I'm looking for an inexpensive, no-frills web host for a small website. My budget is around $10 per month. I'm based in the US and most of my visitors are there too. I'm planning to host a WordPress site. If you recommend a VPS, I'm comfortable managing Linux servers. Any suggestions?

I am looking for hosting, probably not a full dedicated server, but I'd like to be able to host a few other peoples' sites on my setup. I'd also like to have shell access, so I can user Composer/Drupal on it.

Ideally I'd also like to be able to expand it later (CPU's, RAM, storage). I'd like it to support Postgres as well as MariaDB.

Web host questionairre answers:

Monthly budget: $50-60 a month right now. I'm located on the west coast, most users are located on the west coast (California, Washington, Oregon). I'm hosting mostly WordPress and Drupal websites, with some custom software. (I'd like to be able to use Python as well as PHP). Monthly traffic volume is extremely minimal, I am starting over from square 1. I do have experience administrating Linux servers. I did look at the hosts on the sidebar.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

I moved 50 low-traffic WordPress sites from shared hosting onto one VPS three months ago. Here are my numbers for anyone planning the same:

16GB RAM, average use about 11GB with Redis object cache

CPU averages 30%, spikes to 90% during plugin updates

Disk at 140GB, mostly uploads and backups

Questions for people further along: at what point did you split into two servers? Did NVMe make a visible difference to wp-admin speed, or is that placebo? And what are you doing for offsite backups at this size?

Im trying to get a small SaaS off the ground but keep getting stuck on the technical setup. Database, auth, APIs, hosting, deployment. I havent even finished the main feature yet.

Im not much of a developer, so hiring someone for every little change isnt realistic at this stage. I just want to get a basic version online and see if its actually useful before putting more money into it.

My main concern is security and keeping everything running once people start using it. For those whove launched a small SaaS, what did you handle yourself and what did you get help with?

A few months ago I started an open-source benchmark suite (MIT, not affiliated with any provider) that provisions the same sysbench + fio tests on all configured instance-types, then destroys them. It now supports 7 providers and more than 6 months of pricing and performance data.

The latest addition, UpCloud, showed quite good performance, adding another european provider to the top in terms of price/performance. Upcloud also offered the best disk speed I have seen so far for small to medium sized instances.

You can find the dashboard at https://fabianwimberger.github.io/cloud-bench/ and the source + logs under https://github.com/fabianwimberger/cloud-bench - feel free to leave me some feedback or request instances for comparison!

Been using lifetime license for ages but recent php bug forced to look for alternatives since i can no longer use old php versions.

With all alternatives, FOSSBilling gets my vote. Used Gemini to vibe code simple migration script for clients, invoices, tickets, kb, and it's everything has been working smoothly.

Just in case anyone else is looking, https://github.com/FOSSBilling is the link, and it's free.

Ive spent the last two weeks sorting out login, permissions and hosting, and the feature people actually asked for is still waiting.

Didnt expect so much work before even getting a basic version ready to test. At this rate the setup is costing more time and money than the app itself.

For anyone whos built a small app without a dev team, how did you get past this stage?

I built a small internal app with an AI builder, and getting it live was honestly the easy part. The first few weeks were fun, but once people started asking for little changes, I realized I didn't really have a routine for checking auth, database changes, logs, or backups.

I can still make updates pretty quickly, but I don't want to keep changing things in production and hoping nothing breaks.

For those running apps they've built themselves, how do you handle maintenance after launch? Do you have a regular checklist or a simple setup for testing changes before they go live?

I thought the tool mattered less than the idea, but now every builder seems to handle auth, APIs, and deployment a little differently. What looks simple at first can get complicated once the app needs to do more than a few basic things.

I'm trying to build a small internal app without hiring a dev team right now. For anyone who's done something similar, what did you wish you'd checked before picking a platform?