What is cost of running pilot on Digital Ocean

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The discussion centers on the cost and feasibility of running a pilot Discourse forum on Digital Ocean for a paid tradeshow platform. WildfireForums.com seeks a low-cost self-hosted solution (~$25/month) to test configurations over 6 months before migrating to Discourse-hosted or rebuilding. pfaffman suggests a $12/month droplet is sufficient, plus a few dollars for Mailgun, and recommends using dashboard.literatecomputing.com for free automated setup (with optional paid support). Jagster reassures that Discourse is easy to install—even for non-IT users—compared to other platforms, and advises starting with slightly more resources than minimum, scaling as needed. They note that while setup is simple, structuring the forum for usability requires planning and iteration. NateDhaliwal proposes using a free dev install via GitHub Codespaces or dev containers for pilot testing, but itsbhanusharma warns that dev installs are unsuitable for UAT or production-like testing, especially on cloud environments. The consensus leans toward a modest Digital Ocean droplet with proper mail service as a practical, cost-effective pilot setup, while dev environments are discouraged for anything beyond code development.

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Hello, we want to setup a pilot test of discourse forums to create a paid tradeshow forum with display booths in paid and free categories. As well incorporate training seminars, etc.

It will take about 6 months to organize everything and test out the different configurations and have limited funds so considering setting up self hosted for the pilot test on Digital Ocean. Then when everything is figured out, build from scratch on discourse hosted or migrate from self hosted if its possible.

ChatGPT is telling me that its about $25/month for a medium performance Digital Ocean configuration hosting the discourse forum, and then a free SendGrid account for testing.

I’m an IT guy and done lots of Wordpress sites, but wondered if running a self hosted pilot of discourse is a big undertaking? Does Digital Ocean have an automated install of Discourse?

I dont mind hiring an expert for small bits of installation or troubleshooting, just dont have $300/month over 6 months for Discourse Business Hosted.

Thanks,
Glenn

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A $12/month droplet is enough. You can get by on a $6/1gb droplet, but I don’t recommend it.

You’ll also need mailgun or similar. Url be a few dollars a month, though they make it hard to find the pay as you go plan.

Dashboard.literatecomputing.com will install it if you’ll give it api keys for mailgun and digital ocean and your domain name. If you want support you can pay for it, but it will do it for free if you join the free trial group.

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I’m not an IT guy by professional, but I have or had lot of different types of sites — WordPress, Drupal, Moodle, Mediawiki, Gitea, Mastodon server etc. But I don’t understand docker, at all. With that background and compared to other apps, the easiest to start is WordPress and very close to it is Discourse. So that is not an issue, at all.

One click of DigitalOcean has some issues some times (very true with all of theirs apps) but the biggest questionmark is actually Meta itself. If poor admin has issues the first question is is this a standard setup and if the answer is yes, but it is one click of Discourse you don’t get support. Community may or may not help. But because installing Discourse is easy, if have anykind background from anything, doing it manually and spending about an hour is a good option.

Starting with bit bigger than what is announced minimum is just smart. The question of size is hard, because it depends. But starting from small and increasing the VPS when needed is an easy solution.

My piece costs on Hetzner ~15 euro a month, including tax. I had tons of content, but otherwise that community is quite small. Content doesn’t cost, except images, but users are more expensive.

I had some issues in the beginning, but I tried to use three different Discourses together several WordPresses, Moodle etc. with Varnish front of them. It worked, but handling those three forums was a bit problematic for me at that time. And when I realize that all I need is one forum and I stopped to try squeeze everything in one VPS my life got easier (yeah, I broke Varnish big time once and at that point all of my sites were down, because of all eggs and one basket).

The hardest part is building easy to use and logic structure into a forum. And with that I’ve wasted hours, a lot. But I don’t plan, I try and thinking comes later. Cleaning up unnecessary categories and sub-categories and starting use tags, and then tuning up tags, was an awful job when made by hand, ’cos I can’t use rails (or can, but I don’t know how).

So, starting a Discourse is quite easy, almost walk in a park (if mail system works). But everything else after that need thinking, understanding how users see and use things, planning and some testing. As every single system needs (and is more rarely done than backups at home).

And everything costs, but my WordPresses cost more than Discourse.

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Thanks Jakke, great insights.

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@WildfireForums.com What about doing a dev install instead for your testing?

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Does that mean building a parallel test environment in dev, and have live forum under another directory?

That looks ideal for ongoing testing of new plugins or upgrades in dev after going live so love the idea.

Thanks,
Glenn

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I meant it for the

Beacause you can use this method or this and do it for free.

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Dev install for any kind of UAT or production testing is a really bad idea. Running dev install on a cloud environment for anything other than development is even worse.