Is Digital Ocean Host Good for Xenforo, Or What Host Can Is Best

I have previously set up a hosted linux email server on AWS EC2 based on a step-by-step guide, and using SES SMTP was recommended for deliverability. I suppose deliverability is less of an issue for forum notifications?
If you want to set up a SMTP server yourself... stay away from Digital Ocean, Linode or most any of the cheap VPS providers. WAY to many of their IP's are included in block lists and they can be almost impossible to have removed.
For the price, SES is one of the better solutions.
I'm currently using a Hetzner VPS for the site and SES for transactional email.
For a 4vCPU,8GB/160GB instance I'm paying about $16USD a month.
Not using a panel though, AlmaLinux and CentMin Mod.
 
I'm with namecheap. I found that digital ocean was too pricy for me to use.
Use what works for you. Look at the cpanel some of them come with. Some of those don't have one. Some charge like a wounded bull.
Amazon is not worth it. They charge you $200+ for the use of their servers monthly.
Namecheap is worth it. $60 a year for stella hosting.
 
DO, Vultr, Linode, etc. are cloud providers. With the cloud providers, there are many kinds of things additional things you can do with their interface to build up a complete virtual infrastructure. But with that, when it comes to the VPS server itself, Cloud providers are basically going to leave it up to you to support yourself 100% (so far as the environment on the server is concerned).

KnownHost is a more traditional VPS provider, selling VPS systems prepackaged with their control panel of choice, infrastucture, etc.
So they're talking about the managed VPS https://www.knownhost.com/managed-vps right? $40/mo, 8x more expensive than installing & updating the software yourself.

If you want to set up a SMTP server yourself... stay away from Digital Ocean, Linode or most any of the cheap VPS providers. WAY to many of their IP's are included in block lists and they can be almost impossible to have removed.
For the price, SES is one of the better solutions.
I'm currently using a Hetzner VPS for the site and SES for transactional email.
For a 4vCPU,8GB/160GB instance I'm paying about $16USD a month.
Not using a panel though, AlmaLinux and CentMin Mod.
That doesn't seem to make sense to me. Using an SMTP completely bypasses DO, Linode, etc.'s IP issues doesn't it? So it would be perfectly reasonable to use a $5/mo DO droplet with Amazon SES?

Regarding a panel, I'm thinking about using Litespeed Cyberpanel or cloudpanel.io. It would make things easier for a novice to install updates, etc. right? And could still be used with Centmin mod?

I'm looking at Hetzner to see how it compares to DO, Vultr, Linode. DO seems to have the best reputation and ease of use, all have similar prices, but Linode may have increased prices recently, but Linode is also the only one with DDoS protection. It looks like Hetzner has DDoS protection as well, which is great. Hetzner seems to be the lowest cost as well, and from my reading seems to have a good reputation.

What are the pros & cons for you for Hetzner vs the other options? Just the lower price?

Maybe DDoS isn't a concern since it looks like Cloudflare's free plan has unlimited protection? https://www.cloudflare.com/cdn/#CDN-Page-Pricing-AS
 
What are the pros & cons for you for Hetzner vs the other options? Just the lower price?
Price, performance and reliability. Also they provide US based VPS instances (but not dedicated servers).
Haven't had to use their support, and their cloud panel isn't hard to get around in.
I use CloudFlare on the site, so utilize their protection.
The biggest downfall for me is my bank never auto-processes their payment (fraud detection since Hetzners is in Germany) so I have to manually process the payment each month.

And could still be used with Centmin mod?
No, CentMin Mod is is basically a text based control panel that you access from shell. It uses nginx as its web server.
 
So they're talking about the managed VPS https://www.knownhost.com/managed-vps right? $40/mo, 8x more expensive than installing & updating the software yourself.
No, I was talking about their unmanaged VPS systems. They offer minimal support for them, but it's still more than you'll typically get for a cloud VPS. Also, it comes pre-setup, whereas you have to start with installing the operating system on the cloud offers.

Regarding a panel, I'm thinking about using Litespeed Cyberpanel or cloudpanel.io. It would make things easier for a novice to install updates, etc. right? And could still be used with Centmin mod?

They can't be used with Centminmod.

I'm looking at Hetzner to see how it compares to DO, Vultr, Linode. DO seems to have the best reputation and ease of use, all have similar prices, but Linode may have increased prices recently, but Linode is also the only one with DDoS protection.

Linode is not the only one with DDOS protection. They all have it.

]quote]Maybe DDoS isn't a concern since it looks like Cloudflare's free plan has unlimited protection? https://www.cloudflare.com/cdn/#CDN-Page-Pricing-AS
[/QUOTE]

Cloudflare only stops those who don't know your server's IP address. The first time someone posts an image on forum that is hosted on their own server... they have your server's IP and can by-pass Cloudflare.
 
Cloudflare only stops those who don't know your server's IP address. The first time someone posts an image on forum that is hosted on their own server... they have your server's IP and can by-pass Cloudflare.
...or you can use Cloudflare itself as your image/unfurl proxy (for free and the reliability of hundreds of data centers)... :)

1687453598831.png

Simple toggle on/off, don't even need to edit config.php file.
 
I was just looking at the Hetzner website and their "cloud" option is the only one with a US location. It looks like "Cloud vs VPS" isn't a big deal though, and cloud may even be better.

...or you can use Cloudflare itself as your image/unfurl proxy (for free and the reliability of hundreds of data centers)... :)

Simple toggle on/off, don't even need to edit config.php file.
Is that something you do on the Cloudflare website after you have your server up and running?
 
Is that something you do on the Cloudflare website after you have your server up and running?
You can, although if you want to make it super easy where it’s literally just a toggle, that screenshot is from my free Cloudflare addon:

 
If you want to set up a SMTP server yourself... stay away from Digital Ocean, Linode or most any of the cheap VPS providers. WAY to many of their IP's are included in block lists and they can be almost impossible to have removed.
For the price, SES is one of the better solutions.
I'm currently using a Hetzner VPS for the site and SES for transactional email.
For a 4vCPU,8GB/160GB instance I'm paying about $16USD a month.
Not using a panel though, AlmaLinux and CentMin Mod.
What about OVH? A friend and I are starting a company and there's a good chance we'll get some funding towards their hosting.
 
What about OVH? A friend and I are starting a company and there's a good chance we'll get some funding towards their hosting.
I had the same issue with OVH back when I had dedicated servers with them.
I think they may have gotten better on the dedicated servers... I understand now they are doing ID verifications? I think someone said they had the same thing happen with Hetzners. It's just one more way they can help weed out the "scammers" that simply want to spin up a quick site for a week or two until it gets shut down.
 
I had the same issue with OVH back when I had dedicated servers with them.
I think they may have gotten better on the dedicated servers... I understand now they are doing ID verifications? I think someone said they had the same thing happen with Hetzners. It's just one more way they can help weed out the "scammers" that simply want to spin up a quick site for a week or two until it gets shut down.
Hopefully, it looks like we may be getting enough funding to get our company website funded for an entire year
 
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