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Comment by amorphid | Hacker News Reader

The Vultr plan looks like a nice option. For comparison, I recently started using Scaleway for my it's-so-cheap-why-not-try-it box.

My Scaleway box's specs:

- €2.99/month (currently $3.17 USD/month)

- 2 GB RAM

- 50 GB SSD storage

- 200 Mbits/sec of unmetered bandwidth

- data centers in Amsterdam & Paris

When I need to take hosting more seriously, I'll reevaluate. Until then, Scaleway is a damn good deal :)

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Yeah, 2 GB RAM for ~$3 is amazing, while the mentioned Vultr plan is 512MB for $2.5 and DigitalOcean offers 512MB for $5… Sure, these companies have other advantages (e.g. DigitalOcean has very fast storage) but RAM is so damn valuable if you want to run many services, run software builds, etc.

Unfortunately Scaleway is Linux-only, they use some networked block storage that's not yet supported on FreeBSD apparently. (Needs to be mounted from inside the VM I assume? Damn "cloud" stuff.) Scaleway also used to have no IPv6, I think this might have been resolved though (but one address only IIRC? no /64?)

prgmr is my current choice for personal stuff — 1.25 GB is not as good as 2 GB, but they offer normal Xen VMs with full access — install anything you want. Also the good feeling of supporting a small team of sysadmins instead of a big corporation (esp. vs Amazon/Google, not so much with the other small hosters). The only downside is that they only have US servers, nothing in Europe.

> they use some networked block storage that's not yet supported on FreeBSD apparently

This may only apply to their physical offerings, not to the VM-based ones, and you may be able to get it to run using some nasty hacks (possibly involving loading your kernel after booting theirs). Either way, there are no official FreeBSD images so you'd be on your own.

Their IPv6 support is indeed lacking (one address, and you lose it if you stop the server).

No, they told me this about the VM offerings:

https://github.com/scaleway/image-proposals/issues/11

"FreeBSD on x86_64 (C2S, C2M, C2L, VC1S, VC1M, VC1L) needs an alternative way to store data or an NBD driver for FreeBSD, and more work on the boot system"

> Needs to be mounted from inside the VM I assume? Damn "cloud" stuff.

Yeah, that's kind of strange—what kind of SAN product doesn't even expose an iSCSI target for hypervisors to talk to?

Scaleway's lower offerings are not virtual machines. They are small dedicated arm boxes.

That's only one of their offerings. Sure, it's the most famous one, but they've seriously expanded into the amd64 VM market.

This is a great box, I use one myself but people need to know that SSD is network attached which comes with its own slowness. It's OK it's just something you need to be aware of.

So when you try out one of these hosts do you worry about bandwidth overages? Or are the options to manage or cut off the instance if it goes over.

I guess I'm interested in what other costs beyond the monthly keep-it-alive fee can come up with this tier of hosting

DigitalOcean's payment model is great for this. What you see is what you get without small charges or other fees. I vaguely remember Lightsail's release being met with poor feedback on HN because they really missed part of what makes DO by complicating the payment model.

Currently DO does not charge for network overages. I guess they would suspend your node for going way over the prescribed limits.

I'm not affiliated with DO, but I just really like the service.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/extra-bandw...

I've got a few things running on $3/mo Scaleway boxes. Bandwidth is unmetered and 200Mbit/sec. The only extra cost I pay for is additional storage volumes (50gb included, additional 1 euro per 50 GB/month) - other than that, dead reliable and all inclusive.

I am unfortunately stuck with companies that accept PayPal. Scaleway was one that I checked out first, but no PayPal support.

I am curious, under what circumstances would cause you to be stuck with companies that accept paypal?

People whose credit cards do not allow international transactions. The first time I used paypal, it was precisely for this reason.

Interesting. I hadn't realised this was a problem.

Little bit late, but I use Paypal mostly because I have funds in Euros in Paypal, and using my countries currency would be too expensive.

DigitalOcean accepts PayPal.

Does anybody else?

RamNode does too.

OVH does.

vultr takes paypal - it's the only way I've ever paid them.

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