I need an expert opinion of people who use VPS/Dedicated hosting. I personally have always used shared hostings (the expensive ones), but still… Usually with CPanel, but sometime with other web interfaces. What I need is to host a website and a corporate e-mail address. All that is easily achieved with shared hosting, but I want something better.
As something “better” I’ve been using Ubuntu with graphical interface on, LAMP stack, PHPMyAdmin, Postfix etc. So I kinda have a dedicated server for free (except for my time and efforts of course). I enjoy a full control and all that. I’m not a Linux expert, especially when it comes to CLI/scripts. But I’m an above average semi-pro user and I manage everything OK. From fail2ban to LetsEncrypt. Everything works great. BUT…
I have a few reasons why I want to use hosting again. I really don’t wanna get into that since it would inevitably switch the discussion into a whole bunch of an off-topic non-technical stuff.
What I want is to be able to use CPanel as I used to before, BUT not in a shared hosting environmet, but in a VPS/Dedicated Server environment. Also what I don’t understand… let’s say I pay for an unmanaged VPS hosting. What would I end up getting? Same thing I had when I was with shared hosting plus a few additional things (like root access etc.)? Is there a way I could tranfer my working Ubuntu system into hosting? Usually I use Clonezilla for my local re-installation. But I have no clue how to do it remotely. In short, too many unknows. I kinda don’t want to find out all of that by “trial and error”, since it’s usually costly and time-consuming. I would prefer to have at least a general idea what I’m getting into…
My son and I had free connections to a managed hosting company that cost about 70 USD per month. I was laid off, lost the connection and my son recommended trying a 5 USD per month VPS because we were both using Linux. There have been very few major problems which were mostly due to MySql and 512 MB being insufficient memory. The VPS has increased the memory to 1 Gb and not had any problems for a long time, I am delighted to say
I have not paid the additional fee to use Cpanel because it is not essential. Also not installed mail to try and reduce the proliferation of spam.
Currently managing about 16 domains, most free and a couple of .coms. The free domains are ideal for experimenting and testing.
I would certainly recommend trying a VPS along with a free domain and see if the this is a suitable option. Popular price is 5 USD per month with a choice of many Linux operating systems. Connection usually takes less than a couple of minutes all for the price of a Big Mac!
5 dollars per month? Are you kidding? VPS hosting in the UK costs around 30-40 GBP per month. One pound sterling is equal $US 1,25. So we’re approaching like 50 bucks monthly What five dollars… I was paying for a decent SHARED hosting with GoDaddy around 20. And I’m a busy person and have better things to do than to play around with free domains on a cheap hosting. I have a life to live and a business to run. I just don’t feel like paying around $100 per month for a Dedicated hosting (if I don’t have to). Cheap things are cheap for a reason usually. Let’s just say that money isn’t a crucial factor here. What’s crucial is to get a high quality reliable hosting with CPanel and not a shared one. As simple as that…
I do not know if this is an answer to your question, but here is my experience:
I use several VPS and this is my test server http://94.237.92.101:3030
This test server hosts several sites and a Postgresql server.
Without firewall 1 GB costs $5/month. Using Debian (Ubuntus tiny father) and managed by Webmin for uploading, installing etc. https://upcloud.com/pricing/
For five years there have been just a minor glitch. Superfast and simple to maintain.
Normally I add a firewall for about another $5. But 1 GB memory is more than enough for a bunch of websites with low traffic.
I have used cPanel before, but Webmin is good enough and does the job.
A free domain could be used on a self-managed 5 USD per month to make a copy from the expensive server to the VPS server using the following RSYNC command:
You can get VPS with cPanel / WHM control panel, exactly as on shared hosting, but with more features and possibilities, so you’ll be in control of your entire server and hosting environment.
Depending on a location, you may obtain a good VPS plan within EUR 7.99 - EUR 17 /month, plus cPanel licence cost. Hostingdiscussion.com is a good site to start looking at the VPS offers.
