Ask HN: Where should I host my startup? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#91

Post by VertexRed » Mon, Oct 10, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

I'm going to have to be the boring guy and say: depends completely on how much resources you need.

In most cases though (brace yourself for an unpopular opinion) it's enough to setup a simple dedicated server for about $20-$60 per month.

Now I did read the comments that mentioned how getting a dedicated server is a waste of valuable time, but honestly you'll most probably be able to get it setup in a day, you'll also learn how web servers work along the way and you won't have to depend on third-party cloud services (yet).

Here's a great guide from DigitalOcean on how to setup a modern dedicated HTTP server with MYSQL: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-inst...

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#92

Post by smoyer » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 12:22 AM UTC

chias wrote: post #82

smoyer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been with Linode for over six years and the only security incident I've have was my own fault. Follow the guides for securing new VPSs - I recommend that SSH be configured to disallow root logins and only allow certificates for authentication. There are many great guides available.

I think people are disagreeing with you because the parent comment is referring to Linode platform security and not the security of the individual VPSes -- which is a valid point. The security of your individual VPS depends, to a certain degree, on the Linode platform's security. But I find it disheartening that multiple people chose to just downvote you, and nobody bothered to write a response.

I came to the same conclusion but what good is karma if you don't get down-voted occasionally?

I didn't misunderstand the parent's comment ... I was just providing a data point on the continuum. My experience with Linode has been great. I do realize that there have been security problems with the platform itself.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#93

Post by iurisilvio » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 12:27 AM UTC

badsock wrote: post #6

imaginenore wrote: post #2

Cheap: browse through the listings on lowendbox.com, you will find some amazing deals for both VPS and dedicated servers. Reliable: AWS / Rackspace / DigitalOcean / Google cloud / basically any famous one. When you're starting, it's probably better to rent a cheap VPS server. If you start growing fast, you can always move to the cloud. But modern cheap VPSs are quite powerful. I have 7 websites running on one that co…

Has DigitalOcean gotten better for reliability? I took my company off of them about 2 years ago specifically because of their frequent downtime.

I have around 20-30 instances there and it is a long time since the last fail.

In the past it failed a lot (~1 instance completely fail per month), but I think it is better now.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#94

Post by mozumder » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 6:33 AM UTC

tjpd wrote: post #40

Reading a lot of these comments make me think that everyone on HN is a cynic of the Oscar Wilde/Lady Windermere variety: "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" [1]. IMHO you should go with Heroku and ignore anyone who's suggesting dedicated servers, VPSes, AWS, Docker or containers. Every moment you spend maintaining a server or doing devops is wasted because it's time not spent building o…

I found that running my own basement server to be far easier than Heroku, especially on setup and install.

Heroku is something you need to learn, and doesn't follow standard configurations. A Django install on Heroku is completely different from a regular Django install.

But if you're a developer, then you likely already know Unix/Linux, and you can just use standard installs of packages that you are already using.

Your own server or shared hosting is the easiest.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#95

Post by thenomad » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 10:03 AM UTC

tjpd wrote: post #40

Reading a lot of these comments make me think that everyone on HN is a cynic of the Oscar Wilde/Lady Windermere variety: "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" [1]. IMHO you should go with Heroku and ignore anyone who's suggesting dedicated servers, VPSes, AWS, Docker or containers. Every moment you spend maintaining a server or doing devops is wasted because it's time not spent building o…

I agree in principle!

However, it's worth noting that this very much depends on how experienced you are at system administration.

For example, I've been setting up servers (usually for my own businesses) for a couple of decades.

It's thus far cheaper for me to do that than to jump onto Heroku and learn how it works.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#96

Post by grif-fin » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 10:42 AM UTC

I can comment on AWS, EC2 (ECS where docker kicks in if you want it). To set it up via UX Amazon Console was absolutely confusing and continues poor user experience until we moved to AWS-cli which was very time consuming and then the setting up of docker which just ate a big chunk of our time.

Strongly recommend to go for something simpler and lightweight to reduce the time waste as lots of other comments suggest.

At the end of the day you don't even know if anyone wants your product or what first user's opinion is, why waste time on shiny host set-up?

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#97

Post by iyn » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

tjpd wrote: post #40

Reading a lot of these comments make me think that everyone on HN is a cynic of the Oscar Wilde/Lady Windermere variety: "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" [1]. IMHO you should go with Heroku and ignore anyone who's suggesting dedicated servers, VPSes, AWS, Docker or containers. Every moment you spend maintaining a server or doing devops is wasted because it's time not spent building o…

I also recommend Heroku when you're just launching your product. At my first startup (which failed miserably) I spend waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time trying to get the infrastructure right and then the downtime still happened all the time (because I didn't have enough experience with Docker and the project had a few mowing parts and when one failed, everything couldn't work). Honestly, I didn't use Heroku because I really wanted to do infra by myself and learn something (and I actually learned a lot) but also deep down in my mind I felt that using something like Heroku/managed servie was... I'm not sure how to describe it - like admission that I can't do it myself, like as I'm not as good as I think of myself - "I can do infra by myself, I don't need anybody managing my app for me!"-thinking. In retrospect, not using Heroku was a huge mistake because I didn't focus on the product. At my current startup I decided to start with Heroku and I'm really, REALLY glad I made this decision - finally I can focus only on the product and feel that infra is more stable/predictable than in the scenario where I'd try to manage it myself.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#98

Post by gnepzhao » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 7:06 AM UTC

tjpd wrote: post #40

Reading a lot of these comments make me think that everyone on HN is a cynic of the Oscar Wilde/Lady Windermere variety: "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" [1]. IMHO you should go with Heroku and ignore anyone who's suggesting dedicated servers, VPSes, AWS, Docker or containers. Every moment you spend maintaining a server or doing devops is wasted because it's time not spent building o…

If you have the docker image ready, hyper.sh is a no-brainer place to host your app.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#99

Post by akoncius » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

iraklism wrote: post #16

Hetzner is another option. But you don't really specify your requirements (geographical region, scalability , etc) so I don't know if this suits you.

earlier we had issues with storage - we had multiple VMs on same box and main storage stopped working properly, and then we had lots of trouble restoring data / moving somewhere else.. :/ after that incident we went to digitalocean . so keep in mind reliability too.

Re: Ask HN: Where should I host my startup?

#100

Post by akoncius » Sat, Oct 15, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

colinbartlett wrote: post #22

badsock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has DigitalOcean gotten better for reliability? I took my company off of them about 2 years ago specifically because of their frequent downtime.

I've been using for more than 2 years with 100% uptime.

yeah, in last couple of years I cannot remember anything really bad in DO. Biggest issue in DO was slower performance of storage, but after complaining to support about it, it was fixed and everything was fine there.