I’m looking for the most cost-effective way to host a public domain repository of files.
I create free CC0 VJ loops that people can download and use for their projects: https://mantissa.xyz/pages/vj.html
I used to host them on a subdomain of my website’s server because at the time is was easy to set up and I was just getting started.
Recently, I switched over to Linode’s Object Storage (@wendell mentioned it in a video), after noticing my website had been slowing down with people hitting the repo of files.
I thought 1TB of transfer per month would be enough, but boy was I wrong. I’m averaging roughly 250GB / day of transfer and haven’t even moved other public resources on to it yet.
I’m a freelance artist so I would prefer a fixed cost solution instead of a system that runs in to overages. Does anyone here have any suggestions?
I can fall back on what I did before, but my website will end up suffering and the connection can be very unstable, as more than a few people had been pointing out recently.
I’m happy to spin up a server that I manage myself, I just don’t really know where to start for this kind of thing. 
Any advice is welcome!
Take a look at soyoustart or kimsufi, those are dedicated boxes that you manage yourself. However you mentioned that you’d like your website to be responsive when its being hit by a lot of people, so it might not be the best solution for you.
I don’t know how much data you’re storing but maybe google drive…? You could mount it over fuse on some cheap VPS and expose its contents to nginx or whatever you’re using.
You should look into cloudflare serving cached content if you stuff does not change frequently.
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I picked Object Storage because it offered 250GB, of which I would say I’m using roughly 110GB at the moment.
I don’t mind my webserver and file host server to be different servers or services, I just can’t spend crazy amounts of money on hosting free files. 
I want to avoid Google Drive if i can, it would be nicer to just have a simple, flat file structure FTP-style server.
Alright, will do, thanks for the suggestion!
https://www.kimsufi.com/us/en/servers.xml
The smaller capacities are not in stock but 2 TB is literally 18 USD /mo.
They give you a 100mbit link tho, so soyoustart (250mbit link) would be probably better…? But it also costs more.
Yeah, that looks like a decent option. I’ll have to look in to how I can set it up, still learning a lot about the backend of webservers.
It’s a niche problem to have, especially on a tight budget.
Do you have a donations button or patron that you can plug? (on your website)
Nope, I only have one product people can buy to support me.
All of my other stuff is free, with YouTube tutorials for anyone who’s interested.
I want to make sure it’s available to everyone, everywhere. I have enough client work to live my life and support my family.
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It would still be a good idea to give people the option to buy you a one off gift. Like ko-fi for example.
True, I might look in to it at some point.
Given that this is permissively licensed content that doesn’t change, have you considered distributing via Bittorrent?
It doesn’t eliminate the need to keep a copy online (seconding the Kimsufi suggestion), but it could dramatically reduce your aggregate transit needs.
It’s trivial to create the torrents with the mktorrent command line utility or something like Transmission.
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Internet archive?
Another option would be to do webtorrents with an http seed capped at a certain amount.
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Thanks for all your suggestions, I’ve spun a Kimsufi instance and will experiment with the different solutions.
I’ll loop back here once I’ve found something that works!
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After messing with the Kimsufi instance, I ended up choosing a Contabo instance instead. They offer unlimited bandwidth and pretty high speeds for a decent price.
Finally took the plunge and was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to set up an Apache server with SSL, thanks for all your suggestions!