How to pay in advance for a decade or more of webhosting?

April 26, 2024 8:08 PM

So I have a budget for a project that will include a fairly uncomplicated website. The trick is that the state government appropriation for the project only runs another year, and I would like the website to be available for much longer. My idea is to use the project funds I have now to pay for at least a decade of hosting, maybe more. Where can I do that?
posted by LarryC to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

nearlyfreespeech.net is fairly well known for having a model where you pay up front and then they deduct from your funds as you use resources (pricing). You might double-check with them that 10+ years will be fine with an appropriate up-front payment, but I think it fits their model well.
posted by whatnotever at 8:40 PM on April 26 [8 favorites]

I was going to suggest NFSN too. I think I top mine up about once every five years.
posted by hoyland at 9:21 PM on April 26

Can you put the money in a bank account, link it to PayPal, and then set Paypal as the payment method for website hosting renewal? You will need to add sufficient documentation for anyone following you in the support of the website, and sufficient record-keeping to satisfy auditors of course (I retired from a state government, I know some of the issues around spending funds)
posted by TimHare at 9:36 PM on April 26

another NearlyFreeSpeech recommendation here
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 10:31 PM on April 26

nthing NFS.net - you can just dump a bunch of money in it, and that's actually the model they use for payment anyway. You'll probably want to plan in increases for domains (if this involves registering one) since, while NFS's pricing is real stable, domain registrars aren't. (Also the standard caveat that NFS is barebones - there's little hand-holding, no file manager, no cPanel, etc. But you can certainly run WordPress on it or something.)

A quick check indicated that DigitalOcean also allows for pre-pay but you need to email them. Near the end of the linked page is a question about prepay with the email to contact. It looks like you can do the same with Linode.

If you want something with more guidance than DO or NFS, DreamHost also allows for pre-pay. DreamHost does one-click installers and has a Web file manager and easy email setup and all sorts of other things.

One thing to note about providers other than NFS.net: you may want to check to make sure you can remove the payment card once you've filled the account; not sure if any of the other options will allow you to keep an account going solely on balance in their account. (A quick email to billing should resolve that - they just don't say explicitly.) NFS.net doesn't store payment info so this isn't a concern there; every time you pay you can just provide a new card number/PayPal account.

I host stuff at all three of these and like all of them for different reasons and have used them for a long time (I think my DreamHost account turns 20 soon).
posted by mrg at 5:58 AM on April 27

I've worked on state budgeted projects - and the context here is that all the money needs to be accounted for as spent. So no fungible tokens, cash in the bank or anything cash adjacent that would require someone to follow up and ensure the money doesn't end up misused.
posted by zenon at 8:38 AM on April 27 [4 favorites]

I think you want to be planning for 10 years of hosting. I'd worry that your needs in 5 or 6 years might look very different depending on changes in technology and laws.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 12:44 PM on April 27

Like Zenon, I suspect that this would not be deemed proper, and in the event of an audit, there would be Trouble.
posted by samthemander at 4:16 PM on April 27 [1 favorite]

Why don't you get a contract/sla with state IT for hosting. It's something that's done on the regular.
posted by j_curiouser at 4:18 PM on April 27

In my experience, many hosting providers offer 3-year plans, which makes me think they would probably be happy to accept 10 years worth of prepayment.

I would recommend just emailing sales (or using the contact form) at one or more of these firms to see whether they can sell you 10 years of hosting.

Also I personally have not used all of these folks, I have seen most or all recommended on MetaFilter:

Definitely offer 3 year plans, would probably be happy to take 10 years worth of money:
https://www.bluehost.com/hosting/shared

Definitely offer 3 year plans, would probably be happy to take 10 years worth of money, have a sale right now:
https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/shared/#shared-plans

Definitely offer 3 year plans, would probably be happy to take 10 years worth of money, have a 60% off deal right now:
https://www.mddhosting.com/

I have also seen recommendations for pair, although I don't see anything on their site about offering long-term plans - probably still worth asking:
https://www.pair.com/solutions/shared/

I hope that's helpful!
posted by kristi at 6:30 PM on April 27

https://www.namecheap.com/ allows you to put money into an account that can be used to pay for the yearly renewal of hosting. You would still need to deal with the ssl cert every year.
posted by Sophont at 12:57 AM on April 28