
Ask HN: Where should I host my startup? - akos
I am done with the coding and I would like to shoot my site into the wild and start some marketing. What are some of the best and most reliable options? Possibly cheaper ones..
Thanks so much.
======
tjpd
Reading a lot of these comments make me think that everyone on HN is a cynic
of the Oscar Wilde/Lady Windermere variety: "A man who knows the price of
everything and the value of nothing" [1].

IMHO you should go with Heroku and ignore anyone who's suggesting dedicated
servers, VPSes, AWS, Docker or containers. Every moment you spend maintaining
a server or doing devops is wasted because it's time not spent building or
marketing your _app_.

New startups' biggest expense is founders' time. It seems a lot of people,
even on HN, don't realise it because it's a hidden cost. But if you think that
a decent developer is worth at least $50/hr and it might take you an 1hr to
set up and 1hr/yr to manage a server (e.g. apply patches, update security)
then you're better off not spending those 2hrs and paying an extra $100
hosting your app.

Worrying about the future infrastructure cost is also wrong-headed. It's a
kind of premature optimisation. To get the real, expected future cost, the
projected infrastructure cost has to be multiplied by the probability that
you'll actually get big, which for start-ups, is very low.

[1]:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/790/790-h/790-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/790/790-h/790-h.htm)

~~~
iyn
I also recommend Heroku when you're just launching your product. At my first
startup (which failed miserably) I spend waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time
trying to get the infrastructure right and then the downtime still happened
all the time (because I didn't have enough experience with Docker and the
project had a few mowing parts and when one failed, everything couldn't work).
Honestly, I didn't use Heroku because I really wanted to do infra by myself
and learn something (and I actually learned a lot) but also deep down in my
mind I felt that using something like Heroku/managed servie was... I'm not
sure how to describe it - like admission that I can't do it myself, like as
I'm not as good as I think of myself - "I can do infra by myself, I don't need
anybody managing my app for me!"-thinking. In retrospect, not using Heroku was
a huge mistake because I didn't focus on the product. At my current startup I
decided to start with Heroku and I'm really, REALLY glad I made this decision
- finally I can focus only on the product and feel that infra is more
stable/predictable than in the scenario where I'd try to manage it myself.

------
seanwilson
This highly depends on if your site is dynamic or static. If static, I would
go with GitHub Pages or Netlify as they're free/cheap and easy to use. Static
sites with this kind of hosting is also great in that they require practically
zero maintenance.

If you have to run a dynamic site (less potential headaches if you avoid
this), I would try to use something like Heroku. It's easily one of the
simplest way to host a robust site that needs to scale without having to spend
much time on admin and DevOps.

For the people recommending a VPS, DigitalOcean etc., you're talking about
using a huge amount of your own time to make such a setup as robust, easy to
use and low maintenance as Heroku. What about backups? Scripting server
creation? Adding a load balancer and more servers? Security updates? Server
security?

The more parts and scripts you have to put together yourself, the more things
that can go wrong and the more time of yours it's going to consume. If you
consider how much your own time is worth and how important your startup is to
you, trying to save anything in the realm of $10 a month on a core part of
your startup doesn't make any sense if this is going to cost you multiple
hours of time a month.

~~~
Lxr
Honest question, what does Heroku offer over Elastic Beanstalk other than
being more expensive? I switched to EB and it seems more flexible and a lot
cheaper, and I haven't wasted hours on admin.

~~~
seanwilson
> Honest question, what does Heroku offer over Elastic Beanstalk other than
> being more expensive? I switched to EB and it seems more flexible and a lot
> cheaper, and I haven't wasted hours on admin.

I said "something like Heroku" and Elastic Beanstalk is similar.

------
andrewl-hn
No one has mentioned Heroku yet. Starting at $7 they are a bit more expensive
than DigitalOcean, but with that extra $2 you'll get their platform, their
tooling for deploying the app, their database backups. Adding other services
later on is also easy with their addons. By choosing Heroku you can save
hundreds or thousands of dollars in ops costs over a course of a few months.

The hosting cost may go up quickly, but if your business is successful you can
either absorb it, or spend time and money to migrate away. They run on AWS, so
picking the same location means you can run mixed infrastructure (part on
Heroku, and part on AWS) without a latency hit. Thus, a hybrid configuration
is very viable.

~~~
idlewords
Using Heroku puts two levels of bloat between you and the hardware, and locks
you into a hosting environment that becomes very expensive quickly. Eschew.

~~~
tjpd
I disagree with this wholeheartedly and just posted why above but wanted to
reiterate it here. This might just have been a throw-away comment but "bloat",
lock-in & cost are red-herrings.

"Bloat" here is a virtue. Heroku removes two levels of drudgery and
administration between you and the hardware. Who wants to be racking hardware?
Who wants to be patching the OS? Who wants to be dealing with package
vulnerabilities? None of this helps actually build the business

Lock-in is minimal, particularly if it's a self contained app and you're not
using a lot of services. There are countless examples of companies who've
moved off of Heroku when they've gotten big. Plus there's also lock-in using
EC2, S3, AWS. There's lock-in of some level regardless where you run your
stuff.

Future cost is also really, very very low because P(success) is, sadly, super
low.

~~~
idlewords
Built in to your comment is the assumption that you're trying to grow your
business big or die.

If you're working in a niche market, costs are important and keeping them low
can be the difference between having an independent livelihood and failure.

~~~
tjpd
No it's not, it's really not. In fact I think in a niche market then it's
often even more true.

If you're building in a niche then (almost by definition) you're not going to
need a lot of infrastructure. There won't be millions of customers and they
(usually) won't need tons of infrastructure.

I think the only case is where you're building a business like Pinboard :)
Where the CLTV is relatively low but the the bandwidth, storage & compute is
relatively high.

Regardless of the market you're in though, if you want to build an independent
livelihood or a lifestyle business typically infrastructure costs still
shouldn't be a factor.

A good livelihood might be $50k/yr say or $4k/mo roughly. The difference
between $5/mo and $500/mo in hosting costs isn't what determines success or
failure. It's whether or not you've built, marketed and sold an app to 5 or
500 customers.

~~~
sokoloff
I agree with your overall sentiment I think, but there are many side gigs
where $5 vs $500 a month is the difference between viable and not viable.
Sometimes it's the difference between sticking with an idea long enough to
turn it into something viable; something that's bleeding you $500/mo won't
have as long a life as something that's only $5 or $25/mo while you're
figuring out if there's something worthwhile or not.

A niche market cuts both ways. Sometimes you don't need to worry about scale,
but you also can't bet on large numbers of customers coming to cover up
inefficient choices.

------
chias
If "$10 / month" counts as cheap in your book, check out a Linode VPS. I've
been using them for a couple years now, and I have been extremely satisfied
(although I've upgraded to a beefier VPS as my project has grown in
popularity).

Another good VPS option is DigitalOcean, which offers a smaller (and cheaper)
plan for $5 / month.

There are also a lot of shared hosting providers out there that will sell you
cheaper space, but I would not recommend this for anything non-trivial, as
most of the time, you'll be limited to using PHP. Still, if you're looking for
the best bang for your buck and you're willing to settle for shared hosting,
check out Nearly Free Speech -- they are head and shoulders above any other
shared hosting provider that I have ever tried.

~~~
komaromy
If you're considering Linode, you should read up on their history of security
incidents and make sure it's a risk you're willing to take.

~~~
smoyer
I've been with Linode for over six years and the only security incident I've
have was my own fault. Follow the guides for securing new VPSs - I recommend
that SSH be configured to disallow root logins and only allow certificates for
authentication. There are many great guides available.

~~~
chias
I think people are disagreeing with you because the parent comment is
referring to Linode platform security and not the security of the individual
VPSes -- which is a valid point. The security of your individual VPS depends,
to a certain degree, on the Linode platform's security.

But I find it disheartening that multiple people chose to just downvote you,
and nobody bothered to write a response.

~~~
smoyer
I came to the same conclusion but what good is karma if you don't get down-
voted occasionally?

I didn't misunderstand the parent's comment ... I was just providing a data
point on the continuum. My experience with Linode has been great. I do realize
that there have been security problems with the platform itself.

------
hbcondo714
Microsoft's BizSpark program gives startups $150/month in Azure credits for 3
years

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/member-
offers/bizs...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/member-
offers/bizspark-startups/)

~~~
palmeida
Just to add that it is $150/month in Azure credits per user in the startup to
a maximum of 5

------
jhylau
For any non-static website - Heroku FOR SURE. It's not even a question - I
have two companies that both run on Heroku - both startups are profitable and
both will remain on Heroku for the next couple of years.
([https://www.switchup.org](https://www.switchup.org) and
[https://www.trycarriage.com](https://www.trycarriage.com)) - I know massive
scale billion dollar companies that are on Heroku (e.g. Deliveroo, Macy's)

The cost/benefit analysis is ALWAYS positive in favor of Heroku until you hit
super massive scale (minimum 2-3 years out for most startups, if ever). It's
super easy to use. Their feature set is increasing monthly and they can handle
a lot of different types of setups.

------
iraklism
Hetzner is another option. But you don't really specify your requirements
(geographical region, scalability , etc) so I don't know if this suits you.

~~~
idlewords
Big thumbs up for Hetzner.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Yep, another vote for them here. It's expected that you're 100% capable of
admining your own box, but as long as you're happy with that, the price/power
ratio is pretty much unbeatable.

------
ggregoire
AWS has a free plan during 12 months:
[https://aws.amazon.com/free](https://aws.amazon.com/free)

------
biot
Since you've provided no details at all for your requirements (does your
startup need a flotilla of beefy servers to do real-time facial recognition
across thousands of live 4K video feeds?) I'm assuming you have a static HTML
site with zero backend required. In that case, a Jekyll/Hugo generated site
hosted on Amazon S3 will be really cheap. Throw CloudFlare in front of it for
even more cheapness if you expect loads of traffic. Your hosting bill will be
measured in pennies per month.

------
nodesocket
Depending on your application and stack, you may want to consider Google Cloud
or AWS. While I really like DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, etc they lack
production features like a centralized firewall and IAM security. Additionally
AWS and Google have a slew of complimentary services so maybe you don't need
raw physical machines. For example, instead you may be able to use
Elasticache, RDS, and Elastic Container Service and don't have to manage any
servers.

------
jimmywanger
I'd go with GCE. They have a wide suite of services, and because they're the
number three player right now, will probably give you a bunch of free credit
to play with.

------
ing33k
you should check out free tier offered by Amazon

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

Also do apply for things like BizSpark
[https://bizspark.microsoft.com/](https://bizspark.microsoft.com/)

if you have a static marketing page, you can also host it for free ( almost ?
) on
[https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/](https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/)

~~~
boulos
Yes, for a site that can just be hosted on the Firebase free tier
([https://firebase.google.com/pricing/](https://firebase.google.com/pricing/))
you can go a long way (the same is true of the App Engine free tier). The OP
stated they had already written something though, so my guess is that
rewriting to Firebase wouldn't work (if it's just a SPA front-end app in
Javascript, fine, but if there's any backend a rewrite seems more hassle than
it's worth).

------
erikb
Don't trust anybody who doesn't start with "it depends". For nothing in this
world there is one perfect answer. Context means a lot. What have you coded?
Why do you think you are done if it is not running anywhere (I would say you
are 20% done if it runs on your laptop)? How many people need to use it to be
viable (e.g. a diary service needs only one user who writes texts for himself,
a shop needs at least make its hosting and transportation fees, a social
network needs thousands of people before it can even start to be successful)?

Good general advice is this: The simplest solution is often the best, but in
some cases that means taking your old desktop pc, install ubuntu, configure
your router to publicly share http and https from that computer. In other
cases it means using a toolset like Heroku.

Please don't be mad about this, but the way you phrase your question it is
very very likely you have so little skill that you don't even know how little.
Please consider to pay a freelancer to support you. He likely has more skill
and has experienced more "this can never happen in real life" F-Ups than you,
and therefore can handle a lot.

~~~
solipsism
"skill"? That's bullshit, you can't tell anything about skill from a person's
poorly phrased question. Especially since that person's primary language might
not be English.

~~~
erikb
In fact you can tell a lot about what questions people ask. The more specific
and detailed a question is, the better the person knows the topic. A skilled
language learner would never ask "What is the best way to learn English?"
because he knows already that there is no best way, in fact there is no single
way. He knows that he needs to combine different methods and which are the
common methods and how well they work for him.

By recognizing a misconception that people have at a certain skill level you
can guess their skill level quite acurately. Beginners usually want to solve
the biggest of problems, and be done after the next weekend. Mid-levelers
usually have specific questions about a method that must be the one true best
solution in their eyes, but somehow they struggle with topic X. High skilled
people usually ask questions that can't be googled, and even other experts
need to look into the problem more deeply to figure it out together.

It's also hard to fake, since you need have some experience in the area to
recognize how your current believe is limited. You cannot ask a ungoogleble
question if you don't know already most of what can be googled about that
topic.

------
VertexRed
I'm going to have to be the boring guy and say: depends completely on how much
resources you need.

In most cases though (brace yourself for an unpopular opinion) it's enough to
setup a simple dedicated server for about $20-$60 per month.

Now I did read the comments that mentioned how getting a dedicated server is a
waste of valuable time, but honestly you'll most probably be able to get it
setup in a day, you'll also learn how web servers work along the way and you
won't have to depend on third-party cloud services (yet).

Here's a great guide from DigitalOcean on how to setup a modern dedicated HTTP
server with MYSQL: [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-
inst...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-
linux-nginx-mysql-php-lemp-stack-on-ubuntu-12-04)

------
ddorian43
Check out webfaction
[https://www.webfaction.com/?aid=9281](https://www.webfaction.com/?aid=9281).
It's cheaper/better than shared/heroku/dedicated/vps/ec2 up until a certain
point (48GB ram).

------
PetahNZ
If you are willing to shell out a little more ($40), you can get a pretty
powerful DS for a fraction of the cost of what the major cloud providers would
cost: [https://www.delimiter.com](https://www.delimiter.com)

------
adjohn
Check out Digital Ocean Hatch[1]. If you're an eligible startup, you can get
100K of free credits for 12 months.

[1] -
[https://www.digitalocean.com/hatch/](https://www.digitalocean.com/hatch/)

------
trcollinson
Can you give us an idea of what your site is built in? Personally I have a
side project I am working on which I am just hosting on the free allocation of
AWS. Even if it weren't in the free tier, it would be extremely inexpensive.
With that, I have a lot of experience deploying to AWS and I have scripted
most of the process (in fact, other than some monitoring, at this point, the
deployment process is entirely automated). This would work for just about any
architecture. But, the difficulty of setup will cause your mileage to vary a
bit.

------
grif-fin
I can comment on AWS, EC2 (ECS where docker kicks in if you want it). To set
it up via UX Amazon Console was absolutely confusing and continues poor user
experience until we moved to AWS-cli which was very time consuming and then
the setting up of docker which just ate a big chunk of our time.

Strongly recommend to go for something simpler and lightweight to reduce the
time waste as lots of other comments suggest.

At the end of the day you don't even know if anyone wants your product or what
first user's opinion is, why waste time on shiny host set-up?

------
wtvanhest
It depends on how much you want to do yourself.

Heroku is easiest and relatively cheap until you scale. (Great problem)

Lots of people seem to use AWS. My limited understanding is that it is
marginally more difficult to implement than heroku.

You could also go with someone like Linode. I would only go that route if you
have implemented before. There is a learning curve and if you are trying to
get the site up quick, I would go with a different option.

------
smoyer
Redhat offers free services (you pick which ones) via their OpenShift [0]
platform. Under the covers it's Docker and Kubernetes.

[0] [https://developers.openshift.com/getting-
started/index.html?...](https://developers.openshift.com/getting-
started/index.html?sc_cid=701600000011p9xAAA&gclid=CMbt7eWnzs8CFdcSgQod5k0HDQ)

------
boulos
As people asked, what do you need "today" (host website apparently) and what
do you need "tomorrow"? If you just need a simple static-ish web app, and
everything else is your offline iOS game that's pretty different from building
say a Snapchat competitor.

Full disclosure: I work on Google Cloud, but it's unclear you need a cloud
provider.

------
coupdejarnac
I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but Redhat's Openshift provides an
alternative to Heroku. I've used it for a few years and been happy with it.
They have a startup program that gives you access to a paid tier for a year.
I've used Openshift to host Node and Flask apps.

Edit: a bunch of downvotes for trying to be helpful, how nice.

~~~
LaurentVB
I was pretty happy with openshift until I recently discovered it was
impossible to update the version of an os package I depended on. On heroku,
custom buildpack and it was done in 5 minutes.

------
shanecleveland
Webfaction. I don't do anything with heavy traffic, but very happy with
reliability, performance and features.

------
pimterry
If you're talking about hosting your startup's landing page, stick with Github
Pages: [https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/). Free, super
quick & easy, with custom domains to boot.

Personally, for almost any product I start here. Even if you do need server-
side infrastructure for the product, hosting all your marketing pages on GH
pages is probably the right choice - they're going to be better at reliably
hosting and serving static content than you are. Focus on your product
instead.

When I do need server-side logic I then usually go for Digital Ocean, because
they're very cheap, pretty great, and far less complicated to manage than EC2.
It's also pretty easy to set up Dokku: [https://medium.com/@pimterry/host-
your-node-app-on-dokku-dig...](https://medium.com/@pimterry/host-your-node-
app-on-dokku-digitalocean-1cb97e3ab041#.4idyklakq). With that on top you then
get a quick & effective Heroku-style deployment experience, at a fraction of
the price.

~~~
colinbartlett
Since Github Pages doesn't support SSL/TLS certificates for custom domains, I
don't think anyone should be using it. It's simply outdated technology.

~~~
jobvandervoort
You can host static pages on GitLab.com for free, with TLS certificates and
custom domains.

You can use _any_ static site generator.

------
epynonymous
why can't you use just aws micro free t1? they give you a micro machine for 1
year free. what loads do you anticipate, what hw requirements do you need for
your machine? i think hosting a simple website with sqlite database works
great on an aws micro, if you need something more glorified like postgresql or
mysql and multi-tier, then perhaps you should go for something like digital
ocean or paid aws, this all depends on your requirements which you haven't
specified.

currently i'm hosting a golang web + restful api + websocket server + sqlite3
db + redis + nginx all on a single micro AWS server, but my marketing hasn't
really started yet, we're talking about <100 hits thus far per day.

------
nwilkens
Do you have any special requirements -- such as location, high memory, io
performance, or storage capacity?

At [https://mnx.io](https://mnx.io) (my company) we offer various options with
reliability, and performance at our foundation.

------
flaie
Clever cloud is a good option, they're very good at what they're doing. Plans
start low, and you can scale easily when needed. They do have plenty of
options, and support is top notch.

------
pier25
We are super happy with Firebase. Even if you just use the static hosting you
get CDN + HTTPS for free. And you can even use the free tier as long as you
want which is awesome for low traffic.

------
acarrera
if looking into digitalocean, vultr.com is slightly better in terms of pricing
and processors, though it takes much longer (~2-3mins) to spin up a vm instead
of <60s in digitalocean

~~~
the_common_man
This is not true if you have custom snapshots. DO takes quiet a bit of time if
you have custom images. My experience with vultr is that it boots very fast
(<1 min)

~~~
hiphopyo
Does DO even offer custom images? Last I spoke to the owner he said they had
other priorities.

------
borplk
As someone who wasted time and money with AWS I'd say start with something
simple like DigitalOcean and worry about problems as you face them.

------
DeBraid
now.sh [https://zeit.co/now/](https://zeit.co/now/) and surge.sh
[https://surge.sh](https://surge.sh) are some lesser-known options that I've
used recently with ease and success (on free plan, for small projects).

------
jtcond13
Amazon's PaaS offering (Elastic Beanstalk) isn't too difficult to use and may
be less expensive than Heroku.

------
catalinbraescu
It looks like you're confusing your startup (which is a company) with your web
site.

------
d0m
Personally had bad experience with linode.. I'd go with aws.

------
alauda
Take a look at hyper.sh, if you are using docker.

------
imaginenore
Cheap: browse through the listings on lowendbox.com, you will find some
amazing deals for both VPS and dedicated servers.

Reliable: AWS / Rackspace / DigitalOcean / Google cloud / basically any famous
one.

When you're starting, it's probably better to rent a cheap VPS server. If you
start growing fast, you can always move to the cloud. But modern cheap VPSs
are quite powerful. I have 7 websites running on one that costs me $6/month.

~~~
badsock
Has DigitalOcean gotten better for reliability? I took my company off of them
about 2 years ago specifically because of their frequent downtime.

~~~
colinbartlett
I've been using for more than 2 years with 100% uptime.

~~~
akoncius
yeah, in last couple of years I cannot remember anything really bad in DO.
Biggest issue in DO was slower performance of storage, but after complaining
to support about it, it was fixed and everything was fine there.

