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Affordable Hosting Providers
A pissed-off journey through AWS, Digital Ocean, and the hosting maze
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For a year, I didn’t try to use any hosting service provider because I was focused on other things off the web. When I got back, I needed a VPS to host something. Since the client was using AWS, I started with an EC2 machine — a t2.small. In less than a week, I got a notification that I owe three-something dollars?!
Digital Ocean
I immediately shut the machine down and went to my friend Digital Ocean. I remembered they used to have great machines for only five dollars. Wrong — they changed their pricing too. Worse, they have weird extra costs I didn’t even bother to read.
Hetzner
Since I was using Kamal to deploy the project, I thought, “Why not use the same servers as DHH?” So I went to Hetzner and created a new account. The pricing seemed way better than the previous two. I verified my payment method and then — BOOM!! They deactivated my account and deleted it?! They said, for a few reasons, they can’t allow this account. Checking online, I figured they probably have some countries flagged or something. They don’t even try to work with them.
