Having your own website is fun. I had fun when I first started this website back in late 2013. I still remember the 7 revisions in design before I finally reached one that I liked.
I was in college at the time, and I had a web template created. The only problem was I didn't have money or a job to buy a web hosting plan.
Luckily, I did receive some money from my college leftover financial aid, which helped me get started. I quickly went online, and purchased a Shared Hosting plan which supported multiple domains on one account (I had lots of ideas at the time).
Fast forward 3 years later, I began to see the limitations of the Shared Hosting plan as I dived into Node.js and NoSQL development. I realized that most Shared Hosting services come with Apache pre-installed and the company does not support other platforms, such as Node.js unless I upgrade to a web hosting plan that was at least a VPS hosting service. At the time, my web hosting plan was with HostGator. I took a peek at their VPS plans, and they were expensive. The cheapest amongst the name brands that I found started at $15/mo!
This is where DigitalOcean came into play. Yes, I did consider Amazon Web Services (AWS), but the problem was that their pricing chart is kind of ambiguous and hard to understand, so I ended up with DigitalOcean. It had all the features I needed on a very affordable price with their lowest plan starting at $5/mo.
How You Can Get 2 Months of VPS Hosting for Free
If you are a web developer like me, a developer in general, or maybe an entrepreneur who is in need of a VPS hosting service, you might want to consider this tip.
If you sign up through my referral link with Digital Ocean, you can get up to 2 months of free VPS hosting!
2 Months Free VPS Hosting Referral Link: https://m.do.co/c/80a2e0cdadde
To save you some time of having to navigate their site, here is a screenshot of what their pricing plans are like as of 2016:
NOTE - The referral link is a one time offer per account. It will never expire. It will basically reward your account that you sign up through this link with a $10 credit.
Final Thoughts
The pricing they show is also not a promotional price. So unlike other web hosting services, where they increase the price after the first year is over, this one stays constant (depends on usage)! VPS Hosting does require you to setup your own Operating System, and require some technical know how with the command line, but overall, it is a very worthwhile experience. I just wanted to let you all know about this great offer, especially those who want to build an online presence with a low budget.
