6 hosts, all dead or dead to me. The pattern I see: every host that marketed "unmetered" anything eventually metered it creatively. One started counting control panel logins against "fair use." Another defined "unmetered bandwidth" as "unmetered until you exceed what we expected."
Current host: Hetzner, explicit TB limits, no surprises. I pay for what I use. Revolutionary concept.
This thread made me check. 14 hosts in 5 years, but 9 of those were free tiers or trial credits. Oracle Cloud, AWS free tier, GCP credits, Azure student. I wasn't chasing deals, I was chasing zero cost.
The problem: every free tier has hidden hooks. Egress pricing, API call limits, sudden "upgrade or lose data." Now I pay Hetzner EUR 18/month and sleep better.
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Mi servidor, mi problema
8 hosts, but the real number is 3 because 5 were just me learning to self-manage. First host: shared cPanel, didn't know what SSH was. Second: managed VPS, learned I hate managed. Third: unmanaged KVM, broke everything. Fourth: same, broke less. Fifth: finally stable.
Now I run two bare metal from Hetzner auction (https://www.hetzner.com/sb) and one Vultr for Mexico-facing latency. The journey was the problem, not the hosts.
Member
20 years in the trenches. Still trenching.
Count: 6 hosts in 20 years, but 4 of those were in the last 5. The industry got worse, not me. Acquisition killed two good providers. One "upgrade" to "new platform" was actually a migration to cheaper hardware with worse networking. I measured, I documented, I left.
Haroldgsm is right about the contraction wave. I've seen the private equity pattern twice now. Buy, cut, "optimize," sell or die.
If it's under $1/GB/yr, I already bought three.
Current active: 7. Dead: probably 15. I am the problem and I am okay with this.
Best deal still running: Contabo 200 GB storage box, EUR 2.99/month. Worst deal: a "lifetime" 50 GB VPS for $15 that lasted 8 months before the lifetime was redefined as "lifetime of the company, which is now over."
I have learned nothing. I will do it again.
Media archivist perspective: 11 hosts, but I need geographic diversity for legal reasons. One EU for GDPR-covered material, one US for fair use disputes, one Singapore for APAC access. The content determines the host, not the price.
Left two hosts after they changed AUP to ban "archival storage" without defining it. Read your AUP, people. They can change it.
In Rio the issue is PIX vs credit card. Brazilian hosts take PIX, instant, no IOF tax. Foreign hosts want credit card, USD, 6% IOF, bad exchange rate. I've used 7 Brazilian hosts, all terrible technically, all great for payment.
Now I split: Hetzner for quality, local host for PIX convenience and low-latency gaming server. Two is enough.
March7 here, first post. This thread convinced me to count: 5 hosts in 3 years. All left for the same reason: IPv6 support promised, IPv6 support broken or incomplete. One gave me a /128 on a "dedicated" server. Another had working AAAA records but no actual v6 routing.
Currently on Vultr because their v6 is actually v6. Tested with RIPE Atlas, 100% reachability. This should not be remarkable in 2024.
LayerZhao, also first post. 4 hosts in 5 years, all Chinese or Singapore-based. The issue is ICP filing. Without it, your site is invisible from mainland China. With it, your data is visible to authorities. I chose hosts that let me do the filing without hosting the sensitive data.
This is not normal hosting. This is hosting with political constraints. Count would be 1 if I lived somewhere else.
Maximus1986, checking in. 3 hosts in 10 years. I am the boring one. First was DreamHost shared, outgrew it. Second was Linode for 7 years, left after Akamai acquisition and price changes. Third is Hetzner, 2 years so far.
I do not understand how people have energy to migrate monthly. One migration takes me a weekend of testing. Who has 23 weekends to waste?
