On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Nikhil Marathe <nsm.nikhil(a)gmail.com> wrote: I have been using VPS supplied by http://www.vpslink.com. Their support is excellent. They support a wide variety of GNU/Linux distributions. Also you can choose either OpenVZ or Xen. The cost is a little high, but acceptable for commercial ventures. As a very cheap alternative, you can try http://www.vpsstart.com. But I have not tried it myself yet. There are many other service providers too. Searching Linux Vps on Google will help. For non-critical usage, going for a cheap setup on a trial basis, for a couple of months is the best approach. For any serious use, check the credibility of the service provider first. Those with computing infrastructure stationed at good data centers should be opted here. Also timely support is very important. Check various Internet forums on feedbacks from their existing customers. For these transactions, credit card _is_ required. As one poster has suggested already, it is better to use a credit card of a friend and pay back in cash. Also remember that sometimes credit card is auto debited for renewal of the service, unless you terminate the service explicitly by giving termination instructions in time. Raghu

Nikhil, When you say shell account n socks proxy, people get scared if you going to run ssh password scanner :) or irc chat server, both of these are a complete no no with any web host, 95% of them run web panels and got no idea how to give you restricted shell access, it's too expensive as well as risky to run shell accounts for them. You can always pay a decent web host with good reputation with your credit card on file with them instead of paypal, atleast our host allowed us cc on file after we paid them with paypal for almost 6 months. It really depends on what you trying to do an how comfortable is the web host to have you as their customer. They don't like cc on file from a new guy from day one, simply since there are too many cc n paypal chargebacks to worry as well. Again these are my views it can be different for others. Thanks & Regards, Mitul Limbani, Founder & CEO, Enterux Solutions Pvt. Ltd., The Enterprise Linux Company (r), http://www.enterux.com http://www.entVoice.com On 06-Nov-2009, at 14:31, Nikhil Marathe <nsm.nikhil(a)gmail.com> wrote: