I’ve been hosting this web site prairiewest.net on a “reseller” package from a large hosting provider for many years. The hosting was easy to use not because of the provider but because of cPanel. It was a nice step up in 2008 to switch from a bare metal LAMP server to a VM with cPanel, mostly because it automated some of the things that I found tedious at the time.

With ease of use, however, comes additional cost, and my hosting costs have been rising steadily for a number of years. I started with this provider in November 2008, and now 14 years later in November 2022 I’ve switched again. I kind of felt like switching banks: you know it’s going to be painful, but sometimes the pain is worth it.

I’ve been very nicely surprised that Digital Ocean droplets are easy to spin up, easy to monitor, easy to backup, and easy to manage. Overall, for someone with even moderate technical knowledge, droplets are just as powerful as a VM from anywhere else without some of the management headaches. They have been a joy to use so far, and have instantly cut my hosting costs in half.

I’m very happy that I switched to Digital Ocean. I’m only sightly disappointed in myself for not switching sooner, but inertia and the perceived work of switching held me back. Yes I did switch from a “fully managed” hosting provider to what I would call “mostly self-managed” hosting with Digital Ocean, but for the small amount of time I needed to set things up it was definitely worth it.

If you’re thinking of switching to Digital Ocean, use my referral code and we’ll both earn free credits: https://m.do.co/c/5fb5a316732c