I’ve developed a portfolio website for myself using Plone 4, and I’m looking for someplace to host it. Most Plone hosting services seem to focus on large, corporate deployments, but I need something that I can afford on a very limited budget and fits a small, single-admin website.
My understanding is that my basic options are thus:
I can go with a hosting service that specifically provides Plone. I know of WebFaction, but what others exist? Also, I’d have two stipulations for a Plone hosting service: (a) It needs to use Plone 4, for which I’ve developed my site, and (b) it needs to allow me SSH access to a home directory (including the Plone configuration), so that I may use my custom development eggs and such.
I could use a VPS hosting service. What are my options here? Again, I need something cheap and scaled to my level.
I could use Amazon EC2 or a similar service (please tell me of any) and pay by the tiniest unit of data. I’m a little scared of this because I have no idea how to do a cost-benefit analysis between this and a regular VPS host. The advantage of this approach would be that I only pay for what I use, making it very scalable, but I don’t know how the overall cost would compare to any VPS host under similar circumstances. What factors enter into the cost of Amazon EC2? What can I expect to pay under either option for regular traffic for a new website? Which one is more desirable for when a rush of visitors drive up my bandwidth bill?
One last note: I know Plone isn’t common for websites for individuals, but please don’t try to talk me out of it here; that’s a completely different subject. For now, assume I’m sticking with Plone for good. Also, I have seen the Plone hosting services list on Plone.org—it’s twenty pages long, and the first page was nothing but professional Plone consulting services that sometimes offer hosting for business clients. So, that wasn’t much help.
Thank you!