Guides

Practical writing on cloud providers, infrastructure, deployment and cost, from the team behind the BuyCloudExpress catalogue.

Abstract illustration accompanying this guide on llm inference on rented hardware

Running model inference on rented hardware

Self-hosting inference makes sense at some volumes and not others. The decision turns on utilisation, latency requirements and how much operational work you want.

AWS 4 min read

Abstract illustration accompanying this guide on changing cloud provider

A staged plan for moving to another cloud provider

Provider migrations fail when they are attempted as one event. Staged in the right order, most of the risk is removed before anything user-facing moves.

OVHcloud 4 min read

What these guides cover

These cloud computing guides are written for the same people who buy from the catalogue: developers, startups, agencies, businesses and researchers who need infrastructure to work without becoming a full-time job. There are fifty of them, each tied to the providers actually involved, and none of them assume you already know the vocabulary.

Where to start

It depends what you are trying to settle:

Choosing a platform — VPS or managed hosting: an honest comparison and Why Hetzner is so much cheaper, and what the trade-offs are.
Keeping the bill down — How to read a cloud bill, The egress fee trap and Right-sizing: the cheapest optimisation nobody does.
Not getting broken into — Hardening a fresh cloud server in thirty minutes, SSH keys, properly and Least privilege for cloud IAM, without grinding to a halt.
Shipping changes safely — Zero-downtime deploys on modest infrastructure and CI/CD onto a cloud server without a platform.

Guides and the catalogue

Each guide names the provider it was written against and links to the matching account, so you can move from reading to doing without hunting for the product. If you would rather browse the stock first, the cloud account catalogue lists all ten providers with their configurations and prices.

Nothing here is provider marketing. We are an independent marketplace, not affiliated with any of the platforms discussed, and the guides say plainly when a provider is the wrong choice for a particular job.