# Is DigitalOcean necessary?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-digitalocean-necessary/85260
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [April 13, 2018, 3:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-digitalocean-necessary/85260 "2018-04-13T15:59:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@katiesmith](https://meta.discourse.org/u/katiesmith)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2018, 3:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-digitalocean-necessary/85260/1 "2018-04-13T15:59:36Z")
I am wanting to set up a discourse forum on my website. I am paying for discourse now, but it seems in the installation “how-to” that digitalocean is the first step for setup
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### Author:  [@dax](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dax)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2018, 4:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-digitalocean-necessary/85260/2 "2018-04-13T16:02:35Z")
DigitalOcean is recommended but not mandatory. You can use any server that supports docker
[https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-cheapest-solution-for-hosting/24060](https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-cheapest-solution-for-hosting/24060)
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-digitalocean-necessary/85260/3 "2018-04-13T16:35:23Z")
It is almost the case that if you are asking the question, the answer is “yes”, but there are dozens of providers that will work. This list of easy-to-use providers was written with people like you in mind.
> [@Recommended Hosting Providers for Self Hosters](https://meta.discourse.org/t/recommended-hosting-providers-for-self-hosters/79562):
>
> This guide is intended for people who are not system administrators who just want to make Discourse work. This is a list of cloud hosting services that are believed to be reliable and easy enough for a novice to get up and running with as little fiddling as possible. You should be able to create an account, and a server on which to run your Discourse instance and still be able to pull the job off in very close to 30 minutes. I have installed Discourse on each of these, received an email from Di…
DO and Mailgun are what I use for my [$99 install](https://www.literatecomputing.com/product/discourse-install/) (but the $150 [Lite Install](https://www.literatecomputing.com/product/discourse-lite-install/) includes https, which I recommend if you don’t want to get your hands dirty at the command line).
Again, there are other email services, but I have found Mailgun to be easy to sign up and get started with.
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### Author:  [@Mihir](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mihir)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2018, 7:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-digitalocean-necessary/85260/4 "2018-04-13T19:49:08Z")
I am using linode (for server) and sparkpost (for mail). There is also vultr, aws ec2, google cloud (for cloud server) . There are numerous providers of VPS and dedicated server.