Tell HN: Switched from Lightsail to Hetzner Cloud, 2 blogs for $4 a month

[999900000999]

After a few comments mentioned I was probably wasting money using AWS Lightsail, I finally tried out Hetzner Cloud for hosting my Ghost Blogs.

Since ARM is new and interesting, I picked the 4$ ARM Ubuntu server for hosting. After experimenting with a few different alternatives, I installed Captain Rover again( it's still the easiest solution here).

The only thing I really had issues with was getting the A records to work right. I had some weird franken system where I had the domains on a different register, pointing to AWS name servers, pointing to Hetzner Cloud.

This was really confusing and didn't work right, so I migrated the domains over to AWS. I'm happy to say both of my blogs are working fine now.

Both of these are near no traffic blogs, so I have no idea how this would behave under load. 4$ is a great deal compared to the 30$ a month I was spending before.

Whenever I have time I can see myself using Hetzner for other projects. Thanks HN.

[smt88]

Why are the blogs on running application servers at all? You could build them locally and host them on S3 for close to $0/month and load would be a non-issue.

[999900000999 → smt88]

I like being able to write a blog post from my phone, laptop, etc.

I know I can set up tooling for this with GitHub actions, but Ghost is worth 2$ per blog for me.

I still have to find a way to find new free themes though.

[cssanchez]

Why didn't you try a barebones AWS EC2 with their Arm offers as well? Last I checked nothing beat them, especially if you reserve capacity in advance.

Another option is buying a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero and hosting the ghost blog from there since the blogs don't have any traffic.

[uaas → cssanchez]

“Nothing beat them” in what regards?

[dakiol]

I tried to sign up in Hetzner but always got rejected. Also, the idea of providing my ID/Passport to them is odd. I’m running stuff on Digital Ocean without having to hand over any IDs or using my real name. So far, so good.

[acheong08 → dakiol]

Similar experience. DO isn't much better. Their GitHub authentication is broken such that if you change your email on GitHub, you lose access to your DO account & must provide ID to recover it.

Ended up on eth-services.de after seeing they sponsor mailcow.

[satvikpendem]

Why are you paying for blogs, ostensibly static content, at all? Vercel and Netlify are both basically free for both. I use Hetzner too, but only for application services, not static content.

[shinryuu → satvikpendem]

OP is running Ghost, which is an application. Of course OP could have chosen to use a static site generator but didn't in this case.

[satvikpendem → shinryuu]

I'm curious why they chose Ghost when Markdown works just as well, and either way, I believe Ghost can still work via Vercel etc.

[999900000999 → satvikpendem]

I like Ghost.

I took my monthly costs down from 30$ to 4$ HN tells me I'm still wasting money.

I expect nothing less.

Ghost is much easier to use than editing and commiting markdown files. I'm also able to create posts programmatically via an API.

I guess this could all be done with Markdown too, but it would make things harder.

[satvikpendem → 999900000999]

I used to use Ghost, so don't discount me as some "HN commenter." I switched to Markdown not for the cost but for the portability. It simply seemed easier to edit Markdown than to go into Ghost's editor for basically the same thing.

[999900000999 → satvikpendem]

So I assume you edit markdown locally and then commit the files to Git which automatically builds into a static website?

I'm doing certain things with the Ghost API that I don't think I can really replace with that.

[satvikpendem → 999900000999]

Yes I am. What are you doing with the Ghost API?

[999900000999 → satvikpendem]

I automate the creation of certain posts.

Ultimately your not wrong, but I think Ghost is a great platform.

If anything I like creating tools that I can share with others. If I want to invite friends to post on my blogs it'll take 30 seconds to provide a login and creating posts is very easy with Ghost.

Getting non technical people to understand Git is a massive challenge I don't want to try again.

[satvikpendem → 999900000999]

I see. Personally I don't let others write on my blog so I don't have the same use cases as you. If I had to, I'd ask them to just send me the Markdown file or text itself and I'd submit it via git myself.

[999900000999 → satvikpendem]

I'm always open to learning.

Do you have any code to share which automates turning markdown to a blog site?

[satvikpendem → 999900000999]

I just saw this on Show HN, might be exactly what you're looking for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41976673

[999900000999 → satvikpendem]

Thanks!

[satvikpendem → 999900000999]

Search for static site generators, there are many. Some of the famous ones are Jekyll, Hugo, etc, but I personally use NextJS with MDX: https://nextjs.org/docs/pages/building-your-application/conf...

[ipaddr → satvikpendem]

Vercel costs become too costly once you get serious traffic. Plus a server allows you to do many things while hosting static content.

[satvikpendem → ipaddr]

For static content? Vercel, Cloudflare etc are extremely cheap for that, even free even for large traffic loads, but yes a server allows other things than static content.

[inSenCite]

If they're just simple blogs why not use Github Pages? you can set it up with a custom domain and use the web codespaces

[nrnrjrjrj]

Digital ocean is good enough for this. You would be trading the power/$ ratio of Hetzner for probably an easier DX with more regional options.

[BOOSTERHIDROGEN]

I am using Hetzner but recently changed to Netcup due to more discounts.

[revskill]

Or, just use notion and publish the writings ?

[Malidir]

Cool story bro :)