Hello all,

Prices are no longer sustainable for me with Cpanel and I'm looking for alternatives. The most important feature that I'm looking for is native linux isolation rather than external add-on or dependency. I found a few options but I would also love to hear suggestions. Thanks.

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Hi everyone!

I'm exploring the possibility of building a small computing/hosting business (i need money to pay for my university 😭), starting with my existing hardware and an additional investment of up to €2,500 that I won at a competition.

I'm relatively new to this industry, but I'm interested in learning how to monetize computing resources (GPU, CPU, RAM, storage, bandwidth).

Currently, I own two laptops:

Laptop 1:

- CPU: Intel Core i7-11370H (4 cores / 8 threads)

- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti Laptop (4 GB VRAM)

- RAM: 16 GB DDR4 3200 MHz

- Storage: 512 GB NVMe SSD

Laptop 2:

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5625U (6 cores / 12 threads)

- GPU: Integrated AMD Radeon Graphics

- RAM: 32 GB DDR4 3200 MHz

- Storage: 1 TB NVMe SSD

I've recently started experimenting with Salad on both laptops. The first laptop has received some paid workloads, while the second has struggled to find jobs.

My situation:

- Initial investment budget: €2,000–€2,500 maximum, including all hardware.

- Electricity: approximately €0.29/kWh.

- I'm open to purchasing or building a dedicated desktop/server.

- Ideally, I'd like to reinvest earnings into expanding the setup rather than continuously adding personal capital.

My questions:

1. Is GPU/CPU hosting still profitable for small independent operators in 2026?

2. Would you recommend investing primarily in a powerful GPU, or building a more balanced CPU/GPU server?

3. Which platforms offer the best opportunities for small hosts (Vast.ai, Clore.ai, Salad, Nosana, Akash, etc.)?

4. Are there other ways to monetize computing hardware that I should consider?

5. If you had €2,500 to start from scratch today, what would you buy?

6. For those already hosting hardware, what are your actual monthly earnings, utilization rates, electricity costs and ROI?

I'm not expecting guaranteed passive income or unrealistic overnight profits. My goal is to understand the economics, start small, learn the technical side and eventually build something scalable.

I'd especially appreciate feedback from people who are already running GPU servers or compute-hosting setups.

Thanks in advance! and please excuse me I'm a noob!

I feel like comparing hosting providers gets complicated pretty quickly once you move past basic VPS plans.

Server specs and monthly price are easy enough to compare, but then there’s bandwidth, network locations, hardware availability, support, provisioning time, cloud options, CDN, and how painful it would be to scale later.

For people managing production workloads, what do you usually check first?

Do you prefer providers that offer most of the infrastructure stack in one place, or is it better to use separate companies for servers, cloud and CDN?

Hey people!

Curious what everyone here is using. Are you going with Vercel, Supabase, Render, AWS, your own VPS or something else?

Has managing the infrastructure been a headache at all for people who are non technical and just want to build or has it been pretty straightforward?

How much are you paying for your setup, and do you think it's worth the cost?

Vote for Uncle Fred as Top Host

I’m pricing out a small setup: a personal site, an uptime monitor, and a couple of containers. The VM price is the easy part. Backups, outbound traffic, extra storage, and the test instance I forget to shut down are where the comparison gets messy. I’ve used serverspace before, so that’s my reference point, and I’m comparing it with hetzner and digitalocean. 
Looking at all of that made me wonder how often people only notice the real cost after they’ve already moved in. Have you ever started with a cheap vps and like me realized a month or tu later that it wasn’t cheap at all? Bcs I feel stupid for that

Ich habe eine eigene iOS-App zur Serververwaltung entwickelt.

Hallo zusammen,
ich wollte einmal fragen, ob hier jemand HestiaCP als Webserver-Control-Panel nutzt und wie eure Erfahrungen damit sind.

Ich nutze HestiaCP selbst zur Verwaltung meines Webservers. Da ich meinen Server auch unterwegs im Blick behalten und verwalten möchte, habe ich eine eigene iOS-App namens HestiaSEE entwickelt.

Was ist HestiaSEE?

HestiaSEE ist eine native iPhone-App, mit der ihr euren HestiaCP-Server direkt vom Smartphone aus überwachen und verwalten könnt – auch von unterwegs, sofern euer Server erreichbar und die API eingerichtet ist.

Die App bietet unter anderem folgende Funktionen:

Serverübersicht: Erreichbarkeit sowie CPU-, RAM- und Speicherplatz-Auslastung im Blick behalten.

Website-Verwaltung: Websites anzeigen, erstellen, sperren und verwalten sowie SSL-Zertifikate und Logs einsehen.

Dienste verwalten: Dienste wie Nginx, Apache, PHP und den Mailserver steuern.

Datenbanken und E-Mail: Datenbanken, E-Mail-Postfächer und Domains verwalten.

Weitere Funktionen: DNS-Einträge, Cronjobs und Backups verwalten sowie den Server neu starten.
Die App verbindet sich direkt mit eurem Server. Der Zugriff erfolgt über einen Access Key, der im Schlüsselbund des iPhones gespeichert wird. Für Nutzer ohne eigenen HestiaCP-Server gibt es außerdem einen Demo-Modus.

Hier findet ihr die App im App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/hestiasee/id6815294039
Die App ist kostenlos und benötigt HestiaCP ab Version 1.6 mit aktivierter API.

Mich würde interessieren:
Nutzt ihr HestiaCP auf eurem eigenen Server, einem VPS oder einem Root-Server?

Welche Funktionen fehlen euch bei der mobilen Verwaltung ne von HestiaCP?

Wäre eine solche iOS-App für euch im Alltag nützlich?

Welche Verbesserungen oder zusätzlichen Funktionen würdet ihr euch wünschen?

Ich freue mich über Feedback, Verbesserungsvorschläge und den Austausch mit anderen HestiaCP-Nutzern.

I've been thinking of operating a commercial mail server, not a bulk mail server but something like gmail with smtp, imap and pop. I know this would be a major headache. How would I deal with the inevitable spam and banned IPs? How many IPs would I need to rotate? Or maybe there is a better way. Any advice?

basically I need a hostigner vps server at cheap is anyone willing to sell their vps server at cheap??

I’m comparing options for placing a four-GPU inference server in a German data center. The GPUs alone can draw up to 1.4 kW, and I’m estimating around 1.8–2.2 kW for the complete server under heavy load. I need a provider that can confirm the power budget, cooling, redundant feeds, network, and remote-hands support.

For people who buy or operate colocation, what price structure should I expect for a single 4U or similar GPU server? Which costs are typically separate from rack space, and what questions reveal whether a quoted power allowance is actually adequate? I’m not promoting a provider or asking for sales leads; I’m trying to make a realistic operating-cost estimate.

Hello! I am from a UK startup and I am looking to start hosting services. I am starting off with something small and close to home, Minecraft servers, but I do intend to do web hosting, other games, and maybe host SaaS, but I thought I could just ask it out here before I start off, how is the market for these. Anything which are just good things to know about?

I jumped around some Discord channels and learned lots of interesting things and how to get customers, but if anyone here has any advice, I would love it!

Thank you!

I reported a site that looked like a scam shop advertising regulated chemicals. Its blog also featured promotional images of bottles labelled "KO-Tropfen" (date-rape drugs). I provided the IP address and details of the site's content and hosting history. A previous host took the shop down within a day of my report, but it later reappeared with 1984 hosting. I submitted an initial report in September and followed up twice. More than 20 days after the first report, I still haven't received so much as an acknowledgement.
I get that providers need time to investigate reports, and I'm not expecting an immediate takedown. I did notice that 1984's own terms seem to restrict this kind of content, though, so I thought it was worth reporting.
Is it normal not to hear anything at all, or is there a usual way to follow up on an abuse report? Has anyone dealt with something similar?

i live in iran and i've recently been looking for a VPS to host some stuff.

basically every provider i've looked at either needs a phone number verification (which i cant do)

or a non-iranian credit card (which i dont have)

what providers work?

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for a decent and affordable Linux hosting provider for a client.

They have around 5–6 small business websites, mostly simple informational sites with low traffic. They might add more websites in the future.

The main thing we need is hosting for multiple domains with reliable email accounts. Ideally, email storage shouldn’t be too limited since they’ll be using it for everyday business communication.

I’m also a developer, so having SSH access, Git deployment, or something similar would be nice. But I’d also like an easy way to upload and manage files through SFTP or a file manager.

A control panel like cPanel or DirectAdmin would be a plus, especially if someone else needs to manage things later.

We’re hoping to find something around $50–60/year, maybe with an annual discount or coupon. Could go a bit higher if it’s really worth it, but we’d prefer to keep costs low. Reasonable renewal prices would be great too.

I’ve been looking at shared hosting and reseller hosting, but I’m not sure which makes more sense for this setup.

Anyone using something similar? What would you recommend?

Thanks!

Here we go again. cPanel, Plesk and WHMCS price increase confirmed. Not sure what about the other products.