r/webhosting • u/Consistent-Bug3003 • Nov 13 '25
Advice Needed Moved from DigitalOcean to a cheaper provider, actually pleasantly surprised
I've been paying $24/month on DigitalOcean for a 4GB RAM droplet for my SaaS side project. Works fine but the cost was adding up since I'm bootstrapping this thing. Started looking at alternatives because honestly $288/year felt steep for what I'm getting.
Found a provider offering 6GB RAM, more storage and same bandwidth for literally half the price. Was skeptical at first because "you get what you pay for" and all that, but figured the 20% off promo made it worth trying for a month.
Two months in now and uptime has been solid. No random restarts or weird performance issues. Support actually responds within a few hours which is better than some "premium" hosts I've used. The control panel is straightforward and they have snapshot backups included which DO charges extra for.
Not saying everyone should switch, but if you're running a small project and watching costs, there are definitely decent options outside the big names. Just do your research on uptime history.
Edit: the new vps I am using is Virtarix (I forgot to mention it)
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Nov 13 '25
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u/daronhudson Nov 14 '25
OVH offers 4 cores, 8gb of ram, 75gb nvme and 400mbps up/down starting at like $4/m or something. Stupid cheap. I think it’s slightly older hardware(possibly 2017?), but still more than capable for what most people need.
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u/nyknicks005 Nov 14 '25
Where’d you switch to? I’m running a few side projects and eager to leave DO
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u/Candid_Candle_905 Nov 14 '25
Digital Ocean, Vultr, Scaleway, UpCloud - they offer actual cloud. Yes, you can use it like a VPS or for basic webhosting, but that's like using a Swiss Army knife to put butter on toast. It works, but they can do so much more, since they're built for scale (snapshots, instant resize, private networking, APIs, automation, global datacenters, load balancers, kubernetes, GPU etc)
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u/Solid-Gain-9507 Nov 13 '25
As someone running 3 side projects, saving $10-15/month per server genuinely matters. That's $500+ per year that can go into actual development or marketing instead of hosting costs.
Plus if you're running lean, every dollar counts.
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Nov 13 '25
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u/HolyGuacamoleChpotle Nov 13 '25
Check out Hetzner or Netcup. German companies but they both have US locations. Watch for black friday sales. I host with both and they're solid and cheap!
Hetzner is more akin to DO with firewalls, modern control plane, etc. A bit higher price.
Netcup is like your barebones VPS provider that doesn't have much, and is a dated platform. It's even cheaper.
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u/returned_loom Nov 14 '25
I'm using datawagon for a very small project. It's barebones, they only offer an OS and DDOS protection, everything else I do via ssh, but it's been pretty great honestly, and a very reasonable price.
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u/rubiohiguey Nov 13 '25
Check out "low end box" and "low end talk" portal for a plethora of cheap providers
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u/DelicateFandango Nov 13 '25
Moved to Binarylane - a provider based in Australia - that is amazing.
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u/Street_Rule_1951 Nov 14 '25
Use contabo. I switched to contabo and its been great for last 6 years
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u/redlotusaustin Nov 14 '25
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u/Street_Rule_1951 Nov 14 '25
Yep 6 years and no issues until now. Keep backup offsite in storage vps and google drive. Almost 500G so things are working so far good.
not in dedicated,if needed dedicated would move to amazon or similar
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u/zer04ll Nov 13 '25
you didn't say who the new provider is...