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Ask HN: Best Shared Host in 2019?

5 points by dabockster ↗ HN
Hey all,

I need to find a shared host for a PHP project I'm working on. I would deploy on Heroku but I want it usable 24/7 for low cost (Heroku can get expensive FAST if something is left running). I figured an old style shared host would be much cheaper for my case than a full cloud provider. Also needs to be US based (even better if it's in WA state - I'm in Seattle and would love to do business with someone local).

Anyone got any ideas?

10 comments

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citruspi
Given that you're comfortable with a shared PHP host, I'd assume this would comfortably run on a single Heroku dyno?

If so, a single dyno running 24/7 is $7 a month. If that's still too expensive, you could use a free dyno and setup an AWS Lambda which triggers it every ~15 minutes, which would effectively be free.

There's also a number of niche hosts, e.g. zeit[0] (FWIW, haven't used it before, not necessarily endorsing or recommending them) which offer free or cheap managed hosting.

If you're interested in a solution which is potentially a little more interesting and also effectively free for low traffic, you could run your PHP application within AWS Lambda[1].

Unfortunately I can't comment on legit shared hosts (e.g. Bluehost, Godaddy, etc.) because I generally try to avoid them.

Edit: You could also put it on AWS Lightsail, Linode, Digital Ocean, etc. but from your mention of Heroku and desire for shared hosting, I'm guessing you don't want to configure a VPS.

[0]: zeit.co

[1]: https://akrabat.com/serverless-php-on-aws-lamda/

dabockster
> Unfortunately I can't comment on legit shared hosts (e.g. Bluehost, Godaddy, etc.) because I generally try to avoid them.

Yeah, that's actually what I wanted to hear about. Heroku's $7/month adds up to $84/year pre-tax. Way too steep for my project. I also don't want to go near AWS since that's overkill for my project.

I did see DreamHost mentioned somewhere on HN today for $2.50/month. I'll have to check that out.

codegeek
What is your budget? Check out vultr.com VPS that starts at 3.5 USD per month. New Jersey based.
kaushikt
How has your experience with Vultr been? I am considering moving some of my servers there from AWS
codegeek
overall pretty good even though I honestly use more of DigitalOcean but have used vultr and also had good experience with their support.
dabockster
$3.50/month sounds good. I'll have to look them up.
ddorian43
Best is webfaction.com (trust me on this one). They got bought by godaddy. The old guys started opalstack.com so it should be the same.
bluewater
I’ve got a few personal projects up and running on blue host. I can’t speak for the actual performance (little traffic) but so far phone support has been helpful and quick. Positive experience so far after a couple months.
saluki
Check out forge.laravel.com, it's a tool for spinning up droplets, you could connect it to digital ocean or vultr.

For a basic project you could go with a $5 Digital Ocean Droplet.

You can sign up for forge with a 14 day trial, create your droplet and then cancel forge if this is a one time thing. You would still have access to your droplet through ssh, sftp and connecting to the database. But it's nice to have forge for creating servers when you need them and deployments.

Forge saves you the time of configuring your droplet, installing ubuntu, etc.

Performance and security on digital ocean is going to be better than a shared host.

tmaly
I have been using hostmonster since 2003. It was a small company but I think its owned by bluehost now.

It comes with a cpanel and email. Its about $13 a month but they keep the server running 24/7

I also run a droplet on Digitalocean for a Go webapp, but I have to do a bit of devops on it now and then

Forge.laravel.com looks interesting, but I have not tried it.