Since 2008 I have been happily using Slicehost for my virtual server needs. At the time, they were cheap and they have great appeal for developer types. Specifically, you can create a slice with a vanilla install of your linux of choice. This is pretty standard nowadays, but back then you were typically overloaded with Plesk and all sorts of junk.
Recently I have been trying to revamp bills and things like that, and decided it was time to take a look at how much I am spending per month on hosting, and to see if I could reduce that cost at all.
Current (old) Stuff
Here’s a rundown of how I was doing it before:
- VM Hosting: Slicehost (512MB slice $38/month)
- DNS: Slicehost DNS Manager
All personal and client projects were stored on the Slicehost slice. Mind you, they are all small low-traffic sites, so the 512 size wasn’t an issue.
I also ran a copy of Gitlab on my slice, and all of my code for all of my projects was kept there. I enjoyed using Github much much more than Gitlab so was thinking of ways I could move my opensource and private projects over to Github. When I realized that I could split off all of my client projects to Heroku, I was sold. I technically don’t even NEED a VPS at this point because I don’t use it for anything, but I would like something I can hack around on that has afast network connection.
New (current) Stuff
So, introducing the new stuffs:
- VM Hosting: prgmr.com (256MB $8/month)
- DNS: Cloudflare (free)
- Github: micro $7/month (This covers repo hosting for all of my projects as well as hosting this blog.)
- Client Sites: Heroku (free)
There are two really awesome things coming out of this switch.
- I am saving money!! I now spend $15 monthly compared to $38.
- Less worry! Granted I haven’t had any issues with Slicehost, but there is less maintanence that I have to deal with since everything is automated on Heroku.
It also looks like Cloudflare is capable of doing some neat things besides providing DNS management, I just haven’t had the time to look into it yet.