Free Server Guide 2026: Really Free VPS, VDS and

Most people searching for a free server are actually describing two very different things with the same word: some are after a free Linux box for a small test environment, while others are looking for a magical VDS that will carry production traffic without ever paying a cent. The first one is genuinely possible and you'll see it step by step in this guide; the second is a fantasy with a heavy advertising budget behind it, and this article was written to draw a clear line between dream and reality.

The vast majority of ads triggered by queries like "free VDS", "free VPS", "no-cost server", "free VDS VPS", or "unlimited server" steer you toward trial sign-ups that capture your card details, subscriptions that are nearly impossible to cancel, or shared boxes that have already been recruited into a botnet. Below we cover, in detail, the genuinely always free cloud tiers, reputable providers offering 30-365 day trials, free platforms specifically for game servers, and the path to building your own server from scratch on a home computer or Raspberry Pi.

What Does "Free Server" Actually Mean? A Real Definition

A server is a computer permanently connected to the internet that accepts requests on an IP address and runs one or more services (web, game, database, file, mail, API). The word "free" can mean four very different things in this equation: (1) an always free VM that the cloud provider permanently doesn't charge for, (2) credit or direct usage rights granted to new accounts for X days, (3) game-server platforms funded by ads or in-app purchases, (4) a home server running on your own hardware over your own internet connection, costing nothing but electricity.

Each of these four categories is tailor-made for a different use case. An Always Free cloud tier for a Discord bot, trial credit for a weekend hackathon, Aternos for a few hours of Minecraft with friends, a Raspberry Pi 5 for a permanent self-hosted Nextcloud — each has its proper place. Picking the wrong category is the most common reason a setup that looks free at the start comes back at the end of the month as a bill, downtime, or data loss.

Why There's No Such Thing as an "Unlimited Server"

The phrases "unlimited server", "unlimited bandwidth", and "unlimited RAM" you see in ads are an exaggerated example of marketing language. Providers hide them under a fair use policy. CPU throttling, bandwidth shaping, and IOPS limits live in the small print of the contract; the moment you cross 5% of real usage, your account gets suspended. The promise of "unlimited" rests on the economics of oversubscription — the provider sells "unlimited" to 100 customers, knowing they won't all be loaded at the same time, and turns a profit on an average of 5% utilization.

That's why we won't use the word "unlimited" in this guide. Instead, we'll show the real quota for every option — how many vCPUs, how much GB RAM, how much GB SSD, how much GB bandwidth per month, how many runtime hours — in concrete numbers. When you pick a provider that pretends limits don't exist, the day you hit them you won't even know why you hit them.

Always Free Cloud Tiers: Servers That Are Genuinely Free

Hyperscaler cloud providers (Oracle, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure) keep permanent free tiers as a customer-acquisition strategy. These aren't trials; they keep running indefinitely after the account is opened, and as long as you stay inside the quota no charges are billed. They're limited for production traffic, but more than enough for an API endpoint, a Telegram bot, a static site backend, or a cron job runner.

Oracle Cloud Always Free — The Most Generous Offer in the Category

As of 2026, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)'s Always Free tier is the most generous free offer on the market. You get two AMD VMs (each 1/8 OCPU + 1 GB RAM) or four ARM Ampere A1 vCPUs with a total of 24 GB RAM (you can put it all in one VM or split it across four small VMs). On top of that: 200 GB block storage, 10 GB object storage, 10 TB outbound bandwidth per month, two Autonomous Databases (each 1 OCPU + 20 GB), an Always Free Load Balancer, and an Always Free VPN.

ARM Ampere A1: 4 vCPU + 24 GB RAM, 200 GB disk — the technical equivalent of a mid-tier production VPS, permanently free
AMD VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro: 1/8 OCPU + 1 GB RAM × 2 instances — a backup option for small services
Block Storage: 200 GB total, snapshots included
Outbound bandwidth: 10 TB/month (a real 10 terabytes, not fair-use; the figure is written into Oracle's documentation)
Autonomous Database: 2 × (1 OCPU + 20 GB) Oracle DB — more than enough for a small SaaS
Region: the home region you pick at signup is permanent; closest to Turkey is Frankfurt (eu-frankfurt-1) or Amsterdam (eu-amsterdam-1)

Important caveats: ARM Ampere capacity is often saturated in popular regions; if you get an "Out of capacity" error, switching to a non-Always-Free region is not a workaround, because Always Free is only valid in your account's home region. Second caveat: card verification is required (a temporary $1 hold is placed and refunded); virtual cards (Wise, Revolut, EnPara) are usually accepted, but some BINs may be rejected. Third caveat: if the account stays idle for 60 days it's automatically closed — even if your VM is running, the account is treated as inactive if you don't sign in.

AWS Free Tier

AWS Free Tier comes in three layers: 12-month (for new accounts), permanent (always free), and trial (short-lived). When you open a new account you get a $200 credit ($100 for signing up, plus another $100 as you start using services). With that credit you can run experiments for up to 6 months.

EC2 t3.micro / t2.micro: 750 hours/month for 12 months (enough to run one VM 24/7), 30 GB EBS SSD, 750 hours of Amazon Linux or Windows
RDS: 750 hours of db.t3.micro for 12 months, 20 GB storage (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, SQL Server Express)
S3: 5 GB standard storage for 12 months, 20,000 GET, 2,000 PUT requests
Lambda (always free): 1 million requests + 400,000 GB-seconds of compute per month
DynamoDB (always free): 25 GB storage, 25 RCU + 25 WCU
CloudFront (12 months): 1 TB outbound, 10 million HTTP/HTTPS requests
CloudWatch (always free): 10 metrics, 10 alarms, 1 million API requests

AWS's trap: if you forget about the VM at the end of month 12, you'll be billed at full price. Set up Cost Anomaly Detection and AWS Budgets alarms on day one. Our Terraform Infrastructure as Code guide shows how to manage costs as code.

Google Cloud Free Tier

GCP gives new accounts $300 in credit valid for 90 days. The Always Free tier includes a small but real VM: e2-micro (0.25 vCPU + 1 GB RAM), running 24/7 in a single us-west1, us-central1, or us-east1 region. Disk: 30 GB standard persistent disk (HDD). Outbound: 1 GB per month, excluding North America. Cloud Storage 5 GB, BigQuery 1 TB of queries per month, Cloud Functions 2 million invocations, Pub/Sub 10 GB.

On its own, e2-micro is enough for a Discord bot, a small cron runner, or a WireGuard VPN box. But ping from Turkey is high (us-west1 ~190 ms); for latency-sensitive workloads, Oracle Frankfurt or Azure West Europe makes more sense.

Microsoft Azure Free Account

Azure offers a $200 credit for 30 days + 12 months of popular services + 25+ always free services. In the Always Free tier: B1S Linux VM 750 hours/month (12 months), B1S Windows VM 750 hours/month (12 months), App Service F1 tier (10 web apps), Azure Functions 1 million requests per month, Cosmos DB 25 GB + 1000 RU/s, Azure SQL DB 100,000 vCore-seconds serverless, Blob Storage 5 GB, 100 GB outbound bandwidth per month.

B1S: 1 vCPU + 1 GB RAM — Linux or Windows
App Service F1: shared infrastructure, 60 minutes/day of CPU, sleeps when idle
Azure Functions: 1 million requests + 400,000 GB-s
Cosmos DB Free Tier: 25 GB + 1000 RU/s permanently free (1 per account)
Static Web Apps: 100 GB bandwidth + 0.5 GB storage, free tier permanent

Always Free Provider Comparison Table (2026)

The numbers below are quotas verified as of early 2026. Providers reserve the right to change them unilaterally; before opening an account, always confirm the current limits on the official page.

Practical advice: for a single small service, Oracle ARM Ampere beats every other option hands down. But if you're not used to the Oracle ecosystem, AWS Free Tier is more valuable as a learning investment — AWS is the most in-demand cloud skill in the industry. With Ansible for Server Automation you can provision these VMs as code.

Setting Up an Oracle Always Free VM — Step by Step

The complete flow for opening an Oracle Cloud account and running Ubuntu 22.04 on ARM Ampere A1. The home region you pick at signup is permanent — it can't be changed afterwards. From Turkey, eu-frankfurt-1 (Germany) gives the lowest latency.

Oracle's default iptables rule REJECTs incoming new TCP connections. Opening UFW isn't enough — the port has to be opened in both iptables and UFW, and 80/443 also has to be permitted in Oracle Cloud Console under Subnet > Security List > Ingress Rules. Until all three layers are cleared, no connection from the outside world gets through. For detailed VPS hardening steps, see our VPS Security Hardening guide.

Your First Service with Docker + Nginx

With this setup you can permanently and freely host a small-to-mid WordPress, Ghost, Hugo site, or your own Node.js/Python application on a 24 GB ARM server. For SSL setup, follow the Certbot steps in our Free SSL with Let's Encrypt guide.

Trial and Credit Providers (Time-Limited Free VPS / VDS)

If Always Free isn't enough, providers that hand out a fixed amount of time or credit in exchange for a card are the second option. These aren't permanent — once the period is up, the account is either closed or your card gets charged. The list below covers the credit/duration amounts actually being offered as of early 2026.

DigitalOcean: $200 credit for 60 days — droplets are billed hourly, $200 will run a 4 GB RAM droplet for 8+ months
Vultr: $250 credit for new accounts (typically 30 days), card verification required
Linode (Akamai): $100 credit for 60 days
Kamatera: $100 credit for 30 days, extremely flexible shapes (1-104 vCPU, 1-512 GB RAM)
Hetzner Cloud: no trial, but the AX dedicated series and CX/CPX cloud are price-performance leaders (CX22: ~€4/month, 2 vCPU 4 GB RAM)
Alibaba Cloud: depending on the region, a 3-month 2 vCPU 4 GB VPS for new accounts (a popular trial from Turkey)
IBM Cloud: Lite plan, no credit card required; some services are permanently free, but VM quotas are tight
Cloudways: 3-day free trial (no card required) — short, just for getting a feel
ScalaHosting: 30-day money-back guarantee, card required

Golden rule for trials: set a calendar reminder before the credit runs out and delete VMs you aren't using. Most providers will charge you for an idle droplet/instance you forgot about once the trial ends. For a cron-style reminder, take a look at our Linux Server Administration Basics article.

Local Providers in Turkey — Not Free, But Offering Trials

Some local hosting/VDS providers in Turkey (Turhost, Natro, Plusclouds, Radore, PenDC, Vargonen, Doruknet, Nucleus, etc.) throw in 1-2 free months on annual purchases or offer a 7-14 day money-back guarantee. Treat pure "free VDS" claims with skepticism — ads claiming a VDS in Turkey for pennies a month usually involve overselling or hidden contract traps. When making a decision, you can use our What Is Web Hosting? Hosting Types and VPS vs VDS guides for comparison.

Free Platforms for Game Servers (Specifically Minecraft)

A meaningful share of "set up a server" queries comes from gamers who want to run a game server — Minecraft especially. Running a Minecraft server on a general-purpose cloud VM is technically feasible, but Java versions and plugin compatibility on ARM Ampere can cause issues. So game-specific free/freemium platforms are more practical.

Aternos: completely free, ad-supported, supports Vanilla + Forge + Fabric + Bukkit/Spigot/Paper. Constraints: auto-shutdown when nobody's playing, RAM is auto-allocated (typically 2-4 GB), limited player capacity, queues form during peak times
Exaroton: credit-based (1 credit = 1 GB RAM × 1 hour). New signups get trial credits. The server stops when empty and starts when a player joins — pay-as-you-play
Minehut: free 1.5 GB RAM on shared infrastructure. Connection through a hub, 10-player limit on the free plan
Falix Nodes: a free 4 GB RAM Minecraft server, conditional on watching ads or daily renewal
PloudOS: free plan 2 GB RAM, doesn't run 24/7
Server.pro: free plan 1 GB RAM, idle shutdown, pressure to upgrade to premium

The common trap on these platforms: "won't run 24/7". On free plans your server is stopped when there are no players, and bringing it back requires manual intervention or a bot/cron. For a stable Minecraft community, either keep an eye on your freemium credit (Exaroton makes sense) or run your own server on Oracle ARM Ampere (24 GB RAM can power even large modpacks).

Minecraft (Paper) Server on Oracle ARM Ampere — Commands

The JVM flags known as Aikar's Flags are considered standard in the PaperMC community. They're tuned for a 4-8 GB heap, G1GC tuning, and per-minute memory cleanup when no players are online. For advanced topics like plugin installation, world pre-generation (Chunky), and permission management (LuckPerms), look up dedicated Minecraft server guides separately.

Self-Hosted Server at Home — A Permanent Solution Where You Own the Hardware

The most sustainable definition of "free virtual server" is maybe one that isn't virtual at all: a computer in your own home, on your own internet connection, on your own hardware. Your only spend is a one-time hardware cost plus a few cents per month for electricity (5-10 W consumption for a Pi/mini PC). No provider, no card, no EULA, account never deleted.

Hardware Options

Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB): next-gen ARM, 4 vCPU + 8 GB RAM, ~$80-100 USD. Idle 3-5 W. Ideal for small WordPress, Nextcloud, Home Assistant, Pi-hole, WireGuard
Old laptop: installing Ubuntu Server on any 8+ GB RAM laptop that still boots is free. The battery acts as a built-in mini-UPS, a nice bonus
Mini PC (Intel N100/N200): $150-250, 8-16 GB RAM, x86 architecture (compatibility advantage), 7-15 W idle
Old desktop: any 2015+ i5/i7 desktop can still handle serious server work. Idle 30-50 W (keep an eye on the electricity bill)
NAS device (Synology, QEMU): some models can run VMs, a hybrid solution
Unused Android phone: a small Linux container via Termux or UserLAnd, niche use case

Step-by-Step Server Setup with a Raspberry Pi 5

Exposing a Home Server to the Internet — Tunneling vs Port Forwarding

Many ISPs in Turkey keep customers behind CGNAT (Carrier-Grade NAT); when you "open a port" on the router, that port stays closed to the outside world because of the ISP's NAT. Three main solutions:

Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared): completely free, doesn't require a static IP, fully bypasses CGNAT. Create a tunnel with cloudflared tunnel create, point a subdomain to it via a DNS CNAME. HTTPS automatic. No bandwidth limit (Free plan)
Tailscale Funnel: a private network built on WireGuard. Funnel adds public access (with limited bandwidth)
ngrok / localtunnel: for short-lived testing, not for production
FRP / rathole: use a cheap Always Free VM (Oracle E2.1.Micro) as a reverse proxy. Full control on your end
WireGuard: your own VPN, not direct from the public internet to the Pi but enough for personal use
Static IP + ISP port opening: some carriers will sell a static IP for an extra 50-150 TL/month — long term, Cloudflare Tunnel is more practical

Cloudflare Tunnel solves CGNAT, gives you DDoS protection, and manages SSL automatically. The answer to "is a home server enough for production?" is: for small and medium scale, absolutely yes — many tech community sites, including this blog, have run on a Pi for years. Our What Is DNS, Changing Settings guide goes into domain routing in detail.

Student and Open Source Developer Perks

If you're a student or maintain a GitHub open-source project, you can get to a whole pile of additional free cloud resources. They aren't always "servers" per se, but they're services that can do a server's job.

GitHub Student Developer Pack: $200 DigitalOcean credit (1 year), free Namecheap domain (.me 1 year), $50 MongoDB Atlas, Heroku Eco dyno hours, all JetBrains IDEs, Sentry, AWS Educate, $100 Microsoft Azure for Students
Microsoft Azure for Students: $100 credit (no card required) + some always free services
JetBrains Open Source License: if you're an active maintainer, the IDEs are free
Heroku, Vercel, Netlify, Railway, Render: small PaaS plans (usually with sleep/cold start, but enough for hobby projects)
Fly.io: Hobby plan with three shared-cpu-1x VMs (256 MB RAM) and 3 GB persistent volume — a genuine free tier
Glitch: free hosting for small Node.js apps (sleeps)
Replit: education plan + free tier (limited scale)
PythonAnywhere: Python web app hosting, free plan available

To apply for the GitHub Student Pack, send an application from your school email at edu.github.com/pack. Approval takes 1-7 days. With workflows in our GitHub Actions CI/CD guide you can wire up these resources cleanly.

Container PaaS: Running Apps Without Managing a Server

If you don't want to manage a VM and just want to deploy and run your code, there are Platform-as-a-Service alternatives. They're typically Git-push driven and expect either a Dockerfile or a buildpack-compatible app.

Vercel: for Next.js, static sites, edge functions. Free plan: 100 GB bandwidth, 100 GB-hours of serverless execution
Netlify: static site + serverless functions. 100 GB bandwidth, 300 build minutes
Cloudflare Pages: static + Workers. 500 builds/month, unlimited bandwidth, 100,000 Workers requests/day
Render: free web service (sleeps, cold start 30s+), free static site, free PostgreSQL for 90 days
Railway: $5 trial credit (one-time)
Fly.io: covered above, real VM-like control
Deno Deploy: edge JavaScript runtime, free plan 1M requests/month
Cyclic.sh, Koyeb, Northflank: niche PaaS providers (plans change, double-check)

On these platforms, cold start (waking from sleep) and spin down (idle shutdown) are unchanging facts of free-plan life. The first request can be delayed by 5-30 seconds. Not enough for production; reasonable for development/staging/small community projects.

"Setting Up a Server" — General Method and Stages

Whatever platform you pick, the standard stages of setting up a server are below; skipping this order leads to security or stability issues down the line. We cover each step in detail in our Linux Server Administration Basics, VPS Security Hardening, and Fail2ban Guide articles.

1. Hardware/VM provisioning: create a VM at the cloud provider or install the OS on a physical machine
2. SSH key auth + disable password: do this in the first minute
3. Sudo user + disable root login: PermitRootLogin no
4. Firewall: close unnecessary ports with UFW or nftables
5. Fail2ban: auto-ban brute-force SSH attacks
6. Automatic security updates: unattended-upgrades
7. Time sync: chrony or systemd-timesyncd active
8. Hostname + reverse DNS: must be configured correctly
9. Monitoring: at minimum htop + journalctl, ideally Prometheus/Grafana
10. Backup: think about it on day one, not on the last day
11. Documentation: write down what you set up, you won't remember in 6 months

12 Traps to Watch For When Choosing a Free Server

If you see a "100% free server" headline in an ad, blog post, or YouTube video, check the 12 items below. If the answer is "yes" to even one of them, walk away.

1. Does it ask for a card? Trials always do; permanent freebies (Aternos, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages) don't
2. Is auto-billing on? Oracle, AWS, GCP — on all of them "Set spend limit" or "AWS Budgets alert" should be configured day one
3. What happens when the trial ends? Is data kept for 30-90 days, or wiped immediately?
4. Which country/region? A VM in the US or Asia means 200+ ms of latency from Turkey
5. Is the bandwidth limit clearly stated? If they say "unlimited", find the fair-use clause
6. Is there an SLA? Free tiers are usually best-effort
7. Are backups included? Usually not — set up your own backup strategy
8. What does the ToS say about exit? Some providers wipe your data after 30 days, others keep it but cut off your access
9. Are there ads or tracking? Free game host platforms drop pixels/cookies on your account
10. Which protocols are blocked? Some providers block SMTP (port 25) — you can't run a mail server
11. Does the ToS restrict political content / game types? Cloudflare Pages blocks certain content
12. What's the account suspension rule? If malicious-traffic detection false-positives on you, your account can be frozen within 24 hours

Performance Expectations — Free vs Paid Comparison

What's the real difference between a free VM and a $5/month Hetzner CX22? The table below summarizes example measurements made from Turkey (an Istanbul ISP). The numbers are averaged from synthetic benchmarks; your actual workload will vary.

As you can see, Oracle ARM Ampere beats most paid VPS options on CPU performance — but it has a burst-capacity limit, and sustained 80%+ CPU load gets throttled. The advantage of $5-10 paid VPSes is consistency, guaranteed resources, and ticket support. For a standalone Discord bot or a small webhook receiver, free options are enough.

Backup and Disaster Recovery — A Must Even on Free Servers

Free-tier servers can have a bad day: the account gets suspended, region capacity drops, the provider's policy changes. Setting up backup in the first week is not optional. Apply three different strategies in layers.

For backup destinations, consider Cloudflare R2 (10 GB free), Backblaze B2 (10 GB free, cheap egress), Wasabi (1 TB trial), AWS S3 (5 GB free for 12 months). For details, definitely read the 3-2-1 rule in our Database Backup Strategies guide.

Domain and SSL — Companions That Back Your Server

The domain you'll attach to a free server is usually paid (around $8-15 USD for the first year), but there are alternatives: GitHub Student Pack members get a free .me for 1 year, FreeDNS and DuckDNS provide free subdomains (yourname.duckdns.org), and Cloudflare DNS management is always free. SSL is permanently free thanks to Let's Encrypt; Certbot updates the Nginx/Apache config in a single command and quietly handles 60-day renewals via a systemd timer.

Mail Server — Things You Shouldn't Do on a Free Server

Setting up an SMTP outbound mail server on a free tier or home server is technically possible but practically unusable. The reasons: many cloud providers block port 25 (Oracle, GCP, Azure all closed by default), residential IPs are pre-blocked on every major SPAM list, and even with SPF/DKIM/DMARC configured, big inboxes (Gmail, Outlook) filter new sender domains aggressively. The fix: SaaS services with generous free tiers for transactional mail — Resend (3,000 mails/month free), Brevo (300 mails/day free), MailerSend (3,000/month free), Postmark (100/month free), AWS SES (62,000 mails/month free from EC2 for 12 months, then cheap). If self-hosting a mail server is worth it for purely personal mail that's a different story, but not for transactional.

Cost Comparison — Free, or Low-Budget Paid?

If you do the cost math for a 6-month hobby project: Oracle Always Free is $0 (besides your time), Hetzner CX22 is around €24 (~$26 USD), local Turkish SMB VDS is around 600-1500 TL/month (roughly $20-50 USD). If your project is still alive a year later, the mental peace of mind from a small paid VPS is worth $3-5/month; if the project will be dead in 3 months, Always Free is enough. Searching for "Free VDS VPS" most of the time really means "mentally postponing the buying decision" — the decision tree is clear: validate need first, build the MVP on free tier, get ready to pay when traffic and demand show up. Relying on a free tier for months or years means a painful migration when scale finally arrives.

Legal Notes and Server Responsibility in Turkey

If you operate a server in Turkey (local or abroad, paid or free), Law 5651, KVKK, and content responsibility regulations apply. A complaint or access ban triggered by a service hosted on your home server is your personal responsibility. Your ISP's terms of use may forbid "running a server" (especially on some cable/fiber home plans); for professional use, a commercial subscription or an overseas provider is preferable. For your obligations around data retention, logging, and KVKK compliance, review our OWASP Top 10 2026 and VPS Security Hardening guides; before launching a commercial SaaS, a legal advisor is essential.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Turkish providers advertising "free VDS" for real?

99% are not. Real ones typically tack a 1-2 month bonus onto annual purchases or offer a 14-day money-back guarantee — that's not "free", it's the marketing language for "risk-free trial". There is no reputable provider in Turkey selling a genuinely free VDS, because the cost of a VDS (hardware, datacenter, bandwidth) cannot be zero.

Will Oracle Cloud take my card details?

Yes, it requires card details for account verification. It places a temporary $1 hold and refunds it. As long as you stay within the Always Free quotas, no bill is generated. But if you accidentally provision a paid resource (e.g. larger block storage, paid load balancer), you'll be charged — that's why Cost Tracking and Budget Alerts must be set up on day one.

Aternos vs Exaroton — which is better?

Aternos is completely free but on shared infrastructure, with potential queues, capped at 2-4 GB RAM and limited control. Exaroton is credit-based (you pay real money but only when running); more control, fewer queues, better modpack support. For 5-10 players on vanilla, Aternos is enough; for 10+ players, modpacks, or always-online, Exaroton or your own VM makes more sense.

Is GitHub Pages free, and does a home server work without a static IP?

GitHub Pages is completely free — enough for publishing static HTML/CSS/JS and Jekyll. Limits: 100 GB bandwidth/month (soft), 10 builds/month, 1 GB per repo. Custom domain + Let's Encrypt SSL are automatic; you can't run server-side code (PHP, Node.js). As for static IP: with Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale Funnel, or using a small Always Free VM as a reverse proxy (FRP, rathole), you can drop the static IP requirement entirely. Cloudflare Tunnel is the simplest solution; it bypasses CGNAT, automates SSL, and bonus DDoS protection.

Checklist — When Setting Up a New Free Server

[ ] Account creation + card verification (if applicable)
[ ] Define a Cost/Budget alert (Oracle, AWS, GCP, Azure)
[ ] Create the VM, pick the right region (close to Turkey)
[ ] SSH key auth + disable password
[ ] Disable root login, create a sudo user
[ ] UFW + fail2ban + unattended-upgrades
[ ] Hostname + time synchronization
[ ] Swap file (mandatory if RAM<8 GB)
[ ] Connect Cloudflare DNS, set up SSL
[ ] First app deploy + test
[ ] Write a backup script + add to cron
[ ] Configure uptime monitoring (UptimeRobot, etc.)
[ ] Documentation file: write down what you did
[ ] 30-day calendar reminder for review

Turn this list into a written document. Setting up a server and not remembering what you did months later is the most common mistake.

Sources

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