Which hoster for WebSocket server?

[nrd]

Hi, can you recommend a hosting service to run a WebSocket server? I think I would choose "uWS" as programming framework.
For the hosting I have no Idea what to look for. Ideally there would be virtually no way for my bank account to go into depts.
Kind regards

[mattstyles]

uWS is a great choice I think, can't wait to find a good project to test the ropes on that library!

You'd need to be able to set up and run your own server for websocket stuff, and, indeed, anything server side and I don't think you'll find a service that will let you do this without paying over some cash for it.

Any service thats lets you own and manage your own instance will be fine, even an Amazon micro instance, which is very cheap. Amazon/Rackspace (possibly Azure, I've never tried it but heard it is also excellent) will give you the best service, prices are decent to start out with and these are the big boys making it pretty easy and painless to upgrade and attach complimentary services. Linode or Vultr tend to be a little pricey for what they offer but good service, Linode particularly is very well thought of. Heroku are still going strong I believe with good documentation and services, I always found them pretty expensive for what they offer. Digital Ocean are the current biggest bang for you buck with very cheap services that are generally good (and documentation is superb), I have a number of DO instances running and never had any issues with small to moderate loads.

You tend to get what you pay for but $5 to $10 a month will get you plenty to play with and get set up, most proper service providers offer painless routes to upgrade (all mentioned above) as and when you need.

If you're getting started then I'd recommend Digital Ocean or Linode (from personal experience), if you're willing to get your hands a little dirtier and want to do more then Amazon (AWS).

Google Cloud Platform probably deserves a mention but I found it a little bewildering (read, time consuming) to do stuff with, the same can be said of Amazon/Rackspace/Azure as the list of services they offer is astounding.

[ivanix]

You can browse over at lowendtalk.com, lowendbox.com and vpsboard.com  for   for a vps  that costs less than 20USD per year.

If you really want to go lower try lowendspirit.com which run lower than 5/year.   These should not be for any serious work or production but are good for tinkering around.

[nrd]

Thank you for the help! I've looked at digital ocean and it was a perfect match for me. The browser console, to be more precisely, the programs started in the browser console stay forever and one can connect to the terminal always. This working is so cool, and SSD disk space for the price is great.

I'm looking/reading about the mentioned alternatives a bit.

[ClusterAtlas]

Glad you've found DigitalOcean!

Anyways if you got a spare credit card w/ few dollars (required, but not charged) feel free to try out Azure, AWS & Google Cloud, too  

https://www.microsoft.com/itprocloudessentials/en-US - $25 / mo on Microsoft Azure, 1 year. enough for small vps.

https://cloud.google.com/free/ -  free vps w/ other stuff, 1 year.

https://aws.amazon.com/free/ - free vps w/ other stuff, 1 year.

- sign up using any credit card (visa/mastercard/whatever; prepaid cards not accepted)

- just run an ubuntu linux virtual machine instance

- use putty to ssh connect / winscp for ftp over ssh (aka sftp) to your machine, upload your server-side code there

- install nodejs & npm on it

- attach a public ip address to your virtual machine (usually done already for you, read their docs)

- open ports so your services are reachable online (ie, open inbound & outbound port 80 or 3000 on your virtual network settings)

- yes you can use uws or socket.io or even faye / faye-websocket