VPS for static sites

GoatSeller

Hello everyone,

I am planning to host my clients' static sites (~80):

• Less than 10mb per site.
  
• Less than 2000 hits per month.
  

I did some research and found that Nginx is better and less resource hungry for static sites than Apache.

I will have to setup an email server to provide email addresses for my clients.

What are the specs I should be looking for ? RAM/CPU ? Disk space/Bandwidth ?

Budget : $40 ~ $50 annually

AnthonySmith

literally any VPS could handle that unless you are talking about tens of thousands of sites.

Personally I prefer lighttpd for static sites, example: http://lowendspirit.com is a static site running on a 64mb VPS on the same server that houses hundreds of 64 - 128mb VPS's it would lowendspirit would not work for you as you cant run a mail server.

Have you considered just finding a shared hosting/ cPanel reseller package that runs NginX?

if you really want a VPS (for fun ) then maybe just start with a 256mb package with 2 cores that you can upgrade and get it as close to the majority of clients as you can geographically.

AThomasHowe

AnthonySmith said: if you really want a VPS (for fun ) then maybe just start with a 256mb package with 2 cores that you can upgrade and get it as close to the majority of clients as you can geographically.

With a budget of 60 and seeing as it's for clients maybe try starting on a 512MB plan ($5/m Vultr, Digital Ocean for example - maybe Inception on annual?). Even though it's static sites you'll probably end up running spam filtering, virus scanning and maybe even MySQL for user accounts (a lot of the easier tutorials use this). A 256MB might be fine but seeing as it's within his budget I think 512MB might be a bit more comfortable.

Up to you though @dotted

Mun

https://catalysthost.com/shared/ They are a good company with a really good network.

GoatSeller

@AnthonySmith said:
literally any VPS could handle that unless you are talking about tens of thousands of sites.

Personally I prefer lighttpd for static sites, example: http://lowendspirit.com is a static site running on a 64mb VPS on the same server that houses hundreds of 64 - 128mb VPS's it would lowendspirit would not work for you as you cant run a mail server.

Have you considered just finding a shared hosting/ cPanel reseller package that runs NginX?

if you really want a VPS (for fun ) then maybe just start with a 256mb package with 2 cores that you can upgrade and get it as close to the majority of clients as you can geographically.

Thanks, I don't think I will exceed 100 sites.

About the shared hosting, I didn't find any shared hosting plan with unlimited domains in my yearly budget. The reseller plans available are also over my budget and I don't think I'll be using 10% of what I'll be paying for.

I suggested Nginx since I read a lot about it when it comes to static sites and resource optimization unlike Apache. I'll do more research concerning lighttpd.

Like you said a 64mb ~ 128mb VPS would do just fine but the main concern now is the email server.

GoatSeller

AThomasHowe said: With a budget of 60 and seeing as it's for clients maybe try starting on a 512MB plan ($5/m Vultr, Digital Ocean for example - maybe Inception on annual?). Even though it's static sites you'll probably end up running spam filtering, virus scanning and maybe even MySQL for user accounts (a lot of the easier tutorials use this). A 256MB might be fine but seeing as it's within his budget I think 512MB might be a bit more comfortable.

Up to you though @dotted

$5/m plans in DO or similar companies use hourly billing which has problems with my paypal setup (based on a payoneer card). So, a yearly plan is my best option.

I guess you forgot a link on "(a lot of the easier tutorials use this)".

From your comment and AnthonySmith's, CPU wouldn't matter much and 246~512mb box will work fine. Any recommandations for VPSs with these specs on my budget ?

Thanks!

GoatSeller

@Mun said:
https://catalysthost.com/shared/ They are a good company with a really good network.

Thanks but like I mentionned, they have limited number of domains per account.

soulchief

How about crissic? I just ordered their 512mb ram special the other day for $15 a year. https://my.crissic.net/cart.php?gid=4

It should be more then enough to run static web pages and email.

AThomasHowe

Crissic one looks good, good provider. And tutorials like this.

raindog308

dotted said: About the shared hosting, I didn't find any shared hosting plan with unlimited domains in my yearly budget.

https://vpsboard.com/topic/3953-buyvmnet-shared-5year-resellers-200month-dedicated-ipv4-ssd-raid/

sandro

I think you should lower your budget for static web sites :P

GoatSeller

@AThomasHowe said:
Crissic one looks good, good provider. And tutorials like this.

Thanks a lot!

@raindog308 said:
https://vpsboard.com/topic/3953-buyvmnet-shared-5year-resellers-200month-dedicated-ipv4-ssd-raid/

That's just AWESOME - added to the list, thanks!

@sandro said:
I think you should lower your budget for static web sites :P

Less than $40/year ?

hostnoob

tbh I would just go with OVH. 1GB RAM, 10GB HDD from a large company who won't disappear over night for $3/mo

like others said you might want to install some software like spam filtering, anti-virus software.

GoatSeller

@hostnoob said:
tbh I would just go with OVH. 1GB RAM, 10GB HDD from a large company who won't disappear over night for $3/mo

like others said you might want to install some software like spam filtering, anti-virus software.

OVH VPS Classic 1 is on my list, they are $3/m -> 36/y which is less than my budget but I've read some bad review about them and mainly about that VPS plan.

Lm85H4gFkh3wk3

Try out BuyVM shared hosting.

Edit: damn someone beat me to it. Nvrmd

sleddog

said: Hello everyone,

I am planning to host my clients' static sites (~80):

• Less than 10mb per site.
• Less than 2000 hits per month.

I did some research and found that Nginx is better and less resource hungry for static sites than Apache.

Nginx on a quality 512MB Xen or KVM VPS would do nicely. As these are client sites I assume your are charging a fee. For paying clients don't cheap out. Xen or KVM will provide RAM-caching to improve performance. 512MB will leave lots of memory available for caching and room for growth.

I will have to setup an email server to provide email addresses for my clients.

Providing business-quality email hosting is 100 times more complex than providing web hosting. I'd start by evaluating your clients and their needs, so you understand exactly what you're setting out to provide:

• Will clients want to add/remove their own email accounts, or will you do it as a fully managed service?
• Do you know and trust the people who'll be using the mail service, or are they unknown (and untrusted) users?
• Approximately how many email account per domain... in total?

Then you can shop around and decide on a mail control panel (if any) and the mail stack you want to use.

Then you get the basics installed and working.

Then you figure out SPF for each domain (will users also send mail via other servers, e.g. their ISP?) and DKIM.

Then there's spam filtering....

And a usage policy -- don't let them use it for bulk mailing, even legitimate bulk mailing.

Then you get to admin it every day

wojons

I would just grab hosting from anyone from the top 10 providers list that meets your budget and then put the site behind cloudflare you make sure nginx sends some cache headers but other wise you should never see traffic hit your node.

GoatSeller

@sleddog said:

The hosting solution will be provided as an additional service to my web design services.

• The clients won't be able to add/remove their email accounts (or hosting panel), I'll be the only one managing them.
• My clients are/will be local business owners, we can ruleout "unknown".
• 5 email accounts max per domain but I think it's going to be 1~2 per domain.

The only problem I may have is filtering the incoming emails.

Will OpenVZ (OVH VPS Classic 1) be a problem ?

@wojons said:
I would just grab hosting from anyone from the top 10 providers list that meets your budget and then put the site behind cloudflare you make sure nginx sends some cache headers but other wise you should never see traffic hit your node.

Thanks, I'll look into the CDN thing.

jvnadr

sleddog said: Providing business-quality email hosting is 100 times more complex than providing web hosting

This. ^^

Do not provide emails to your clients. The static sites would run well (if you mean 2000 visits for all of the sites, not if you mean 2000 hits x 100 sites = 200.000 hits) even in lowendspirit boxes (3$ per year! You could buy 10 and split your sites there) from @AnthonySmith, 60 visits per day is almost idle for non-cdn websites.

But if you want to run email, need a lot of other things. Clamav, spamassassin and a very secured server. It is better to buy a google app account and use gmail with your (or your clients) domain with just pointing there MX records. There are a lot of other similar services there such as mailgun that could handle incoming and outcoming mails, using their ip reputation and filtering.

Use your server for mail is a good idea only if you intent to administrating the server 24/7 and have a good knowledge to do that.

But if you do it, I would recommend to buy a very cheap vps from a good provider here with minimum specs (try a 256 box or similar from iwstack, crissic, inception, ramnode) with 15-25$ per year and buy another similar box only for email, secure it and connect it with a free account from mailgun (10.000 mails per month).

sleddog

dotted said: The only problem I may have is filtering the incoming emails.

Spam filtering? Spamassassin is a common solution, though it's only moderately effective out-of-the-box. It's greatly improved by training its bayesian filter. RBLs are very effective too -- spamhaus.org and barracudacentral.org are good.

You can do SPF checks to filter email spoofing -- e.g. there's postfix-policyd-spf that integrates easily with Postfix.

Have your users connect and authenticate on port 587 (smtp submission port) for sending. Then you can tighten up what's allowed on port 25. Postfix has some built-in checks you can use (e.g. reject_non_fqdn_helo_hostname). And you can integrate RE header checks (e.g. on Subject or From).

Other MTAs are similar, it's a matter of figuring out the syntax

ryanarp

dotted said: Thanks but like I mentionned, they have limited number of domains per account.

We are changing that soon, working on new reseller accounts

earl

dotted said: @raindog308 said: https://vpsboard.com/topic/3953-buyvmnet-shared-5year-resellers-200month-dedicated-ipv4-ssd-raid/

That's just AWESOME - added to the list, thanks!

Just like to mention, while I think this is the best reseller I've ever had! overselling is not enabled.. so you can only create as many account based on the resources of your current plan.

GoatSeller

jvnadr said: Do not provide emails to your clients. The static sites would run well (if you mean 2000 visits for all of the sites, not if you mean 2000 hits x 100 sites = 200.000 hits) even in lowendspirit boxes (3$ per year! You could buy 10 and split your sites there) from @AnthonySmith, 60 visits per day is almost idle for non-cdn websites.

But if you want to run email, need a lot of other things. Clamav, spamassassin and a very secured server. It is better to buy a google app account and use gmail with your (or your clients) domain with just pointing there MX records. There are a lot of other similar services there such as mailgun that could handle incoming and outcoming mails, using their ip reputation and filtering.

Use your server for mail is a good idea only if you intent to administrating the server 24/7 and have a good knowledge to do that.

But if you do it, I would recommend to buy a very cheap vps from a good provider here with minimum specs (try a 256 box or similar from iwstack, crissic, inception, ramnode) with 15-25$ per year and buy another similar box only for email, secure it and connect it with a free account from mailgun (10.000 mails per month).

2000 hits per month is an over estimation, my current clients do not exceed 500 hits per month. I guess having the email server on my own server will give me more control over the email accounts (also more work to handle, but it's okay). The two boxes idea seems good and the mailgun will work fine if I use it (10.000 mails per month is more than enough knowing that).

GoatSeller

sleddog said: dotted said: The only problem I may have is filtering the incoming emails.

Spam filtering? Spamassassin is a common solution, though it's only moderately effective out-of-the-box. It's greatly improved by training its bayesian filter. RBLs are very effective too -- spamhaus.org and barracudacentral.org are good.

You can do SPF checks to filter email spoofing -- e.g. there's postfix-policyd-spf that integrates easily with Postfix.

Have your users connect and authenticate on port 587 (smtp submission port) for sending. Then you can tighten up what's allowed on port 25. Postfix has some built-in checks you can use (e.g. reject_non_fqdn_helo_hostname). And you can integrate RE header checks (e.g. on Subject or From).

Other MTAs are similar, it's a matter of figuring out the syntax

Thanks a lot ! I'm not familiar with setting up email servers but I guess tutorials on LET and other resources will be fine. I'll use a sysadmin if necessary.

iceTwy

@dotted said:
Thanks a lot ! I'm not familiar with setting up email servers but I guess tutorials on LET and other resources will be fine. I'll use a sysadmin if necessary.

I've been recommending two guides to people on LEB who wish to setup a mail server; both are excellent. Take a look at Ars Technica's four part guide, or if you need a SQL setup (which is helpful when handling lots of clients), go for Linode's and combine it with sealed abstract's.

A quick note on sealed abstract's guide, though; some parts of the configuration files in the article are incorrect. Hit me up if you need help with this guide.

pauliakas

You can try www.host1plus.com/vps-hosting/ for low price.

sleddog

If you're going to manage the email accounts yourself, you could use Postfix and Postfix Admin - http://postfixadmin.sourceforge.net/

Postfix Admin is web interface for managing email domains and accounts. It does virtual mail accounts rather than shell user-based accounts. It's a little dated, but very solid in what it does.

Just lock it down tight with htpasswd in front of its login, use https, and don't give anyone access.

AThomasHowe

I know a lot of people like iRedMail for an all-in-one mail server solution too. Think you are deffo looking at a 512-1GB VPS for iRed though, pretty heavy.

mikho

If you decide on shared hosting, there is a $35/year reseller promo code here: http://forum.lowendspirit.com/viewtopic.php?id=656

Friendly support and the resources you need.