Exactly, I think DigitalOcean is a great and unexpensive option here. The thing is, you really don't need a whole box for each of your small projects, most like

Exactly, I think DigitalOcean is a great and unexpensive option here. The thing is, you really don't need a whole box for each of your small projects, most likely you will be able to have a few in one box, specially in the beginning with not much traffic. So, start small and then move onto bigger things if things look promising. Use something like Dokku for easy deployment if Ansible or others are too much work. Every little bit will help when you do need to scale.