Self hosting options- Free or low cost hosting

[harrytruman]

Hi everyone, I'm returning to my espocrm project after a long break. Last year I used elest.io to host my project. They are fantastic, easy to use (for non-experts like me) but a little pricey for someone just working on a pre-launch project.

Do any of you have suggestions for self-hosting or finding a cheap alternative? I'm considering:

-AWS (free tier)
-Google Cloud 90 day trial (includes $300 of credits)
-Supabase (looks like the $25 per month plan can work)
-Self hosting my project on a PC or server in my home

Appreciate any ideas or feedback. Once I get this project going again, I'd like to move it back to elest.io when I'm ready to launch. Thanks everyone!

[shalmaxb]

Hi, a decision like that depends on many parameters, which are difficult to judge from a third party. It depends on what you plan to do, in which country you live, the features a provider offers (regarding the requirements of espoCRM, which you find in the documentation) and many other things, which only you can decide.
Watch out for these requirements and how you can address them with the provider. Is everything scalable? Can you configure it by yourself and so on.
And in the end the yearly costs you will have to consider.
I had a look into elest.io, which seems to quite well equipped and scalable.

[harrytruman]

thanks, shalmaxb, I really appreciate the advice. In general, is it difficult to migrate an installation from one hosting service to another?

[shalmaxb]

No, not at all. espoCRM is genially programmed. To move to another host, here the minimum rules:

- have a current backup of your database
- have backups of these folders: custom, client/custom, data

On moving to another host, start a fresh installation of espoCRM, after that empty the newly created database tables and import you database from the old installation, copy the mentioned folders to the new webfolders and change the passwort (because in your old config-internal.php, which is saved in the data folder, there will be the old passwort) to the old one with this command:

php command.php SetPassword [user name]

user name is a placeholder, where you set your user name, hit return and set the new (old) password, as it is already saved in the imported database.
Then you should be able to login, execute a rebuild and clear cache. Now you should be able to login with your user name and old password.

[harrytruman]

Thanks shalmaxb. This is very helpful.