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Cheapest Italy VPS
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Cheapest Italy VPS

sandrosandro Member
edited December 2019 in Requests

Hello,
I want to run a simple blog on Grav and I'm looking at the beginning for the cheapest solution out there that could run it fast with close to zero visits for now.

Or any other location that has good response times to Italy. I'm ok with NAT.

I guess I would need at least

256MB RAM
5GB SSD

Thanks! :)

Edit: i wonder if any provider like this offers also backups?

Comments

  • DPDP Administrator, The Domain Guy
  • Anyway since I'm here do you have idea of the ram requirements for Grav?

  • ManishPantManishPant Member, Host Rep

    Whats your budget too ?

  • sandrosandro Member
    edited December 2019

    @ManishPant said:
    Whats your budget too ?

    Below $10/y.

  • ManishPantManishPant Member, Host Rep

    @sandro said:

    @ManishPant said:
    Whats your budget too ?

    Below $10/y.

    @sandro said:

    @ManishPant said:
    Whats your budget too ?

    Below $10/y.

    You missed the Black Friday Sale , or checkout serverhunter.com to find one

    Thanked by 1ServerHunter
  • uptimeuptime Member
    edited December 2019

    @sandro said:

    @ManishPant said:
    Whats your budget too ?

    Below $10/y.

    Seems like options will be pretty limited in that price range - I would say if the mrvm 256 mb ram OVZ NAT works for your application then great (and a recommended option to consider, for sure) - otherwise that's $7 spent on an experiment ... then what?

    I am thinking that if $10/yr is a hard limit then perhaps you might also look at shared hosting options that support grav? SmallWeb is one that I know with several EU locations - might check with @Mic-hael about support for grav. Also there is myw.pt with a location in Germany - @MikePT can provide details about that.

    Another angle might be to experiment first using hourly-billed service such as Lunanode (available in France), Hetzner (in Germany) or iwStack (in Italy) to determine system requirements for grav ...

    There are actually quite a few hourly-billed options with EU locations such as intoVPS, mivocloud, skylonhost, ramnode, linode, vultr, ovh, ikoula ... but I think the cheapest to get started with might be Lunanode ($5 or maybe $10 initial deposit) - also skylonhost (I think €5 to start). And Hetzner is good value at about €2.50 per month for a 2 GB ram KVM.

    You would then just spend a few dollars to test grav on different size instances until you figure out what you really need. And then can look for an annual deal with those requirements elsewhere - but still possibly make good use of your balance on the hourly-billed service for backups - or even some more complicated scheme where you spin up a temporary instance to update your site while serving the static pages via low-cost CDN (ie, bunnyCDN)

    Personally I would probably prefer to reduce the risk and need for complicated experimental schemes and just budget something more like $20 to $30 for an annual KVM deal with 1 or 2 GB ram to play with. Plenty of options for that - but for $10 per year it's a bit more challenging to make any solid recommendation - given more risks, compromises, and complexities to take into account ... I can respect that but not a whole lot comes to mind after the mrvm 256 mb NAT deal, or shared hosting - either of which might actually work just fine for you.

    https://serverhunter.com might be useful to identify some other possibilities but you'll (always) want to check about reliability and performance for the low-budget rando hosts - or take a chance to kiss some of your budget goodbye if you find out the hard way. (And be especially wary of anything offered on LowEndBox - there is historically a high chance that many of those hosts will not survive to actually deliver the full duration of the plan purchased.)

    There are some good deals for (mostly) OVZ you can find on this forum around this time of year - can also check hostballs.com and talk.lowendspirit.com for more - but you will need to do your homework if you are counting on reliable performance.

  • vyas11vyas11 Member
    edited December 2019

    @sandro said:
    Hello,
    I want to run a simple blog on Grav and I'm looking at the beginning for the cheapest solution out there that could run it fast with close to zero visits for now.

    Or any other location that has good response times to Italy. I'm ok with NAT.

    I guess I would need at least

    256MB RAM
    5GB SSD

    Thanks! :)

    Edit: i wonder if any provider like this offers also backups?

    I would recommend you start with shared hosting- that's how I began. Then ssh if the host allows, before moving to NAT or VPS. Of course if the objective is to learn and DIY then nothing like jumping into the deep end of the pool directly.

    Tagging @seriesn. You might want to try out on ServedEZ shared hosting (DE) , for which the kind host does not charge anything. Your other equally fine choices are @smallweb (Lux) or also wait to see if @Cam has any DE offers for Gullos during Christmas. Lilchosting @s4suke7 also has a recent offer here - DC location is the same for Nexusbytes, Myw .pt (@MikePT) and Lilchosting in DE- Hetzner. Added later: or if @HostSlick offers their $ 5 or under $ 10 deals during Christmas, you can snap that up (NL location)

    I have a grav install on a DA shared hosting plan of GestianDBI and also on a VPS. The former was to learn "grav with training wheels on". .The latter- I set it up using one of the fine tutorials on websiteforstudents (Debian 10+ Apache2), you might want to read up on the OS/ webserver of your choice. I'm sure stackexchange or similar site will do just fine. I used one of the Grav skeletons - the default zip for Hipstr might not have the admin plugin and you may have to install it separately. Any of the knowledge base / blogging ones might work. Good luck with the quirks of 'twig' otherwise Grav is awesome!

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • Don't go cheapest! Just buy Prometeus and buckle up for the long run. Very reliable provider and you don't have to wonder if they will dead pool next month or the hardware will be slow or that support won't answer. They have everything from really reasonably priced OpenVZ to Storage KVM and the prices start at $5.00 for the KVM and $3.90 for OpenVZ. Been using this provider since 3/2/2012 and I don't think I have actually seen but 1 unplanned downtime and they notified me about it as soon as it happened.

    my 2 cents.

    Cheers!

  • uptimeuptime Member
    edited December 2019

    @TheLinuxBug said:
    Don't go cheapest! Just buy Prometeus and buckle up for the long run. Very reliable provider and you don't have to wonder if they will dead pool next month or the hardware will be slow or that support won't answer.

    Also note the hourly-billed service from prometeus: http://iwstack.com/ which offers a 512 mb ram kvm + 10 gb storage for around €3 per month total - however they seem to require an initial deposit of €30 so definitely a different tier budget scenario (see http://iwstack.com/billing.php)

    @vyas11 - any more details about system requirements for running grav / experience using shared hosting? Seems like a sufficiently capable shared hosting setup could be a good low-cost option, even if budget is not the only factor ...

    Though also interesting to consider possibility of (maybe) upcoming promotions for $5-10/yr OVZ VPS (such as from @HostSlick or @HostSailor or ...?) - and if @VirMach has fresh KVMs in Europe soon, then could be some good deals even if substantially more than $10/year for those (not expecting any more Black Friday-level discounts but still hopefully competetive with the current $20-ish options such as BuyVM)

    Thanked by 1vyas11
  • HostSlickHostSlick Member, Patron Provider
    edited December 2019

    Eh.
    Maybe will ipv6 only promo in that price range. Not sure yet though. Could be no promo at all :smile:

    Thanked by 2vyas11 uptime
  • vyas11vyas11 Member
    edited December 2019

    @uptime said:

    @vyas11 - any more details about system requirements for running grav / experience using shared hosting? Seems like a sufficiently capable shared hosting setup could be a good low-cost option, even if budget is not the only factor ...

    Budget wise, I would cap it at $ 3/ year. For that reason, any of the @smallweb plans or the $ 2/year NATs are perfect for Grav. By extension, yes a $ 5 OVZ as well. But then I try to test things super cheap and then go the whole hog.

    One of the good things about this CMS is the relatively loose set of 'recommended' requirements
    Source: https://learn.getgrav.org/16/basics/requirements

    In a nutshell, any thing that can run:

    Web Server (Apache, Nginx, LiteSpeed, Lightly, IIS, etc.)
    PHP 7.1.3 or higher
    Apache Requirements:
    mod_rewrite
    mod_ssl (if you wish to run Grav under SSL)
    You should also ensure you have AllowOverride All set in the and/or "VirtualHost" blocks so that the .htaccess file processes correctly, and rewrite rules take >effect.

    My test setup was on the $ 2/yr Gullo's NAT : 128 MB RAM, 1 VCore, 3 GB HDD. OS was stock Debian 8 template upgraded to Debian 9, PHP 7.2 (I think 7.3 kept giving errors for some reason, now I typically maintain notes but not back when I did this experiment). the current system is a KVM with specs similar to a TinyKVM setup (256 MB RAM, 1 VCore, yada yada, Debian 10). Webserver was NGINX- had read that NGINX was better suited for Low RAM systems. The tutorial I had followed was:

    https://websiteforstudents.com/setup-grav-cms-with-composer-on-ubuntu-16-04-18-04-and-nginx-php-7-2-fpm-support/

    For shared hosting, I have tried on the super slow-ultra oversold - piss poor bandwidth shared hosting - a typical $ 1 / month shared hosting plan . (other specs I do not recall - again days of yore). But a close cousin could be a Hostinger "Single Plan" of 1X processing power and 1 X Ram/ 1 website/ 100 GB BW/ 10 GB Disk space. The Gestiondbi shared hosting - or any other the plans I mentioned above - are a massive upgrade compared to the plans I have run Grav on! My love-hate relationship with that CMS stems from the fact that "twig" is super flaky and breaks more often than not.

    A full blown Grav install with 20 odd plugins and 5 themes- some never used- does not need more than 200 MB space btw. I have even run it on a 2 Dedicated Core/ 8 GB RAM/ 60 GB SSD/ KVM. But that is a different story.

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • @HostSlick said:
    Eh.
    Maybe will ipv6 only promo in that price range. Not sure yet though. Could be no promo at all :smile:

    Max, I'll keep nagging you till you set up an offer mate! Cheers.

  • HostSlickHostSlick Member, Patron Provider
    edited December 2019

    @vyas11 said:

    @HostSlick said:
    Eh.
    Maybe will ipv6 only promo in that price range. Not sure yet though. Could be no promo at all :smile:

    Max, I'll keep nagging you till you set up an offer mate! Cheers.

    Will look. If we still got some stock on dedis we will discount some aswell.

    Problem is that UPS driver didn't come as scheduled. But will come today. VPS Nodes and a Juniper switch waiting at our doors to get pick up here in Germany.
    Will be racked same day hopefully in the NL DC so we might have some OVZ7 promo and very limited KVM.

    If the 5usd/year will come back, then it will be ipv6 only. IPv4 is problematic.

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • @HostSlick said:

    @vyas11 said:

    @HostSlick said:
    Eh.
    Maybe will ipv6 only promo in that price range. Not sure yet though. Could be no promo at all :smile:

    Max, I'll keep nagging you till you set up an offer mate! Cheers.

    Will look. If we still got some stock on dedis we will discount some aswell.

    Problem is that UPS driver didn't come as scheduled. But will come today. VPS Nodes and a Juniper switch waiting at our doors to get pick up here in Germany.
    Will be racked same day hopefully in the NL DC so we might have some OVZ7 promo and very limited KVM.

    If the 5usd/year will come back, then it will be ipv6 only. IPv4 is problematic.

    Thanks for taking the time to explain some of the behind the scene acts (and facts). Sometimes it is easy to get carried away in the deals/offers madness, but the effort taken to make them happen goes unnoticed. Your post was a peek into some of that.
    Cheers

  • vyas11vyas11 Member
    edited December 2019

    tagging @Unixfy . Another adventurer who runs Grav on a $ 1 VPS. Mate, happy to hear your perspectives on Grav install on your setup.

  • Of course the shared hosting option would the cheapest solution (free basically) but I also want to do it all my self so vps is the way to go. I don't see the point of spending with Prometeus that I'm sure is very reliable when this blog probably won't receive any visit :)
    I think I'll go with Gullo's.

    Thanked by 1uptime
  • vyas11 said: Mate, happy to hear your perspectives on Grav install on your setup.

    It is pretty simple. I just have Caddy + Php-fpm running on the server listening on IPv6 and using Cloduflare 6to4 proxy. Unfortunately I did some loader.io testing and Caddy crashed (OOM) after ~220 simultaneous visitors. :( Maybe not the best solution, but a cool idea nonetheless.

    Thanked by 2vyas11 uptime
  • on which specs?

  • The answer is already there in this discussion should you be the investigative types!!

  • I can't find any mention of the $1/y specs here.

  • ZigiZigi Member, Host Rep
    edited December 2019

    I personally use https://nelax.it in Italy.

    (no affiliation with them I just use them)

  • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran

    7$? well did not Anthony sold these for 3$/y?

  • @Zigi said:
    I personally use https://nelax.it in Italy.

    (no affiliation with them I just use them)

    The shared hosting plans?

  • ZigiZigi Member, Host Rep

    @sandro said:

    @Zigi said:
    I personally use https://nelax.it in Italy.

    (no affiliation with them I just use them)

    The shared hosting plans?

    No I use there VPS not shared hosting.

  • Check the MrVM bundle on LES. You may want to confirm with the provider if you can run the CMS.
    My learning for today is: doing what is not written as prohibited does not mean it is allowed.

  • vyas11vyas11 Member
    edited December 2019

    @sandro said:
    I can't find any mention of the $1/y specs here.

    128 MB RAM, 1 VCore, 3 GB HDD.
    Eagerness and motivation are a powerful combination. BF deal was mentioned in discussion above

    https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/161709/gullos-hosting-did-someone-say-black-friday-flash-sales-here/p1

  • tgltgl Member
    edited December 2019

    For nelax.it there is a promotion running it seems:

    Valido fino il 01/01/2020
    Codice sconto: NATALE2019

    15% discount

  • it's way out of my initial budget.

  • vyas11vyas11 Member
    edited December 2019

    Set up two test sites running on grav. Hosted on Inception Hosting 128 MB/ 3 GB or 2 GB NATs. Oh- the most important part; cost: this was the Birthday special 3.99 Euro / 3 NAT /year bundle deal from Aug 2019.

    There were some issues I believe after the move to OVZ7 that made me decide to do a clean install. That’s when the thought occurred, why not install grav using composr this time ?(Last time I had directly used the "skeleton" files).

    Set up two sites: https://nl1.gaatha.co/ and https://uk.gaatha.co
    Either site has a screenshot that shows system resources.

    Notes:
    a. Time for install : Debian10 + basic configuration- 10 minutes (had two screens setup with one site each, so some inefficiencies from dual tasking)
    b. Grav : basic setup / uploading images to Grav CMS (and failing) then on CDN and linking - 12 minutes
    c. Final checks - 3 minutes

    Uptime as of posting: 25 min 48 seconds since boot.

    Notes 2:
    d. Level: rookie user- you may want to kick the wheels further.
    e. Network connectivity using web browser is was is rather flaky. SSH is working fine- in case you see cloudflare errors (or retry for a live version) prompts from CF, do not be surprised. I have added a few screenshots of the errors myself received.
    f. No customisations, tweaks done, no keywords added or image optimizations done. Other than changing name of site and admin details, this is a plain vanilla grav install.
    g. I may keep these sites running or update them at a later time. Or kill them altogether- not yet decided.
    Thanks to @uptime for some food for thought

    Thanked by 1uptime
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