Cheapest, but easily scalable, hosting setup.

Any recommendations for what is the cheapest way to host ( and how much ) assuming low volume web server, database server, and content server. I am thinking not heroku due to content serving. Perhaps Digital Ocean? 

While small to start, I would like to be able to scale with as little fuss as possible. I haven't quite worked out where hatchbox fits in but I suspect it would be overkill for me at the moment.

I am trying to use Digital Ocean apps. $5 app server, $7 db sever.a
Works well for the free version but not the paid

Thanks for the info. Could you elaborate on the 'Works well for the free version but not the paid".

I have the full jumpstart license, is this what you mean? What makes it different?

I've had a medium-sized Rails app on Heroku for a few years but for my new much smaller app I went with Hatchbox. I thought it might be overkill too but it was very easy to set up and seems like it will be easy to scale.

What is the 'content'?  External media like PDFs or video?  Host those assets on S3, manage via ActiveStorage.  Take a look at config/storage.yml to configure.  Your assets are served via s3, so it doesn't consume your web workers.

For the hosting, go with Heroku.  Heroku dyno, $7, hobby Postgres database, $9.  Easy deployment and fully managed.

it's not the cheapest - but paying some money for hatchbox will save you many many hours and much pain.
(it's also from Chris Oliver like jumpstart)

Hatchbox does all the management work, you provide the server (or at least the account) - hatchbox makes it all work.
Personally I use digital ocean. I think they're great, and very reasonably priced, but you can use other hosts as well.

Scaling is pretty easy. At the outset, you'll just increase the size of your droplet. You can run a pretty large site on a 15/20 dollar server - and you can push up to really big single servers. ($80 gets you 8 virtual cpu vs the 2 virtual cpu at $20).

Alternatively, you can let hatchbox set up a cluster for you with load-balancer, separate database, multiple workers, etc. I have never had to do that - but it looks straightforward enough.

I wrote about hatchbox here:
https://hobbyist.medium.com/rails-hosting-easier-than-heroku-as-flexible-as-digital-ocean-d91ba90c63bf

Thanks for the responses.

Content will probably just be images and sound. I have used S3 before. I got it working but I don't know if it was working securely. I find it quite complex to learn and admin.

I think I like the hatchbox approach from what I understand of it and probably would go this way if my site started to justify it.  I will give your article a read. Thanks.

I am just at that stage where I have time but I don't have the money for any expensive monthly fees. If I was bringing in money I would be more than happy to go straight paying for ease and simplicity.

Heroku might be your next best bet then. It is super simple to set up (that's the whole point) as long as you don't want/need any of the things that end up being painful. 
They're pretty cheap as you get started, and you can use s3 for any large storage. It looks like a hobby server/db will be ~$16/month.

the pricing goes up really quickly though. Need more than 10k rows in your db: that's an extra $41/month. 
need background workers (e.g. to send email) - I think you need a second dyno (an extra $7/month?)
I'm not expert on Heroku - so may not have these details right.

Hatchbox plus a basic DO server will be $39/month ($29 + $10). When you need to grow - you can add an extra vcpu for $5.

It's easy to focus on the $$ costs, but really - your time is probably more valuable than the differences here. 

Which solution isn't going to waste a day of your effort battling something stupid or dealing with the upgrade/feature install. Which solution isn't going to waste days as you transfer from A to B when the upgrades get too expensive, or the xxx feature isn't available. 

That's probably more important than $200/year...




 

Thanks. I have a lot of spare time at the moment but no money coming in so...but in general I absolutely agree, the less I have to manage the better and it's worth paying to not do it.

I have done a couple of simple Heroku deployments and it is fairly easy, S3 not so much.