ok though slowish I/O

~~~
Havoc
Faster io than the free GCP

------
Stevvo
OVH, their cheapest brand is Kimsufi. From five euros a month. i.e. your own
box for the price of a VPN.

------
craftoman
Below the cheapest and most reliable VPS providers.

Europe => Hetzner, Scaleway

USA => Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode

------
werber
Also check to see what free stuff you can get through your school!

------
arkh
In France: OVH. Their kimsufi lineup is hard to beat.

------
daemonk
Hetzner is great. Cheap for what you get.

------
wensheng
AWS EC2 reserved instances, pay upfront for 3 years, it works out cheaper than
digitalocean/linode.

------
speedypete
scaleway.com and hetzner.com

------
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Now, you are asking for subscription-based, but have you considered that it is
perfectly possible to host on your own hardware at home perfectly fine for
experimental/personal stuff? Just buy the cheapest Raspberry Pi (or a clone or
whatever) and hook it up at home, that's certainly going to be cheaper than
any of the cloud providers being thrown around here, only the cheapest
lowendtalk offers might be cheaper still.

------
darksaints
I know you aren't interested in server hardware, but you should be. You can
get extremely cheap used servers from eBay, Craigslist, or government
auctions, and you can get extremely cheap rackspace in colocation centers.

~~~
detaro
That's unlikely to be "cheap" compared to what a student needs for the first
few experiments.

~~~
darksaints
That would depend entirely on the nature of the experiments.

