I’ve been learning C# with .NET Core and would like to start hosting my projects online, everything I’ve done is locally so far.
I don’t THINK I need a Windows Server host, they seem to be expensive, I think .NET runs ok on a Linux server? But when searching for a .NET hosting provider I see windows everywhere.
I’m hoping to find as low a cost option as possible. It will be mostly for hosting projects to show potential employers / clients etc.
where do you generally host your .NET projects? I’ve seen AWS / Azure / Linode recommended, but I think costs can spiral quickly?
Depends if you want a managed service or not. As stated by others, any Linux vm can do it: Aws ec2, Azure, Digital ocean, etc. Cost won’t spiral because you pay a fixed fee for the vm you choose (can be like 5 dollars a month).
The options that can spiral if for some reason your app started being used a lot. But likely these will be pretty much free:
A lot of cloud platforms have some sort of managed container service. Wrap your app in a docker container and pay per 10K API calls for example.
Another option is to use a managed service that handles the runtime for you (AWS Lambda, Google cloud app engine, etc.) These options should have the option for a dotnet core runtime. They can also be really cheap if your app isn’t used much.