If you want to support the network, or mine the coin you like, you will need a Full Node. Or maybe you want to have a Masternode or some other type of node which needs to run constantly without interruption. The best way to do this is to rent a VPS – Virtual Private Server from a hosting provider and create your node on it. There are plenty of hosting services out there, but we will focus on the most broadly used in the crypto space.
Vultr.com
The company has 15 datacenters close to major cities across the globe and was launched in 2014. They offer a wide range of configurations with several operating systems including Windows, ability to make snapshots of your VPS, as well as a console for executing commands on your server through your server settings on the website. You can choose from multiple location where your server will be hosted. The pricing starts from 5$/month for which you get 1GB of Ram and 25GB storage space which is typically more than enough but bear in mind the fact that some Full Nodes on Bitcoin or Ethereum require quite a lot of space. There is an option for 2.5$/month but it’s more for testing purposes than for real life usage. The interface is very clear and straight forwarded, the support is good and responds fast and they offer an affiliate program also.
Digital Ocean
Similarly, the prices for Droplets here also start from 5$ per month for 1GB Ram and 25GB of storage with 1 TB of data transfer each month. Very easy to deploy and manage thanks to their simplistic design. There is an API which enables more advanced users to deploy and manage Droplets in a programmatic way also. Supported operating systems include Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, there is one-click apps as well – MongoDB, MySQL, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, and WordPress being some of them. You can get metrics for your Droplets, receive alerts when such arise and monitor overall performance with the Seamless Infrastructure Monitoring. On the downside there is no DDOS protection that comes out-of-the-box and they don’t accept Bitcoin as a payment method.
Linode
Linode offers standard and high memory plans for their customers starting with Nanode which comes with 1GB of RAM, 1TB transfer limit, a storage of 25GB for the price of 5$ per month. The price range of available servers is quite large and can get to 960$/month for 300GB RAM and 16 CPU cores machine with 9TB data transfer capacity. Datacenters of Linode are located at 3 regions – Asia Pacific, North America and Europe. There are plenty of features that are provided – Out-of-band console access, Linode API, CLI (command-line interface), 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) are some of them.
All three providers offer similar spec at same price levels, with good support and fairly easy setup process. It’s difficult to pick one for favorite, no matter which you will choose you will not be wrong. Other hosting providers worth mentioning are Time4VPS and Netcup.