I'm looking to have an Umbraco site hosted for a small business. I've never dealt with hosting before. Where do I start? I've looked at Azure and Amazon and if I understand what I'm reading correctly, the absolute cheapest they will allow a single site is $800/yr for Amazon, and $1098/yr for Azure. That seems really high. Is this the bare minimum? I need to host a single Umbraco site for now with low traffic.
Depends on what your usage needs are. You could probably get away with an Azure database and Web App for under $30 per month if you really wanted to (Shared Web App Instance with a Basic Database).
You need to set yourself some realistic expectations on your needs in terms of database throughput and expected traffic/memory usage on the Web App.
In terms of minimum specifications, a Standard Database (S1 or S2) is generally accepted, while a Basic Web App may be enough.
That's all fair, I'd advise Chad to actually check if this is a common or even uncommon issue and not extremely rare, been using CE for some websites for around 6 years and never had issues.
Under all circumstances, Chad shouldn't base his decision off 2 voices on the Internet - so be sure to search around for more info on the topic.
Also, the same host I'm referring to offers a full MS SQL db for an extra 1.5 EUR a month, so at the very very least it's easily doable for 2.5 EUR a month.
Sounds like you've already gone down this path, so I won't cover it. I will say that at work we tend to use AWS. Makes sense for our situation, but doesn't sound like it makes sense for yours.
GoDaddy (Infinite Pain)
Believe me, you don't want to use GoDaddy. Look at the forums at everybody else that has tried this and you'll see why. It's a painful experience, and even if you get it working you'll probably find that it's horribly slow. Might seem cheap, but price isn't the only factor and GoDaddy rarely makes sense for an Umbraco install.
Wouldn't really recommend that approach. It's a complete pain to implement, and for $330/year Umbraco cloud beats doing that manually just for the cost of the developer time. It's also been years since I wrote that article, so quite a bit has changed and you'll have to figure more things out.
On Premise ($70 + $120)
Something else to consider is that you don't really need a hosting company. You could host the server yourself at home or at work. If you're already paying for an internet connection, that might be a workable option. Here's a $70 refurbished computer you could buy if you don't have one already (I fully expect this link to break in the future, but keep in mind, future people, that cheap PC's aren't hard to find): https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5HA5DY4415
Note that hosting a website may affect your internet pricing. And of course there's the cost of electricity (not really sure, but I'd guess $10 or so a month).
SQL CE = Nope
I also second the opinion that SQL CE is not a good option for any production website. After all, SQL Server Express is free.
That $1,000/year (plus or minus) you mentioned for AWS/Azure may sound like a lot, but if you host several websites on there (assuming you have more to build), it might make more sense. That comes with its own caveats though (e.g., a performance issue on one site affects all sites).
Also worth considering if you're planning on hosting dev/stage/prod (could all be on the same VM).
Summary
For your situation, I'd probably just go with Umbraco cloud. Seems like a relatively cheap option that has the least friction. The on premise option might be better if you like to feel that you have more control over the server by being able to physically see it and connect peripherals to it.
Go with Umbraco Cloud - it's ~25$ a month and you get Umbraco Forms and Umbraco.TV for free on top of it. In addition you'll get your Umbraco automatically patched without lifting a finger and a great flow for sharing Umbraco assets between the hosted site and your local dev environment.
It's powered by Microsoft Azure and beats performance of shared hosts. A trial is free for 14 days, no credit card needed.
Been hosting for them for years, support is excellent, and they always ensure the latest Windows .NET Framworks are available. Sites run in FULL TRUST, and they even mention that Umbraco will work on it, even on the most basic plan..
You can get fullremote access to the Database instance, so you can just work from Visual Studio.
Proves you can get a "good value service" - if you know where to look.
Having said all that... Umbraco Cloud is great, but remember, UC dosent support all Packages, only ones which have a courier resolver. I largely dont use "Plugins", and stick to the core property types, so UC is now my preferred hosting.
I have had a very similar doubt when i had to decide how to do for hosting of an umbraco website that I made for a nonprofit organization where I serve as volunteer.
As you can imagine, budget was strictly limited.
That site was quite small (about 40 pages and no particular features, except a restricted access area for personnel where duty orders and general communications were published).
Finally we decided that a cloud server was the best for us, and we found an ISP that gave us a virtual machine with 2GB of RAM and 2 vCPU with Windows 2012R2 and MSSQL2014 Express at about 12 euros/month.
We couldn't expect great performance, but our site didn't need that and we are overall very satisfied.
If I were you, I would evaluate a VPS with guaranteed resources from an affordable ISP, maybe asking a trial period.
I'm glad there are very economical solutions available. One I haven't seen mentioned in this thread that I've come across is softsys. They seem to have a shared plan for around $9/mo starting and dedicated plans for a little bit more. Has anyone been using them? I noticed that they give you extra MySql databases, but I had heard Umbraco isn't going to really be using that in the future. Is that true?
I like the idea so far of a shared plan, or an on premise setup as we get the site through it's infancy stages. Umbraco Cloud is an attractive option, but I'm curious as to how the performance would be for a mostly US based site.
Thanks everyone so far for the input! It is greatly appreciated.
For years I have been a happy customer of nitroserve.nl for some websites which I maintain at cost for fellow academics.
All was well until this Saturday, they seemingly suffered a catastrophic disk failure.
Customer support was almost unreachable and until just now I was kept in the dark as to whether any actual data was lost or not. Even after their status pages indicated things were well again, I could not get access to most of my sites via FTP and files were seemingly missing. Filesystem access rights for the IIS processes were not restored properly etc etc...
Turns out that for a few sites, all filesystem content was lost. Luckily, the DB's are still there but having lost the entire media folder for a site that is running a couple of years is not funny at all (all their backups are lost too).
This is turning into a bit of a nightmare for me...
I am fearful there really aren't any 'cheap' solutions.
If you are new to develop Umbraco site, then you can just need to find shared hosting provider. It will cost you around $80/year and you can find reliable shared hosting provider. I would recommend you to check asphostportal.com for umbraco hosting. You can find other Umbraco hosting alternative on http://topreviewhostingasp.net/list-of-best-umbraco-hosting-with-cheap-price/
Where to start with hosting
I'm looking to have an Umbraco site hosted for a small business. I've never dealt with hosting before. Where do I start? I've looked at Azure and Amazon and if I understand what I'm reading correctly, the absolute cheapest they will allow a single site is $800/yr for Amazon, and $1098/yr for Azure. That seems really high. Is this the bare minimum? I need to host a single Umbraco site for now with low traffic.
Hi Chad,
Depends on what your usage needs are. You could probably get away with an Azure database and Web App for under $30 per month if you really wanted to (Shared Web App Instance with a Basic Database).
You need to set yourself some realistic expectations on your needs in terms of database throughput and expected traffic/memory usage on the Web App.
In terms of minimum specifications, a Standard Database (S1 or S2) is generally accepted, while a Basic Web App may be enough.
You can do as low as 1EUR a month with SQL CE at some hosting companies, so it's definitely doable. :)
I wouldn't recommend SqlCe for production - it's too unreliable and prone to corruption.
Note he said "small business" - I'm assuming 3-10 pages with no crazy integrations - I've done this several times over the years with 0 issues.
yep, I used to do that as well - however, I've also lost data in SqlCE on production before, and wouldn't do it again
That's all fair, I'd advise Chad to actually check if this is a common or even uncommon issue and not extremely rare, been using CE for some websites for around 6 years and never had issues.
Under all circumstances, Chad shouldn't base his decision off 2 voices on the Internet - so be sure to search around for more info on the topic.
Also, the same host I'm referring to offers a full MS SQL db for an extra 1.5 EUR a month, so at the very very least it's easily doable for 2.5 EUR a month.
Azure VM / AWS VM ($$$)
Sounds like you've already gone down this path, so I won't cover it. I will say that at work we tend to use AWS. Makes sense for our situation, but doesn't sound like it makes sense for yours.
GoDaddy (Infinite Pain)
Believe me, you don't want to use GoDaddy. Look at the forums at everybody else that has tried this and you'll see why. It's a painful experience, and even if you get it working you'll probably find that it's horribly slow. Might seem cheap, but price isn't the only factor and GoDaddy rarely makes sense for an Umbraco install.
Cloud ($330)
You can do Umbraco cloud for about $330/year: https://umbraco.com/pricing/
For a smaller website, I imagine it should hold up well.
Azure Cloud Services ($260)
I also wrote this article years ago about how to host it yourself with Azure cloud services: https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/584908/Umbrazure-Limitless-Websites-with-Umbraco-on-Azure
Wouldn't really recommend that approach. It's a complete pain to implement, and for $330/year Umbraco cloud beats doing that manually just for the cost of the developer time. It's also been years since I wrote that article, so quite a bit has changed and you'll have to figure more things out.
On Premise ($70 + $120)
Something else to consider is that you don't really need a hosting company. You could host the server yourself at home or at work. If you're already paying for an internet connection, that might be a workable option. Here's a $70 refurbished computer you could buy if you don't have one already (I fully expect this link to break in the future, but keep in mind, future people, that cheap PC's aren't hard to find): https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5HA5DY4415
Note that hosting a website may affect your internet pricing. And of course there's the cost of electricity (not really sure, but I'd guess $10 or so a month).
SQL CE = Nope
I also second the opinion that SQL CE is not a good option for any production website. After all, SQL Server Express is free.
In fact, I just submitted a feature request earlier to ask that SQL CE be discouraged during installation: http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/U4-9866
Shared Hosting on VM
That $1,000/year (plus or minus) you mentioned for AWS/Azure may sound like a lot, but if you host several websites on there (assuming you have more to build), it might make more sense. That comes with its own caveats though (e.g., a performance issue on one site affects all sites).
Also worth considering if you're planning on hosting dev/stage/prod (could all be on the same VM).
Summary
For your situation, I'd probably just go with Umbraco cloud. Seems like a relatively cheap option that has the least friction. The on premise option might be better if you like to feel that you have more control over the server by being able to physically see it and connect peripherals to it.
Hi Chad!
Go with Umbraco Cloud - it's ~25$ a month and you get Umbraco Forms and Umbraco.TV for free on top of it. In addition you'll get your Umbraco automatically patched without lifting a finger and a great flow for sharing Umbraco assets between the hosted site and your local dev environment.
It's powered by Microsoft Azure and beats performance of shared hosts. A trial is free for 14 days, no credit card needed.
http://umbraco.com/cloud
If youre "OK" with a UK Data center, you cant beat these guys...
https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm
Been hosting for them for years, support is excellent, and they always ensure the latest Windows .NET Framworks are available. Sites run in FULL TRUST, and they even mention that Umbraco will work on it, even on the most basic plan..
You can get fullremote access to the Database instance, so you can just work from Visual Studio.
Proves you can get a "good value service" - if you know where to look.
Having said all that... Umbraco Cloud is great, but remember, UC dosent support all Packages, only ones which have a courier resolver. I largely dont use "Plugins", and stick to the core property types, so UC is now my preferred hosting.
Hi chad,
I have had a very similar doubt when i had to decide how to do for hosting of an umbraco website that I made for a nonprofit organization where I serve as volunteer. As you can imagine, budget was strictly limited.
That site was quite small (about 40 pages and no particular features, except a restricted access area for personnel where duty orders and general communications were published).
Finally we decided that a cloud server was the best for us, and we found an ISP that gave us a virtual machine with 2GB of RAM and 2 vCPU with Windows 2012R2 and MSSQL2014 Express at about 12 euros/month. We couldn't expect great performance, but our site didn't need that and we are overall very satisfied.
If I were you, I would evaluate a VPS with guaranteed resources from an affordable ISP, maybe asking a trial period.
Good luck and sorry for my bad english!
Davide
So many excellent responses.
I'm glad there are very economical solutions available. One I haven't seen mentioned in this thread that I've come across is softsys. They seem to have a shared plan for around $9/mo starting and dedicated plans for a little bit more. Has anyone been using them? I noticed that they give you extra MySql databases, but I had heard Umbraco isn't going to really be using that in the future. Is that true?
I like the idea so far of a shared plan, or an on premise setup as we get the site through it's infancy stages. Umbraco Cloud is an attractive option, but I'm curious as to how the performance would be for a mostly US based site.
Thanks everyone so far for the input! It is greatly appreciated.
To chime in...
Be VERY careful with cheap hosting providers.
For years I have been a happy customer of nitroserve.nl for some websites which I maintain at cost for fellow academics.
All was well until this Saturday, they seemingly suffered a catastrophic disk failure.
Customer support was almost unreachable and until just now I was kept in the dark as to whether any actual data was lost or not. Even after their status pages indicated things were well again, I could not get access to most of my sites via FTP and files were seemingly missing. Filesystem access rights for the IIS processes were not restored properly etc etc...
Turns out that for a few sites, all filesystem content was lost. Luckily, the DB's are still there but having lost the entire media folder for a site that is running a couple of years is not funny at all (all their backups are lost too).
This is turning into a bit of a nightmare for me...
I am fearful there really aren't any 'cheap' solutions.
Hi Chad,
If you are new to develop Umbraco site, then you can just need to find shared hosting provider. It will cost you around $80/year and you can find reliable shared hosting provider. I would recommend you to check asphostportal.com for umbraco hosting. You can find other Umbraco hosting alternative on http://topreviewhostingasp.net/list-of-best-umbraco-hosting-with-cheap-price/
Good luck
is working on a reply...