Cheap hosting for ideas in development?

[TGDesigns]

This might be a bit off topic but is there a go too host for hosting ideas that your currently developing? I dont mind paying but I dont want to break the bank and it doesnt need to be high performance as its generally only me using it to test bugs and such and make sure it runs on a production style web server. This might be a silly question but I would appreciate a bit of knowledge <3

 

[Adam]

A little off-topic, split in to it's own thread for you! 😇

A $5 VPS on https://www.digitalocean.com/ is almost unbeatable and a popular choice. Personally I avoid them and all providers that do not have a billing cap though. For this I'd prefer to spend a bit more at https://katapult.io/.

There is a whole blog here dedicated to cheap VPS: https://lowendbox.com/

 

[TGDesigns]

When you say a spend cap you mean it can potentially rack up costs? Because I agree thats something I would like to avoid haha

 

[Adam]

Yeah, many providers have uncapped bandwidth usage that a DoS or rogue script could easily eat up. Not a fan of that. I'd much rather have the choice to set a cap and go offline in these cases. I feel uncapped is predatory, such a simple feature to add too.

 

[Gummibeer]

https://www.hetzner.de/cloud

My choice, German hoster - 3€/m.

 

[Adam]

https://www.hetzner.de/cloud

My choice, German hoster - 3€/m.

In English language here: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud

They look great!

 

[Gummibeer]

As a recommendation: search for any local VM hoster/provider.
All cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure) start at ~7$/m for a far less powerful VM.
If you need scaling storage pick one of the cloud providers, you possibly need other services of - like Google maps, image rating ..., and create a blob storage.
There's no need to have the VM at the same provider.

But you should use ansible or similar or document every tool/command to setup the server.

 

[Gummibeer]

In English language here: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud

They look great!

Sorry, just the habit to post a link without caring about language. 🙈😅

 

[TGDesigns]

Any thoughts on namecheap?

 

[Gummibeer]

In English language here: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud

They look great!

Definitely they are, if you need a server in west Europe. They can provide Frankfurt, DE and something in Finland I believe.

But they are also integrated into Laravel forge! 🚀
So not this small/unimportant like they look. 😅

 

[Gummibeer]

Any thoughts on namecheap?

Never used them and once I searched a domain on their site it was taken 3min later ... 🤯🤬

I would check for a really well rated local one - in Germany it would be hetzner or alfahosting. Or simply go for digital ocean!
In question i would go for DO only because of their outstanding and public server setup posts! 🤩
Like how to install nginx, PHP, MySQL ...

 

[Mike Rees]

Can't beat digital ocean in my experience, for prototyping or just small projects in general. Their service is great, their documentation is unbeatable, and if you do run into overrun costs from DDoS or whatever just shoot them an email and they'll refund you or cancel the bill.

 

[xavier]

Did nobody mention Heroku? It's free (but slow), super cool as a dev platform.
You should also consider Firebase or AWS Lambda, that's cheap, scalable and nothing to maintain!

 

[TGDesigns]

Ok this is gonna sound super silly but im not very good with server setup or maintenance so are these services that a beginner could fool around in without incurring massive charges? The extent of my knowledge is connect to the box, install apache and php, upload files XD

 

[Gummibeer]

Use a simple VM or DO droplet. Additional costs are usually only by traffic. Do as long as you don't run TBs during testing everything fine.
And by following the DO guidelines on how to install/setup nginx, PHP, MySQL or anything you have a solid setup.

 

[kilian]

Netlify, Vercel and Heroku all have free tiers that you could use depending on your need.