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Comment by hgs3 | Hacker News Reader

What does HN recommend these days for app hosting? I'm a solo dev without deep pockets. I was looking at Linode and DO, but posts like this have me worried about the later.

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YMMV - but I’ve had 2 wordpress blogs on Linode for 14 years now. I’ve spun up (and spun down) 3 different companies on Linode (all monoliths using Postgres, Memcached and Redis). I’ll be with them as long as I can. During this time, I can really only recall 2 times they emailed me out of the blue and said something was wrong with one my hosts. Both times were a couple of hours of downtime to which they credited me the time. I’m sure I’ve had more downtime, but it must not have been too bad because it isn’t readily available from memory.

AWS Lightsail. Linode and DO are not cheaper. Seriously, compare the prices for yourself [0][1][2]. Linode and DO seem to have a reputation of being cheaper options, but they're not, and AWS isn't going to jerk you around with small-hoster issues like Linode and DO have been known to.

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/

[1] https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing

[2] https://www.linode.com/pricing/

What is a "small-hoster issue"?

Things like poor customer service (the OP that we're commenting on right now), limited POPs [0], low service quotas with unpredictable results if you hit them [1], limited services (limited instance types, no long tail of value-add services), requiring manual tickets for things that hyperscalers have fully automated, etc. Things of that nature. These are things that stem directly from being a very small hosting company, and that you won't see at a hyperscaler.

[0] Linode got DDOS'ed literally entirely off the Internet in December 2016. You can't take AWS down with a DDOS. You can take down an individual customer server but you can't take AWS offline with a DDOS.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20064169

Instead of just negatives, do you have an answer for his question? What is a good hosting provider?

I can't tell if I'm missing a joke or something. AWS Lightsail is the host that I recommend. That's what I said in my post.

D'oh. My eyes. I saw that first . after lightsail as a ,

I'm a happy Linode user. And I'm a very small hoster. I'm renting a $10/month VPS for quite a few years now, and I've been very impressed with them.

A while back I made a stupid mistake while tired, and I was panicking and couldn't find the feature I needed in the account.

I called Linode at around 11PM CDT, and got a helpful friendly guy on the line who walked me through what I needed. I was amazed that I could get a human on the line in less than a minute after hours, when only paying $10/month.

I wish I could migrate to Linode... but they don't support VPCs in Europe though.

I've inadvertently done something against Linode's ToS twice and both times they contacted me to get the issue resolved, my account was never locked. So take this as a +1 for them, at least on this front.

If you don't use any services specific to the vendor. Then practice your backup and restore routines. You will be able to reasonably move to a new cloud provider, on the off chance you get similarly cancelled.

This is probably the most reasonable risk mitigation you can fairly easily do.

I don't think there exists a vendor that's going to be foolproof. Most users aren't going to any have issues with any of the major providers, including DO, Linode, Vultr, Oracle, AWS, Azure, etc...

I have never had any problems with Hetzner, but I suspect someone who has will reply to this comment.

I've been on Linode for going on 15 years now. I've hosted a myriad of projects for myself and clients there without significant issues. For $corporatejob all of our assets are in AWS or Azure but my own stuff is on Linode.

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