With the recent tragic at LxLabs which pretty much pushed HyperVM out of market, I haven’t seen any new provider advertising low end virtual servers at under $7/month range. While we wait for the alternate control panels to be developed (and kudos to providers who do not use a control panel or have already developed one in house), how about let’s talk about something else.
Now it’s my turn to ask the readers — what do you use your under $7/month VPS for?
I had a few ones over the years that I generally use them for:
- Host a few PHP sites that won’t make me cry if they suddenly go off-line (using Lighttpd/Nginx + PHP/FastCGI).
- Secondary MX for my domains (using Postfix + GLD for greylisting).
- Provide backup space for my more expensive VPS & production sites.
- Jabber bots + server providing various services (I’m a big XMPP fan).
- Private proxy via SSH tunnel or TinyProxy (I don’t live in US).
- Cacti monitor for all my other boxes.
Obviously not all of them on the same 64MB VPS, but I guess it is quite possible doing all that for under 7 bucks a month consider how much memory (256MB+ !!!) you can get these days from some VPS providers (oversold? loss leader? not my business…)
Now it’s your turn. What do you do with your low end box?
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LEA (LowEndAdmin) is the original founder of LowEndBox and the visionary who gave rise to an entire movement around minimalist, efficient hosting. In 2008, LEA launched LowEndBox with a simple but powerful idea: that it was possible to run meaningful applications, web servers, VPNs, mail servers, and more – on small, low-cost virtual machines with minimal resources.
At a time when most infrastructure discussions were dominated by high-end servers and enterprise platforms, LEA championed the opposite approach: lightweight Linux distros, self-managed servers, open source software, and thoughtful optimization. This philosophy gave birth to the term “Low End Box”, which would come to define a new genre of hosting tailored to developers, tinkerers, and budget-conscious users around the world.
Through LowEndBox and its companion forum, LowEndTalk, LEA built the foundation for what would become one of the most active and enduring communities in the hosting world, prioritizing knowledge-sharing, transparency, and accessibility.
After several years of nurturing the site and community, LEA stepped away from active involvement, passing the torch to a new generation of admins, contributors, and moderators. Today, LEA remains a respected figure in the LowEnd ecosystem, credited with launching a platform and philosophy that continues to influence thousands of infrastructure providers and users globally.
LowEndBox’s legacy, and its thriving community, is a direct result of LEA’s original vision.
– Websites
– Transferring files between computers (often better than usb stick or unreliable email).
– Testing connectivity with ping netcat etc.
Backup DNS
Still waiting for people mentioning dirty words such as “seedbox” or “IRC bots” :)
-WebServer
-MailServer
-FTP Server
-GameServers
-Backup
Backup DNS and MX, and I could probably do a little more on my $5 EliteDataHosting VPS since it has 160 MB RAM.
– Web, email, and FTP servers
– Secondary MX’s
– Experiment boxes
– SSH Proxy’s
Small blog without mysql, SSH tunnel
– openvpn server (accessing hulu.com from europe)
– small webserver
– testing all kinds of stuff
Hosting some small websites, mail server.
-Hosting a few small website
-Platform for learning Linux
Web (four simple php sites, apache, php, pgsql)
Mail (SMTP/POP/IMAP/Web, vhosts, ldap auth)
Cross-backup with my home server
Jabber (vhosts, ldap auth)
OpenID provider (php, mysql)
STUN
LDAP
All of it on one OVZ VPS with 512MB (burstnetworks US VPS) — 10 AUD.
Some static pages,
some hosted files,
SSH tunnel (I don’t like ppl watching my traffic)
Experiments
cURL Kung-Fu
fake open relay
@Chih-Cherng Honey pots?
@LowEndAdmin
Just a specially configured SMTP server. I’m collecting the source IPs of the spam mail, as I suspect them to be zombie PCs.
Secondary DR:
HTTP
SMTP & IMAPs
@Lowendbox Admin:
Do you know, that BuzzServers have USD 3 VPS package for 15 Gigs harddisks + 256 RAM. I use it for my community http://batam.web.id since a week ago and it works fine without any downtime ’till now.
That USD 3 package not in their VPS list order, but, you can find in a post at their offer in WHT :)
GeoDNS
Network Edge Node -> Squid and/or NGINX
@hasanul
look like your site is down right now :P
to bad.
VPN server