How to find cheap web hosting providers

[timewo]

One of the main webhosting providers I used Nexusbytes has shut down, so I require another cheap shared hosting provider. I am checking a few forums but I cannot find a suitable hosting provider. Which is the best way to find a cheap web hosting provider online?

 

[Tracy]

Wish I could help.. but decided a LONG time ago that you buy cheap, you get cheap. I started out with HostGator and stayed with them for about 2 months before I figured out they sucked... and then simply moved to a VPS. Yes, I had to figure outside mail hosting solutions since I didn't want to run cPanel.. but for less than I would pay for a cPanel license I was able to set up another VPS to do my mail processing on.
Now, I simply have a decent VPS and do my mail processing via Amazon SES.... and so far, it's been free due to the low level of mail I send.

 

[Cedric]

Wish I could help.. but decided a LONG time ago that you buy cheap, you get cheap. I started out with HostGator and stayed with them for about 2 months before I figured out they sucked... and then simply moved to a VPS. Yes, I had to figure outside mail hosting solutions since I didn't want to run cPanel.. but for less than I would pay for a cPanel license I was able to set up another VPS to do my mail processing on.
Now, I simply have a decent VPS and do my mail processing via Amazon SES.... and so far, it's been free due to the low level of mail I send.

If you ever feel up for it, it would be great if you could provide a guide/how to through the Articles how you’ve setup a VPS with a working email client and how you’ve setup the server to make it work with XenForo. That would be really helpful for our members and anyone trying to get into VPS.

 

[Tracy]

If you ever feel up for it, it would be great if you could provide a guide/how to through the Articles how you’ve setup a VPS with a working email client and how you’ve setup the server to make it work with XenForo. That would be really helpful for our members and anyone trying to get into VPS.

I'll see what I can compile.. it would be a rather lengthy article and honestly would require me to recreate the MTA VPS and install... which means I'd need to set up another VM on my current environment and walk through it. It's not an "easy" thing to detail to be honest about it, as there are steps that have to be taken that most day-to-day admins won't be capable of.

 

[Cedric]

I'll see what I can compile.. it would be a rather lengthy article and honestly would require me to recreate the MTA VPS and install... which means I'd need to set up another VM on my current environment and walk through it. It's not an "easy" thing to detail to be honest about it, as there are steps that have to be taken that most day-to-day admins won't be capable of.

No obligation of course, but I can imagine it will be helpful to many people and you will earn my forever gratitude. Which you already have, but yeah, lol. I’d love to know personally as well, as I have little experience with VPS, but would at one point like to change to VPS.

 

[Tracy]

No obligation of course, but I can imagine it will be helpful to many people and you will earn my forever gratitude. Which you already have, but yeah, lol. I’d love to know personally as well, as I have little experience with VPS, but would at one point like to change to VPS.

What applies to a VPS carries over to dedicated servers frequently if you are simply going to run the OS on those... but I usually end up putting something like SolusVM or ProxMox on a dedicated server and then that allows me to spin up other VPS's and isolate the sites from each other.

 

[Tyrsson]

Honestly, I go cloud these days. I have tested all of the major providers and my currently preferred (from a developer perspective is Azure). The offer pay as you go, automatic scaling etc. For sites that are just getting started I guess it makes sense to start on shared hosting. However, if you need anything more than just a docroot on a server you are most likely out of luck.

Even though I do not currently host sites (im just finding time to build my own lol) I will deploy on the same service on which I deploy client infrastructure as it will just expand the knowledge base I have in using those services, which is is win win for both me and the clients I develop for in the long run. The main problem I see with people trying to switch over is that the proprietary lingo takes over and sooo many people that are not developers have a hard time translating what they need from a cloud provider from their old "hosting package". Nearly all of the Big 3 cloud providers, Azure, Google, AWS offer what you need, it's usually just a case of... "I have no idea what all of these means" when the average user tries to move a site from say, a VPS to the cloud. Admittedly there is several ways to get from point A to B. As an example. Depending on the site (application) to be moved... It could be as simple as following a tutorial on deploying an "App" on compute for the related service with MySQL. Sometimes you may want to go containerized etc... Behind the scene the APP in their APP Service, uses a container One is just usually managed and one you have to manage (usually). They provide you the freedom to build the way you want/need to, but there is a steep learning curve. Nearly all of them will offer a free tier of services for at least the first 12 months and you only pay for the services above that tier. You will want to know what your average monthly usages are before you think about making a move though.

[edit]
One gotcha I would mention is nearly all of them have rules pertaining to sending email. Google cloud just shuts down the standard ports. Period. Finding and understanding the network configuration needed to send mail say from a VM running cpanel (which I have done) is NOT simple. I caution you if you decide to go with google cloud.