Request for recommendations for web hosting

[Mike Huffaker]

Hello,

I'm trying to shop for a new web hosting solution.  Its just for my personal web page.  I had it parked at Apple mobile.me at one point, but then when Apple went to iCloud they shut that down, and I have the basic "under construction" message just sitting there right now.  :)

Basically I'm looking for:

1.  Some place where I can park my domains - I have them at GoDaddy now and I'm not 100% happy with them.

2.  Email to go with the domains.  POP-3 is fine, IMAP access is even better.

3.  I want to run a website that is mostly the standard stuff, HTML/CSS, javascript, etc.  No flash or anything fancy.  But I do also want to be able to put Java code out to run under Tomcat or some JVM container.

4.  I would like to have MySql or Postgres available for creating database.

5.  Nothing too expensive - this will just be for my personal web page and some playing around with development and traffic would probably be really low.

If you guys have any suggestions, let me know.  I have found a few options, but I thought I would tap into the experience that other people have.

Mike

[Charles Feduke]

Heroku is pretty good for what you are looking for, since a single "dyno" is free. You don't get to configure Tomcat or anything directly but developing on their platform is fairly easy. Its very simple to just create a Rails or Sinatra application and put all your static content in the public directory and deploy. (I believe the platform does support Java as well.) No real email support this way.

Next is Amazon's EC2 where you can get a free micro instance for 1 year when you sign up. I host a bunch of stuff on a small instance and use S3 for backing up all my personal stuff and my monthly bill is around $32. You'd be responsible for your own Postfix server this way, or using Amazon's solution (forget which acronym it is).

Finally there is http://www.macminivault.com/ which I don't have first hand experience with but my friend has two collocated there on their rent to own option. With 16GBs of RAM and a quad core proc its like ~$112 a month for a year, then $35 a month after that (you basically buy the mini over time). A comparable EC2 instance is very costly but of course you don't get the same kind of hardware redundancy you get with EC2 either. You'd definitely be responsible for your own Postfix server for email.

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[Mike Huffaker]

Charles,

Thank you for the suggestions.  I'll add them to the list with some of the other options I'm considering.  The mac mini vault sounds real interesting because of the option to buy the server.

Mike

[Charles Feduke]

I should add: for DNS use afraid.org - then you can change hosts as often as necessary plus use dyndns subdomains. I don't have a recommended registrar because I've never moved any of my domains (it's always some archaic process that involves a fax machine, blood of a virgin and a full moon).

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[Marcus McConnell]

You can host static web sites on Amazon S3 very inexpensively. I use NameCheap.com to park domains for $4/year

Marcus

[Justin Etheredge]

Moving domains seems to be relatively painless these days, I haven't had to fax anything for quite a while! For domains I also use namecheap and it is great.

For hosting, another option to consider is Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, you can deploy Java code there and it is supposed to make it pretty painless. It is kinda like Heroku, but not :-) Although nowhere near as cheap as static site hosting on S3. And definitely more expensive than just some shared hosting plan. You might be better off just getting a cheap linode vm, you can put whatever you want on there.

As for email, I use Google Apps for business. 5 dollars per user per month. Full imap access comes with that.

[Mike Huffaker]

Justin and Marcus,

Thanks for the suggestions.  I looked at linode and they seem pretty solid.  I'll check out the Amazon options too.

Mike

[Charles Feduke]

On Saturday, March 23, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Justin Etheredge wrote:

I haven't had to fax anything for quite a while!

But where do you get your blood of virgins?

Has anyone tried out the new outlook.com for business accounts? Is there even such a thing? I have a unrealistic fear of Google sunsetting gmail over the next decade, or maybe I just don't like that company much anymore, so looking for something comparable.