# 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:** 1 **Showing post:** 3
### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@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. --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-digitalocean-necessary/85260)._