Free dedicated server hosts?

[LunaRebirth]

I've created a "game maker" that makes networking super easy and includes collaborative scripting in-game with friends that's also crossplatform.
As I'm getting ready to release the game/maker, I'm looking into testing the server with a host to make sure it runs fine online and assure me that I'm not going to have problems when I do actually start paying.

Are there any Windows server hosts that fit my needs for testing purposes?
Do you have any suggestions for making sure everything is running as expected?

Any feedback is appreciated

[CuteAlien]

Hm, don't know any free ones. What you can to is use your home-computer as server and create a dyndns account (which is free) so other people can find your system. Good enough for first tests. Next cheapest solution I know are virtual servers... but will be a few $ per month (price depends on promised CPU and memory you get - for very simple testing there are sometimes solutions under 5€ per month for Linux based VServers, don't know really about Windows).

[sudi]

I would suggesting to look at amazons ec2 instances ( https://aws.amazon.com/de/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ )
But if you need long cpu usage at a time dont bother trying the instances with variable ecu, they get throttled as soon as they used all their credits until they are not anything anymore.

[MartinVee]

I'd also suggest you find an environement as close as possible to your final ideal environment to avoid deployment issues.

[LunaRebirth]

I would suggesting to look at amazons ec2 instances ( https://aws.amazon.com/de/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ )
But if you need long cpu usage at a time dont bother trying the instances with variable ecu, they get throttled as soon as they used all their credits until they are not anything anymore.

I've been trying to use Amazon's ec2 for the past (literally) 4 hours and it doesn't allow me to port forward. Been through Google and back, no solutions work.

Tried Vultr but I couldn't connect through their server for FTP.

Overall it's been a long day of attempted productivity with nothing to show for it. Why is setting up a server on a different system so dang complicated?

Anyways, if I port forward on my router, run the server and client on the public IP, does that suffice as "working as expected" if there aren't any problems?
I'm guessing I'm going to get nowhere looking at free options and would need to pay a few hundred for some help getting the server online that I need.

[REDDemon]

You can find cheap dedicated servers (machines that are outdated and datacenters are reselling, trying to put to little gain), from little to 10$/year for very crap hardware, to as much as 200$ / year.

You have no guarantees about uptime, service assistance etc.

There's nothing free, and also free plans like altervista and wordrpess If think you could setup 2 cheap servers, try to connect to one of the 2 at random, wait some time and then connect to the other one. End of troubles. YOu will be probably able to host a hundred of concurrent players, though you risk incurring in some downtime, but if you can make a good profit out of that you will be able to scale to more serious hosting plans (like 50$/month dedicated servers with automatic images boot etc.)

There's also a gaming cloud service Photon, that allow to run custom servers and connect players, for few concurrent connections it is free, but cost quickly escalates, if you have thousand of players it is suggested you request a custom pricing from them because otherwise it would be too expensive. It does not have a C++ SDK, but if you are developing for Windows I think you will be fine with the .NET SDK (that should work in Visual Studio also with C++). (Note it is not a Pay-per-use service like AWS, you pay upfront for a certain traffic level).

[sudi]

I would suggesting to look at amazons ec2 instances ( https://aws.amazon.com/de/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ )
But if you need long cpu usage at a time dont bother trying the instances with variable ecu, they get throttled as soon as they used all their credits until they are not anything anymore.

I've been trying to use Amazon's ec2 for the past (literally) 4 hours and it doesn't allow me to port forward. Been through Google and back, no solutions work.

Tried Vultr but I couldn't connect through their server for FTP.

Overall it's been a long day of attempted productivity with nothing to show for it. Why is setting up a server on a different system so dang complicated?

Anyways, if I port forward on my router, run the server and client on the public IP, does that suffice as "working as expected" if there aren't any problems?
I'm guessing I'm going to get nowhere looking at free options and would need to pay a few hundred for some help getting the server online that I need.

Not sure what you mean by port forwarding but you just have to add the port to the security group the instance is launched in. If you launch the instance manually you can change it for every instance individually.







PS: The forum cut of the images....to see the full image open them in a new tab (hint click them)

[LunaRebirth]

Yeah I tried that.
It still doesn't allow me to connect to the server running on the VM.
Using telnet shows the port isn't open even when I add it to the security group

EDIT:
Forgive my ignorance, I also had to add it to the VM firewall. Now it works!
Woop, no more stressing over if it'll work as a public server, it does.
So happy.
Thanks so much guys!!! I'm super excited.