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1. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:14:25 JST Aral Balkan

   Oh, great. Just looked at Hetzner’s new pricing for VPS servers:

   CPX22 (dedicated vCPU): €7.99 → €19.49 (+143.8%)

   So that’s fun. I guess one way to ensure the Small Web doesn’t happen is to make it prohibitively expensive for people to have their own servers.

   (Before anyone mentions it, prices of single-board computers are also increasing and shipping hardware is an even bigger challenge.)

   If anyone knows cheaper EU-based hosts, please leave a comment.

   It’s so much fun to constantly have the rug pulled out from under you while you’re trying to make progress.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:16:30 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     (There is the “cost-optimised” CX22 with 2 vcpus for €5.49/mo but that’s marked “limited availability” so it’s not something you can base a system that you need to be always available around.)

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:18:54 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Adam ♿

     @voltagex Sadly, I need something predictable as I’ll be basing the onboarding process on it. So lotteries are out of the question :)

     Had bad experiences with Scaleway in the past but will look into it again, thanks.

   • Embed this notice
     Adam ♿ (voltagex@aus.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:18:55 JST Adam ♿

     in reply to

     @aral Unsure if Scaleway or UpCloud have also increased their prices (I'm in Australia so EU is normally too much latency for me to consider)

     You could also play the LowEndBox lottery.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:32:18 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • simendsjo

     @simendsjo Do need something based in the EU but thanks, appreciate it.

   • Embed this notice
     simendsjo (simendsjo@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:32:19 JST simendsjo

     in reply to

     @aral I have been using Linode for years. It has been bought by Akamai though. Still has the $5 plan which I'm using.

     There is LowEndBox which has various listings of providers: https://lowendbox.com/

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:36:04 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • John

     @john234 Thanks, John, will check them out.

   • Embed this notice
     John (john234@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:36:05 JST John

     in reply to

     @aral I've used a VPS hosted by IONIS previously. Reliability was good. However, I looked recently and their prices have gone up significantly since I last used them. It looks like there's no longer a small option - starts at medium now (there may be a hidden web page where you can still find small spec option).

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:36:12 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Kobiac

     @Kobiac Thanks, appreciate the heads up. I’m trying to keep what people pay <= €20 while ensuring we can be sustainable and Node is far more stable on 2 vcpu, I find (especially if forking). So might not be viable. But will check them out :)

   • Embed this notice
     Kobiac (kobiac@dice.camp)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:36:14 JST Kobiac

     in reply to

     aral@mastodon.ar.al Icelandic 1984.is offers selfhosted VPS with 1 GB RAM, 1 CPU, 25 GB DISK, 1 TB TX/RX for about €10, don’t know if that meets your requirements. Next tier up is about €20. Seems like an ethical company, I use their free DNS services. https://1984.hosting/product/pricelist/

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:37:30 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Samuel
     • Emanuel Pina

     @samuel @emanuel Oh, ffs, we just can’t win, can we? :)

     (Was just looking at their site and their prices + API looked great.)

   • Embed this notice
     Samuel (samuel@social.spejset.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:37:39 JST Samuel

     in reply to

     • Emanuel Pina

     @emanuel I used HostUp before but the owner is some far right person. Was enough for us to change providers. But can't find the info right now @aral

   • Embed this notice
     Emanuel Pina (emanuel@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:37:40 JST Emanuel Pina

     in reply to

     @aral I can't yet recommend them, but I'm currently testing HostUp: https://hostup.se/

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:43:35 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Samuel

     @samuel Wow, Contabo have an amazing price/resource ratio (even on their 1 month contract plan). And I was able to hunt down their API.

     Any experience with the latter?

     Have they been pretty solid in terms of uptime, etc.?

   • Embed this notice
     Samuel (samuel@social.spejset.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:43:36 JST Samuel

     in reply to

     @aral I use contabo for my personal stuff, they are pretty cheap

     https://contabo.com/en-us/

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:44:28 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jonathan Treffler 🇺🇦🇵🇸

     @JonathanTreffler Yeah, the latter. If someone’s first experience of the Small Web is “Service Not Available”, that’s also going to be their last experience of it.

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan Treffler 🇺🇦🇵🇸 (jonathantreffler@gruene.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:44:29 JST Jonathan Treffler 🇺🇦🇵🇸

     in reply to

     @aral (You probably know this, but since it can be read two ways in your post: thats limited availability as in "sometimes out of stock" not "existing instances are sometimes down", so I assume you always need availability of new instances?)

   • Embed this notice
     Elena Rossini 🌈 (_elena@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:45:14 JST Elena Rossini 🌈

     in reply to

     @aral unbelievable! (actually, totally believable, greedy b------s)

     I remember fondly how last year I would spin up VPSs for self-hosting experiments. CPX21 was something like 3 or 4 Euros a month. I don't dare look at the current price.

     Avari!

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:45:14 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Elena Rossini 🌈

     @_elena Any 1st-party greed aside, it’s the ponzi schemes of the AI companies speculatively (and on laundered credit) buying up all available hardware and driving prices up.

     They don’t want us to be able to own tech, only rent it from them. That’s the end game.

   • Embed this notice
     simendsjo (simendsjo@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:51:54 JST simendsjo

     in reply to

     @aral I remember a similar site which lists a few alternatives: https://european-tech.com/categories/european-vps-providers/

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:51:54 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • simendsjo

     @simendsjo Thank you :)

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:58:24 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Khleedril

     @khleedril Thanks, I hadn’t heard of them. Sadly, out of the price range of the Small Web (from €24,92/month). Folks are not going to pay > €30/month for their own Small Web social sites, I don’t think :)

   • Embed this notice
     Khleedril (khleedril@cyberplace.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:58:26 JST Khleedril

     in reply to

     @aral I don't know how they compare cost-wise, but I find Infomaniak a very ethical company, rock-solid reliability, and they use the OpenVPN stack.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:59:13 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Samuel
     • pyche

     @pyche @samuel Thanks, that’s really helpful; appreciate it :)

   • Embed this notice
     pyche (pyche@pleroma.pyche.ovh)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 21:59:20 JST pyche

     in reply to

     • Samuel
     @aral @samuel been using contabo for two/three years now, had one outage that lasted around 8hours and other than that it was very reliable. I use it for vpn,mails and other stuff. I don't always check the uptime, i don't need 99,9999% but was fine for my usage
   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 22:03:03 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Jiří Hazekk

     @jiri Looks good, thank you.

     Do you happen to know if they have an API? I can’t seem to find mention of one on their site.

   • Embed this notice
     Jiří Hazekk (jiri@mendeddrum.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 22:03:04 JST Jiří Hazekk

     in reply to

     @aral

     https://www.manitu.de/vserver/

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-2026 22:06:50 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Hetzner

     Hey everyone, just wanted to say thank you for all your replies, I think I have enough candidates to look into now :)

     So since @hetzner has sadly priced itself outside of Small Web use, the hosts I’ll be looking into include:

     ⁃ Netcup (Germany)
     ⁃ HostUp (Sweden) - if owner isn’t far right; waiting for confirmation on that as someone mentioned they might be
     ⁃ Contabo (Germany)
     ⁃ Mantu (Germany) - if they have an API. Wasn’t able to find one while skimming heir site.

     Ones I’ve already eliminated include:

     ⁃ IONOS (€10 setup fee on monthly contracts and might be UK based.)
     ⁃ Any based in the US for obvious reasons.

     Thanks again :)

     #SmallWeb #SmallTech #VPS #hosting #EU

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 00:59:18 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • 🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑

     @brouhaha :P

   • Embed this notice
     🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑 (brouhaha@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 00:59:19 JST 🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑

     in reply to

     @aral
     The CX22 often sells outright on eBay for under USD $70.
     Of course, that is the _Atari_ CX22, so it might not do what you need.
     :-)

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 01:14:24 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Sam Machin

     @sammachin Yeah but this is for onboarding folks onto the Small Web so “service not available” is not an option.

   • Embed this notice
     Sam Machin (sammachin@chaos.social)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 01:14:25 JST Sam Machin

     in reply to

     @aral the limited availability relates to spinning up a new machine. They’re not always available stock in all locations. Bu lt once it’s running you’ve got it. I’ve had one box running 24x7 for 2 years now

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 01:16:45 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • René Seindal

     @seindal Thank you, I’ll add them to my list :)

   • Embed this notice
     René Seindal (seindal@mastodon.uno)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 01:16:46 JST René Seindal

     in reply to

     @aral

     I have vps' with Aruba.it, and they have some fairly cheap offers.

     https://www.arubacloud.com/vps/#prezzi

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 01:16:49 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Hetzner
     • Mathias Fußenegger

     @mathias @hetzner Yep. Gotta love it.

   • Embed this notice
     Mathias Fußenegger (mathias@social.fussenegger.pro)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 01:16:51 JST Mathias Fußenegger

     in reply to

     • Hetzner

     @aral @hetzner worth keeping in mind that those alternatives might have to raise prices too due to the price increase of the hardware.

     So if migrating takes a lot of effort it might backfire in a couple months

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 05-Sep-2026 04:04:38 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Cisco Caceres

     @ciscocaceres Indeed. But I was going to launch the Small Web on them and now I can’t as there’s no way to mark up those prices to make our not-for-profit sustainable without making a personal site unaffordable for many people.

   • Embed this notice
     Cisco Caceres (ciscocaceres@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Sep-2026 04:04:39 JST Cisco Caceres

     in reply to

     @aral That Hetzner hike is brutal. For what it's worth, their docs say existing cloud instances created before June 15, 2026, keep their original pricing unless you rescale them. Might offer a temporary reprieve for some.