Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?
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I'm looking into making a website to help a cause my wife is interested in. I could probably do everything that's required in WordPress or something that has super cheap shared hosting, but this has to be up and running quickly and I don't want to have to learn PHP as well, so asp.net is probably my best bet as I'm comfortable with it.
What are the options for cheap but half decent hosting? It probably won't be particularly high traffic, maybe a few hundred hits per day.
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@jaloopa said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
I'm looking into making a website to help a cause my wife is interested in. I could probably do everything that's required in WordPress or something that has super cheap shared hosting, but this has to be up and running quickly and I don't want to have to learn PHP as well, so asp.net is probably my best bet as I'm comfortable with it.
What are the options for cheap but half decent hosting? It probably won't be particularly high traffic, maybe a few hundred hits per day.
Do it in .NET Core and deploy to Digital Ocean for $5 per month. ;)
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@jaloopa said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
I could probably do everything that's required in WordPress or something that has super cheap shared hosting, but this has to be up and running quickly and I don't want to have to learn PHP
The thing is, WordPress is popular because you don't need to know PHP to use it.
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@jaloopa Azure? Free accounts get 60 CPU minutes/day, shared costs $0.013/hr and gets 240 CPU minutes/day
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@jazzyjosh how does that translate into traffic? It's the equivalent of 60 minutes of full CPU utilisation, right? On what level of processor?
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@jaloopa You don't have to know any PHP, or any programming at all really, to use WordPress.
When my mom (geeky but very non-technical when it comes to computers) wanted to set up a blog, I pointed her at WordPress and she had no trouble using it.
There are a few "must-have" extensions I'd put on any WordPress site, though. Make sure to get Akismet (spam filtering, requires a bit of involved setup but after that you can basically just forget it exists; it's that good,) Jetpack (a collection of administration tools including some really simple, really good analytics,) and WordFence (security by some guys who are really on the ball and specialize in WordPress security.) All three are free, though WordFence offers a premium version. I've never needed it.
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@jaloopa If you know Azure (not setting up VMs, which work like VMs everywhere, but how to make Azure-specific apps) you'll get a really cheap website with minimal learning.
If you have to learn Azure, you might end up spending just as much time as it would have taken to learn whatever PHP you need for the site.
You can set up the site on a VM either in Azure or Amazon AWS, but I'm not sure if that fits your definition of "cheap" or not.
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@masonwheeler it might fit within the blog format, but a few of the features we're thinking of are probably more than you can do by plugging together plugins written by other people. There's also the proud developer in me wanting to code it myself
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@blakeyrat said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
I'm not sure if that fits your definition of "cheap" or not
I don't really know what sort of ballpark I'm looking at, just asking for what's a sensible price to see if it's too much to justify not going for WordPress based shared hosting. It's only going to be needed for a little over a month, so that increases what I can afford since it's not a long commitment
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@jaloopa said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
@masonwheeler it might fit within the blog format, but a few of the features we're thinking of are probably more than you can do by plugging together plugins written by other people.
Maybe. You ought to check out the WP plugin ecosystem before saying that, though. It might surprise you. I've seen WP sites with ecommerce, forums, all sorts of stuff really.
There's also the proud developer in me wanting to code it myself
Fair enough. If you think you can handle all this:
go for it.
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@jaloopa An Amazon EC2 "small" is very small, but it'll do for hosting the traffic you need. (Unless your code is really bloated.) If I'm reading AWS' pricing calculator right, that's about $24/month.
EDIT: keep in mind, AWS charges bandwidth separately. It's cheap, but it's not included with the VM.
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@blakeyrat said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
If I'm reading AWS' pricing calculator right, that's about $24/month
WordPress personal hosting is $3.99/month CAN, so about $0.99 US
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@jaloopa said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
@blakeyrat said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
I'm not sure if that fits your definition of "cheap" or not
I don't really know what sort of ballpark I'm looking at, just asking for what's a sensible price to see if it's too much to justify not going for WordPress based shared hosting. It's only going to be needed for a little over a month, so that increases what I can afford since it's not a long commitment
For Azure Linux VM with a SQL Server instance it probably starts at like $10/mo. You can get a Linux VM for .NET Core from DigitalOcean for like $5 per month. And I don't really think you can find anything cheaper out there.
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@timebandit said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
WordPress personal hosting is $3.99/month CAN, so about $0.99 US
Well, we're getting ripped off in the UK
And apparently you need the business plan to install plugins beyond what they already include.
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@jaloopa said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
Well, we're getting ripped off in the UK
OK, I just checked the conversion and £2.50 is just over 4 Canadian dollars.
It would still need the £20 package to get the plugins I'd need though. AWS or Azure look cheaper than that, and I could use WP or asp.net on them
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Keep in mind there's a learning curve involved in learning either .net Core or Mono to deploy on a Linux server. One of the original parameters was "minimal learning curve".
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@jaloopa When people talk about Canadian money versus U.S. money like that, they're usually joking.
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@blakeyrat said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
minimal learning curve
To put that in context now I'm not on mobile, there's a consultation running until the 3rd of September on changing services my wife is involved with. We want the site up and running by the start of August until the end of the consultation period to give it the maximum time to be of use.
I want to be able to do some distance based stuff (enter your address, get a "this is how close your nearest service provider is now, this is how close they will be if the proposals go into force), and a page where you answer a few questions to fill in a template which you can then edit, send to the consultation contact address via the site or copy into an email of your own.
After a quick look, I think Wordpress might have the sort of plugins to at least get me started, and something that allows a one click install and file access is a lot simpler than working out which of the hundreds of AWS/Azure options is best suited. I'm sure I can pick up enough PHP to modify an existing plugin to do what I want: it's not that fundamentally different to languages I'm used to.
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@powerlord said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
@jaloopa When people talk about Canadian money versus U.S. money like that, they're usually joking.
Eh, I don't know shit about the Canadian exchange rate.
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@jaloopa Canadian and American money generally aren't very far apart, but it's a Thing to exaggerate it.
In fact, the two currencies were about even a few years ago, although it's since dropped to $1 CAD = $0.80 USD.
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@powerlord said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
@jaloopa Canadian and American money generally aren't very far apart, but it's a Thing to exaggerate it.
In fact, the two currencies were about even a few years ago, although it's since dropped to $1 CAD = $0.80 USD.
It dropped a fair bit lower than that; CAD has been rising quite seriously over the last few months, and now it's back up to $1 CAD = $0.80 USD. (Source: I've made good money on FXC lately.)
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@jaloopa as @ben_lubar mentioned somewhere, there's a free tier for the Google Cloud
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@wharrgarbl Will it run Windows? It used to not.
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@blakeyrat said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
@wharrgarbl Will it run Windows? It used to not.
The languages supported by the completely free version of Google App Engine are:
- Python 2.7
- Java 7, Java 8
- PHP 5.5
- Go 1.6
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@ben_lubar said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
@blakeyrat said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
@wharrgarbl Will it run Windows? It used to not.
The languages supported by the completely free version of Google App Engine are:
- Python 2.7
- Java 7, Java 8
- PHP 5.5
- Go 1.6
Flexible runs .NET Core, but it seems there's no free tier of that.
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@jaloopa yes, you can use shared hosting. Find windows hosting provider, this is my suggestion. New .net core has been supported on Linux, but I never try it. I always use windows to deploy .net application.. You can consider asphostportal, they support .net hosting, price range between $5.00-$10.00/month
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@karriepop Welcome to the forums!
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@tsaukpaetra too late, @kt_ scared @KarriePop away
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@wharrgarbl said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
@tsaukpaetra too late, @kt_ scared @KarriePop away
LIAR! It was YOU who scared her away!
#FakeNews
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@tsaukpaetra said in Cheap hosting for an asp.net based site?:
@karriepop Welcome to the forums!
I mean...it sure smells like a spammer, but it was literally answering the question that was asked for the thread, and didn't even put a real link!