Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#1

Post by j_baker » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 7:34 PM UTC

I'd like to set up a webhost just to play around with during my spare time. I'd like some kind of virtual private server so I can have root access and customize it to my heart's content.

I don't need anything too expensive. Does anyone have suggestions?

Re: Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#2

Post by jaddison » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 7:49 PM UTC

For VPS: I'm using Slicehost currently, but have seen some good reviews of Linode. I think I'll likely give them a spin in the new year instead of Slicehost - you get a bit more for your money, and can customize more from what I understand.

I believe they both have quite good support from both community and company perspectives. Lots of good articles and tutorials.

Some comparison links:

recent: http://journal.uggedal.com/vps-performance-comparison

older: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode

The companies:

Linode: http://www.linode.com/

Slicehost: http://www.slicehost.com/

Re: Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#3

Post by dryicerx » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 7:57 PM UTC

Linode for general stuff.

Amazon EC2 when I need a sudden burst of computational power.

Re: Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#4

Post by fendale » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 8:09 PM UTC

prgmr.com is very cheap and has worked well for me for the last month (which is when I signed up)

Re: Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#5

Post by chunkyslink » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 8:09 PM UTC

I've used Rimuhosting VPS http://rimuhosting.com/ for a while now and they have been nothing short of excellent.

Re: Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#6

Post by robotrout » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 8:10 PM UTC

dryicerx wrote: post #3

Linode for general stuff. Amazon EC2 when I need a sudden burst of computational power.

Can you give an example of an actual case when you needed this sudden burst of computational power? I'm curious what sorts of things people are actually using it for in real life. (instead of "well, you COULD use it for ....")

Re: Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#7

Post by idlewords » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 8:12 PM UTC

Linode and slicehost are quite expensive if you price out the RAM and disk you get per dollar, but they do let you rent quite small instances. I've found the main difference in favor of Linode to be nice monitoring tools and graphs.

Serverbeach occasionally runs specials on rented dedicated that offer very good value if you need a somewhat larger box.

An EC2 small instance is also surprisingly good value if you can commit to a year up front.

Re: Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#8

Post by mattyfo » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 8:15 PM UTC

jaddison wrote: post #2

For VPS: I'm using Slicehost currently, but have seen some good reviews of Linode. I think I'll likely give them a spin in the new year instead of Slicehost - you get a bit more for your money, and can customize more from what I understand. I believe they both have quite good support from both community and company perspectives. Lots of good articles and tutorials. Some comparison links: recent: http://journal.uggeda…

I recently purchased a linode account for the same reason and am really enjoying it. For $20 I have a linux server to toy with and have been learning a lot from it. The one really nice thing about their setup is the management console that makes deploying whichever distro you want really easy and then monitoring really easy.

Also as Jaddison said, they have some a really solid community and the support is excellent.

Re: Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#9

Post by trimski » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 8:16 PM UTC

fendale wrote: post #4

prgmr.com is very cheap and has worked well for me for the last month (which is when I signed up)

It's also run by fellow HN user Luke Crawford:

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lsc

Re: Ask HN: What hosting do you use for personal projects?

#10

Post by jazzychad » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 8:18 PM UTC

I use my home computer for this purpose. There is a simple WAMP setup on the main OS (winxp) for quick and dirty stuff, and then I have VMWare running a 512 MB RAM image of Ubuntu Server to let me play around with more interesting stuff. So the cost is effectively free.

If something then turns into more than a personal project, I use the home setup as a development/staging server and then push it out to a hosted server.