
Ask HN: What are good hosting providers? - joanna_
I am launching a small business. I do not have much budget. I cannot spend more than $5 per month.<p>I am going to host my web app on digitalocean. Is digitalocean right choice?<p>What is your experience with hosting providers?<p>Who is the best for low budget?
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LinuxBender
It depends on your needs really. DO is fine for low budget projects. Just
below them I would suggest Vultr. If you don't care about API's and that sort
of thing, then Ramnode is even cheaper, but I've had issues with the user
interface.

There are a bunch of aggregator sites that compare vps providers. Here are two
of them. [1] [2] [3]

Disclaimer: These sites can be a bit spammy. Use NoScript / uBlock. Also, you
really do get what you pay for, so as your business grows, you may wish to
consider diversifying across providers.

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

[2] - [https://vpscomp.com/servers](https://vpscomp.com/servers)

[3] - [https://www.serverhunter.com](https://www.serverhunter.com) as
mentioned by IronBacon, I totally forgot about this one.

~~~
Youden
Ramnode also has at times outright hostile customer support and a blatant
disregard for customer privacy. Strongly advise against them.

~~~
LinuxBender
They are for sure the bottom of the barrel. I threw that one in there because
they have dirt cheap options.

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gramakri
What framework/programming language are you planning to use?

If you want super cheap, nothing will beat shared hosting. In most cases, you
will have to write your coded in PHP and MySQL. You can get spaces really
cheap hosting like 12 USD per year.

For any other framework, you have to use a VPS. Even in VPS there are two
types - KVM based and LXC based. KVM based systems support docker but will be
expensive. LXC based systems will be much cheaper but can run most frameworks.

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penagwin
I can personally recommend Vultr, Linode, and DO for reliable VPS services.

All of them have pretty competitive offerings, great support, and are just
generally on top of things. You won't regret any of those hosts.

The problem with the hosts on lowendbox.com and the like is that they will
very likely work, but they don't have the history for me to trust business
critical tasks. Many are just resellers offering over-allocated machines.

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jmhyer123
I've been very happy with DigitalOcean but be aware that $5 is not going to
get you very much. If it's a small web app or static site then the $5/mo
droplet will be fine but plan to be spending more like $15 or $20/mo very
soon.

Edit: If price is your biggest concern then maybe look at Vultr
([https://www.vultr.com/products/cloud-
compute/#pricing](https://www.vultr.com/products/cloud-compute/#pricing)) to
get you started for less $.

~~~
rubicon33
I've also been quite happy with DigitalOcean for the last 2 years. Pricing is
good, and I've had 0 downtime.

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freehunter
You didn't mention the type of business, so I'll throw out a question: do you
need a VPS host? Is Wordpress hosting enough? Static site hosting? You said
web app, but I just want to double check.

If you have to have a VPS where you get a bare OS and need to install your
custom web app, there are some great suggestions already in here. I personally
use DigitalOcean because my company's budget is super small as well.

If you just need a business _website_ , there are cheaper options than
DigitalOcean or Vultr.

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davesmith1983
I am using Vultr. They have very cheap VPS options and they have many
different OS images i.e. I am running a CentOS and a OpenBSD instances.

~~~
iamcreasy
The cheapest VPS on Vultr doesn't provided IPv6. Does it mean people from IPv4
wont be able to access website hosted on that VPS? Is there a way around this
issue?

~~~
TheMog
If you're talking about the $2.50 VPS, yes, that's IPV6-only, so it doesn't
support IPV4. You're correct that people who only use IPV4 won't be able to
access that VPS, at least not without jumping through hoops. There's also a
$3.50 VPS instance with the same spec that appears to support both IPV4 &
IPV6.

I've been using Vultr for a while and am quite happy with them. I've also used
a couple of the IPV6-only VPSs for experiments, but I have IPV4 & IPV6
connectivity at home.

~~~
iamcreasy
Thank you. I did not know that. It is only available from their NY location.
One has to click though all server locations to find the best deal for the
need.

------
zeug
If you are targeting Europe, you could give Hetzner a shot. Starting at
2,50€/Month with 2GB RAM, 20GB NVMe and 1 CPU Core.

As of my knowledge, the ping isn´t that bad in the US neither.

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sethhochberg
Whenever I need a managed hosting provider (admittedly pretty rare, I run most
of my personal stuff off a Digital Ocean VPS, but I'm also very comfortable
with linux/ops/security and don't mind managing these things myself), I always
head to [https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/](https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/)
\- these days they support a pretty varied collection of languages/frameworks,
and they have a good combo of extremely transparent pricing, solid
reliability, nice security features, and seemingly strong technical
background.

~~~
stevedekorte
I've had good experiences with them as well.

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dfeojm-zlib
I have used these in production:

0\. [https://www.bytemark.co.uk/prices/#cloud-
prices](https://www.bytemark.co.uk/prices/#cloud-prices)

1\.
[https://www.pair.com/solutions/shared/](https://www.pair.com/solutions/shared/)
(FreeBSD-based)

2\. [https://www.linode.com/pricing](https://www.linode.com/pricing)

3\. [https://aws.amazon.com/free](https://aws.amazon.com/free) (Free Tier is
awesome, for a little while)

Others I would evaluate:

4\. [https://www.digitalocean.com](https://www.digitalocean.com)

5\. [https://www.orangewebsite.com](https://www.orangewebsite.com) (Iceland-
based)

6\. [https://www.bahnhof.net](https://www.bahnhof.net) (Sweden-based)

7\. [https://tranquillity.se](https://tranquillity.se) (Sweden-based, green-
powered and straightforward billing)

8\. [https://advania.com](https://advania.com) (Sweden-, Iceland-, Norway- and
Finland-based)

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impostir
Is it for a website or webapp?

If it is just a website, I highly recommend Netlify. It does static site
hosting for dirt cheap.

If you need a webapp, I would agree with many other posters and say DO. They
are the biggest of the "small" cloud providers, DO, Vultr, Linode. They have a
wide range of options if you ever need to expand. I can't speak on their
customer support because I have never had to use them.

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elamje
I don’t see anyone mentioning AWS Lightsail.

[https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/)

I use it and it seems to be pretty great. I also like that it brings you into
the AWS ecosystem at a low price, so if you need to scale or you want to make
a bigger application, AWS is right there to hook into. Furthermore it’s a
really simple UI and not as overwhelming as the normal AWS web console.

~~~
icedata
I have also had good experiences with Lightsail. We use the Tokyo node for an
app targeting China. And unlike the Amazon free tier (older Red Hat) you get a
choice of modern distributions.

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bin0
Linode is great for cheap VPS. Most people here use DigitalOcean, but I did
the comparison and liked Linode. Management console is pretty good (though I
haven't tried their new one). The one serious benefit over DO is faster
transfer (40gbps down/1 up). Not huge, but that's why I picked it.

I like the look of vultr, and have considered it, but their plans are
functionally identical these days and I probably won't bother switching.

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cdnsteve
AWS and GCP have free tier options that you can benefit from. Having either as
part of your skillset is good for a career in technology, so bonus points
there.

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duiker101
I moved from DO to Scaleway a few years ago and I am super satisfied. Never
had any problems whatsoever and I haven't found a cheaper hosting. Their
console is easy to use and their offering is generally pretty good. Highly
recommended.

I spend $3.33 (2.99€) and host a few apps. None big but they all run smooth as
butter. It's amazing how much you can actually host on this little machines.

~~~
packetlost
Worth pointing out that Scaleway only has servers in Europe. Paris and
Amsterdam to be specific.

I'm American, but I've been using Scaleway for a few months, and latency
aside, I've had zero problems as well and they're one of the only hosting
providers I'm aware of that has ARM64 based VPS. Amazon recently announced ARM
EC2 instances, but even their cheapest offering is weaker and significantly
more expensive than Scaleways.

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karanbhangui
You can't go wrong with DO for $5/mo.

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thorwasdfasdf
I've had excellent experience on DO for over 4 years now. Almost 0 downtime.
DO is awesome!

Here are some that are not so great: ServerPronto

Here is one that nearly ruined my entire business: Rimuhosting (there was an
actual hardware issue with the VPS and every 5 requests, the server would go
down and they couldn't fix it, it was really awful.)

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hwj
I'm surprised nobody mentioned joshtronic's VPS showdown:

[https://joshtronic.com/2019/07/01/vps-showdown-
digitalocean-...](https://joshtronic.com/2019/07/01/vps-showdown-digitalocean-
lightsail-linode-upcloud-vultr/)

~~~
unforeseen9991
Thanks, this was a great writeup with lots of benchmarks.

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reilly3000
I haven’t seen any plugs yet for AWS Lighthouse. It’s in a dedicated UI, so
it’s not as overwhelming as AWS. You don’t need Ground Control satellite
services to run a website.

Lighthouse starts at $5/Mo and comes with great docs and lots of templates.
It’s pretty comparable to a Digital Ocean droplet.

~~~
cannonedhamster
I think you meant Lightsail not Lighthouse correct?

~~~
reilly3000
Oops, correct. Its too late to edit :/

~~~
cannonedhamster
Oh whale. It's actually a fantastic suggestion. I think I'm actually going to
use it based on the pricing and offering. Thanks for bringing it up.

------
dingus
Linode is good.

DigitalOcean is fine, too. I find some of their distro tooling to have
annoying and longstanding bugs that never get fixed, though. I eventually
moved all my servers back to Linode to avoid the small pointless hassles.

They're all probably more or less equal.

------
justforyou
I suggest you spend some time reading the following thread before making a
decision about Digital Ocean:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20064169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20064169)

------
1137
Been on Linode for about 6 years with nearly 0 downtime across 5 servers.
Absolutely no complaints.

They did get hit with a nasty DDoS attack a couple years back which did suck
for me, but it was short lived and I think it taught but them and me a lot..

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Havoc
If you're willing to learn - consider a google cloud VM.

It allows you to run a VM 24/7 for free indefinitely. Obvious not the most
powerful machine but you can host a couple low activity sites on it no sweat.

>Is digitalocean right choice?

It's a good choice.

------
jseliger
Anyone here used WPEngine for Wordpress hosting?
[https://wpengine.com](https://wpengine.com)

~~~
mike503
I’ve moved many people to it and more people away from it. It isn’t worth the
cost for most people.

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a47thrandomfox
I like scaleway! Small, cheap, on baremetal.

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vaygr
Vultr is excellent. Especially for customized Linux distros and unique options
like OpenBSD. As well as Linode.

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type0
Between Lightsail, Hetzner, Vultr and OVH - which one is better in Europe?

~~~
zeug
Hetzner and OVH should be the Same from a Network Point.

Personally I like Hetzner the most. They are dirty cheap and have a good
support.

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abdullahkhalids
If you are willing to do the heavy lifting on the backend, nothing beats
nearlyfreespeech

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pcunite
mddhosting.com

