I did this for a while and ended up expanding out to setting up my own email server, calendar server, and contact server. Needless to say, I'm a happy customer. :-)

Setting up your own email server? You're a much braver person than I.

Similarly, I set up two OVH Public Cloud 2GB instances $3.49 (4.49 CAD) with CloudFlare in front. Having two lets me set up master-master MySQL for Ghost and other play projects.

Your paying in CAD so assuming your in canada how do you find OVH, is there any north American severs? If not how is connection time to the website and general experiences with it? Cheers.

I haven't been using their 'Public Cloud' VMs very long so don't really have a strong opinion, so far it's seemed about as quick or sometimes quicker than DO. Too soon to speak for reliability. In the past, I've used their bare metal hosting which is very inexpensive (ranging from $90/mo - $1000 for 32G - 512GB), but you have to know what you're getting. Check the h/w they give you and if you find any issues with it, they'll replace it, but only if you notice and request it. The servers I've used were in Montreal. Thought I'd heard that they were planning on a datacentre in US East.