moving a few sites off shared hosting onto my own vps. only ever used cpanel there, so i have zero experience with any of the free ones. shortlist so far:

hestiacp cloudpanel aapanel beadmin cyberpanel virtualmin

read some bad stuff about cyberpanel security and i can't tell which of the rest are still maintained. if one of these has been on your server a while, how are updates and what annoyed you?

I’ve had enough of Stablepoint price increases now. Their latest price increase went from £7.99 to £14.39 (inc VAT) for their monthly billing starter tier. They’re refusing to refund my immediate request for cancellation & refund as well.

The only feasible, cost-efficient pricing they have is for new customers at £4.18/pm (inc VAT) offer for the same tier (1 domain only) if you pay for 3 years upfront. Its ludicrous.

The hosting package I have is for a tester/playground website with hardly any traffic, for which £14.39 is extortionate.

Any suggestions for reliable, affordable UK hosting that scales sensibly and doesn’t lock you in with 3-year upfront fees?

It’s really disappointing tbh, I’ve been with them since fixed.net days, they were super helpful and their customer service has now become canned responses.

Let me preface this by saying I am not very tech-web savvy. And I apologize if this type of post isn't welcome here! I had a simple website made for my commission art business about a year ago. It's in Wordpress, and I edit it via Elementor. It's nothing fancy, just a bunch of slides and a contact form that forwards any emails to my "home" email. I get spam of course, not tons but the usual nonsense. The other day I got one and the return address looked like a user from my domain, it was wilfred@"MyDomain.com", (MyDomain.com isn't my site, lol), and of course there is no 'wilfred' as a user on my website, just 'info' and 'tech' are users I think. I thought it was weird, but figured it was something someone faked to get my attention. They were hawking some shipping service or whatever.

Today I got an email in my home account saying someone replied to a Comment I made on my website. I was confused, as there isn't really an area to leave comments on my website. So I went to my Elementor editor and was poking around. And I saw I did make a comment when I was first messing around after my site was live a year ago. Someone found it, even though it's not "visible", and replied with some spam (I guess?). Should I mark that comment as "spam" and just forget about it? Or should I be worried that someone is trying something more than just to spam me?

As a someone who worries a lot and isn't tech-savvy, any helpful input very welcome. Thanks in advance!

I wanted to share my recent experience with Euronodes (euronodes.com) as a warning to anyone considering them as a VPS provider.

I accidentally upgraded my VPS on Euronodes because their control panel applies upgrades without any confirmation dialog.

Support restored my original CPU and RAM configuration, but I was told I would have to pay extra for the disk or risk data loss by shrinking it.

I left a 2-star Trustpilot review, explicitly acknowledging their good server performance and quick customer support. Link to the review.

Link to the emails following my review.

Their response? Five days to migrate my services before my account is closed.

They even sent a second email stating:

We dont have a problem with the content of the review: it's perfect and accurate

We have problem with rating: 2 stars is reserved for scams and over-promised companies where support doesnt even answer

Apparently, honest reviews are acceptable only if the company agrees with the rating.

I've backed up my data, updated my review, and am reporting the incident to Trustpilot.

Screenshots attached.

What's the point of good server performance if your hosting provider can terminate your account simply because you leave negative feedback?

Has anyone else experienced something like this?

I got locked into a contract with IONOS that I never use. I clicked through and didn't realize it was a fee charged me every month like 4 different items. I need a good cheap web hosting

Hello everyone,

I'm currently using an account from a UK provider which offers 25GB of storage reseller hosting (whm access) which allows 25 accounts and I'm paying 20 pounds. I have about 4-5 very passive sites in there.

Service is good but I'm using very little resources and I want to take advantage of the black Friday offers. Is there any recommendation for an European based hosting company that allows me to have whm access and create accounts?

The reason I want whm access is because I want to separate these WordPress sites from each other. I'm not too active there and if one gets hacked, I don't want of risk others. Don't get me wrong, I do have good security on both but I prefer isolation.

Also VPS is not a solution because I prefer to use the email service that cpanel offers.

Thanks in advance

Hi there. Sorry for lengthy question

My site is hosted by 123-reg due to hosting companies moving on… HostingUnlimited moved to TSO Host, then 123, so it was never a deliberate choice to use 123.

I use Deluxe package, I have my own site hosted and have my email through it, doesn’t have much web traffic, basically a blog and personal promotion pages. Then I have 3 other small sites hosted for a friend, just basic, and again not much traffic.

All was going well with hosting until the last week or so when I ran into File Usage limit - 250000 of 250000. My email stopped and auto plugin updates on sites failed.

I couldn’t work out why, so did web chat with support. They weren’t able to help much, other than saying I needed to go through files and delete anything not needed. Or I could upgrade - to get 500000 or so file usage - for a fee in £hundreds.
They did offer to migrate my email to Microsoft, also for a fee.

I was using IMAP for mail, I downloaded all I could using pop3, saved all I needed locally, deleted all I could from mailbox.

I’ve found some stats.png files - lots of them- which I’ve deleted, I’ve gone through file manager deleting caches and old backups.
But still close to the 250000 limit. (Now at 249316)

Can anyone suggest any other places to find unneeded files and bloated folders?

Many thanks in advance.

in brief, I have a InterServer account... typical user/password. free, nothing paid to set it up.
just now I decided to have the them host my simple site, went through the payment process.
then I went to their control panel, it asked for user/password but it failed.
I tried resetting with no joy...

after some futzing around I checked my email.
They sent a Clear Text email confirming that password change... INCLUDING MY PASSWORD.

just a FYI ...
I did open a trouble ticket.

I was setting up smtp2go and when I tried creating my account it gave me error 8, what does it mean and what do I do I'm waiting for a response from them once outlook uncraps themselves (domain was bought around 4pm yesterday Brisbane time and it's a plain .com domain)

Over the last two weeks I asked in r/VPS and here how people notice when a client site or server gets compromised. Lots of good answers, so here's what I collected, mostly cheap checks that catch the common cases:

1. No PHP in uploads. The classic is a PHP dropper in wp-content/uploads sending spam. Block execution there (nginx: location ~* /wp-content/uploads/.*\.php$ { deny all; }, Apache: <Files *.php> Require all denied </Files> in an .htaccess in uploads), and look for files that are already there: find /var/www -path '*/wp-content/uploads/*' -name '*.php'

2. Nightly checksums. wp core verify-checksums and wp plugin verify-checksums --all in a cron. Changed or new files show up the next morning instead of weeks later.

3. Watch the mail queue. A sudden big queue (postqueue -p | tail -n1) is often the first sign, long before the client says their invoices land in spam.

4. Compare what Googlebot sees. curl -A "Googlebot" https://example.com vs. a normal request. Cloaked SEO spam only shows up for Google. Not perfect (some check Google's IPs), but cheap.

5. Check crons and processes after any alert. Look for curl/wget/base64 in crontabs and for processes running from /tmp. That's where most of the manual cleanup time goes.

6. Make sure updates actually run. unattended-upgrades can fail silently. Check the date of the last run in /var/log/unattended-upgrades/.

Full disclosure: I'm turning these checks into a small agent for my own client servers. It's read-only by default, explains what it finds in plain words, and only fixes things after approval. Nothing to link yet. Two honest questions:

• What would you need to see before you'd run something like that on a client server?

• Would you pay for that, or is a cron plus a few scripts good enough for you?

And if I missed a check that saved you, I'd love to add it.

Hey everyone(I'm a newbie)!

I'm currently looking for ways to deploy my web application completely for free, or at least as close to $0 as possible.

My current tech stack is:

• Frontend: Next.js

• Backend: Django

• Database: PostgreSQL

For deployment, I'm currently using:

• Frontend: Vercel (Free Tier)

• Backend: Render (Free Tier)

• Database: Supabase (Free Tier)

The main issue I'm having is with Render's free tier. As far as I understand, Render spins down the backend service after 15 minutes of inactivity. When someone visits the application again, it takes a while for the server to spin back up, which results in a pretty slow initial loading experience.

I understand that this is one of the limitations of free hosting, but I'd like to know if there are any alternatives that don't have this kind of inactivity-based spin-down, especially for hosting a Django backend.

I've considered sticking with my current setup, but I'd prefer something that doesn't require users to wait for the backend to wake up whenever it's been inactive.

A few things I'm looking for:

• A genuinely free tier (no paid subscription required).

• No automatic server shutdown or spin-down after inactivity.

• Support for deploying a Django backend.

• Ideally, something that works well with my existing Next.js + Django + PostgreSQL setup.

For those who have deployed similar projects without paying for hosting, what services or deployment setups would you recommend?

I'm also open to alternative deployment architectures if they can keep the overall cost at $0.

Would appreciate any suggestions or experiences. Thanks!

Hey everyone(I'm a newbie)!

I'm currently looking for ways to deploy my web application completely for free, or at least as close to $0 as possible.

My current tech stack is:

• Frontend: Next.js

• Backend: Django

• Database: PostgreSQL

For deployment, I'm currently using:

• Frontend: Vercel (Free Tier)

• Backend: Render (Free Tier)

• Database: Supabase (Free Tier)

The main issue I'm having is with Render's free tier. As far as I understand, Render spins down the backend service after 15 minutes of inactivity. When someone visits the application again, it takes a while for the server to spin back up, which results in a pretty slow initial loading experience.

I understand that this is one of the limitations of free hosting, but I'd like to know if there are any alternatives that don't have this kind of inactivity-based spin-down, especially for hosting a Django backend.

I've considered sticking with my current setup, but I'd prefer something that doesn't require users to wait for the backend to wake up whenever it's been inactive.

A few things I'm looking for:

• A genuinely free tier (no paid subscription required).

• No automatic server shutdown or spin-down after inactivity.

• Support for deploying a Django backend.

• Ideally, something that works well with my existing Next.js + Django + PostgreSQL setup.

For those who have deployed similar projects without paying for hosting, what services or deployment setups would you recommend?

I'm also open to alternative deployment architectures if they can keep the overall cost at $0.

Would appreciate any suggestions or experiences. Thanks!

I want to upload a small file (around 500 MB) for general availibility for the public indefinitely (not one of those one day or 10 DL sites). It is not copyrighted or sensitive does not contain executables so anyone can download it without restriction. I just want a place I can upload the file get the link and post it for others to download. I want a site that doesn't spam the user with fake download icons and annoying pop-up ads. Any suggestions?

A few weeks ago there was a $5,000 charge on my card for a domain I'd never heard of nor authorized the purchase for. GoDaddy said it was one of their staff that made the purchase when they had access to my account.

I've been trying to get a clear explanation as to how on earth that could even happen. I never received an explanation so I followed up again and they sent the below.

So making a purchase without approval from the use is not a security breach? Ok.

I also don't appreciate the brought to their attention part because I'm the one who had to do that. This isn't something they caught on their own.

GoDaddy:

We wanted to follow up and confirm the same information you should have received previously.

There was no "security breach", A GoDaddy Guide inadvertently processed that purchase in your account. As soon as the matter was brought to the attention of leadership the situation was rectified by issuing a full refund of that purchase and coaching the guide to ensure such an error does not occur again in the future.

From an Aftermarket perspective this matter is closed, the transaction was cancelled and a full refund was issued.

If you have any other questions regarding this matter you would want to engage with any messages you have previously received from Customer Care leadership.

Monthly budget is about $100.00 a month.

User are mostly US East Coast.

Highly dynamic WordPress site.

I do have sys admin skills.

I am looking to offload my side projects that have grown.

The site is about 10 GB in size.

I am part of a small B2B booking tool with about 600 users and nearly all of them are in Australia. Everything sits on a droplet and a managed database in Singapore, billed in US dollars on my card.

The plan price hasn't moved in a year, but what I actually pay has gone up every quarter. Between the exchange rate and the 3% foreign transaction fee, I'm paying noticeably more for exactly the same box.

Singapore also adds about 90ms for my Sydney and Melbourne users. That's not terrible, but the app feels slower than it should.

The budget is about 40 AUD a month for the app and the database. Did you move to a local provider billed in AUD, or to a Sydney region at one of the big hosts? And does hosting in Sydney actually make a difference your users notice?

I’d avoid WP Engine. They have higher prices because of their America support but recently within the past 1-2 years I’ve noticed they are outsourcing to the Philippines. What the point of paying these exorbitant prices for American-based support when they are actually philipinos

I'm currently running OpenClaw headless on a 4 vCPU, 8GB VPS for about a month, Dockerized with Caddy in front. It handles inbox triage and a few browser tasks for my small business, and each task takes 20 to 40 seconds end to end and it's starting to drive me nuts.

Rough timing says the model API is maybe half of that, and the rest is the browser tool spinning up, PDF parsing and a couple of tool calls, and htop shows all 4 cores pegged whenever the browser runs.

For people running OpenClaw 24/7 on a VPS, what specs did you land on? Did faster cores actually help, or was it all API time?

Trying not to throw money at it blind.

Ciao a tutti, vorrei avviare la mia attività di rivendita hosting dedicati a piccoli e medi clienti per la maggior parte avente un sito semplice wordpress.

Avevo pensato ad una linea base con 2 vcpu e 1 o 2 vram, per poi salire in base al pacchetto, magari arrivando ai classici 5 vcpu e 12 GB vram.

Esiste un fornitore serio che offra reseller hosting con CloudLinux in modo da creare i pacchetti che voglio?

O avete alternative? Grazie

Alrighty... We're really trying to avoid the use of AI in all avenues where we can help it. We get it, in this day and age, nigh impossible on some level, but as we are due for upheaval nor are confident in hosting locally... What are some services that may be the best to support a large long term storage database of music, videos, and related media (1 Terabyte+ is excessive at this point), just one or 2 emails, the full security package for registrants, and that also has overall fair pricing on sales/merchandise?

We are working from the ground up. We have the domain secured, but.. despite mentioning "we" as often as we do... It's just me. And it's time to admit I could use a hand. Learning music production, mycology basics and intermediates, as well as other sciences this is not the place get into over the past year....it is safe to say, the brain is near fried.

Thank you ahead of time for any pointers. We're in no immediate rush, but a presentable website sooner than later would be ~lovely~. ...or at least a fancier, fitting redirect.

I host one domain, which has a personal wordpress and a small personal forum. It uses under 10GB of space and has light traffic. I've been with FastComet because I heard they were reliable and offers good support, but it's been years now and they raised prices on me such that my plan is more expensive than the list price. They are charging me about $20.63/mo (paid bi-annually in full) for the Shared Hosting Plus ($17.95 per their website).

I read some posts and it seems KnownHost might be a good alternative. I signed up with them, but they want me to send them my Drivers License and a photo of my credit card. Remembering back to Discord requesting these and then getting hacked, I don't want to send them this.

What's another host that is reliable and good quality? I'm ok with paying for quality and reliability, I just feel like FastComet is overcharging me, so I'm shopping around. If everyone's requiring my ID, I guess I'll just stay at FastComet.

I also heard Nixihost might be a good one?

How can I resolve this issue. My domain points to a different server with an A record for the website. It uses nameservers to point to the cpanel hosting the email. This causes the error as it wants the A record to point to the email server. As a result emails to yahoo accounts are being denied.

Thanks 🙏

Thanks for the best hosting recommendation! This will save me a lot of time.

I'm moving my hosting (from think of a color) to a new one. 3 domains and a few email accounts.

What is the best sequence of operations? ex.

step 1. Transfer Registrar

step 2. Transfer Domain to new provider

step 3. Backup existing sites

step 4. Restore sites on new provider

step 5. Change DNS

step x: no idea on how to deal with transferring the emails

And any recommendations on timeframe between each (e.x. "T minus 2 days")

When I go to the Hosting List menu, it shows that I have an IP address, so I'm stumped.