Mastodawn

Chad McCullough

So, I've been wanting to move my sites to new hosting for just about a year. Sadly, and very frustratingly, each time I find a price that I can afford, the small print always says something like: "The price is on a 36-month term." And the 12-month term is always much more.

I think I'm done looking and will just stick with the hosting that I'm not thrilled with. The service is terrible but I can sort of afford it, at least. Is there good, affordable, hosting out there for unemployed poor people?

Sorry, went on a bit of a rant there.

#hosting #webhosting

manchicken Mar 22

@cmccullough Have you considered setting up your own server in your home and using something like Tailscale to help you make it public? I don't know if your ISP has any terms prohibiting that.

I use DigitalOcean, they still have Droplets (VPS) for like $4/mo, though if you want load balancers or anything like that it's more.

Chad McCullough Mar 22

@manchicken I've considered self-hosting but not sure I have the hardware power for it.

manchicken Mar 22

@cmccullough Yeah, it can be tricky to correctly gage scale on a new server. My advice is to hit up thrift stores and junk yards looking for large PC cases, and then buy older hardware powered with modern power supplies.

Especially given the cost of RAM in 2026, you're probably better off using older hardware. Modern power supplies will help keep your utility bills down while the machine chunks away.

It all really does depend on what you want to do with it.

Chad McCullough Mar 22

@manchicken 💯

Sharp Cheddar Goblin Mar 22

@cmccullough Have you looked at https://www.hetzner.com/? Not sure what qualifies as affordable or what your requirements are but I've been running small services there for a while.

Günstige Dedicated Server, Cloud & Hosting aus Deutschland

Günstige Hosting-Lösungen, Dedicated Server und Cloud-Services bei Hetzner ✓ DSGVO-konform ✓ günstige Preise ✓ 100 % grüne Energie

Chad McCullough Mar 22

@SharpCheddarGoblin I have looked at them before. I should take another look to see if this is something that I would be able to afford. Thanks!

Sharp Cheddar Goblin Mar 22

@cmccullough Up front standard pricing is nice and some regions have configs down to € 2.99 /month.

@cmccullough I pay $29/yr for a "shared hosting" plan that allows 50gb of storage and unlimited websites. It's isn't a B Corp, it isn't based in Switzerland, and it doesn't advertise five 9s but it's cheap and it gets the job done. If you are looking to your to host your node, php, or python project, you could do worse. That's where a few of my WordPress sites are hosted.

∴ esoterik ∴Mar 22

@cmccullough what kind of hosting are you looking for? depending on your needs there may be good free (or close to free) options out there.

off the top of my head, check out:
- SDF: https://freeshell.org/
- neocities: https://neocities.org/
- tilde.town: https://tilde.town/
- (and lots of other tilde club type sites)

hope you find something. good luck!

SDF Public Access UNIX System - Free Shell Account and Shell Access

Chad McCullough Mar 22

@d6 I do have a neocities account. I'm using their service to build a site in HTML. It's mostly for practice since it's been a very long time since I've used HTML.

Matthew Vernon Mar 22

@cmccullough dunno what affordable means for you, but @beasts have web-hosting starting from 2.5 GBP/month, and have solid customer service.

Ross Wintle Mar 22

@cmccullough What do you need to host? If you can get away from CMSs that need databases and server processing then there are lots of free options. You could even build a static version of a site locally and just host the static files.

GitHub and Cloudflare are two good options for this.

Chad McCullough Mar 22

@ross I'm definitely working on moving away from WordPress so won't need a lot of power. I've been wanting to learn how to build static websites or even straight-up HTML sites. Also, I have been wanting to support @Codeberg (even though I'm not a developer). I just like their service and would like to support them. I wonder if they allow for website hosting? I should look into this.

Ross Wintle Mar 22

@cmccullough @Codeberg That looks like an option, for sure.

https://codeberg.page/

Codeberg Pages - static pages for your projects

Chad McCullough Mar 22

@ross Excellent! Thanks!

@Codeberg

@cmccullough @ross @Codeberg They do: https://www.getzola.org/documentation/deployment/codeberg-pages/

Codeberg Pages | Zola

Everything you need to make a static site engine in one binary.

Chad McCullough Mar 22

@sylvie Thanks!!@ross @Codeberg

John Foley Mar 22

@ross @cmccullough I just built my first static site with a Netlify/GitHub setup, and with the 5 or less updates I'm making a month (and my minimal traffic), I pay $0 for hosting.

Chad McCullough Mar 22

@yelof @ross 👍️

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Mar 22

Uberspace is just about the best for small/personal hosting stuff: https://uberspace.de/en/

They're… pure awesome. The only web host I've ever been in love with. Amazing documentation (best I've ever seen in tech, probably), great product, and it's a "pay what you can" model where people who can afford to pay a bit more help subsidize people on a tight budget. It includes email hosting as well, I believe, though I didn't use that.

(It's also prepaid, which is a model I'm personally a fan of. Load up whatever amount of credit you want and it'll pay your chosen amount from that balance each month. First full month is free. When I contacted the team about a refund of remaining credit when I moved [the built-in refund feature doesn't work with US banks I think] the team was helpful and got it done quick.)

This instance was actually originally hosted on Uberspace, until the stuff I hosted outgrew it and I decided to spring for a dedicated server.

Uberspace

Chad McCullough Mar 22

@amin That's right! I had forgotten about @ubernauten and really should check out their service.

Thanks for the reminder!!

Amin, minor deity of the legume realm Mar 22

@cmccullough @ubernauten

Enjoy yourself! :D

@amin @cmccullough pikapods is great as well if you are running something that used docker

Jochie 👨🏻‍💻🏳️‍🌈Mar 23

@cmccullough Do your websites require running scripts on the server, or would they be fine as static websites fetched/built from a git repo somewhere?

For the latter, https://www.statichost.eu/pricing/ has a generous "Hobby" level that has yet to cost me a penny.

statichost.eu - 100% European static site hosting

statichost.eu

Chad McCullough Mar 23

@jochie Thanks for sharing this!

RootHosts Mar 23

@cmccullough Hey, I totally get your frustration — many hosts advertise low prices but only with long-term contracts, and renewals get expensive.

We keep things simple:
- No hidden fees
- No long-term lock-in
- Free website migration
- 7-day free trial (no payment required)

If you ever decide to try again, we’d be happy to help you move your sites easily 👍

Also, our support is good, we respond quickly and solve problems quickly, if you are our customer, you will be convinced of this.

Chad McCullough Mar 23

@roothosts Thanks!

Tinko Vialard Mar 23

@cmccullough I’m on @ubernauten and like it so far, their pricing is a bit of pay what you can, and their services have not given me any troubles.

Chad McCullough Mar 23

@twix 👍️ @ubernauten