VPS providers

Note

This doc is written for the hosting section of the getting started guide. Please take a look if you don’t know how to host Red on a VPS.

This is a list of the recommended VPS providers.

Warning

Please be aware that a Linux server is controlled through a command line. If you don’t know Unix basics, please take a look at this guide from DigitalOcean which will introduce you to the Linux basics.

Linux hosting

Link	Description
Scaleway	Incredibly cheap but powerful VPSes, owned by https://online.net/, based in Europe.
DigitalOcean	US-based cheap VPSes. The gold standard. Locations available world wide.
OVH	Cheap VPSes, used by many people. French and Canadian locations available.
Time4VPS	Cheap VPSes, seemingly based in Lithuania.
Linode	More cheap VPSes!
Vultr	US-based, DigitalOcean-like.

Others

Link
AWS	Amazon Web Services. Free for a year (with certain limits), but very pricey after that.
Google Cloud	Same as AWS, but it’s Google.
Microsoft Azure	Same as AWS, but it’s Microsoft.
Oracle Cloud	Same as AWS, but it’s Oracle.
LowEndBox	A curator for lower specced servers.

Self-hosting

You can always self-host on your own hardware. A Raspberry Pi 3 will be more than sufficient for small to medium sized bots.

For bigger bots, you can build your own server PC for usage, or buy a rack server. Any modern hardware should work 100% fine.

Free hosting

Google Cloud Compute Engine, Oracle Cloud Compute and AWS EC2 have free tier VPSes suitable for small bots.

Note: AWS EC2’s free tier does not last forever - it’s a 12 month trial.

Additionally, new Google Cloud customers get a $300 credit which is valid for 12 months.

Other than that… no. There is no good free VPS hoster, outside of persuading somebody to host for you, which is incredibly unlikely.