Where to Deploy? Get a VPS

Blogs

September 10, 2025

TL;DR

If you are building software or want to use projects that other built…

HomeLab Repo

Docker Configs for your server

…you will just need a place to host them.

Intro

Have your client in the loop asap.

Yea, Thats one of the outcomes of the lean startup

So when the code works on your machine: how about sharing it with real users?

Just…via containers please.

Plot twist: nobody cares about solutions that only you can use.

So get ready to know how to use a VPS as infrastructure for your apps.

I will just assume that:

You have something to share or want to use a conteinerized app that other people created
You know how to get a domain and configure DNS records
You are ready to pay for a VPS - Prepare ~5$/m for a basic VPS

VPS

VPS, just a computer somewhere else in the world.

I started using GCP free tier to get started with Linux+cloud.

Later, I got dissapointed with Oracle Cloud.

And after testing some SBCs and MiniPCs at home, plus few OSs:

FireBat AK2 Plus

Less than 1L mini PC with decent 4C/4T - The Review

BMax B4 MiniPC Review

BMax vs Pi vs Cloud Comparison

Then, decided to try these VPS for fun and see how my linux skills got better.

Any of these can help you serve your Apps to people, unless you want to do so from your homelab!

Digital Ocean
Hetzner
Linode

Below Ill leave some updates tricks to take into consideration when spinning up a VPS.

If you need big GPU power, isntead of just CPU, you can always try https://www.runpod.io/gpu-instance/pricing and similar services.

https://accounts.hetzner.com/_ray/pow (I tried the CX22 model x2 vCPU)
https://cloud.digitalocean.com

Clouds ( & GPU Clouds)

RunPod, Linode, DigitalOcean, Paper Space, Lambda Cloud, Hetzner…
vast.ai,
Google Colab TPU…

With the Cloud, you forget about power consumption at home:

Tapo P110 x Home Assistant

P110 and x300 power monitoring

DO

https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets

From ~4/m for 1vcpu

Configuring a DO VPS as VPN Server

Setting up wgeasy withing a DO Droplet

Hetzner

https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/

Competitive prices ~4$ for 2 vcpu

Germany or Finland

Making Deployments Easy with hetzner

Setting up Hetzner for the Wedding Setup in Feb this year

Linode

https://cloud-estimator.linode.com/s/

Linode VPS

The basic ones goes for around 60$/y for 1vcpu

They have several locations, including US, JAPAN, EU AMS

Others

PikaPods ↗ Dev Focus Public Cloud ↗

For AI workloads you will be interested in some cloud GPU:

Vultr Cloud GPUs ↗ VastAI GPUs ↗ Lambdalabs GPUs ↗

Elestio

I used https://elest.io/ to try some open source projects.

Their mission is great:

Fully managed DevOps platform to deploy your code and open-source software

You manage it all from https://dash.elest.io/login

They also provide guides and high level features on the OSS projects.

See: https://elest.io/fully-managed-services/hosting-and-infrastructure

Conclusions

Its up to you: Homelab vs VPS

Get a x300, get a ~15w avg at 0,25eur/kwh will cost you ~32eur/y (or 2,74 a month)
Deploy on one of these smaller servers for a little bit more of the price, but you forget about the initial costs.

A new repo for SelfHosters:

HomeLab Repo

Docker Configs for your server

Get https/SSL
Do that cleanup from time to time:

#df -h
docker stop $(docker ps -a -q) #stop all
#docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -q | grep -v '^portainer_data$') #rm all volumes but portainer

#docker system df
#docker image prune -a 
#docker builder prune -a --force

#docker system prune --all --volumes #just clean all...