₦airaland Forum

Been shipping a few small web projects this year and hosting is always the decision I spend too long on.

Vercel works fine for frontend stuff. But once you need a persistent backend — Node.js API, a cron job, something that can't go cold — options start getting complicated.

I've been on Render for a few things. Free tier is decent but those cold starts on the free plan are embarrassing when someone clicks a link and waits 30 seconds for the first response. Tried Railway briefly — pricing model changed a few times and I never know what I'm going to pay at the end of the month.

Been hearing about Hetzner from a few people — apparently very cheap VPS out of Germany. Anyone running Nigerian-facing apps on Hetzner? Curious whether the server location actually matters for load times when your users are all in Lagos or Abuja.

What are people here actually using for backends in 2026? Especially for small projects you're not making serious money from yet.

Thanks for putting this question on the table. In my opinion, it is essential to keep things simple for small projects. Likewise, you can use Vercel for the frontend and seamlessly integrate Railway or Render for server-side setup and functionality. Free tiers work well for experimenting with ideas, though cold starts can be annoying when the first visitor has to wait.

Later, I would suggest you select Back4app for further experiments. Yes, Back4app is a reliable backend hosting solution that handles APIs, auth, and databases with minimal setup, which is handy when you just want something running fast. With Back4app, you only need to handle client-side functionality, and it takes care of your backend operations. As a novice, you can also start with the free tier and then switch to premium offerings.

On the other hand, if you want full control and more cost-effective long-term hosting, a VPS from Hetzner is tough to beat. For users in Nigeria, latency from EU servers is generally manageable, but choosing a region closer to your audience will help once your app starts getting real traffic.

Hetzner is what we are exploring for a Golang Application, the prices are fixed, the next i would say would be Droplets they are cheaper, but you will need to utilize Docker-compose to get the best out of it, or Kubernetes as the App platform is too expensive.

1984 hosting paid with my fav crypto foe minor projects and major projects are run bare metal via nginx and openbsd on thinkcenter.