Run OpenBSD on DigitalOcean for $4/month
A developer moves their homepage from GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Pages to a self-hosted OpenBSD server on DigitalOcean, drawn by nostalgia for the DIY web. This guide walks through uploading a custom miniroot image, creating a basic $4 droplet, and installing OpenBSD 7.9 with full disk encryption. It covers essential setup steps, including SSH configuration and trimming install sets, and notes the caveat of manually entering the encryption passphrase via web console on reboot.
Free and easy is cool, and I understand that writing software full-time leaves us wanting absolutely nothing to do with computers after we punch out, but lately I have been missing the do-it-yourself web that I grew up with.
- bananamogul
That pricing is awful. $4/month for 512MB VPS...eeek.
You'll find much better pricing at RackNerd, DediRock, InterServer, BuyVM, etc. Small indy hosting companies are the way to go. 2GB for $5/month or so is the typical price point.
Any host that offers KVM and allows you to upload your own ISO can run OpenBSD (or FreeBSD, NetBSD, whatever you want).
Check out LowEndTalk or LowEndBox for deals. There are other sites but that's where I shop.
Sure, if you need an API, or if you want to host in one of the less common locations, or if you absolutely must have five nines, then DO or Vultr or Linode or Amazon LightSail can be a good fit. But if you just need a VPS with a control panel in a typical hosting location (Amsterdam, LA, New York, Chicago, Singapore, etc.) then I don't see the point of paying more at one of the big hosts.
- dchest
A warning about openbsdhandbook[.]com - this website has completely incorrect information for some things. Like hallucinated, even though I think it was created before LLMs.
- 8by3
I've always gone with Vultr (vultr.com) for BSD VMs, its properly supported by them and while I've never hard verified this, they seem like a nice smaller player. Like they have offered Open/Free BSD VM's for > 10 years, kind of nice.
- FLeXMurphy
DO burned me recently due to their unwillingness to handle DDOS attacks: "The best we can do is change your IP." Thanks guys.
Switched to OVH immediately.
- githubholobeat
You can even go completely free with Cloudflare tunnel with your own office/home hardware. I have a simple web running on my old Raspberry Pi 3 + nginx + golang web app. Also with ssh access to the Pi.