Switched Hosts Over A Few Cents

I had been using HostBilby to run this site on a VPS, and the service has been great. It was cheap and reliable, and I didn’t pay much attention to it.

A little over a month or so ago, I used my card in a vending machine at a hospital, and I knew my account was going to be very close to going negative. So I logged into the account to check it out. I noticed a small fee that had something to do with international fees or something. That sent me into an immediate reaction that I was being scammed or about to be scammed.

I did some online searching and figured out it is a normal charge because of international usage. My web host was a Canadian company registered in Canada, so that made sense. I never noticed it before, but I think it was the first time I was using an international company. The fee lined up with the 3 percent fee, so I wasn’t concerned anymore.

Last month when we were in Philly, I checked my account and saw the same thing. I got into the same little panic. That is when I decided I needed to change providers. It isn’t good for me to keep seeing that and getting into the same place where I think I got scammed. I am cautious and astute about being scammed, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.

I am cheap but not cheap enough to worry too much about that small amount. It’s even a fair charge, I think. I just don’t like that it’s separate. And I am not expecting to see it, so it grabs my attention. I am actually paying a tad bit more for less now because I had a crazy deal before. It was very much overkill for what I needed, though. What I have now is still actually overkill but gives me plenty of room to tinker around with things.

I would up switching to a provider that I have had my eyes on for quite a while now. They just haven’t had availability, and that is how I wound up with the old host.

They have availability now but not in the location I wanted yet, but the one I have will do for the moment.

I just have this weird fixation on it being geographically close to Philly whenever possible. When something becomes available, I will definitely migrate to that location. My understanding is that it should happen sometime later this year.

Using a static website generator like I do certainly makes the whole process easier for me. Now screwing around with permissions and slight path changes if I set it up differently and have no databases to move. Just a quick rsync from the old server to the new, and it’s done. I could even just reupload it from my computer here at home, but cable internet has the slower upload speed.