Hello everyone. I just tried to create an account with linode and got the automated cancellation email due to fraud, which left a bad taste in my mouth about the company before I even had the chance to get started.
So I am looking for alternatives that won't break the bank, have linux options, and are fairly easy to use once you get up and running. I dont need to do anything complex, just host my small hobby projects that I'm hacking away at. I don't have anything ready now, but I thought that with new years and all that it might be a good time to snag some deals.
Do you guys know of anything that fits? Thanks!
Edit: Decided to go with Oracle's Always Free option, as at this time being a student (i.e. poor) and just wanting to mess around and learn I can't justify going with a non-free option when a free on is available. I am however stuck on the part where I need to create my instance. I'm getting the out of capacity error, which after reading up on means there aren't available resources for my selected region. I can either try again daily to see if at some point they will be available or select a different region (which as far as I can tell means closing and reopening the account which I want to avoid).
I'm pretty happy with Digital Ocean if I need a temporary VPS because I can pay by the minute and the UI is great. Anything that I want to stay alive for more than a month or two, I do on a single 6-core VPS rented long-term from Netcup, a low-cost German provider, deploying with Docker and Traefik.
I've been using Linode for a decade (or more) now without any issues. I'd encourage you to contact their support about this issue. Assuming you're on the up-and-up this sounds like a big and in sure they'd be happy to help.
If you decide not to go with Linode though I think Digital Ocean is a good alternative.
@EncryptKeeper@PHLAK I was using Linode, then I was using 'Akamai Connected Cloud', and now I'm using Hetzner — with a dedicated server for a third of the price of Akamai's 'cloud'-hosting — with four times the RAM and about 20x the disk space.
Racknerd has VPSs starting at around $10/yr. Been using them to host my email/nextcloud/jellyfin proxies for a while now with no issues or unexpected downtime. They don't have any of Linode's advanced features, but they're pretty hard to beat price-wise.
That website is great. Racknerd sometimes has offers in the forums there where they will double your monthly data limit for free when you comment your order number.
There is also lowendspirit, but in both cases you have to be very careful what you buy - not everything that is advertised there will work as advertised or will work long-term
I have personally been using OVH for $1.05/month. This offer is only available for their new customers and also is only offered in certain regions as well. I've been using it for my personal small projects to host my frontend projects and also as VPN server as well. It is now more than a month since I've been using it and haven't had any issues so far.
Another platform I might suggest is Oracle cloud. They have a free VPS offer FOREVER. If you're register for the first time and their system gives you an error it's their "fair usage policy" of some sort where their system might think you're someone that's trying to abuse their free offerings(best not to waste time if it doesn't work the first time). If you do register tho, you might need to do a few research when you're starting out initially. The platform has lots of options and tools and it might get overwhelming if this is your first time. Nonetheless, I believe it is manageable tho. It just takes a little bit of time to get used to their interface.
+1 for the Oracle solution. I use one for my public IP, and port forward over WireGuard to my home. They claim something like 480Mbps, but it's nowhere near that, at least for external traffic. But in any event I've been using it for a few months with no real complaints.
And yes, I fully appreciate the irony of trying to self-host services to get away from big corporations, but relying on Oracle to do so.
I just signed up to oracles free cloud service after watching a video where it was said it was always free, but the wording on oracle's site made it seem like its a trial. Are there two free options?
I assume you're referring to the two free instance you get with the x86 VMs. And that is correct. As far as I remember, they offer you two VMs with x86 1VCPU and 40GB of block storage minimum or you can create 5 VMs with ARM with CPUs with lots of cores and memory each having 40 GBs of storage(don't remember the exact use-case). If you want to know what you are getting, please read the doc I have attached for you for always free resources. They offer you free 200GB in total and the bandwidth they offer is 20TB/month with 1Gbps speeds for each VMs (I might be wrong tho. It's been a while since I've used their service). Also, in case you're wondering why I'm not using a free service like this is, I used one of their servers to pirate copyrighted material. They'll ban you without warning so read their terms of services and try not to be a fool like I am.
https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm#resources
I ditched Linode after they sold to Akamai and immediately raised prices, then changed names. I shifted everything over to Vultr which is a roughly comparable service, and is a little bit cheaper. It’s not quite as polished as the company formerly known as Linode, but it does it does the job just the same.
Yup, ended up going with oracle. Free is good for me, and im totally new to this so it doesnt really make a difference to me if theres a minor interface difference between 2 providers.
VPS is opposed to a dedicated server, and actually is a kind of shared hosting because as a VPS user you a allocated a 'share' of resources on a machine where others also have a 'share' of resources.
Shared housing more typically refers to simpler web hosting where multiple users have their website servers from shared hardware.