
Ask HN: Cheap dedicated hosting options for side projects - webtechgal
Hello all,<p>I have a few side projects (all web apps) that would require sizable amounts of storage space (but not much of other resources) once I bring them live, so I&#x27;ve been searching for cheap dedicated hosting options.<p>If huge space requirement was not a constraint, I&#x27;d say Digital Ocean (or other low-cost cloud services like Linode, Vultr etc.) would provide great bang for the buck, but I&#x27;m talking hundreds rather than tens of gigs of storage here at which levels, DO etc. would be way beyond my reach, and out of the question.<p>After some research, I have found what I believe to be the cheapest dedicated box provider and before signing up there, I thought I&#x27;d run it by HN, for other opinions, suggestions etc. What do you all think?<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kimsufi.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;servers.xml
======
AnkhMorporkian
Here's an option you might not have considered, but might be applicable,
depending on the read/write speeds you need from those hundreds of gigabytes
of data. Amazon has cloud drive, which costs something like 50 bucks a year,
and has unlimited storage.

The neat thing is someone created a FUSE file system called acd_cli that
allows you to use the cloud drive as if it were a normal hard drive. The
speeds aren't too shabby either; I easily get 150MB/s up and down on my
dedicated server, and response times are snappy. Additionally, you can create
a unionfs mount so that writes are instant, and you sync new files on a
regular schedule.

Of course, that might not be applicable to your use case, but I use mine for
many things. I have a plex server running using that with over 13TB of videos,
and it works flawlessly. It allows me to run a full plex server with unlimited
storage for 20 bucks a month.

~~~
dhruvkar
I have the same issue. Running a Plex server (~6TB) at home, and thinking I
need to put my media in a more accessible location. Are you using Amazon Drive
as the one true source and syncing it locally to use with your Plex Server? Or
are you pulling/streaming directly from ACD?

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
My setup is a little convoluted. I've found that using the write mount really
slows me down, so I use a unionfs mount with the writes going to the local
hard drive, and the cloud drive being the primary read source. Given that it's
unionfs though, anything that I haven't synced will be read from the hard
drive.

So the order goes: Sonarr/CouchPotato -> Local Hard Drive -> Amazon Cloud
Drive -> Plex. I stream directly off the cloud drive for any file older than
an hour, as that's my upload interval.

~~~
dhruvkar
nice. so you read from ACD, because you're mainly writing to local? Or is
there another reason for NOT reading from local? also, does local completely
mirror ACD, or have you found a way around that?

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
It doesn't mirror it at all. The local stuff is only a temporary holding place
for it to sit until it gets uploaded to ACD, at which point it is
unceremoniously deleted. I have >10TB on my cloud drive, but I'm using <10GB
on my hard drive.

~~~
dhruvkar
Great! Going to give this a try.

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
Give me a shout if you need any help. I know HN doesn't have private
messaging, but you can reach me on IRC on Freenode at AMorpork.

~~~
dhruvkar
will do, thanks for the offer!

------
davidverhasselt
\- If latency isn't an issue you could store your things on Backblaze [1]
which is by far the cheapest storage I've found.

\- For my high-storage requirements I rent a dedicated Hetzner server with
2x3TB disks for around 30 euro/month [2]

[1] [https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-
storage.html](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html)

[2] [https://robot.your-server.de/order/market/country/DE](https://robot.your-
server.de/order/market/country/DE)

~~~
DanielStraight
Since the OP indicated elsewhere that the storage need not be local on the
machine, Backblaze is almost certainly the best answer.

500 GB of Backblaze B2 storage is $2.50 / month

Pair that with a $5 DigitalOcean droplet and the need is met for a grand total
of $7.50 / month.

~~~
webtechgal
Wow!!! DO being a favorite of mine, I will definitely try to explore this. My
concern, however, is what about the bandwidth between DO and Backblaze? How
would that count/work?

~~~
snuxoll
Bandwidth into both B2 and DigitalOcean is free, bandwidth OUT of them is
metered (or in the case of DO you get a bucket of bandwidth to start and then
it's metered past that bucket).

~~~
jazoom
Also there appears to be no way in the dashboard of DO to see bandwidth usage.
I don't know where they say it's metered after that, because they just slowed
down the speed severely when my server went over, rendering it useless for its
purpose without warning.

~~~
novaleaf
digital ocean charges $0.02/gb after your vm quota is used up.

fyi, amazon/google charges above $0.10/gb

------
Veratyr
Depends more on your usage requirements:

\- If you're basically just doing a backup and not reading data very often,
Backblaze B2 is a good choice, as storage only costs 0.005$/GB (1TB is $5).
However if you're reading kinda often, I'd recommend against it, as it's not
the fastest to read and bandwidth is 5c/GB (it's mainly intended for backup
use cases).

\- If you're doing a backup and REALLY not reading data very often,
Online.net's C14 is a good choice. Storage is only EUR 0.002/GB (EUR 2/TB) but
reading/writing (known as "operation" on their pages) costs EUR 0.01/GB.

\- If you need a decent/low latency network, I'd pay for Google Cloud Storage
or something similar.

\- If you're doing basically anything else, I'd recommend a server from
Kimsufi (as you've found), SoYouStart, Online.net, Hetzner or OVH.

\- If you're fine with something _really_ low end, another user pointed out
time4vps.eu which offers the lowest cost online storage I've seen (EUR
0.002/GB) with RAM, a CPU and bandwidth attached.

------
fbcpck
I frequently lurk on LowEndTalk forums; if you don't mind using vps from not-
so-known providers, these are the two best storage vps deals on it:

» Time4VPS
([https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85707/](https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85707/))

1TB Storage for €48 bienially. Double the storage for double price.

» ZXHost
([https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85803/](https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/85803/))

1TB Storage for €45 annually. Offer has ended though; but they might do it
again in the future so I'll leave it here.

—

Otherwise, go for kimsufi/ovh/soyoustart/hetzner/scaleway special offer
dedicated servers. They are the cheapest you can get for non-random providers.

~~~
webtechgal
Wow!! I actually have a 20GB instance with Time4VPS, that I had found via an
ad on LowEndTalk last year. I think I paid some Euro 9 or something for the
WHOLE YEAR!! Other than an annoying glitch that causes the space allocation to
drop down to 10GB instead of 20GB at random, it has been working quite well
too.

However, I didn't know they had had the 1TB offer - I'll put in a ticket there
asking them to let me know if/when it comes up again. Thanks for the info.

~~~
time4vps
We have those offers (high volume storage servers) for some time now and they
are not going to disappear.

------
Eun
I am using [https://online.net](https://online.net), works good so far.

~~~
jagger27
If you can put up with the latency to France.

~~~
webtechgal
Looks quite promising, and well within my price range (under $10) too. In
fact, their Personal Range appears to be cheaper and config-wise superior to
even Kimsufi!! I will surely check this out. @jagger27, for a WAHM from India,
be it France/US/UK or whatever, they're all the same. :-)

------
BrianT
Delimiter's full-ha cloud gives you 250GB space, 1 CPU, 1GB RAM for $6/month.

You could add more CPU/more RAM for just a few pennies. Disk space scales to
50TB per disk quite cheaply.

[https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-
pool/](https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/cloud-resource-pool/)

Another option is ObjSpace (S3 compatible storage) but that would require you
to run S3FS or similar. [http://delimiter.com/objspace-object-
storage/](http://delimiter.com/objspace-object-storage/)

[disclaimer I work for Delimiter]

------
icebraining
TransIP sells you DigitalOcean-like VPSs, but also allow you to attach multi-
TB NAS drives to them for a few bucks more. I've been a happy customer with a
2TB drive for a few years.

[https://www.transip.eu/vps/big-storage/](https://www.transip.eu/vps/big-
storage/)

------
zazibar
I highly recommend Scaleway.
[https://www.scaleway.com/](https://www.scaleway.com/)

~~~
DanielStraight
Looks like with their lowest tier bare metal server + 450 GB additional
storage the total would be 11.99 Euros per month or $13.28 USD. And there
wouldn't be transfer cost between server / storage.

------
bcheung
I use OVH. Kimsufi is basically the same company. I think it is their low end
alias or white label.

I think Kimsufi limits you to 100Mbps which might not be enough bandwidth
speed if you plan on server video or other large files to a bunch of people at
once. OVH gives you a 1 Gbps unlimited pipe included.

[https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-
servers/storage/](https://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/storage/)

------
gargravarr
Kimsufi are a great low-cost provider, I ran an Atom dedi with a 1TB disk with
them for 2 years at around £12 a month. Never had any problems - great
bandwidth to move data around, mostly used the big disk for offsite backups.
However, an important consideration - they don't adjust their pricing for
existing customers or allow the hardware to be upgraded. Around the 2-year
mark, they dropped the price for the same server to just £3 a month and
doubled the RAM. I was told if I wanted it, I'd have to give up my current
server and move everything to a brand-new one. They wouldn't drop the price,
and when I asked about doubling the RAM, was told it wasn't an option. They
then put the price of my dedi up not a month later. I cancelled the server and
have run my own hardware since then.

Good for a specific use, but as the low price implies, there is no option to
scale in future.

~~~
webtechgal
Thanks for all this info. Just out of curiosity, when they offered the same
config as your £12/mo box for £3/mo and refused to reduce your billing, could
you not have simply bought the cheaper one, taken a snapshot of the existing
server, transferred it over to the new one and discontinued the older one?

~~~
gargravarr
I couldn't have done so using the KS dashboard, for example. As it was Linux,
I could have cloned the machine fairly easily, but it seemed silly to me to go
to all that trouble, essentially throwing away the original server and
starting again.

At the time, my need for a hosted machine was decreasing so I didn't want to
expend much effort anyway.

------
nwilkens
At [https://MNX.io](https://MNX.io) we introduced an SSD cached storage VPS
server -- 500GB starting at $7/month, available up to 40TB at $15/TB.

~~~
joshmn
I remember when you guys were first starting out :) I think we emailed back
and forth. Nice to see you guys are here!

------
berns
OVH Public Cloud Object Storage. It's $ 0.01 per GB for storage and transfer.
Triple replicated with datacenters in Europe and Canada. It uses Open Stack
Swift which has a nice api and tools.

------
mvip
Assuming it's possible (i.e. you don't need a POSIX file system), your best
bet might be to use an Object Store like S3. It will most likely be by far the
most cost effective solution.

~~~
webtechgal
Thanks. S3 would work fine for me (from a tech perspective), but the question
is, would it offer ~500 GB storage for under $10/mo?

~~~
mvip
According to their calculator[1], it's $15. Less than $10 seems unreasonably
low for what you're asking.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/)

~~~
chrisgoman
You can use S3FS ([https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-
fuse](https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse)) to mount your buckets and make
it look like just another directory using /etc/fstab

------
Bedon292
Just chiming in with my experience. I have several different servers for
personal projects on various OVH properties. So Kimsufi, SoYouStart, and OVH
proper. They have all been great. The VPS option at OVH was nice too. 100Mbit
connection, several TB of bandwidth for $5 / month. Never ran into any issues
with their services, and will continue to use them for everything. Much better
deal than anything else I have found.

------
Hates_
I use Kimsufi for a load of small side projects. AFAIK they are decommissioned
OVH servers. You lose RAID as well as some other features like fail-over IPs.

~~~
webtechgal
That's great, thanks!! How about uptime and support/response issues? Of
course, I am not expecting any fancy support for < $10/mo., but just to know,
have you had any issues and 1st-hand experiences?

~~~
kraftman
I've had a few boxes from them for a few years, they've been pretty solid.
Once I had a server go offline, I got an email from them saying they'd
detected an issue, another 10 minutes later saying they'd found a problem with
a network connector and it was fixed. I bought an extra server for a month
once and the automated system had some issues which meant I didn't get the
login info, took them about a day to fix it and get back to me.

------
coot_
I use: [https://indiehosters.net](https://indiehosters.net) If you care about
privacy you will land in the right hands, and you will support an interesting
project on its own: [http://www.wired.com/2014/11/indie-
hosters/](http://www.wired.com/2014/11/indie-hosters/)

------
jbardnz
Seen as you already mention Vultr as an option they actually have dedicated
block storage plans:
[https://www.vultr.com/pricing/blockstorage/](https://www.vultr.com/pricing/blockstorage/)

A 500GB SSD is $50/month which seems fairly reasonable. You can use it
directly with a cheap VPS from them as well.

~~~
webtechgal
That's useful to know, but as mentioned in my original post, what I basically
require is a dedi box and since Kimsufi is offering one with 500GB for under
$10/mo., the Vultr offer won't make much commercial sense to me. Thanks
anyway.

------
benologist
If you're already paying Dropbox there's a terabyte of space that might be
useful with bonus backups, versioning and undeleting, a CLI too:

[http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/using-the-
officia...](http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/using-the-official-
dropbox-command-line-interface-cli)

------
Something1234
You could go with hetzner. They recently had a special for a 64GB with 2x4TB
hard drives for $54, and do a bunch of VMs on it.

------
cweagans
FYI, DigitalOcean is rolling out expandable block storage summer 2016 (so any
day now), so that might be a good way to go. Not a lot of information, but
keep an eye on
[https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/](https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/).
You may be able to ask support to manually add you to the beta if you need it
_right now_. DigitalOcean is really good about going out of their way to win
your business. Full disclosure: I have no relationship to DO other than being
a happy customer.

If you're looking at mostly static assets though, why not just upload them to
S3 and serve them directly from there (or via a Cloudfront distribution)? EC2
boxes are fairly inexpensive as well, and there's all kind of automation tools
for provisioning your AWS resources + configuring them.

~~~
chrisgoman
+1 on DigitalOcean with Block Storage. Currently using DO with Amazon S3
mounted using /etc/fstab via S3FS [https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-
fuse](https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse) (which has eventual consistency
but if you want cheap)

------
quicksilver03
Kimsufi's problem is the lack of redundancy, if the single drive on a box dies
then you're not going to see your data again.

However, given the low price you could rent them in pairs and replicate the
data using something like DRBD. Depending on your comfort level, this can be a
very viable and cost effective option, or a system administration nightmare.
If it's the latter, then definitely look into an object storage solution if
your applications are compatible with that.

By the way, I've written an ebook which tries to help people make sense of the
various hosting options available on the market today, perhaps it can be
useful to you. The book site is

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

~~~
Gustomaximus
>given the low price you could rent them in pairs and replicate the data using
something like DRBD

I'd be worried with this drive 2 is sitting 30cm from drive 1 so if something
physical happened at the site itself your data is gone vs multi site coverage.

------
HaseebR7
The one's listed here are great. Been using one for over a year now.

[http://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-
france](http://oneprovider.com/dedicated-servers/paris-france)

------
leandot
I use kimsufi to host a side project and so far they have been really good.
Switched away from Hetzner.

Running multiple dockerized applications on a dedicated host is a good way to
save on running costs until things pick up speed.

------
joshbaptiste
The best bang for buck I have found so far for large storage hosting is the
slot hosting option from [http://www.delimiter.com](http://www.delimiter.com),
where you mail in your own hard-drive and they provide you with a local VPS
that can mount it in an Atlanta data center for $100/yr. I sent a 6TB drive. I
then run other cheap VPS's (usually on the east coast for lower latency) that
mount the drive via sshfs.

------
known
Low end dedicated servers/virtual private servers
[http://www.lowendbox.com/](http://www.lowendbox.com/)

------
retrack
Almost everyone here suggest Object Storage which I too think is the best
option for your case. Then you can modulate computing power or even technology
(VPS, cloud instance, PaaS, or containers) as you will.

Some providers like us (I am CEO at Exoscale) bill the compute by the minute
and allow to resize the direct attached disk even on small 5$/mo 512mb
instances.

------
andy
I know what you mean about needing a solution with lots of storage. I have
Linode servers, and I'm at 90% disk space usage on one of them. They just
upgraded the ram on all servers, but what I really need is more disk space.
I'm nowhere near hitting the bandwidth limit, just need more space.

------
andybak
I use [https://backupsy.com/](https://backupsy.com/) \- essentially a cheap
VPS with slow but generous storage options.

I think ovh also has an option for 'lots of space but don't worry about the
other things'.

------
nreece
Check out Dediserve - [https://dediserve.com](https://dediserve.com). They let
you customise the resources (including SSD and NAS storage) as per your needs.
Moreover, their performance and support are great too.

------
ahazred8ta
"would require sizable amounts of storage space (but not much of other
resources)"

Self-hosting would be your best option if your bandwidth needs are modest.
Your data is 'small' enough to fit on a local drive.

------
shaunpud
Have you checked out ServerHub? They are very generous with storage;
[http://serverhub.com/vps/ssd-cached](http://serverhub.com/vps/ssd-cached)

------
seanwilson
Are these static websites or do the apps need to write to the storage space?

~~~
collyw
What sort of static website would need that much storage?

~~~
icebraining
Something like a self-hosted pyvideo.org would probably take a few TBs.

~~~
collyw
Even that has a search option. I suppose you might want to host a large number
of big downloads.

~~~
icebraining
You can have search using only browser-side JS, by generating a static index:
[http://10consulting.com/2013/03/06/jekyll-and-lunr-js-
static...](http://10consulting.com/2013/03/06/jekyll-and-lunr-js-static-
websites-with-powerful-full-text-search-using-javascript/)

------
Raed667
I use OVH SSD VPS (the cheapest offer) and it has been working nicely for me.

However if you select your server to be in a region requests from other
regions might be a bit slow.

------
hatmer
Github let's you host static pages for free. Mega gives you 50GB free storage.
Amazon EC2 has a nano option that costs very little.

------
chintan39
I have been using CloudAtCost for almost 2 years. Works fine for side projects
or experiments.Also has one time fee option

------
walrus01
kimsufi = OVH , just FYI.

~~~
webtechgal
Thanks, yes, I actually found them via OVH only, but SO much cheaper than
OVH!! The configs offered are much inferior, but okay for my requirements.

~~~
walrus01
The primary difference being that kimsufi has basically no support, you're
wholly responsible for whatever OS you're running on the box. The only support
is 'wipe and start over'. If you're confident and OK with that it's a lower
cost option.

~~~
AznHisoka
To be honest, that's also the same support level as the higher plans like
SoYouStart and OVH. They don't manage or administrate your servers for you.
You need knowledge. The good news is: it doesn't take much to be able to
manage everything on your own.

~~~
webtechgal
So very true and I doubt if ANY service with such low costs would provide any
support beyond hardware/network failure. However, speaking for myself, once I
have the trusty ol' CentOS 6.7 and an ssh login, Barbara is my aunt, so this
works for me. :-)

------
skrowl
OVH is what we use for our side stuff. Pretty good as long as you never need
support. Getting support was very slow.

------
fapjacks
I use and recommend both OVH and Hetzner.

------
haseeb1431
Is there any way to get the crux of this whole discussion instead of going
through each comment?

------
gravypod
If you don't mind a sketchy company Volume Drive has great prices, just
horrible service.

~~~
joshmn
> sketchy company

Understatement of the year.

For those who are out of the loop, webhostingtalk.com has some great reads.
Get some popcorn.

~~~
gravypod
Didn't they just leave 300+ servers at a datacenter?

------
sandis
I've been quite happy with Delimiter [1]. Cheap, but relatively beefy
dedicated servers and S3-compatible object storage. You can use promo code
B6NFT66YU7ZN to get 6% off in perpetuity (disclaimer: that's my affiliate
code).

[1] [https://www.delimiter.com](https://www.delimiter.com)

~~~
ivank
My experience with Delimiter involved sending them a hard drive, not getting
it installed in the "slot hosting" VPS I paid for, not getting any support
tickets answered, then eventually getting my drive back three weeks later
after complaining on a forum. Said forum then banned a Delimiter sales guy,
partly for posting a barcode with my home address and other PI on it.

They are literally the worst hosting business I've ever dealt with, and I've
used many of the low-end providers. OVH and online.net are miles better.

~~~
sandis
When was that? Just curious, because I did see some bad reviews before
deciding to go with Delimiter, but also kept hearing that things have improved
in recent years. Online.net (specifically their Scaleway brand) I've been
happy with as well. Their support has a quick turnaround, but answers have
been unrelated to what I've been asking.

~~~
ivank
That happened in April 2016. Unrelated to my issues, they also had a very long
HVAC outage earlier this year. So I'm not sure anything has improved at
Delimiter/Yomura.

------
aantix
VPSDime ([http://vpsdime.com/](http://vpsdime.com/)). Their largest VPS
package is

4 CPU

36GB Memory

180GB SSD Space

12TB Traffic Limit

10Gbit Connection

$42.00/mo. Lot of room for multiple sites.

~~~
forthefuture
That's both much less storage than he needs and much more expensive.

------
zzcworld
In the U.S, you can use WholeSaleInternet, Joe's Datacenter and Nocix, those
servers are dirt cheap.

~~~
jackson23
Be careful, looks like these may be owned by the same person and are all
located in KC MO. The prices look good, but some research should be done.
Nocix is/was datashack.

[https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1559810](https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1559810)

------
zaidf
ovh.com

------
angry-hacker
OpenShift by Red Hat. Upgrade to silver package, they just want your credit
card but you don't have to pay anything if you run 3 small gears for an
example. If you give them your CC, you get things like own domains etc. for
free. For my simple side projects, it's perfect and easy to scale.

I can't remember about storage costs, but you can find out!

~~~
webtechgal
Thanks - I will check that out, though I seriously doubt if they would be
offering anything like a dedi box with 500GB drive for less than $10/mo...

~~~
EduardoBautista
[https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/)

If you use exactly 500gb it would be be $15 a month for standard storage.

