As someone who runs a hosting company I see it all the time that developers think they need a huge $50 per month VPS to run their application. Reality is that you probably don't when you're just getting started!

I'm Sam and I run a hosting company called Vizalo and we run several different applications to keep Vizalo online. 90% of these applications run on tiny VPS that cost between $5 to $10 per month and today I'm going to share how much these small servers can do.

Background

At Vizalo our cheapest server is $8 per month and this gives you 2 CPU and 4GB of RAM. We run 4 of these right now to power Vizalo as a whole. That's it four $8 p/m servers keep up online.

Breakdown

So let's breakdown what each of these servers do and demonstrate how your tiny VPS can do a lot more than you think. We like to name our servers after either characters from the Simpsons or Breaking Bad as they are my favourite TV shows.

Homer

Our primary server is called Homer, obviously named after Homer Simpson.

Homer powers our main Vizalo application which is built with Laravel. To keep Vizalo running this server runs PHP, NGINX, PostgreSQL, Redis all on the same server!

Bart

Bart is our secondary server that we run our documentation and tutorials application on. Again it's a built in Laravel so has all the same software running as Homer.

Tuco

Tuco runs a number of different applications that help us.

1. OpenObserve for logging and observability of our other apps
2. Caddy to allow our logs to be sent over HTTPS
3. We run a Slack bot written in TypeScript that we call "dirty uptime" to do a quick uptime check on the Vizalo website
4. Docker to run both OpenObserve and the Slack bot

Huell

Huell is a reverse proxy we use for our managed apps and serves as the entrypoint for all our managed apps allowing free preview domains and then allowing our customers to point their own domains at the app.

This is running Caddy for the reverse proxy and serves around 8000 requests per day right now with single or double digit response time most of the time.

Summary

I've given you an insight into Vizalo as a hosting company but I've also given you an insight into how much you can get out of four $8p/m VPS!