As per the title, where do you guys get your cheap servers? I mean subscription-based, not server hardware. I'm a student and I'm looking for something cheap for hosting personal experiments and websites. Thought that people on HN might have the answer and be interested in the answer, too.
Check out the Black Hat SEO forums - the people there generally are running all manner of sketchy services, bots, crawlers, etc. that need the cheapest compute available.
The old hosting providers often have deals that can get you more power than the equivalent Amazon machine for the same price. If you're looking to be able to host something that other people might use, this is a solid way to go; just make sure you build something that it's easy for you to re-deploy elsewhere (i.e. at the very least have all your code in a separate revision control system, and some mechanism to back up any databases / locally created files to your home machine).
If you're really just looking for something dirt cheap for personal projects that won't see use beyond yourself, the free / up to $5/mo tier of the big cloud providers is a reasonable thing to check out. https://vncoupon.com/5-usd-vps-compare-linode-vs-vultr-vs-di... is a bit old now, maybe there's a newer article helping you sort that out.
I love the lowendbox/lowendtalk forums. Dig in and you learn all kinds of inside information about the various discount hosting companies and their bizarre drama. You also learn how to spot actually reliable, professionally managed services, versus the fly by night people just looking to take your money and bail.
You can find cheaper options than Linode, but honestly you can host lots of stuff on a single $5/month instance, and you get the benefit of their infrastructure and support. I remember being a student and paying $20/month for a SliceHost VPS with a fraction of what you can get today for much less.
Had an account on asmallorange (https://asmallorange.com) for a while. Can't vouch for their compute power, but if barebones shell access is what you're after, they do well.
Lowendbox, lurk 3+ years offers during blackfriday and you'll pay 1-5 dollars/year for a 2gb ram VPS with unlimited traffic in a non 13-eyes country. Payable in bitcoin.
I was using that feature for the last year or so but recently they took away the public IP address. So I think it’s no longer free for common use cases like hosting a website. Correct me if I’m wrong!
Just remember Google only gives you 1GB of egress network traffic free, per month. This might be enough for a small personal project, but even a low traffic website will easily surpass that - doing a Show HN or something will blow through that quickly.
I second Hetzner. Their smallest VPS has been reliable for me and is even a bit cheaper than OVH. More importantly, should something go wrong or you have a question, you can expect a quite fast reply.
Recommending Hetzner Cloud as well. They had some connectivity problems 6-12 months ago, but seem very stable in the last months. They provide backup and snapshot features, floating IPs, internal networking and mountable volumes as well - which can be handy in comparison to a barebones server from e.g. Kimsufi where you have to manage everything yourself. Hetzners lowest tier is "much" cheaper than DO and co.
And they have DDoS protection layer! With European data protection law better than US. It is a no brainer to pick Hetzner instead of any other services. They do have a difficult to remember name, maybe rebrand it for English speaking market.
Not because they are cheap but because they are great. It just so happens they have a $5 / month plan for a 1 CPU core / 1GB of memory / 25GB SSD server.
I've tried Scaleway once when I applied for their 500€ 1-month credit campaign, but they demanded a CC and to add insult to injury charged me an activation charge that wasn't given back. Twice.
For websites, just use GitHub Pages. It's totally free, very reliable, and extremely easy. It feels like a nerdier GeoCities, but without the composing tools.
I have my important VPSs on Linode since 2008, good experience, almost zero downtime in 10+ years, very reliable, great customer support. They have a $5/mo Nanode 1CPU, 1 GB Ram.
There are at least 5 providers that will rent you a $5/month server: DigitalOcean, Lightsail, Linode, UpCloud and Vultr. There's a guy that publishes benchmarks of their $5 instance regularly
DigitalOcean is by far the most popular. Personally, I like Vultr because they also have $2.50 IPv6 only instances and you can upload your own ISO file if you want to try a less popular Linux distribution. Both services have similar user interfaces that are pretty good.
That being said, $60/year is still a lot. If you can get away with just a static site, try GitHub pages https://pages.github.com/. You only get one (unless you create GitHub organizations) but it's free. You can still have your own domain pointing to it with TLS (free through Let's Encrypt). You miss out on the fun of managing a Linux server unfortunately.
Yep. I use DO and it’s been just fine for low traffic websites. They’ve been great to work with and very easy to use. But I only host personal projects and internal tooling projects with them. Can’t speak to scaling but my experience has been positive.
I've been on Digital Ocean for a few years, pretty happy with them and have no plans to move on. I was on Hetzner before them, but moved away because the pricing was essentially the same yet Hetzner's control panel (at least back then - I'm talking before 2015) was a bit of a pain, and DO's is all shiny, and I find what I'm looking for quickly, most of the time. Hetzner's admin panel might have come a long way since then though?
Heroku is free if you don't need constant uptime (it shuts down your server when it's idle for a while and starts it back up when a request comes in). Then the cheapest paid tier is $7.
It's also really pleasant because you deploy by just pushing your code; no SSHing or cron jobs. You do code an entire server process; you just don't manage it. So it's like halfway-serverless.
The downside, other than being $7 instead of $5, is that that's only for a single process; you can't run multiple low-compute servers within that $7. The file system also gets wiped whenever you deploy, so it's not appropriate for a database.
Now, you are asking for subscription-based, but have you considered that it is perfectly possible to host on your own hardware at home perfectly fine for experimental/personal stuff? Just buy the cheapest Raspberry Pi (or a clone or whatever) and hook it up at home, that's certainly going to be cheaper than any of the cloud providers being thrown around here, only the cheapest lowendtalk offers might be cheaper still.
IIRC, at least the Amazon EC2 free tier is limited to the first 12 months. There was a point at which I got billed for the instance that was free before.
I know you aren't interested in server hardware, but you should be. You can get extremely cheap used servers from eBay, Craigslist, or government auctions, and you can get extremely cheap rackspace in colocation centers.
Great experience with Amazon Lightsail. The smallest instance is only $3.50 a month, and you can add a swap file if you need a bit more than 512 MB of RAM.
Lightsail is like swimming in the shallow end of the AWS pool. Doesn’t have a drop down with 50 services like AWS, but has enough to run a small or medium sized web app.
Assuming the question is an XY problem and you are really looking for a very simple solution for an Internet server you operate: Have a look at FFTH.
If fiber is offered for your home then you can host your server in your bedroom. This is what I do for my websites, and this is really liberating. Hell, you could serve from a RaspberryPi or if you think this is too extreme, from a mini PC like Gigabyte Brix.
If fiber is not offered, but you plan to relocate anyway, try to optimize for FFTH. This is what I have done, I moved more than a year ago and specifically looked for FTTH.
It's all about the pre-cloud hosting providers.
Check out the Black Hat SEO forums - the people there generally are running all manner of sketchy services, bots, crawlers, etc. that need the cheapest compute available.
The old hosting providers often have deals that can get you more power than the equivalent Amazon machine for the same price. If you're looking to be able to host something that other people might use, this is a solid way to go; just make sure you build something that it's easy for you to re-deploy elsewhere (i.e. at the very least have all your code in a separate revision control system, and some mechanism to back up any databases / locally created files to your home machine).
If you're really just looking for something dirt cheap for personal projects that won't see use beyond yourself, the free / up to $5/mo tier of the big cloud providers is a reasonable thing to check out. https://vncoupon.com/5-usd-vps-compare-linode-vs-vultr-vs-di... is a bit old now, maybe there's a newer article helping you sort that out.
Also look at webhostingtalk.com (that’s where all the BHW vendors are buying from anyway)
LowEndTalk offers
Very cheap but don't be surprised if a supplier goes out of business/disappears so strategize accordingly.
Plus then of course all the major cloud provide a intro credit. So that should cover about 3 years worth of basic VPS
I love the lowendbox/lowendtalk forums. Dig in and you learn all kinds of inside information about the various discount hosting companies and their bizarre drama. You also learn how to spot actually reliable, professionally managed services, versus the fly by night people just looking to take your money and bail.
AWS, azure, and digitalocean all give free credit to students
https://education.github.com/pack
vultr, hetzner, and OVH have sub-$5/month VPS plans
Personally, I use digitalocean.
OVH, Hetzner, Digital Ocean
If you're looking for really cheap, then use the free servers. Google, AWS provide free tiers that are more than enough for a hobbyist.
Sounds crazy, but the Orcale free tier might work for you. Enough to run two small Linux VPS instances free.
Do you mean Oracle Cloud?
I think this thing https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/iaas/Content/FreeTier/resource...
some forum discussion https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/160260/oracle-cloud-fr...
seems ok though slowish I/O
Faster io than the free GCP
https://prgmr.com/
I have been using their VPSs for about 10 years: it's one of the best services I've ever had the pleasure to use.
You can find cheaper options than Linode, but honestly you can host lots of stuff on a single $5/month instance, and you get the benefit of their infrastructure and support. I remember being a student and paying $20/month for a SliceHost VPS with a fraction of what you can get today for much less.
Had an account on asmallorange (https://asmallorange.com) for a while. Can't vouch for their compute power, but if barebones shell access is what you're after, they do well.
A Small Orange was acquired by EIG (Endurance International Group) in 2012[1] and has reportedly gone downhill since[2].
[1] https://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/site-updates-n... [2] https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/01/19/the-rise-and-fall-o...
Lowendbox, lurk 3+ years offers during blackfriday and you'll pay 1-5 dollars/year for a 2gb ram VPS with unlimited traffic in a non 13-eyes country. Payable in bitcoin.
Take advantage of student credits!
Even when you run out of credits, all cloud providers have a pretty generous free tier.
For example see haveibeenpwn.com's cost breakdown for running a hugely popular api for less than a dollar a month: https://www.troyhunt.com/serverless-to-the-max-doing-big-thi...
Google cloud free tier gives everyone (not just students) one 'always' free vps instance. It works great for me.
Oracle promised 2 instances but got an error 'out of capacity' error instead. Support staff confirmed they dont have hardware in my region.
I was using that feature for the last year or so but recently they took away the public IP address. So I think it’s no longer free for common use cases like hosting a website. Correct me if I’m wrong!
Just remember Google only gives you 1GB of egress network traffic free, per month. This might be enough for a small personal project, but even a low traffic website will easily surpass that - doing a Show HN or something will blow through that quickly.
Put CloudFlare in front. Works fine for me.
Hetzner.
They offer VMs with 1 vCPU and 2GB RAM for 3€/month. Quite a deal.
Decent uptime too. I have a vm running there with over 3 years of uptime. Not bad considering the price.
I second Hetzner. Their smallest VPS has been reliable for me and is even a bit cheaper than OVH. More importantly, should something go wrong or you have a question, you can expect a quite fast reply.
Recommending Hetzner Cloud as well. They had some connectivity problems 6-12 months ago, but seem very stable in the last months. They provide backup and snapshot features, floating IPs, internal networking and mountable volumes as well - which can be handy in comparison to a barebones server from e.g. Kimsufi where you have to manage everything yourself. Hetzners lowest tier is "much" cheaper than DO and co.
And they have DDoS protection layer! With European data protection law better than US. It is a no brainer to pick Hetzner instead of any other services. They do have a difficult to remember name, maybe rebrand it for English speaking market.
Just get a Hetzner. Costs very little, good exercise to set it up with a usable config. I even have one that I barely ever use.
I use digitalocean.
Not because they are cheap but because they are great. It just so happens they have a $5 / month plan for a 1 CPU core / 1GB of memory / 25GB SSD server.
agreed. I also use AWS for certain projects... IMO- Don't put all your eggs in one basket
OVH, their cheapest brand is Kimsufi. From five euros a month. i.e. your own box for the price of a VPN.
I'm using scaleway.com. For $3/month you get 2vcpus, 2GB RAM and 20GB ssd.
And great unmetered bandwidth
I've tried Scaleway once when I applied for their 500€ 1-month credit campaign, but they demanded a CC and to add insult to injury charged me an activation charge that wasn't given back. Twice.
Can't say I recommend them.
scaleway.com and hetzner.com
Time4vps has some of the best prices I can find for storage. I've been using one for a could years with no problems.
Virmach seems to have comparable prices, but I haven't used them.
AWS EC2 reserved instances, pay upfront for 3 years, it works out cheaper than digitalocean/linode.
For websites, just use GitHub Pages. It's totally free, very reliable, and extremely easy. It feels like a nerdier GeoCities, but without the composing tools.
I have my important VPSs on Linode since 2008, good experience, almost zero downtime in 10+ years, very reliable, great customer support. They have a $5/mo Nanode 1CPU, 1 GB Ram.
There are at least 5 providers that will rent you a $5/month server: DigitalOcean, Lightsail, Linode, UpCloud and Vultr. There's a guy that publishes benchmarks of their $5 instance regularly
https://joshtronic.com/2019/09/02/vps-showdown-digitalocean-...
DigitalOcean is by far the most popular. Personally, I like Vultr because they also have $2.50 IPv6 only instances and you can upload your own ISO file if you want to try a less popular Linux distribution. Both services have similar user interfaces that are pretty good.
That being said, $60/year is still a lot. If you can get away with just a static site, try GitHub pages https://pages.github.com/. You only get one (unless you create GitHub organizations) but it's free. You can still have your own domain pointing to it with TLS (free through Let's Encrypt). You miss out on the fun of managing a Linux server unfortunately.
Yep. I use DO and it’s been just fine for low traffic websites. They’ve been great to work with and very easy to use. But I only host personal projects and internal tooling projects with them. Can’t speak to scaling but my experience has been positive.
For cheap hosting, nearlyfreespeech.net is where it's at, cheap and full shell access on bad.
Many cloud providers like digital ocean have student offers [1] with GitHub student developer program worth trying out.
[1] https://blog.digitalocean.com/were-participating-in-githubs-...
Actually, you can have multiple github pages sites: just create a new repo with a branch named gh-pages. You can then add a CNAME to that as well.
Hetzner is great. Cheap for what you get.
I've been on Digital Ocean for a few years, pretty happy with them and have no plans to move on. I was on Hetzner before them, but moved away because the pricing was essentially the same yet Hetzner's control panel (at least back then - I'm talking before 2015) was a bit of a pain, and DO's is all shiny, and I find what I'm looking for quickly, most of the time. Hetzner's admin panel might have come a long way since then though?
Vultr: 1 vCPU / 512MB RAM / 500 GB bandwidth for $2.5 a month [0]. I ran a VPN with them, once.
https://www.vultr.com/products/cloud-compute/
For webpages, I have been using https://1mb.site (free custom domain and TLS) and https://netlify.com
Also check to see what free stuff you can get through your school!
Linode. Cheap but not too cheap, still reliable.
My choice too. Been pretty reliable and perform well. Easy to find a $20 credit for new customers on podcasts and other ads.
In France: OVH. Their kimsufi lineup is hard to beat.
Heroku is free if you don't need constant uptime (it shuts down your server when it's idle for a while and starts it back up when a request comes in). Then the cheapest paid tier is $7.
It's also really pleasant because you deploy by just pushing your code; no SSHing or cron jobs. You do code an entire server process; you just don't manage it. So it's like halfway-serverless.
The downside, other than being $7 instead of $5, is that that's only for a single process; you can't run multiple low-compute servers within that $7. The file system also gets wiped whenever you deploy, so it's not appropriate for a database.
Now, you are asking for subscription-based, but have you considered that it is perfectly possible to host on your own hardware at home perfectly fine for experimental/personal stuff? Just buy the cheapest Raspberry Pi (or a clone or whatever) and hook it up at home, that's certainly going to be cheaper than any of the cloud providers being thrown around here, only the cheapest lowendtalk offers might be cheaper still.
OVH, Hetzner, and the whole Low End family
https://lowendstock.com/
https://www.lowendtalk.com/
https://lowendbox.com/
But nowadays you can get servers for free. AWS, Google, and even Oracle have free triers:
https://aws.amazon.com/free/
https://cloud.google.com/free/
https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/
IIRC, at least the Amazon EC2 free tier is limited to the first 12 months. There was a point at which I got billed for the instance that was free before.
I know you aren't interested in server hardware, but you should be. You can get extremely cheap used servers from eBay, Craigslist, or government auctions, and you can get extremely cheap rackspace in colocation centers.
That's unlikely to be "cheap" compared to what a student needs for the first few experiments.
That would depend entirely on the nature of the experiments.
Great experience with Amazon Lightsail. The smallest instance is only $3.50 a month, and you can add a swap file if you need a bit more than 512 MB of RAM.
Lightsail is like swimming in the shallow end of the AWS pool. Doesn’t have a drop down with 50 services like AWS, but has enough to run a small or medium sized web app.
Assuming the question is an XY problem and you are really looking for a very simple solution for an Internet server you operate: Have a look at FFTH.
If fiber is offered for your home then you can host your server in your bedroom. This is what I do for my websites, and this is really liberating. Hell, you could serve from a RaspberryPi or if you think this is too extreme, from a mini PC like Gigabyte Brix.
If fiber is not offered, but you plan to relocate anyway, try to optimize for FFTH. This is what I have done, I moved more than a year ago and specifically looked for FTTH.
I use netcup.eu , a German Provider. They have cheap hour based plans so that you can cancel your plan everytime.
Below the cheapest and most reliable VPS providers.
Europe => Hetzner, Scaleway
USA => Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode
VPS:
- https://bytemark.co.uk (VPS, colo and leased physical by competent & responsive folks (in Manchester IIRC))
- https://linode.com (more than just Linux)
- https://pair.com (24/7 phone support in North America, has FreeBSD offerings too, been in business a long time)
Bonus: And physical servers: https://unixsurplus.com
Netcup, very cheap and reliable https://www.netcup.de
There are many options mentioned already and one I haven't seen so far is https://www.ssdnodes.com/ been using it for some time, fares well.