My virtual server is $1.67 a month (buyvm.net)

My home firewall blocks all traffic except for incoming SSH from 3 IP addresses in the world. One of those is my virtual server.

If I'm in a hotel with my laptop I run the first command to set up an SSH tunnel to my "home" computer through the cloud virtual server. That listens on my laptop to port 8888 and forwards it through the cloud virtual server to my home computer's SSH daemon listening on port 22

ssh -X -f -C -L 8888:home.mydomain.com:22 -N [email protected]

ssh -p 8888 user@localhost

I do the same thing! I'm hoping that some day hotels won't send every wireguard packet they see straight to the bit bucket. Until then I'm really grateful for ssh.

If they upgrade to premium tier, set up your virtual server then. Your total cost, $0 for the duration it's free + $4 * the rest is still lower than $4 * lifetime, and the cost for switching is only going to be marginal.

I get the thought, you can build something now that is guaranteed to have a fixed cost, or you can risk going with a free product that might surprise you, causing you to rush to replace the solution with a tight deadline.

Just look at all the people panicking with the free Google Workspace shutdown.

I can use virtual server for many things (backup, vpn, webservices...) not just port forwarding.

Cost of my time for reading contract and learning new proprietary tool is not worth it for several years.

Cloudflare is arguably better from big tech. But cost of deployment some binary package on confidential server, keeping up with their marketing bs, etc is simply not worth it.

If I have to spend an hour or two setting up each solution, I could pay $4 a month many years before I'd feel like it was worth doing that twice. You're not wrong, but I would gladly pay the monthly to only have to set it up once.

You can build a physical server for $500 once. Relying on proprietary hardware and registering to some service, that may "upgrade" to premium tier anytime, is pretty off-putting.

not trying to be difficult, but $500 seems like an odd price tier to end up in. If I was going cheap, I'd do something between a rock64/raspberry pi and an Intel Nuc. If I was going powerful, it would be north of $1,500 for sure. That decision would probably be based on what I was running on it. If it's a VPN, the rock64 would be plenty. < $50

you can get them for even less: https://lowendbox.com/

You can also get a domain name for $4/year and completely own your content, but nobody does that either.

Why use a virtual server if you want to connect to your home network?

My home network has a dynamic IP. I'm using a home-baked dynamic DNS thingie, but a virtual server with a fixed IP could work too. Would update for the new IP much faster now that I think about it.

I have IPv6 at home with port 22 opened for one of my home server's IP's. But my work internet connection does not have IPv6 at all (lol) so I use one of my VPSes as a jump host.

Because in some countries, like .cz, it is pretty common that your home network is behind NAT, the ISP does not want to forward a port for you, and there is either no option to get a public IP or it costs $5 to $10/month and is a lengthy process to obtain (typical internet connection costs $20 to $30/month here).