HN Explorer

Tell HN: Switched from Lightsail to Hetzner Cloud, 2 blogs for $4 a month

11 points by 999900000999 ↗ HN
After a few comments mentioned I was probably wasting money using AWS Lightsail, I finally tried out Hetzner Cloud for hosting my Ghost Blogs.

Since ARM is new and interesting, I picked the 4$ ARM Ubuntu server for hosting. After experimenting with a few different alternatives, I installed Captain Rover again( it's still the easiest solution here).

The only thing I really had issues with was getting the A records to work right. I had some weird franken system where I had the domains on a different register, pointing to AWS name servers, pointing to Hetzner Cloud.

This was really confusing and didn't work right, so I migrated the domains over to AWS. I'm happy to say both of my blogs are working fine now.

Both of these are near no traffic blogs, so I have no idea how this would behave under load. 4$ is a great deal compared to the 30$ a month I was spending before.

Whenever I have time I can see myself using Hetzner for other projects. Thanks HN.

28 comments

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smt88
Why are the blogs on running application servers at all? You could build them locally and host them on S3 for close to $0/month and load would be a non-issue.
999900000999
I like being able to write a blog post from my phone, laptop, etc.

I know I can set up tooling for this with GitHub actions, but Ghost is worth 2$ per blog for me.

I still have to find a way to find new free themes though.

satvikpendem
Why are you paying for blogs, ostensibly static content, at all? Vercel and Netlify are both basically free for both. I use Hetzner too, but only for application services, not static content.
shinryuu
OP is running Ghost, which is an application. Of course OP could have chosen to use a static site generator but didn't in this case.
satvikpendem
I'm curious why they chose Ghost when Markdown works just as well, and either way, I believe Ghost can still work via Vercel etc.
999900000999
I like Ghost.

I took my monthly costs down from 30$ to 4$ HN tells me I'm still wasting money.

I expect nothing less.

Ghost is much easier to use than editing and commiting markdown files. I'm also able to create posts programmatically via an API.

I guess this could all be done with Markdown too, but it would make things harder.

satvikpendem
I used to use Ghost, so don't discount me as some "HN commenter." I switched to Markdown not for the cost but for the portability. It simply seemed easier to edit Markdown than to go into Ghost's editor for basically the same thing.
999900000999
So I assume you edit markdown locally and then commit the files to Git which automatically builds into a static website?

I'm doing certain things with the Ghost API that I don't think I can really replace with that.

satvikpendem
Yes I am. What are you doing with the Ghost API?
999900000999
I automate the creation of certain posts.

Ultimately your not wrong, but I think Ghost is a great platform.

If anything I like creating tools that I can share with others. If I want to invite friends to post on my blogs it'll take 30 seconds to provide a login and creating posts is very easy with Ghost.

Getting non technical people to understand Git is a massive challenge I don't want to try again.

satvikpendem
I see. Personally I don't let others write on my blog so I don't have the same use cases as you. If I had to, I'd ask them to just send me the Markdown file or text itself and I'd submit it via git myself.
999900000999
I'm always open to learning.

Do you have any code to share which automates turning markdown to a blog site?

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ipaddr
Vercel costs become too costly once you get serious traffic. Plus a server allows you to do many things while hosting static content.
satvikpendem
For static content? Vercel, Cloudflare etc are extremely cheap for that, even free even for large traffic loads, but yes a server allows other things than static content.
dakiol
I tried to sign up in Hetzner but always got rejected. Also, the idea of providing my ID/Passport to them is odd. I’m running stuff on Digital Ocean without having to hand over any IDs or using my real name. So far, so good.
acheong08
Similar experience. DO isn't much better. Their GitHub authentication is broken such that if you change your email on GitHub, you lose access to your DO account & must provide ID to recover it.

Ended up on eth-services.de after seeing they sponsor mailcow.

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revskill
Or, just use notion and publish the writings ?
nrnrjrjrj
Digital ocean is good enough for this. You would be trading the power/$ ratio of Hetzner for probably an easier DX with more regional options.
BOOSTERHIDROGEN
I am using Hetzner but recently changed to Netcup due to more discounts.
cssanchez
Why didn't you try a barebones AWS EC2 with their Arm offers as well? Last I checked nothing beat them, especially if you reserve capacity in advance.

Another option is buying a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero and hosting the ghost blog from there since the blogs don't have any traffic.

uaas
“Nothing beat them” in what regards?
inSenCite
If they're just simple blogs why not use Github Pages? you can set it up with a custom domain and use the web codespaces