

Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014? - mhoad

I am doing some pro-bono work currently with a number of NGOs who all seem to have horror stories about their web hosting platforms. I have moved some of them onto a simple VPS with DO for now but would like a better long term solution (i.e something managed).<p>The main problem I am having at this point is that given they are NGOs money is a big issue and finding something that would work with their price range and isn&#x27;t at the Godaddy level is proving to be a bit of a challenge. I have also tried approaching WPEngine and a few others to see if they were able to arrange discount pricing for NGOs but so far have not had any luck.<p>I would love some feedback from you all as to what you would recommend out there. In terms of requirements I would need somewhere that will support SSL (so they can receive donations without PayPal) and a platform to handle their e-mail as Google Apps isn&#x27;t an option for various reasons at this stage sadly.<p>Any advice would be hugely appreciated and would be helping a very worthy cause.
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codegeek
I recommend [http://www.asmallorange.com](http://www.asmallorange.com)

We use them for a dedicated server and their support is awesome. They are also
not too big like the godaddys and seem to care about their customers. No
affiliations, I just like them a lot.

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crazypyro
Someone mentioned to me in IRC that they are owned by Endurance, same owners
of HostGator and a bunch of other hosts. Not sure this really affects anyone's
opinion.

I have a 35/year personal site hosted there.

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toomuchtodo
> I have moved some of them onto a simple VPS with DO for now but would like a
> better long term solution (i.e something managed).

> The main problem I am having at this point is that given they are NGOs money
> is a big issue and finding something that would work with their price range
> and isn't at the Godaddy level is proving to be a bit of a challenge.

These statements contradict each other. If money is an issue, you're going to
have a hard time finding someone to manage an environment that small.

S3 + Jekyll are out if you need SSL. Have you thought about Docker containers
on Digital Ocean with Cloudflare in front of the site (free tier comes with
SNI SSL)?

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hackertoolbox
> S3 + Jekyll are out if you need SSL.

Isn't this possible with cloudfront?

[https://www.google.com/search?q=s3+website+sshl&ie=utf-8&oe=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=s3+website+sshl&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb#rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&channel=sb&q=s3%20static%20website%20ssl)

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hackertoolbox
What are you going to host? static site or dynamic site, or just a wordpress
site? How is the traffic of this site?

Some tools suggested from previous HN discussions:

[http://www.hackertoolbox.com/tags/cloud%20hosting](http://www.hackertoolbox.com/tags/cloud%20hosting)

[http://www.hackertoolbox.com/tags/email%20hosting](http://www.hackertoolbox.com/tags/email%20hosting)

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triggerworlds
Check out Zoho Mail for an alternative to Google Apps email interface [1]. Has
worked pretty well for me when handling several non-proit email platforms. It
isn't as pretty of an interface as Gmail or google, but I have found it to be
reliable and cost-inexpensive.

[1] [https://www.zoho.com/mail/](https://www.zoho.com/mail/)

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jlees
Is Heroku sufficient? It doesn't have the email aspect but there are plenty of
standalone options there. It abstracts away a lot of the headache from custom
VPSen, as long as the sort of thing you want to host is supported. AWS
OpsWorks could be an alternative.

