Moving from managed basic hosting to VPS

[Dup]

So, I have a basic hosting package with Westhost which I have had for years and years. It is quite costly for what I am effectively using as an email service at the moment.

My partner also has her own website/email via a different provider which is also not very cheap.

Digital Oceans VPS have peaked my interest. I figured why should we pay loads when a basic server should just be ample for us both.

I am looking to get into Rails development using my partners site as a first basic project so she can edit it herself and for my own tinkering using my own domain.

I want to retain the domains with their own email (IMAP and Roundcube) and hosting capabilities. Am I barking up the right tree? Can I do all this with Digital Ocean?

I know I will be full admin and responsible for any config issues. This is slightly new to me although I am not stranger to servers, command line etc but only on a basic level. I am keen to learn however so shouldn't be too much of a challenge. I just want to know if I can achieve what I want this way

 

[dmsims]

Do you really need a VPS ?

You can get cloud hosting email, web, mysql etc for £15 per year

 

[atmax1]

You can get a 10gb vps from ovh for £4.06 with plesk control panel if that's any good to you but heard Digital Ocean are very decent, I use TMZVps with cpanel myself but basically you can get a vps and get cpanel or plesk licence and host as many domains as you like (plesk has different packages) but that would allow you to host a few sites and they can all have there own pop/imap email accounts... You can setup without a control panel with ssh and guides online as well but that's more complicated.

 

[callummance]

Sounds to me like a VPS would work fine for you. On the other hand, you might want to consider hosting all the services on a Raspberry Pi, though you would need a static IP address (usually costs an extra £2 a month from home ISPs). On the subject of recommended VPS', I would suggest taking a look at lowendbox.com, they have a load of deals from VPS businesses.

As for how you would go about setting up your server, I would suggest using Apache if you want a website, and Kolab for any emails, though of course there are plenty of alternatives. As for your domains, you would have to pay for them separately, which is usually a few pounds a year.

Anyway, good luck if you decide to go ahead!

 

[Phunky]

Don't give yourself the pain of hosting email, especially if this is your first experience with managing your own server. You've also got to think about security, performance and maintenance of your VPS along with your applications that you're playing with.

If anything buy a VPS for a month or use a VM and have a play setting things up first and see how you get on. Although you can use tools like cpanel and plesk, if you're want/needing to use those i'd just stick with a white label reseller account instead of a VPS as you'll get more support and most of the security and setup aspects will be handle for you.

I've not looked at providers for a long, long time but nethosted we're always good to me back in the day (2005~2008ish), not the cheapest but you get what you pay for.

 

[Etheco]

Email is always a chore, I always push clients to gmail nowadays so much less hassel

We use various providers and digitalocean is one due to the fact its SSD based which helps with things like Magento.

but i would like Phunky said buy one to mess with or at least startup a local VM before getting into moving it some times something "simple" can turn into a day of pain.

And get it all working on a local setup that won't take down anything, And at least if you break it you don't have to worry about taking email / sites down.

 

[mtalk]

Digital ocean is good but you wont get control panel like Cpanel with Roundcube and you need to have server management skills to use it. Better go for managed VPS solution it will cost you a bit higher but you will be relaxed from server management stuff and installing control panel and all.

You can check out VPS UK they offer cloud VPS solution that you are looking for.

 

[daz]

For rails and so on, a VPS is definitely a good idea. You can fiddle around to your heart's content then. It can be tricky to get up and running but rails is specifically one thing that doesn't work well in a shared hosting environment.

For your email, just stick that on a standard hosting account and then you don't have to worry about Exim/Dovecot/webmail and so on.

 

[gerico]

I recently moved from shared managed hosting, incidentally as mentioned above, I tried Digitalocean. I was a little apprehensive at first, but their documentation is plentiful and well written. I was able to setup a VPS running Debian 7, and now have jekyll and github setup nicely. I also have a wordpress site for my wife running off it.. it's very nice indeed. I'd recommend it.