8 ms·

NearlyFreeSpeech.NET now supports persistent processes

69 points by kderbe 12y ago

kderbe 12y ago
Previously I thought of NFSN as a place to host a low-traffic static site for $1/year, or host an unmanaged WordPress site for $1/month. It sounds like it can now run web frameworks like Rails or Node.JS, as well as internal services like Redis. I'm not sure where they fit in a world with free Google App Engine tiers and $5/mo VPSes. But they've been around a while, doing their thing, so that must be worth something to folks that are leery of the big guys and weary of being victims of acquisitions and product re-imaginings.
- xtrumanx 12y ago
  > Ruby on Rails, Django, Catalyst, Node.JS, Network.Wai? Sure, technically you can run them here, but it’s not what you’d call a good idea. Don't get your hopes to high on deploying your rails/node app on NFSN.
  - kderbe 12y ago
    They're describing how things used to work. Read the very next line in the blog post: > Take that long-standing well-known fact about our service, and pitch it straight into the trash.
    - xtrumanx 12y ago
      Oops. I kind of read that bit over and over and still came away with the wrong idea. Reading comprehension failure I guess.
- archagon 12y ago
  Weirdly, with a bare-bones Wordpress install with barely any traffic, I still spend about $5 every month or two. Not sure what's going on there. For blogs, I've found that Github Pages offers one of the best deals in the industry. It's free and it allows you to use your own domain; all you have to do is provide static HTML, or alternatively a bare-bones Jekyll site. With a few simple files, it's possible to have a custom domain and 404 error pages. Because it uses git, you automatically get a complete historic archive of your site without having to resort to archive.org. For once, without paying any extra money, you can have your own custom content and not have to manage any server stuff. Just write and publish.
  - baldfat 12y ago
    Wordpress requires MySQL which is an added cost of $0.05 a day
    - bearbin 12y ago
      It's actually $0.02 for the first process (which can have as many databases as you like) AFAIK.
- gnopgnip 12y ago
  There are some benefits to using a managed service instead of setting everything up yourself on a vps. The management tools are usually better, and many of the common services are already installed and configured for webhosting. Also its generally less work to deal with scaling using a hosting provider compared to doing it yourself, but it really depends on how much you value your time.
threatofrain 12y ago
I love NearlyFreeSpeech and they were my first and current web host, although now I primarily use others. They are so incredibly cheap for those who want to host a simple site, and they come with a slew of interesting options like interesting pricing schemes. I hope they never go out of business.
- nodata 12y ago
  Don't hope! Support!
  - corobo 12y ago
    In the same boat here - do they have a Europe presence yet? Probably the only reason I don't host small sites/landings with them Still use them for domains
- eksith 12y ago
  How would you rate their support? Are they good with fixing issues or are there fewer issues than the other hosts you use? Would you recommend them for a site with, say 100K visitors per day?
  - baldfat 12y ago
    I wouldn't think that this would work since it really is a great site for low number of visitors. Also this is a pre-paid plan. Try out the price estimator: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/estimate https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/estimate
  - sogen 12y ago
    Hi, eight+ years of using NFS.net. Support is great, they handle stuff quickly and JDW is also very active in the NFS forums.
  - unfocused 12y ago
    I've had a site hosted on theirs (Wordpress + MySQL) for 3 years with no problems. Very cheap as well especially since the site is not heavy in traffic, so it doesn't get charged much. Only had 1 support ticket which was my fault and they resolved it quickly.
mattbee 12y ago
If you ever lose both your login & access to the email address from which you signed up, you will lose everything you host with nearlyfreespeech. I was trying to help a friend recover his own site after the pre-paid credit expired. A mutual journo friend had set it up years earlier but lost access to an old email address. It was down because the pre-paid credit had expired, but wouldn't even take payment from someone they didn't know to get it back up. Support wouldn't empathise or even help "in principle", i.e. "Given that we've lost access to the original email address that our friend signed up with, how can we go about recovering this account, give you some money saving the domain"? The answer was essentially: we don't care, you're dead to us. I run an ISP in the UK that takes backup contact options, so I was trying to go through what options they _might_ have to help, but they weren't interested. Cheap is good, especially when you're setting up sites for friends, but always think twice about the support you might need years down the line.
- pilif 12y ago
  Personally, I think this is a feature. It's nice to know that a third party cannot socially engineer them into access to my site. Of course now it all hinges on the social engineerability of my email provider, but they're getting better and better at this too.
  - derefr 12y ago
    There's a difference between "asking to recover an account of that's in active use" and "asking to recover an account which is in arrears and unreachable for the last two months", though. I don't think I'd mind if people were able to socially engineer the latter; they'd have to pay my account off to use it!
- soult 12y ago
  Actually they have improved on this a lot. If you lose access to your account and your configured mail address, there are various actions (like sending bank statements, government ID, secret question/answer pair, ...) you can take to get it back. But instead of relying on a single verification method, you are required to submit at least X different proofs of identification, where X can be set by yourself (before you lose access, of course). This is a lot better than blindly trusting that every "lost password" request is legitimate. For more information you can check out their FAQ entry on the issue: https://members.nearlyfreespeech.net/faq?q=LostEverything#LostEverything https://members.nearlyfreespeech.net/faq?q=LostEverything#Lo...
iamben 12y ago
This is great. I love NFSN - I've hosted a lot there. It's brilliant for sticking up something simple, and they've weathered a number HN frontpages / stuff going viral on Twitter / etc, etc without any problem.
cwyers 12y ago
I get that they're incredibly low cost, but their MySQL support (MariaDB 5.3 with InnoDB disabled by default) seems not that great to me. Also, they say that their optional InnoDB support uses "MariaDB's advanced high-performance XtraDB implementation" -- XtraDB is made by Percona, not MariaDB.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

69 points by kderbe 12y ago

Previously I thought of NFSN as a place to host a low-traffic static site for $1/year, or host an unmanaged WordPress site for $1/month. It sounds like it can now run web frameworks like Rails or Node.JS, as well as internal services like Redis. I'm not sure where they fit in a world with free Google App Engine tiers and $5/mo VPSes. But they've been around a while, doing their thing, so that must be worth something to folks that are leery of the big guys and weary of being victims of acquisitions and product re-imaginings.

xtrumanx 12y ago
> Ruby on Rails, Django, Catalyst, Node.JS, Network.Wai? Sure, technically you can run them here, but it’s not what you’d call a good idea. Don't get your hopes to high on deploying your rails/node app on NFSN.
- kderbe 12y ago
  They're describing how things used to work. Read the very next line in the blog post: > Take that long-standing well-known fact about our service, and pitch it straight into the trash.
  - xtrumanx 12y ago
    Oops. I kind of read that bit over and over and still came away with the wrong idea. Reading comprehension failure I guess.
archagon 12y ago
Weirdly, with a bare-bones Wordpress install with barely any traffic, I still spend about $5 every month or two. Not sure what's going on there. For blogs, I've found that Github Pages offers one of the best deals in the industry. It's free and it allows you to use your own domain; all you have to do is provide static HTML, or alternatively a bare-bones Jekyll site. With a few simple files, it's possible to have a custom domain and 404 error pages. Because it uses git, you automatically get a complete historic archive of your site without having to resort to archive.org. For once, without paying any extra money, you can have your own custom content and not have to manage any server stuff. Just write and publish.
- baldfat 12y ago
  Wordpress requires MySQL which is an added cost of $0.05 a day
  - bearbin 12y ago
    It's actually $0.02 for the first process (which can have as many databases as you like) AFAIK.
gnopgnip 12y ago
There are some benefits to using a managed service instead of setting everything up yourself on a vps. The management tools are usually better, and many of the common services are already installed and configured for webhosting. Also its generally less work to deal with scaling using a hosting provider compared to doing it yourself, but it really depends on how much you value your time.

threatofrain 12y ago

I love NearlyFreeSpeech and they were my first and current web host, although now I primarily use others. They are so incredibly cheap for those who want to host a simple site, and they come with a slew of interesting options like interesting pricing schemes. I hope they never go out of business.

nodata 12y ago
Don't hope! Support!
- corobo 12y ago
  In the same boat here - do they have a Europe presence yet? Probably the only reason I don't host small sites/landings with them Still use them for domains
eksith 12y ago
How would you rate their support? Are they good with fixing issues or are there fewer issues than the other hosts you use? Would you recommend them for a site with, say 100K visitors per day?
- baldfat 12y ago
  I wouldn't think that this would work since it really is a great site for low number of visitors. Also this is a pre-paid plan. Try out the price estimator: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/estimate https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/estimate
- sogen 12y ago
  Hi, eight+ years of using NFS.net. Support is great, they handle stuff quickly and JDW is also very active in the NFS forums.
- unfocused 12y ago
  I've had a site hosted on theirs (Wordpress + MySQL) for 3 years with no problems. Very cheap as well especially since the site is not heavy in traffic, so it doesn't get charged much. Only had 1 support ticket which was my fault and they resolved it quickly.

mattbee 12y ago

If you ever lose both your login & access to the email address from which you signed up, you will lose everything you host with nearlyfreespeech. I was trying to help a friend recover his own site after the pre-paid credit expired. A mutual journo friend had set it up years earlier but lost access to an old email address. It was down because the pre-paid credit had expired, but wouldn't even take payment from someone they didn't know to get it back up. Support wouldn't empathise or even help "in principle", i.e. "Given that we've lost access to the original email address that our friend signed up with, how can we go about recovering this account, give you some money saving the domain"? The answer was essentially: we don't care, you're dead to us. I run an ISP in the UK that takes backup contact options, so I was trying to go through what options they _might_ have to help, but they weren't interested. Cheap is good, especially when you're setting up sites for friends, but always think twice about the support you might need years down the line.

pilif 12y ago
Personally, I think this is a feature. It's nice to know that a third party cannot socially engineer them into access to my site. Of course now it all hinges on the social engineerability of my email provider, but they're getting better and better at this too.
- derefr 12y ago
  There's a difference between "asking to recover an account of that's in active use" and "asking to recover an account which is in arrears and unreachable for the last two months", though. I don't think I'd mind if people were able to socially engineer the latter; they'd have to pay my account off to use it!
soult 12y ago
Actually they have improved on this a lot. If you lose access to your account and your configured mail address, there are various actions (like sending bank statements, government ID, secret question/answer pair, ...) you can take to get it back. But instead of relying on a single verification method, you are required to submit at least X different proofs of identification, where X can be set by yourself (before you lose access, of course). This is a lot better than blindly trusting that every "lost password" request is legitimate. For more information you can check out their FAQ entry on the issue: https://members.nearlyfreespeech.net/faq?q=LostEverything#LostEverything https://members.nearlyfreespeech.net/faq?q=LostEverything#Lo...

iamben 12y ago

This is great. I love NFSN - I've hosted a lot there. It's brilliant for sticking up something simple, and they've weathered a number HN frontpages / stuff going viral on Twitter / etc, etc without any problem.

cwyers 12y ago

I get that they're incredibly low cost, but their MySQL support (MariaDB 5.3 with InnoDB disabled by default) seems not that great to me. Also, they say that their optional InnoDB support uses "MariaDB's advanced high-performance XtraDB implementation" -- XtraDB is made by Percona, not MariaDB.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]