this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
41 points (93.6% liked)

Selfhosted

39937 readers
386 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Veeble | Webdock | Milesweb | Cloudfanatic | Time4vps | Hetzner | Vpsdime | Zap-hosting I'm looking for cheap VPS options. I'm trying to run Syncthing, a caldev server and maybe a searXng instance as well. Also what would be the catch with cheap VPS providers?

top 49 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

From your list, I'd go with hetzner. Racknerd is another good cheap option.

Also check out lowendtalk or lowendbox. Various providers post deals there petty often and the community is active.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

You know what sucks? Getting your VPS shut off or account suspended. All your data gone in an instant, not recoverable. You don't have access to the metal, and the metal no longer has access to you.

Hetzner is known for randomly boinking accounts. You update billing info? Whoops maybe shutoff. You login via a VPN, account disabled. Just randomly for no reason, account locked and VPS down.

You have basically zero recourse. Their support staff suck and the immediate reaction is suspend and delete. NEVER use them for anything you don't consider temporary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I've used Hetzner for years without issue. Accessed through VPNs to the control panel without problems, changed password no issue, etc. I've never heard of them being "known for" the behavior you describe. This is just anecdote vs anecdote, though. I'd be interested to see some kinda evidence of what you're saying.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I also used them for years, then everything blocked and deleted instantly. I have other homelab type friends, same thing happened. Again more anecdote vs anecdote. But if you google about hetzner and this type of activity there are bagillions of reddit threads.

After paying them about a grand a month forever, losing all my "safe data" and having to wait a week for even a response that just says "account has suspicious activity. Disabled". Not a single response after that. And they had the nerve to charge my credit card again at the next payment period. Overall, truly scummy. And I will prevent everyone I can from ever engaging with them.

When hiccups happen, you would hope to be able to at least talk to someone and figure out what's going on. If they don't want to keep your business, fine let me get it out privately. But they don't play that way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Any suggestions for bulk storage? I use their storage box for off-site backups of the nas critical data (a touch over 1TB). It's my tertiary backup (another off-site, a local full, and this) but I was testing it to replace my current off-site.

I've asked my vps provider about it, and it's on the roadmap but not yet ready, so I've been lightly searching around.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Purely for storage, no processing? I just finally got around to checking pricing and went with Backblaze B2. Not certain it’s the best, or cheapest, but I’m serving files out of it through cloudflare and it seemed to be a decent choice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I had B2 a few years ago and it wasn't that cheap, even though everyone raved about it. I moved to synology's c2 backup, which is like a dollar fifty more a month but is well-integrated with their nas OS. But I'm up against the 1TB limit and to get more I'd have to get another TB. I thought Hetzner was the solution for this with their storage box but now I'm worried. And price-wise, 5TB of Hetzner is about the same of 2TB with synology c2... blah.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I use World Stream for many of my storage VPSs. They have pretty cheap servers that can take 14x or 18x drives. So I use their super powerful Epycs plus storage and then they can do an internal LAN only network for your boxes at 10G. 140TB to 200TB per box, connected to the rest of my stuff at 10G.

Their support is opposite of Hetzner. Everything is communicated. It's almost too much. You get emails that they're updating the air conditioning unit in a different building. Your downtime is zero. I've had some questions on setting up my rack space with them, and engineers respond back, not sales.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I use Hetzner exclusively and have just one complaint. You don't get much choice as to where your VPS is hosted country-wise nor the OS it runs. You do get the standard list of options, as you would with any other provider, except that list is quite small on Hetzner. It's good enough, I use Fedora everywhere and they support that so I'm good. Anyway, it's obviously free to create an account so there's no risk in case your setup isn't supported.

Apart from that, they're brilliant. The web console is nice, clean and well-designed, great value (1TB of storage clocks in at a few euros/month), room to scale and a decent company. Can't comment on customer support since I've never needed it.

For the services you've specified, that'll run you maybe 3 - 4 euros a month (that's with automatic backups of your entire server + tax) since you can run all of that under one server.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Agreed on Hetzner, although I have used customer support—to add another distro option. Sent them a web link, and they had it uploaded under my account by the next day.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Oh wow, that's pretty awesome.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Hetzner if you are in the EU, dirt cheap haven't had a problem. Had to use customer support once, wasn't a problem either.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I've been using Hetzner at work now for more than ten years and for my personal stuff for more than five. I haven't tried many others but I haven't had a reason to do so

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I agree with you, recently moved to hetzner one of my vps's, ended up costing me almost 2 euro cheaper than vultr + higher specs.

Also have another auction dedicated server with them, which is really amazing for the price it costs me (hosting my lemmy instance/sharkey/... in total about 20 diff services plus a minecraft the 1.12.2 pack server ) the server barelly sees around 20% cpu usage on my grafana dashboard.

So from the point of price/performance hetzner is amazing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Cheap but powerful VPS? NetCup ARM-Server or normal x86 VPS. Both are good

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Of all those, I've only heard of Heztner. Am I out of touch?

I've been a Linode customer for years, and I used to use Digital Ocean as well. I've been happy with them, did you consider them?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I'm guessing if they want to run syncthing they have a lot of data to store and linode/do is expensive for that

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's not on your list but 1984. Iceland based, good for privacy, runs on renewable energy. You can install YUNOhost on it and easily run the things you mentioned plus a bunch of other stuff like email.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I dropped Akamai Connected Cloud (Formerly Linode) after the rebrand and price hike. Shifting everything over to Vultr was easy enough. They’re not a great VPS platform but in Linode’s absence there’s no real definitive platform. Digital Ocean is now probably the fan favorite I would guess.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

After 10 years with Linode I've just completed a transition to hosting hardware at my house instead. https://urbanists.social/@markstos/112267184724721864

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Out of those I've tried hetzner and milesweb and I thought hetzner was better in terms of ping times for me and easy to use

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I use Vutlr. They have a nice UI.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I used to use these guys for the same reason. I moved because of the forced agreeing to giving them your data. And now I'm paying less else where.

https://piped.video/watch?v=LGwvLB7rhCE

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Source? I remember a follow up to a post about that saying it was a misinterpretation of their T&Cs

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

There were some older language taken out of context, and they’ve since removed the wording after things blew up. Some people who knee jerk reacted will continue to hold their initial reaction and never change their opinion, others will take ages to convince otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

If you care about privacy, choose 1984. Located in Iceland and good service.

Edit: typo

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

*Iceland. I recommend them too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I use Linode

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Whatever one has a data center closest to you. If the VPS is on the other side of the country, the ping time will be very high.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Geographic proximity doesn't necessarily relate to network proximity, but it's usually pretty close. Sometimes if a route is particularly bad, your traffic might go across the ocean and back.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Had this topic today with a friend. ionos offers 1 vCore, 1GB Ram and 10GB SSD for 1€ a month.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

When I searched for a cheap VPS I settled on IONOS's XS package (this 1€/month). It's one of the cheapest out there. Bonus is that it's a company we all recognise and can reasonably trust. And there are no weird gimmicks either; it's just straight forward.

One thing missing from this XS package compared to their other packages from IONOS is that there is no resource monitor on their web panel, which can be useful if you don't want to set up your own.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Do they accept crypto payments? If they do, I'd rent some without second thought

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

AFAIK only credit card, PayPal and sepa/debit card

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

does that include a ipv4 address?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Yepp, 1 ipv4 is included and domains are optional. Seems like ionos.com offers it for 2$ while .de is at 1€. https://www.ionos.com/servers/vps

[–] wildbus8979 2 points 6 months ago

If cheap (but reliable) is your main criteria, check out buyvm.net they've been solid over the years

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Out of that list I use OVHCloud. Their VPS are built on Epyc (atleast they are in London), which gives very high performance for a low price.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
VPN Virtual Private Network
VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

[Thread #678 for this sub, first seen 13th Apr 2024, 16:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I have tried Buyvm when I was getting into selfhosting during the pandemic.

They were pretty cheap too, not sure about the pricing these days but you should take a look.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I use netcup cheapest VPS server, so far it runs SearXNG, Shaarli and Miniflux all dockerized and they all run without problems, given the fact that they are all single user instances.

[–] alphacyberranger 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

May I ask what is the spec of your VPS?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

The cheapest one from the link above 2 vCores (x86) 2 GB RAM 40 GB SSD (RAID10) 80 TB Traffic

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Hetzner wanted to charge me more because I am from "risky" country. Idiots...

I use Time4Vps now. Works fine with one downtime in a year. Their prices are reasonable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I moved from kts24 to a hetzner arm node earlier this week. So far I'm very impressed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I am hosting stuff on OVH at the moment. Entry level package is around £1 / mo in the first year.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Another possibility for cheap VPS is Contabo they are quite good value. Netcup is good value as well.