Picking a VPS to degoogle myself and go selfhosted, using cloudron

qwinter

I'm a total newbie in picking VPS. I'm trying to degoogle myself and go selfhosted. I run a small company but I want to do this for my personal domain ($myname.com) first as I'm one of those looking for GSuite Free Legacy Alternatives.

I can spend money to have something as close to 'set and forget' as possible.

I'm not in a hurry to move, but I want to do it right.

I've learned that cloudron can be a good solution for this, and this is what I'm aiming to implement (LMK if that's a bad idea). I need to replace most of google services with selfhosted stuff, and I want to run a couple of low traffic, private nodebb forums). Cloudron has email solutions. But then my email will come out of my VPS, which could be its own set of problems (IP reputation etc). I know about dnswl.org but I'm not sure I need this; I don't think I send that much mail. For the nodebb forums I require excellent deliverability. Perhaps I need a 3rd party smtp instead of my own cloudron server?

I'm in Germany so EU location would be my choice. DDoS protection a plus.

I discarded Hetzner (otherwise really good offers!) because I read here that their IPs are not great for mail.

Suggestions? I know hosting email is a pain. So perhaps clean IPs are not a good requirement, and I should just use a 3rd party like mxroute. I'm a desktop linux user for 20 years but I don't really have the bandwidth to babysit servers (hence cloudron). Considering to host multiple apps on one beefy VPS (8gb ram). Leaning towards racknerd because of LET.

caracal

I'd use an external SMTP service like mail.baby to take my mind off sending mail from the native IP. Cloudron's great and pretty plug and play

vitobotta

@caracal said:
I'd use an external SMTP service like mail.baby to take my mind off sending mail from the native IP. Cloudron's great and pretty plug and play

Another good one is Mailpace.com.

Lee

I have been running a VPS with Cloudron on Hetzner cloud for a few months. If Cloudron has the apps you want then it's a great choice. I particularly like:

• Backup to AWS and others, simple to setup
• Wide range of apps, again all very simple to setup
• Connects straight to Cloudflare and handles the setup there
• Control the resources for each installed app
• Email is included but as you note could be troublesome (IP rep, etc)

If you are looking for something a bit more bespoke like using it for Laravel or another framework it can be a pain using the default LAMP app but doesn't sound like that will be an issue for you.

szymonp

one provider I had luck with was oracle cloud, they have free VPS with good specs(10 TB bandwidth, 4 cores, 24 GB ram, 200 GB SSD)and their IP's seem to have a good reputation everywhere I checked

henrymiller

@qwinter said: I discarded Hetzner (otherwise really good offers!) because I read here that their IPs are not great for mail.

They did increase prices on their VMs though. Still good, not sure if i'd still call it really good. Still really good if you're grandfathered in the old prices I guess.

But however you decide, I would agree that you should strongly consider an SMTP service if you're worried about IP reputation. Mail delivery problems are something you can deal with yourself. But since you said you want set and forget, I'm not sure if you really want to.

Do consider paying for an SMTP service. Should be dirt cheap at low volumes. Like, amazon SES is $0.10 per 1k e-mails (though iirc they don't allow using it to send personal mail traffic, but just to illustrate the point of it being cheap).

As for personal email, again, it's up to you. It's certainly doable, but how much headache is it worth to you when you could pay a few euros to a provider that lets you use your own domain and with that you still won't have any lock in and can switch mail providers as easily as updating your DNS records and running imapsync to move your stuff over.

Examples: tutanota (1Eur/m german company). mailbox (3Eur/m for own domain, german company) protonmail (5eur/m for custom domain, swiss company)

Edit:

Leaning towards racknerd because of LET.

don't have anything to say about them negative or positive. Just be aware that they seem to only offer servers in the US. Might want to consider someone with servers in europe because of latency so things are snappier (and often lower dl/upload speeds when you go through transatlantic cables)

caracal

@Lee said:
I have been running a VPS with Cloudron on Hetzner cloud for a few months. If Cloudron has the apps you want then it's a great choice. I particularly like:

• Backup to AWS and others, simple to setup
• Wide range of apps, again all very simple to setup
• Connects straight to Cloudflare and handles the setup there
• Control the resources for each installed app
• Email is included but as you note could be troublesome (IP rep, etc)

If you are looking for something a bit more bespoke like using it for Laravel or another framework it can be a pain using the default LAMP app but doesn't sound like that will be an issue for you.

Could you use several servers on one paid account?

Gamma17

Self-hosting will always require some work, even when using automation like Cloudron. So think twice before doing it instead of, may be, going with paid services from less evil companies.

Another thought - if going self-hosted you might also go a step further and have small box sitting somewhere in your hose and hosting stuff (most of it). This way you have real physical control over your data instead of just trading one provider/datacenter for another.

I ended up doing exactly this - small fanless box with a pair of SSDs at home + payed mail service (because mail needs high uptime which "box at home" might not be able to guarantee). But for me the stuff is not critical and i am fine with it sometimes being offline, which might not be the case for everyone...
This might seem like a lot of work, but in reality this ended up less problematic than many VPSes. It just sits near the router and does its thing, no fans mean no maintenance to speak of.

If choosing one large vps to put everything on IMO there are few considerations. First of all you need backup. And it has to be automated and monitored. Otherwise loosing data is a matter of "when", not "if". Also i would not choose a provider from LET for such thing. Mainly because migrating the stuff will be a pain and low end focused providers tend to have very short lifespan. IMO going with some large and well established provider, may be even one of "cloud" ones like amazon or oracle, will make more sense...

henrymiller

@Gamma17 said: low end focused providers tend to have very short lifespan

not bad advice. but there are providers here that have been shitposting here for over a decade. just be careful.

Lee

@caracal said: Could you use several servers on one paid account?

No, only one per licence.

qwinter

Thanks guys, really good, hard-to-get info in this thread!
On replacing email: it could be that cloudflare would be a way to convert your domain to a gmail or similar free account. It's in beta though:

https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing/

xTom

Try our Frankfurt location, we have Google PNI, we have experience with Invidious (alternative front-end to YouTube) and Whoogle (Google alternative) installation in our Frankfurt location without any problems.

Here is the traceroute result to Google's network

root@s99 ~ # traceroute 8.8.8.8
traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  a1.cr01.fra01.xtom.de (91.200.241.10)  0.907 ms  0.665 ms  0.641 ms
 3  uncle.google.com (147.78.178.29)  1.019 ms  0.858 ms  0.820 ms
 4  * * *
 5  dns.google (8.8.8.8)  0.464 ms  0.398 ms  0.573 ms

fluffernutter

@qwinter said:
Leaning towards racknerd because of LET.

Racknerd uses ColoCrossing, who has absolutely trashed IP reputation. Aside from all the other issues with them, if you care about IP rep it's best to look elsewhere. To their credit, the service works and support is fantastic, just not the greatest history. I'd recommend providers like @LiteServer, @servarica_hani (if Canada is OK), @Hybula (very nice network). Also for a free cloudron alternative, try https://yunohost.org/

pbx

@qwinter said: I know hosting email is a pain.

Honestly it ain't that hard: if you have a decent provider your IPs won't have trashed reputation, and you'll likely either have no need for an external SMTP server, or only to send mails to outlook.

@qwinter said: I'm in Germany so EU location would be my choice.

You might want to try Netcup if you're looking for a long term choice and aren't looking to go for something as cheap / low end as possible, that you might have to move from at some point in the future.

Hybula

Thanks @LiliLabs for the recommendation!

@qwinter If you want, get in touch with us to discuss your project and requirements (ticket, Telegram, Whatsapp, Discord). We are completely NL based, privacy and security focused with an amazing network (including 100G PNI peering with Google). Our IP reputation is good because we are very strict with abuse.

Network information: https://lg-nl-oum.hybula.net/

snz

@pbx said:
You might want to try Netcup if you're looking for a long term choice and aren't looking to go for something as cheap / low end as possible, that you might have to move from at some point in the future.

I use netcup for two years now (some easter deal from two years ago I think) including a mail setup and never had issues sending mails to google/MS.

If your nextcloud will have a lot of pictures I'd go with a more powerful box (the VPS line isn't that strong and the steal is high). That's the only issue.