Update 8/1/14: Free DO $10 promo code: 2014SSD
Well thats 2013 nearly wrapped up. In the last 6 months I have been working on some pretty large projects and have come away with a full set of hosted applications that I am using to manage my day-to-day workload. I had planned to get a post written sooner for all the apps I am using with decent free tiers, that will now come in the new year!
One service I do want to get a blog out about now is Digital Ocean. Digital Ocean is the fastest growing VPS provider in the world right now, and every experience I have had with them in the 4ish months I have been using them has been excellent. Before using them, I was 100% shared cPanel hosting. Now I am migrating everything over to self-managed VPS’s at Digital Ocean. Why?? $5/mo, 20GB disk space, enough memory and CPU speed to run NGINX and mySQL very comfortably.
Keep reading for a a bit more info and my first list of free applications that have made my life easier! This list is no where near exhaustive, and over the next month or so I will be writing about a few of the key services I think you should start using if you don’t already!
I have a bookmark folder called ‘To Implement / Research’ that takes about 5 seconds to scroll through, so watch this space!
Digital Ocean, setting up and security
Using a VPS is not for the feint heated or the technically challenged. For myself, my only experience managing a linux box was a Raspberry Pi under my TV, going from using cPanel for everything to installing and most importantly, securing, a Linux VPS was an interesting learning curve. Most tutorials to set up a LEMP stack (Linux, Nginx, Mysql, PHP) leave out security hardening, and its not until you notice people bombarding you with hundreds of SSH login attempts that you start to think, this needs to be sorted!
Right now, enough of that! I will be posting again in the new year in more detail about my unmanaged VPS experience at Digital Ocean.
Hosted Apps – free tiers galore!
For those of you who have strayed below the fold, this is a quick list of SaaS hosted applications I have been using in the last 6 months to get myself sorted.
Below is a quick list of apps I have been using and getting the most out of the free tiers – I pay £0.00 for any of these (apart from Digital Ocean and thats pittence!)
Organisation
- One Login – Single Sign on service to save time logging into loads of websites (this is a massive time saver, excellent free tier!)
- Docracy – you will at some point need to sign a works contract or agreement. This is a free service for just that. Choose a template to modify or import current docs. Legally digitally sign and store them.
- SkyDrive – Microsofts answer to Google Docs, now with an excellent Excel Web App that rivals the paid Office 365 extension. This is an invaluable tool for storing client details for access from anywhere.
Services / Platforms
- Digital Ocean – as discussed above, damn!
- CloudFlare – hosted DNS and Caching service, with an great free tier for basic and ecommerce sites. If you have to manage DNS, you will need to look into this.
- Mailgun – I have an eCommerce site hosted at Digital Ocean that needs to send out emails to customers, I use mailgun to provide this for free, while still giving me oversight into the tracking logs!
- No Support Linux Hosting – if you need to host something quickly and cheaply, this is for you (as long as you have an idea about what your doing!)
- Loggly – after some security issues on my servers, I started using Loggly to monitor my logs without needing to ssh in. Good free tier, I am currently still under free trial at the moment!
Generally Awesome
- Cyfe – cool dashboard, small free tier but useful for overviewing Google Analytics!
- Stack Overflow – I don’t need to say any more!
This is a quick list of how I manage myself. I think I put this off because I didn’t want to make it easy for people to doss on the leg work, but when I think about it, this is how blogging should be!
Please leave a comment if you have had similar experiences with any of these and if you want to recommend any you have been using!
Disclaimer: all Digital Ocean links are referral links, I get a bit of commission if you sign up and use the service.