5 ms·

Ask HN: Where do you host your side projects?

mindcrime 8y ago
Most of my stuff is at Linode; but for the last new project I spun up, I moved to Hetzner just because the pricing is so much better.
- sumitsrivastava 8y ago
  Can you tell about your usage vs bill on both? Doesn't have to be accurate.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    I'd have to go back and look up all the details, and it's not apples-to-apples anyway, as I have just one VPS at Hetzner, and several at Linode. But just going by the VPS specs and the published pricing, I was impressed enough to do the experiment of deploying this one app to Hetzner as a trial of sorts. If it goes well, I may move more, or even all, of our stuff to them. I estimate I'd save at least 50% off of what I pay Linode today by doing so. The one downside, of course, is that all of their datacenters are in Europe. So if your customers are not in Europe, and latency is a big issue, then that could complicate things.
    - sumitsrivastava 8y ago
      Latency is probably not that much of a deal if costs are half.
      - mindcrime 8y ago
        Yeah, especially while this is in beta mode. If we start getting serious traction, we might be forced to move, or distribute the app to other providers to ensure good QoS everywhere. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. As the old saying goes "that would be a good problem to have".
        sumitsrivastava 8y ago
        Yup, definitely a good problem to have.
- mises 8y ago
  How are speeds compared to Linode? I currently use them, and have gotten a fairly consistent 1Gbps. I'm also curious about their management functionality. Linode is very good there; I particularly appreciate the lish console for if I lock myself out. Any such equivalent there?
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    How are speeds compared to Linode? Too early to tell here. The site hasn't been promoted yet and is in "private beta" mode, so the traffic is trivial. Subjectively, when I visit for testing and admin stuff, it feels fine, even though the servers are in Europe and I'm on the US East Coast. I'm also curious about their management functionality. I find Linode's stuff to be a little better from a UX perspective, but I have no particular complaints about Hetzner so far. But keep in mind, I'm running one app there that I stood up a month ago, which has no paying customers yet. So I can't exactly offer the most in-depth critique ever.
    - mises 8y ago
      Yeah, not a fan of the whole european server thing. Needless lag when no non-American will use it. Also, not a fan of European regulations. Having a European server might make me subject to GDPR (?) (or other regs I don't know about), a risk I don't want to take.
52-6F-62 8y ago
I’ve been happy with Digital Ocean. It’s versatile, and so far reliable for mainly small to kid-sized projects. YMMV. From what I understand they’ve improved over the years.
mises 8y ago
I self-host some, with the rest at Linode. Self-hosting is a little hard for me as I don't have much hardware; I'm hosting various services on Raspberry Pis and old laptops with one rpi as a reverse proxy for all. Though I don't recommend it to everyone, as there's a serious security risk if you don't know what you're doing.
- sumitsrivastava 8y ago
  Yes, that's risky indeed unless you know what you're doing. How do you do it?
  - mises 8y ago
    I close down everything on the home gateway box but one publickey from one ip (hardened cloud server) with secure ciphers and protocol 2 only. Non-standard port. Cloud server acts as a jump box, only allowing login from lan ips (requiring vpn first). This is, in no small part, because of the awful quality of most isp-issued router/firewall combos.
zhte415 8y ago
Digital Ocean: Reliable, flexible location choice (US, EU, SG), simple, good pricing for what I need (mainly, small instances, one instance dedicated for one project).
seanwilson 8y ago
Heroku, Firebase and Netlify usually. I'm using Firebase and Netlify for https://www.checkbot.io/ https://www.checkbot.io/ at the moment (it's a Chrome extension that tells you how to improve your website). Minimal hosting costs and I don't have to worry about what happens when traffic picks up.
Down_n_Out 8y ago
Either Hetzner or DigitalOcean. Both have handy API's which makes deploying new nodes easy (ansible, terraform, ...).
franzwong 8y ago
Digital Ocean and AWS. More on AWS recently because I also want to try some new services (e.g. AI) it provides

Most of my stuff is at Linode; but for the last new project I spun up, I moved to Hetzner just because the pricing is so much better.

sumitsrivastava 8y ago
Can you tell about your usage vs bill on both? Doesn't have to be accurate.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  I'd have to go back and look up all the details, and it's not apples-to-apples anyway, as I have just one VPS at Hetzner, and several at Linode. But just going by the VPS specs and the published pricing, I was impressed enough to do the experiment of deploying this one app to Hetzner as a trial of sorts. If it goes well, I may move more, or even all, of our stuff to them. I estimate I'd save at least 50% off of what I pay Linode today by doing so. The one downside, of course, is that all of their datacenters are in Europe. So if your customers are not in Europe, and latency is a big issue, then that could complicate things.
  - sumitsrivastava 8y ago
    Latency is probably not that much of a deal if costs are half.
    - mindcrime 8y ago
      Yeah, especially while this is in beta mode. If we start getting serious traction, we might be forced to move, or distribute the app to other providers to ensure good QoS everywhere. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. As the old saying goes "that would be a good problem to have".
      - sumitsrivastava 8y ago
        Yup, definitely a good problem to have.
mises 8y ago
How are speeds compared to Linode? I currently use them, and have gotten a fairly consistent 1Gbps. I'm also curious about their management functionality. Linode is very good there; I particularly appreciate the lish console for if I lock myself out. Any such equivalent there?
- mindcrime 8y ago
  How are speeds compared to Linode? Too early to tell here. The site hasn't been promoted yet and is in "private beta" mode, so the traffic is trivial. Subjectively, when I visit for testing and admin stuff, it feels fine, even though the servers are in Europe and I'm on the US East Coast. I'm also curious about their management functionality. I find Linode's stuff to be a little better from a UX perspective, but I have no particular complaints about Hetzner so far. But keep in mind, I'm running one app there that I stood up a month ago, which has no paying customers yet. So I can't exactly offer the most in-depth critique ever.
  - mises 8y ago
    Yeah, not a fan of the whole european server thing. Needless lag when no non-American will use it. Also, not a fan of European regulations. Having a European server might make me subject to GDPR (?) (or other regs I don't know about), a risk I don't want to take.

52-6F-62 8y ago

I’ve been happy with Digital Ocean. It’s versatile, and so far reliable for mainly small to kid-sized projects. YMMV. From what I understand they’ve improved over the years.

mises 8y ago

I self-host some, with the rest at Linode. Self-hosting is a little hard for me as I don't have much hardware; I'm hosting various services on Raspberry Pis and old laptops with one rpi as a reverse proxy for all. Though I don't recommend it to everyone, as there's a serious security risk if you don't know what you're doing.

sumitsrivastava 8y ago
Yes, that's risky indeed unless you know what you're doing. How do you do it?
- mises 8y ago
  I close down everything on the home gateway box but one publickey from one ip (hardened cloud server) with secure ciphers and protocol 2 only. Non-standard port. Cloud server acts as a jump box, only allowing login from lan ips (requiring vpn first). This is, in no small part, because of the awful quality of most isp-issued router/firewall combos.

zhte415 8y ago

Digital Ocean: Reliable, flexible location choice (US, EU, SG), simple, good pricing for what I need (mainly, small instances, one instance dedicated for one project).

seanwilson 8y ago

Heroku, Firebase and Netlify usually. I'm using Firebase and Netlify for https://www.checkbot.io/ https://www.checkbot.io/ at the moment (it's a Chrome extension that tells you how to improve your website). Minimal hosting costs and I don't have to worry about what happens when traffic picks up.

Down_n_Out 8y ago

Either Hetzner or DigitalOcean. Both have handy API's which makes deploying new nodes easy (ansible, terraform, ...).

franzwong 8y ago

Digital Ocean and AWS. More on AWS recently because I also want to try some new services (e.g. AI) it provides