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Sometime last year I was on HostGator's VPS and WP Engine for several different sites. I was paying around $150 a month. HostGator started to shut me down for u

Sometime last year I was on HostGator's VPS and WP Engine for several different sites. I was paying around $150 a month. HostGator started to shut me down for using too many resources and I was going way over the limit with WP Engine's 100k limit. I was fed up so I looked into Digital Ocean. I knew a bit server management but never really wanted to deal with it. I just wanted to produce content and make apps. I purchased the $40/m plan on DO and started to move my sites over. In the process I learned a whole lot about configuring my own server. I got a pretty impressive setup going now and monitor it on New Relic. It really only took me a few weeks to learn everything and get all my sites stable. It's been several months now and have had to hardly ever login to my server to touch anything. Initially I was worried that I'd have to manage my sites and it'd suck up some of my time but really I'm actually saving time because I don't have to deal with HostGator or going over the limit with WP Engine. I'm saving $110 a month, I learned a whole lot in the process, and it really did not take much time to learn nor is it much of a maintenance at all to run.

codelust 13y ago
What is the kind of traffic total/concurrent at peak that you serve?
kyriakos 13y ago
thats the way to go. i stopped using shared hosting many years ago for the same reasons and you. I've been running a single dedicated server for the past 8 years (which i keep upgrading every 2 years). hosting 30+ sites some of which have a decent amount of traffic. I get better performance, and more control. it all has been smooth ever since - just keeping an eye on the logs (I setup some alerts), following some security hardening guides and don't run anything I am not sure about. it just works!
luxpir 13y ago
Seems like a lot of folks in this transition at the moment. It'd be great to take a poll. I wonder if a low-cost provider will offer the one-click installs we all came to appreciate with decent shared hosts, along with a decent back-up system.
- sparkzilla 13y ago
  DO has a one-click Ubuntu/worpress install that gets a WP site up and running in about two minutes.
  - luxpir 13y ago
    You're right, but I suppose we move over to VPS partly for performance/control, so an Nginx setup with swap memory and tuned MySQL would be nice in a one-click.
markyc 13y ago
any tips on where to start learning this stuff? (I don't want to invest a lot of my time in server management either)

codelust 13y ago

What is the kind of traffic total/concurrent at peak that you serve?

kyriakos 13y ago

thats the way to go. i stopped using shared hosting many years ago for the same reasons and you. I've been running a single dedicated server for the past 8 years (which i keep upgrading every 2 years). hosting 30+ sites some of which have a decent amount of traffic. I get better performance, and more control. it all has been smooth ever since - just keeping an eye on the logs (I setup some alerts), following some security hardening guides and don't run anything I am not sure about. it just works!

luxpir 13y ago

Seems like a lot of folks in this transition at the moment. It'd be great to take a poll. I wonder if a low-cost provider will offer the one-click installs we all came to appreciate with decent shared hosts, along with a decent back-up system.

sparkzilla 13y ago
DO has a one-click Ubuntu/worpress install that gets a WP site up and running in about two minutes.
- luxpir 13y ago
  You're right, but I suppose we move over to VPS partly for performance/control, so an Nginx setup with swap memory and tuned MySQL would be nice in a one-click.

markyc 13y ago

any tips on where to start learning this stuff? (I don't want to invest a lot of my time in server management either)