New web domain and email hosting recommendations

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timmmay

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#2080549 29-Aug-2018 08:27

If you're considering Sydney then AWS Lightsail (their consumer VPS offering) gives you 512MB RAM, 20GB SSD, and 0.5TB transfer for US$3.50, or double that for US$5.

I run six production websites on the smaller size instance, which is Nginx, PHP, and MySQL. Yes it all runs on 512MB RAM, I have swap available but only a little of it is used. 1GB would be better, I just wanted to see if I could do it. I use 1% CPU most of the time, spiking to about 20% for short periods for backups. You'd want the larger size for a busier site as it has more CPU. I also use CloudFlare free plan for CDN. My uptime is good, in AWS Oregon, I've never had any unexpected downtime. With EC2 I pay more than what Lightsail charges, but I had it before Lightsail was announced.

While AWS isn't particualrly simple to use, LightSail has been made to be simple, with it's only easy to use control panel.

jarledb

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#2080774 29-Aug-2018 13:17

timmmay:

While AWS isn't particualrly simple to use, LightSail has been made to be simple, with it's only easy to use control panel.

Lightsail looks like a nice product, but its not simple from what I can gather. For instance it seems you should have some knowledge to be able to add Lets Encrypt to a LightSail instance, unless I have missed something.

For someone that doesn't know what they are doing, it might be challenging to set up and run a LightSail instance.

BTW: Do LightSail manage OS, web server and script language updates? Didn't immediately find any information about that.

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timmmay

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#2080827 29-Aug-2018 14:40

jarledb:

Lightsail looks like a nice product, but its not simple from what I can gather. For instance it seems you should have some knowledge to be able to add Lets Encrypt to a LightSail instance, unless I have missed something.

For someone that doesn't know what they are doing, it might be challenging to set up and run a LightSail instance.

BTW: Do LightSail manage OS, web server and script language updates? Didn't immediately find any information about that.

You'd probably have to install Certbot or similar to install a Let's Encrypt certificate, though I had trouble with it on Amazon Linux. Under full AWS you can use AWS Certificate Manager, but that only works with load balancers.

Lightsail sets up the server and can optionally set up Wordpress and such, I think you probably have to "yum update" it regularly. Forum thread.

If the other provider you recommended does all that for you it's probably better for someone who doesn't want to know about the details of updates, adding https certs, and additional configuration.

jarledb

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#2080898 29-Aug-2018 16:36

timmmay:

If the other provider you recommended does all that for you it's probably better for someone who doesn't want to know about the details of updates, adding https certs, and additional configuration.

Cloudways provides a layer on top of various cloud providers, including AWS and Google Cloud. They manage the server updates, updates to PHP, MySQL and other packages used on the server. They also handle backups, and provides a fairly easy to use management panel.

While it does give you SSH access, you do not have root access so might not be for someone that wants to customise heavily or use features they don't provide out of the box. But for standard installs of WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Joomla, Drupal etc. its pretty good. You can also run custom PHP applications, and you have a fair amount of customisation through the admin panel.

I have used quite a few premium hosting services for WordPress, and their stack beats all of the ones I have tried before in speed (including WPengine).

They add a little on top of the cloud providers fees, but to me its worth it to not have to deal with lots of OS updates etc.

I typically run one site per 1 cpu/1GB server instance, which makes it a lot easier to find out whats going on when all the server resources suddenly are used. Thats much harder to figure out if you share the server with several sites. It also provides better security, because you can't get cross site infections.

timmmay

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#2080956 29-Aug-2018 17:22

It does sound easier. AWS is very powerful but it's complex. Lightsail is a bit less complex and has some standard installs. I wouldn't use Amazon Linux again though, Ubuntu is much better supported with many more packages available.

"yum update" isn't so difficult. AWS provides disk snapshots, incremental, which is good for backups, but restoring individual files takes some experience / skill.

I use separate PHP pools for my sites, so I can tell if anything goes crazy. I also cache and rate limit so things can't go too crazy. 1GB / 1CPU is probably much more than most single sites need if it's set up and cached properly, but that can take a bit of time and effort.

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