In a discussion about hosting Discourse, kyle987 continues from a previous thread, asking NateDhaliwal about cost-free setup options after learning DigitalOcean requires payment. NateDhaliwal clarifies that while nothing is entirely free, Google Cloud’s Compute Engine offers a free tier (with credit card requirement) and mentions paying for domains via Namecheap (~$1/month first year). He also shares using Brevo’s free plan (300 emails/day) for email and notes rebuilds on his instance take ~3 hours, suggesting tmux or screen for background runs. kyle987 acknowledges understanding, and NateDhaliwal invites further questions.
Continuing the discussion from Trying discourse and plugins for github:
particularly post 9
okay so @NateDhaliwal when I go to set up something on digital ocean it costs money you said you have a different way of doing it then I requested for the link to your free installer and then I asked if there are other parts that also need money that you have a free way to do
thanks kyle
A few things before I begin:
Take a look at Compute Engine in the table:
However, I pay for the domain. Namecheap can get you domains at >$1 a month for the first year.
OK continue
For my email server, I use Brevo, which gives 300 emails a day on the free plan.
I also forgot to mention, rebuilds on my instance take about 3 hours. But you can probably set up tmux or screen to run it in the background.
okay i follow
That’s about it. Anything else you’d like to know?