Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


What is the cheapest server I can rent to host a small (around 50) user rocketchat group?
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

What is the cheapest server I can rent to host a small (around 50) user rocketchat group?

lowendguy7lowendguy7 Member
edited April 2020 in Providers

I have other servers I initially thought to put it on however after some thought (and testing) 2 of those do heavy encoding so realized that is a bad option as it will lag the chat server :). The third one is going to be getting up there in processing use too since I am scaling up my work operation and besides would still prefer encapsulation (separate server) for the chat server anyway ideally.

However this is a 'non profit' thing for work discussion with other users as I have wanted to move away from spyware types of things like discord (where I currently run the group) for a long time to something open source and rocketchat seems to fit the bill nicely. Due to this though all expenditure is a sunk cost for me so I would like the cheapest option available.

I don't want to try and ask the user for 'donations' at this time (if ever) because they already see no point in moving from discord which already works fine for them, and they have other contacts there and are just 'used to it', as most are not concerned about privacy or data mining/spying so just see it as a needless nuisance to move to some unknown (to them) new chat server.

Here are the spec requirements for it. It mentions a small server of 50 active users but my active users are a fraction of the total users base of around 50; there are probably 5-8 daily regular users and the rest in the list come and go sporadically so the requirements are probably very low.

So what do you guys recommend? I know I could get a little rasp pi to host myself at home but I don't like having electronics running 24/7 in my home (I get worried if I am asleep or out that a fire would start or something); much prefer to outsource that for peace of mind.

Comments

  • pikepike Veteran

    @lowendguy7 said:
    I get worried if I am asleep or out that a fire would start or something

    Maybe talk to a doctor about this.

    As you didn't mention any location requirement I will recommend Hetzner.

  • Just get a Hetzner CPX11? Seems like it would be sufficient for your usecase.

  • Still too expensive. The $2.49 will go up a few more dollars again once you add HD which I see is additional cost below. I need real low end offer :)

  • What was the name of that place that did $1 per month servers? Something like that or even less.

  • lowendguy7lowendguy7 Member
    edited April 2020

    @pike said:

    @lowendguy7 said:
    I get worried if I am asleep or out that a fire would start or something

    Maybe talk to a doctor about this.

    As you didn't mention any location requirement I will recommend Hetzner.

    Why would I need to see a doctor about a legitimate possibility? Electrical fires are not a fantasy.

  • AlexJonesAlexJones Member
    edited April 2020

    @pike said:

    @lowendguy7 said:
    I get worried if I am asleep or out that a fire would start or something

    Maybe talk to a doctor about this.

    2nd. Also kimsufi/ovh

  • tjol5tjol5 Member
    edited April 2020

    why not run rocketchat in your boxes (ideally virtualized) with a higher nice/priority value?

    otherwise, sign up for those free cloud server trials, and move from host to host?

    you want something with 40GB storage(HDD), 1GB ram, decent CPU for under $12/year

    https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/164140/vps-1-6-m-on-yearly-payment-location-ca-fr-uk-payment-credit-card-paypal
    this one has close to what you want (1GB + 30GB for $20/year)

    Thanked by 1lowendguy7
  • UnbelievableUnbelievable Member
    edited April 2020

    @lowendguy7 you are probably thinking of arubacloud. You may also look at @Cam Gullos hosting https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/164231/gullos-hosting-littlevz-new-service-launch-dirt-cheap-dedicated-ip-vps-in-the-uk and you may want to go through all the offers yourself as there are some other lower cost offers - hostsailor maybe? I don't have time to hunt them down for you. Or you can wait for black friday or find someone with digital ocean credits or amazon credits or get a free server from oracle.

    Is the real reason you don't want to use Hetzner the difficulties you had last year in understanding post paid vs prepaid services and how to actually cancel?

    Thanked by 2Cam lowendguy7
  • Is the real reason you don't want to use Hetzner the difficulties you had last year in understanding post paid vs prepaid services and how to actually cancel?

    Not at all. If that was the reason I would have said so. I had no problem using them for like a year before I stopped and didn't leave with any sour taste in my mouth about them. The service was good but I thought them very stingy for HD space for the price you pay.

    ye it was arubacloud I was thinking. I remember trying to jam an archlinux image on there a couple of years ago with varying levels of success - worked first time about a year before but wasn't able to get success again. I like to stick with arch because I find I waste loads of time figuring out the equivalent packages/repos needed for other distros.

  • lowendguy7lowendguy7 Member
    edited April 2020

    @tjol5 said:
    why not run rocketchat in your boxes (ideally virtualized) with a higher nice/priority value?

    Not sure what you mean? You mean to run it in one of my existing servers? Well for the original reason I think it would be competing for resources though I am open to ideas. The thing is the other resources are more important than the chat server as they are what I make my main income with. There may still be room on the one that doesn't encode with enough space processing to not interfere with the main bots I run there.

    Worth a try since it doesn't take long to setup rocketchat in a docker.

    Actually a reason for my hesitation there was I was concerned if using a chatbot on docker on a server will open me to attack on that server? if someone got pissed at my chat server (I have had to ban a few people over the years for misbehavior) and if they wanted to mess with the server it would screw up all my work related bots.

    Is that likely? I would be running thru reverse proxy on nginx. I am a noob to self-hosting so not sure how things all work yet.

    As a side note, thinking about all the costs associated with self-hosting, how are these companies like discord able to offer free hosting for all their users? is it because that are selling your data behind the scenes somehow after mining it from the chat/metadata?

  • DataIdeas-JoshDataIdeas-Josh Member, Patron Provider

    @lowendguy7 What is your budget?
    Location?
    General specs you looking for?

  • @AlienData_Josh said:
    @lowendguy7 What is your budget?
    Location?
    General specs you looking for?

    Well the budget is the cheapest possible to run the chat server which I gave a link to specs required in OP.

  • DataIdeas-JoshDataIdeas-Josh Member, Patron Provider

    Well the recommended is 2GB ram and 40GB of space.
    We have a couple of different packages that might work for you.
    https://my2.dataideas.com/cart.php?gid=2
    We are based out of Texas.

    Or if you want something a tad more dedicated.
    Check out https://rpiservers.com

  • PHDanPHDan Member

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    Slice slice baby.

    Francisco

  • vimalwarevimalware Member
    edited April 2020

    Rent an additional ipv4 for your budget (preferably from different subnet) and run RC in lxc/kvm.

    Thanked by 1lowendguy7
  • lowendguy7lowendguy7 Member
    edited April 2020

    @vimalware said:
    Rent an additional ipv4 for your budget (preferably from different subnet) and run RC in lxc/kvm.

    Interesting, you mean it would be on the same server? I have never bought additional IPs before so don't know how it works. Would I need to install the whole OS again (the base OS I mean) on the new IP or do I still run it from the existing one it is just it now has an extra IP to login with?

    Well RC is already running from docker anyway so that issue is dealt with.

    If it still took the same resources I don't really see the advantage in terms of attack mitigation? cos it could still take the whole thing down with say ddosing? I find it unlikely anyone would bother but I suppose I am being paranoid and it wouldn't take long to get a new IP if that happened and get my work bots running again.

  • Any other suggestions?

  • @tjol5 said:
    why not run rocketchat in your boxes (ideally virtualized) with a higher nice/priority value?

    otherwise, sign up for those free cloud server trials, and move from host to host?

    you want something with 40GB storage(HDD), 1GB ram, decent CPU for under $12/year

    https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/164140/vps-1-6-m-on-yearly-payment-location-ca-fr-uk-payment-credit-card-paypal
    this one has close to what you want (1GB + 30GB for $20/year)

    @Unbelievable said:
    @lowendguy7 you are probably thinking of arubacloud. You may also look at @Cam Gullos hosting https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/164231/gullos-hosting-littlevz-new-service-launch-dirt-cheap-dedicated-ip-vps-in-the-uk and you may want to go through all the offers yourself as there are some other lower cost offers - hostsailor maybe? I don't have time to hunt them down for you. Or you can wait for black friday or find someone with digital ocean credits or amazon credits or get a free server from oracle.

    Is the real reason you don't want to use Hetzner the difficulties you had last year in understanding post paid vs prepaid services and how to actually cancel?

    Yes! these both look up my alley! Just looking closer now, to see if one will fit correctly.

  • lowendguy7 said: Any other suggestions?

    If 6.5TB bandwidth isn't a big limitation for you, I'd recommend RackNerd
    6.5TB Bandwidth
    2.5GB DDR3 ECC
    40GB Raid10 SSD
    3vCores
    It seems to meet the specs provided on the website, and for $1.96/month, billed anually, I am unaware of any cheaper VPS to meet your requirements.

    Thanked by 2dustinc lowendguy7
  • leapswitchleapswitch Patron Provider, Veteran

    We are offering free hosting for RocketChat on CloudJiffy > https://cloudjiffy.com/solutions/rocket

    It is completely free for 2 months and you can view daily usage ( based on actual resource consumption ) and decide whether you wish to continue with us.

  • @leapswitch 500 server error - seems promising /s How much after the 2 months (for the standard recommendation 2GB ram 40 GB space

  • leapswitchleapswitch Patron Provider, Veteran

    @Unbelievable said:
    @leapswitch 500 server error - seems promising /s How much after the 2 months (for the standard recommendation 2GB ram 40 GB space

    This was a major goofup from our end. We have 2 versions of the website, 1 is for non Indians and 1 for Indians. We saw the Indian one which was fine and there was an extra ' in the international version which caused the error.

    Please accept my apologies for this and try it now.

    CloudJiffy bills on consumed resources rather than fixed plans, so billing after 2 months cannot be predicted as of now. During the free months you can view actual consumption and pricing on an hourly basis.

  • Well if you can give no indication at all how much it will be that is next to worthless. It could be $100 a month. Whenever costs are hidden/not transparent it usually means they are being hidden for a reason, ie very expensive.

    Hate reading on website 'contact us for pricing'.

  • lowendguy7lowendguy7 Member
    edited April 2020

    @PineappleBox said:

    lowendguy7 said: Any other suggestions?

    If 6.5TB bandwidth isn't a big limitation for you, I'd recommend RackNerd
    6.5TB Bandwidth
    2.5GB DDR3 ECC
    40GB Raid10 SSD
    3vCores
    It seems to meet the specs provided on the website, and for $1.96/month, billed anually, I am unaware of any cheaper VPS to meet your requirements.

    Thanks, I would imagine that a text only chat will only take up very minimal bandwidth. Even without disabling large uploads I think it would be ok because people do that very rarely, but there are plenty of other places people can host large files, the only thing that is uploaded regularly on the current server which we will be moving from is the odd image now and then.

    Can I install archlinux on this one? I see it is kvm so there should be the possibility of just doing a manual custom image with arch on it if they don't have one setup out the gate right? I know that openvz are/were a nightmare installing custom images but shouldn't be an issue in this case?

  • lowendguy7 said: Can I install archlinux on this one? I see it is kvm so there should be the possibility of just doing a manual custom image with arch on it if they don't have one setup out the gate right?

    I'm not sure how custom image installation works with them, but I'd recommend opening a ticket. Last time I did so they had gotten back to me in around 30 minutes.

    Thanked by 1dustinc
  • james50ajames50a Member
    edited April 2020

    delete

  • dustincdustinc Member, Patron Provider, Top Host

    @lowendguy7 said:

    @PineappleBox said:

    lowendguy7 said: Any other suggestions?

    If 6.5TB bandwidth isn't a big limitation for you, I'd recommend RackNerd
    6.5TB Bandwidth
    2.5GB DDR3 ECC
    40GB Raid10 SSD
    3vCores
    It seems to meet the specs provided on the website, and for $1.96/month, billed anually, I am unaware of any cheaper VPS to meet your requirements.

    Thanks, I would imagine that a text only chat will only take up very minimal bandwidth. Even without disabling large uploads I think it would be ok because people do that very rarely, but there are plenty of other places people can host large files, the only thing that is uploaded regularly on the current server which we will be moving from is the odd image now and then.

    Can I install archlinux on this one? I see it is kvm so there should be the possibility of just doing a manual custom image with arch on it if they don't have one setup out the gate right? I know that openvz are/were a nightmare installing custom images but shouldn't be an issue in this case?

    Hello,
    We can always download and attach an ISO for you :)

    Thanked by 1SCAM_AlphaRacks
  • leapswitchleapswitch Patron Provider, Veteran

    @lowendguy7 said:
    Well if you can give no indication at all how much it will be that is next to worthless. It could be $100 a month. Whenever costs are hidden/not transparent it usually means they are being hidden for a reason, ie very expensive.

    Hate reading on website 'contact us for pricing'.

    We are upfront about our pricing. It is based on your usage. If you use 1GB RAM for an hour, you will be charged for 1GB. If you use 128MB, you will be charged accordingly. Try it out in order to estimate usage and cost. After that decide whether you wish to continue.

Sign In or Register to comment.