
NearlyFreeSpeech.NET now supports persistent processes - kderbe
https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2014/09/24/more-power-more-control-more-insight-less-cost/
======
threatofrain
I love NearlyFreeSpeech and they were my first and current web host, although
now I primarily use others. They are so incredibly cheap for those who want to
host a simple site, and they come with a slew of interesting options like
interesting pricing schemes. I hope they never go out of business.

~~~
eksith
How would you rate their support? Are they good with fixing issues or are
there fewer issues than the other hosts you use? Would you recommend them for
a site with, say 100K visitors per day?

~~~
thaumaturgy
I am not a fan of their support in general.

I've had to rescue a few people from NFS after a well-intentioned but short-
sighted web developer somewhere set up their client's website on NFS, and then
the relationship fell apart or the web developer moved on, and the client is
left with some issue at NFS but not the technical knowledge to deal with it.

NFS has an entirely inflexible policy towards this situation: nobody but the
account holder is allowed to access the account or contact support on the
account holder's behalf, period, no exceptions. This is still in their TOS:
"You may not set up a membership for an individual other than yourself, access
any membership other than your own, or let anyone else access your
membership."

If you violate this rule and they catch you at it, they will not only stop
talking to you, _they will also punitively disable the account_.

The end result of this all is that I have to lie through my teeth when dealing
with NFS and go through a song and dance that isn't necessary at any other
hosting service. (I even like GoDaddy better in this regard; I call up all the
time saying, "Hi, I'm a technician for your customer _____, I'm working with
them to ______, their account number is _____ and their password is
______...", and it's never been a problem.)

I was an NFS customer about 7 or 8 years ago. It's an OK service. I don't
dislike them except for this one obnoxious support issue that bites innocent
people in the ass.

~~~
eurleif
I wonder what they're afraid of here? How would allowing this harm them? There
must be some reason (even if it's ultimately misguided), but I've been trying
to figure it out, and I can't.

~~~
kderbe
Their FAQ includes an explanation:
[https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#MembersOnly](https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#MembersOnly)

Their explanation may not be all that satisfying, and thaumaturgy's story
about the disabled account is kind of alarming. But there you have it.

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kderbe
Previously I thought of NFSN as a place to host a low-traffic static site for
$1/year, or host an unmanaged WordPress site for $1/month. It sounds like it
can now run web frameworks like Rails or Node.JS, as well as internal services
like Redis.

I'm not sure where they fit in a world with free Google App Engine tiers and
$5/mo VPSes. But they've been around a while, doing their thing, so that must
be worth something to folks that are leery of the big guys and weary of being
victims of acquisitions and product re-imaginings.

~~~
archagon
Weirdly, with a bare-bones Wordpress install with barely any traffic, I still
spend about $5 every month or two. Not sure what's going on there.

For blogs, I've found that Github Pages offers one of the best deals in the
industry. It's free and it allows you to use your own domain; all you have to
do is provide static HTML, or alternatively a bare-bones Jekyll site. With a
few simple files, it's possible to have a custom domain and 404 error pages.
Because it uses git, you automatically get a complete historic archive of your
site without having to resort to archive.org. For once, without paying any
extra money, you can have your own custom content _and_ not have to manage any
server stuff. Just write and publish.

~~~
baldfat
Wordpress requires MySQL which is an added cost of $0.05 a day

~~~
bearbin
It's actually $0.02 for the first process (which can have as many databases as
you like) AFAIK.

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cwyers
I get that they're incredibly low cost, but their MySQL support (MariaDB _5.3_
with InnoDB disabled by default) seems not that great to me. Also, they say
that their optional InnoDB support uses "MariaDB's advanced high-performance
XtraDB implementation" \-- XtraDB is made by Percona, not MariaDB.

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iamben
This is great.

I love NFSN - I've hosted a lot there. It's brilliant for sticking up
something simple, and they've weathered a number HN frontpages / stuff going
viral on Twitter / etc, etc without any problem.

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mattbee
If you ever lose both your login & access to the email address from which you
signed up, you will lose everything you host with nearlyfreespeech.

I was trying to help a friend recover his own site after the pre-paid credit
expired. A mutual journo friend had set it up years earlier but lost access to
an old email address. It was down because the pre-paid credit had expired, but
wouldn't even take payment from someone they didn't know to get it back up.

Support wouldn't empathise or even help "in principle", i.e. "Given that we've
lost access to the original email address that our friend signed up with, how
can we go about recovering this account, give you some money saving the
domain"? The answer was essentially: we don't care, you're dead to us.

I run an ISP in the UK that takes backup contact options, so I was trying to
go through what options they _might_ have to help, but they weren't
interested.

Cheap is good, especially when you're setting up sites for friends, but always
think twice about the support you might need years down the line.

~~~
awakened
This is not true. There are several recovery options offered by
NearlyFreeSpeech. They are defined in great detail on their website. They
offer two factor (TOTP) as well:

"Our membership recovery procedure comes into play when you lose your password
and access to your email at the same time, or if you have 2-factor
authentication configured and lose the second factor. To regain access, you
will need to contact us and perform a certain number of verification actions."

Possible verification actions:

* You provide a scanned copy of a government-issued photo ID.

* You provide a scanned copy of a statement showing both the most recent deposit and a name and address matching one of your accounts.

* You complete SMS verification. (SMS must be previously configured.)

* You complete 2-factor verification. (2-factor auth must be previously configured.)

* You correctly answer your security question. (Security question and answer must be previously configured, below.)

* You use an ssh key to create a file with a specific name on one of your sites hosted here. (Must be previously configured, won’t work if account is empty.)

* We try and fail to contact you via your currently configured email address. (This one may take a long time.)

Recovery Thresholds:

* Scorched Earth. If you lose access to your membership, you won’t be able to recover it. But neither will anyone else. (This is not a joke. If you set this option and lose access to your membership, it and everything on it will be inaccessible until it expires.)

* All possible actions. Excessive security. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

* Five actions. Very high security. Regaining access will be a huge pain for you, and rounds-to-impossible for anyone else.

* Four actions. High security. Provides enhanced protection but if you need to recover access to your membership, it’s probably going to be pretty inconvenient.

* Three actions. Default security. Provides good protection without making membership recovery too miserable.

* Two actions. Reduced security. We really don’t recommend this, but if you’re really forgetful and really sure nobody would ever target your membership, this option exists.

* One action. No security. All it takes is an email bounce and your membership goes to the first person to ask for it. (This is a joke. Don’t pick this.)

Confirmation:

* I understand the recovery setting I'm picking, and I am solely responsible for the consequences.

~~~
teraflop
To be fair, that level of customizability is fairly new; It was only announced
about 8 months ago[1]. I don't know how strict the previous recovery procedure
was, since I never had to make use of it.

[1]: [https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2014/02/28/price-cuts-
more...](https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2014/02/28/price-cuts-more-
security-and-recovery-options/)

~~~
mattbee
My "computer says no" support experience was in November 2013.

If there were any options to save my friend's data and domain registration,
their support guy didn't know about them, or wasn't willing to tell me.

