Original thread: Private Server Hosting Options 2017

I'm still looking for a private server host, and only have about a week to pick one and get it set up before "downtime" (not that it really matters). I've found ramhost.us, which seems like a small host, but they sound otherwise good. The only bad review I've seen so far was from a guy committing copyright infringement on a massive scale that got shut down after being warned several times.

I'm curious if anybody here has ever used them and what your experiences were. It seems my hosting options are in Los Angeles or Atlanta, neither of which is very near to me. I'm not sure how bad my ping will be as a result. I guess I won't know for sure until I try it.

I guess I'll probably end up trying them for a month or two and see how I like it, unless we can come up with better options here.

Thanks, AMCerasoli. Although I don't fully trust DreamOcean, and RAM Host did sound like a generally more privacy centric host, I decided to give DreamOcean a try. I was able to get the machine I wanted (mainly a lot more storage) for a better price without haggling over email. We'll see how it goes. Already I'm annoyed that we cannot install a custom system (e.g., your own image, installer, etc.). They also apparently will not allow a custom kernel to boot. You have to boot their own kernels. Which pretty much guarantees you cannot secure your data 100% because they could have anything in the kernel: key loggers, drivers that talk to the host machine, backdoors, etc. That's quite annoying. I'm not sure if RAM Host is different, but with past hosts, even VPS hosts I thought, I've always been able to install a custom system by myself.

I'm curious about setting up a web server on Amazon or Google Cloud. I ran a live test server online from an Amazon EC for awhile. I hear it's more "cost efficient" to go with a direct webhost, however. But I kind of like / prefer to run a machine down to the bare metal. And spin up a web server using something funky like Web.Py, or even D language's Vibe.D.

Google supposedly has a new "feature" where they charge you by the minute as opposed to rounding up to say, increments of ten minutes. So you can run much smaller batches cost effectively. But I don't know how much I trust Google, and again, it's probably overkill for a website...

I'd probably just host from my home server if it wasn't likely against my ToS.

It's getting hard to find a "bare metal" host that is affordable for a developer or hobbyist budget. Cheapest ones I've been able to find are about $70/mo now I think, and the specs on them are nothing fancy.

I don't know about ToS, but my hurdle is a dynamic IP. I've used DynDNS in the past to get around that, but it's not 100% reliable, and it's a pain. My ISP will only issue static IPs to business accounts, which are more expensive than my current plan, and I'm worried that the service will be specialized and won't work well for gaming (I certainly can't afford both plans).

Web site hosting is dirt cheap. Even root access to a virtual machine is pretty affordable. What's expensive is root access to a physical machine.

GoDaddy was my original registrar. I never used them for hosting. I eventually ran away from them because I got too annoyed by their chaotic UI. I could barely understand it. Just terrible UX. That was years ago so maybe they've smartened up, but I don't miss them.

Name.com remains a reliable registrar for me so far.