hosting · guide
Ship your side project for $0 (then decide if it deserves a bill).
verdict
DigitalOcean gives new accounts free credit — comfortably enough to run a small droplet for a couple of months. That's a real runway to find out whether your idea deserves ongoing rent before you pay any.
The graveyard of side projects is full of things that were killed by a $12 invoice before they ever met a user. The free-credit route flips the order: deploy first, validate, and only start paying once something's worth paying for.
The $0 launch, step by step
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Sign up through a credit link — new accounts get the promo credit |
| 2 | Create the smallest droplet (Ubuntu LTS is fine for almost everything) |
| 3 | Point a domain, install Caddy or nginx, deploy your app |
| 4 | Set a billing alert at $1 so credit exhaustion never surprises you |
| 5 | At month two: real users? Keep it. Crickets? Destroy the droplet, owe nothing |
What the credit realistically covers
The smallest droplets cost a few dollars a month, so the promo credit funds roughly a two-month experiment with a database-backed web app — or longer if you're serving something static. That's more validation time than most ideas need.
Wondering where to go after the credit runs out? Best VPS under $10 covers the long-term options.
Some links on this page are affiliate links — if you sign up through them, SoloStack earns a commission at no extra cost to you. I only list tools I'd run on my own server. Full disclosure.