I use a tiny VPS provider that is actually $20/yr. For sites that get a couple thousand hits per month it is perfect. Although I do not see it as a requirement in this price range, the uptime has been on par with the big names (I have known of one 5 hour outage in the 3 years I have been using it). Even DO's $5/mo now seems a bit steep now for the "I just had a random idea" type thing.

Care to share the provider you are using?

There are always great offers on http://lowendbox.com/ - I'm very happy with the small KVM offers edis.at is offering.

Beware of super cheap VPS providers. A couple years ago I got burned by a provider called VBOX that was highly recommended on lowendbox.com. At first the service was ok, but a few months later my server and VBOX business were completely unresponsive.

Sure you'll save some money, but you might also waste hours of your time setting up a server that could one day disappear into thin air.

So long as you have deployment automated, and frequent backups, that shouldn't be a huge issue. One of the many advantages of not having to manually deploy a new box is being able to rapidly get off a bad provider.

Ramnode is fantastic and cheap.

http://www.ramnode.com

vpsdime is crazy cheap...

$2/month is enticing, but 128mb ram seems impossible. even 256mb is pushing it.

Debian minimal, with NGINX or some other light HTTP is easy on even 64 megs. On 128, you can do stuff like PHP and you can run whatever efficient web stuff you like. The web is light, if you're efficient about it.

As an aside, one of my friends has a 100 meg free VPS from one of the terrible free vps providers. He has managed to squeeze a Minecraft server on, and that can hold about 2 or 3 players! (apart from the terrible network, cpu and uptime)

You can run a mostly static site on 64.

It isn't (I have one, a whole $15/year due to some ridiculous sale some months ago). Consider that it's userspace only, so kernel doesn't count. I'm running a (light-duty) nodejs app, nginx to proxy it, tmux, and two irssi instances on mine right now, with memory to spare. Light PHP works fine too (haven't tried anything heavier).

A database server or similar wouldn't work, of course.

If you pay $2/month, you're a sucker; they've got lots of coupons (like the seemingly permanent 25 % discount on their website. If you look a bit further, you'll find even better discounts).

I use INIZ[1] 1GB for only $25 a year from a lowendbox special[2]. I don't use it for much so I can't speak with quality/uptime/anything beyond testing/experimentation.

  1GB-YEARLY
  3 vCores
  1GB RAM
  512MB vSwap
  50GB RAID10 Disk
  1TB Outbound BW
  1 IPv4 and 1 IPv6
  OpenVZ/SolusVM

[1] http://iniz.com/

[2] http://lowendbox.com/blog/iniz-yearly-deals-and-more-25year-...

OP here. I use Hostigation[1]. I know some people are concerned about many of the low end providers, but in this case:

1. It's 20 bucks... take a gamble!

2. The owner, Tim, has personally responded to every issue I have ever had within an hour. Pretty stellar, if you ask me.

[1] https://hostigation.com/

5c a month savings is worth keeping your Linode on old hardware with 512MB of ram?!??!?

The stuff I have there (mostly lightly-trafficked PHP sites) is not memory-intensive. Why rent a 3000 sq ft office when I only need a 1500 (or even 750) sq ft one? And yes, if I could halve ($20 -> $10) my monthly cost, it would most definitely be welcome.

If you're that cost sensitive, move to Digital Ocean. They have a better deal.