The Complete Guide to Oracle Always Free Tier

This article briefly discusses the Always free tier provided by?Oracle, the only web hosting provider in the industry that does not charge for its free servers. I have covered everything below to get you started with Oracle and provide you with as much information as possible.

This article also has a step-by-step guide for setting up your first free VPS with Oracle. Read through the end to find out.

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What is a VPS (Virtual Private Server)?

A VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a server hosted in a shared environment but acts as if it is a dedicated server. A VPS host will allocate a portion of their physical server to you and provide the operating system, so you have a server to build websites, run the software, and host game servers.?

You will have your personal space, or Virtual Machine, on the server and can do whatever you want. You can use a VPS when you need more power than a shared hosting account but don’t want to pay for the expensive upfront costs of a dedicated server.

It is a web hosting environment that provides the functionality and flexibility of a dedicated server but at a much lower cost.

Compared to shared hosting, where hundreds of websites are hosted from the same server, VPS hosting provides more control over the server, including installing software, configuring settings, and customizing the environment.?

The good part is that VPS hosting is also much cheaper than dedicated web hosting, which means it’s an excellent choice for those looking for the best of both worlds.

Why do you need a VPS?

VPSs provide high security and privacy for individual websites and applications.

They’re an excellent option for website hosting, online stores, or any other online project that requires a lot of space and some degree of scalability. VPSes are like servers on steroids, offering tons of resources and the ability to scale up or down as your needs change. They’re a good choice for both new and experienced users.

They boost your website’s speed and growth to an ultra-fast level, which is something that shared hosting simply does not offer and lacks. If you are running a mission-critical website or project that requires no downtime or has high traffic fluctuations, you should use a VPS.?

Generally, virtual private servers cost as much as any good shared hosting and have a very low downtime.

Apart from hosting a website, a VPS is a perfect solution for hosting your game servers. Whether Minecraft or something else, you can easily create a server and play with your friends.

After you hit the limits of your shared hosting account, you should upgrade to a VPS and take advantage of the virtual servers' power.

Virtual private server hosting provides a way to host your website without the need for you to share resources with other websites on the same server. The benefit of this is that you have complete control over your website and can host it the way you want without limitations imposed by the hosting provider.

This also allows you to host multiple websites on a single physical server, reducing costs and improving website performance. VPS hosting is also a better option for high-traffic websites as it allows for better performance.

VPS vs Shared Hosting

A virtual private server (VPS) is a great way to get your site online quickly, with low maintenance costs.?

Instead of sharing resources with hundreds or thousands of other websites on a single server, a VPS runs wholly isolated from the rest of the web. This provides excellent levels of privacy and uptime, as your site will never be down simultaneously as another site on the same server. Because of this, downtime is much less of an issue with a VPS than it is with shared hosting.

With a virtual private server (VPS), you have the choice of resources. You can allocate more resources to your website, such as RAM, CPU and bandwidth, which results in better performance. This, in turn, leads to a better user experience and higher traffic. You also have the choice of location.

Unlike shared hosting, where multiple websites are hosted on a single server, All resources on a VPS plan are guaranteed and never upsold or shared with other users on the same hardware.

Shared hosting has multiple disadvantages over a virtual private server, speed and performance being the worst. Generally, websites hosted on a shared network perform worse than websites hosted on a VPS; in shared hosting, multiple websites use the same resources, and one will eventually slow down to make room for others to work properly.

While you get guaranteed resources on a virtual private network, resources are used by all users in shared hosting, and if they happen to consume a lot of resources at once – your website will crash and go down.

The biggest disadvantage of shared web hosting is the speed and performance of your website. Because all websites are essentially using the same resources, the load on the server is significantly higher than it would be on a VPS. This results in slower-loading pages, lower web traffic, and a poorer user experience.

The Oracle Free Tier

Oracle is a very generous cloud platform with an unmatched free tier that lasts forever.

Where Google Cloud Platform and Amazon web services provide a limited trial of one year, Oracle provides a free forever tier that lasts as long as you keep an account with them.?

The best thing about this is that you can use it for production and host your heavy applications. The provided features and facilities in this free tier are enough to handle a load of huge traffic simultaneously. Plus, the free tier comes with all the facilities that you would find in paid VPS hosting on popular hosting providers.

The Oracle free tier is idle for hosting any website, blog, e-commerce store, game server, scripts, etc. This is because, unlike the Google Cloud platform (GCP) and Amazon AWS, Oracle provides a variety of powerful resources enough to deploy multiple applications.

I have run a successful blog hosted entirely free on the Oracle cloud for over a year without any issues, and my friend ran his entire business on the same for a year before upgrading to a paid account.

You get access to premium hardware and robust infrastructure. This provides an excellent opportunity for new entrepreneurs and developers to build their applications without worrying about the limits on their infrastructure.

Follow this guide to get your cloud career started with Oracle cloud infrastructure.

Sign-up process [Step-by-Step]

1. Visit the?Oracle Cloud sign-up?page to select your country of residence; this will not affect the location of your cloud data center. You will get an option to choose the most appropriate cloud location later during the signup process.
2. Fill in your legal name and Email address and complete the captcha verification. Once you fill in all the required information, click the?Verify My email?button to receive the verification email.
3. You will receive an email with a verification email shortly; click on the button in the email or copy-paste the verification link in your browser to proceed with the verification.
4. Select and confirm a strong password and remember to make your password hard to guess by making it at least eight characters long, including one lowercase, one uppercase, one numeric, and one special character.This makes it difficult for hackers (who are constantly trying to get into your account) to brute force your account.
5. Next, choose a name for your cloud account. You will need this while signing in, it can be anything, and you will get a choice to rename it later from the console after signing up.
6. Finally, choose a?Home region;?this will decide the location of your cloud account and servers that Oracle provides you.I recommend you choose a location nearest to your users. The speed of a website or application ultimately depends on the location of the servers.This also decides the availability of resources; if Oracle shows you notice that servers are out of stock or limited in a particular region, choose another region that is closer and appropriate for you; otherwise, you will have to face a long wait time before you can launch and use resources.
7. For the next step, add your address details, including State, city, Postal code, and phone number. Oracle will use this phone number in the future with issues concerning your account, so ensure you provide the correct details.
8. Click on the Continue button to proceed to the next step; a pop-up will appear on your screen, asking you to add a card to verify your Oracle account.
9. Proceed by clicking on?Add a Payment Method?and filling in your?credit card details.?Oracle does not accept Debit cards or virtual credit cards. You need a real credit card issued by an actual bank. If you have an issue authorizing your card, try another card or contact the Oracle help team using the chat popup on the bottom right of your screen.Oracle will place a hold of $1 on your credit card to verify the legitimacy of the card and the owner.

Read more about using different cards with Oracle later down in this article.

Once Oracle finishes verifying your identity, your sign-up is finished, and it will redirect you to your?Oracle dashboard.

Congratulations, you have successfully signed up for the Oracle free tier now. You can now use and deploy free virtual machines, databases, networks, and a lot more.

Free Trial Explained [NOT to be confused with Free Tier]

Oracle Cloud provides a free trial for first-time customers. This provides an excellent opportunity for potential users to try out the platform, ensure compatibility, and experience the benefits of the service before committing to a purchase.

This free trial also provides a great opportunity to get hands-on experience with the platform, which can help users become comfortable with the basics and learn how to utilize the platform in the most productive manner. This experience can also provide a sense of security for users who are unsure about how the platform will perform in their environment.

The trial lasts for thirty days until your free tier starts. It includes $300 credits and access to all Oracle cloud services provided in an upgraded account. It gives you access to a wide range of Oracle Cloud services for 30 days, including Databases, Analytics, Compute, and Container engines for Kubernetes.

Oracle cloud trial is available worldwide in multiple regions; credits are consumed at a discounted rate during this promotional trial.

Remember, this trial is?different from the free tier, and these two are not to be confused with each other.

Always Free Tier Explained

Apart from the free trial, Oracle has an?always-free tier?that starts after your initial trial expires (30 days) and never ends. You get multiple resources marked as Always free eligible on your Oracle dashboard; any account can use these resources during the always free tier.

You get the following resources under the always-free tier:

1. VPS (Virtual Machine) with 24 GB memory with 4 Arm-based Apmere A1 cores
2. 2 AMD-based Compute VMs with 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB memory each
3. Six IP addresses
4. NoSQL Database, 25 GB storage per table, up to 3 tables
5. 10 TB outbound data transfer per month
6. Maximum of 2 VCNs (Virtual Cloud Networks) with IPv4 and IPv6 support
7. 200 GB Block Storage
8. 10 GB Object Storage
9. 10 GB Archive Storage
10. And many more…

You can use the 24 GB Arm VPS as a single VPS or as four virtual private networks with 6 GB memory each. This gives you 4 OCPU and an uplink of over 4 Gbps, enough to run any app under high load.

Oracle provides multiple platform images for users. As of now, this includes the following operating systems:

1. Canonical Ubuntu

2. CentOS

3. Oracle Autonomous Linux

4. Oracle Linux

5. Oracle Linux Cloud Developer

Other operating systems and custom image uploads are not yet supported for free accounts.

Your Oracle VPSes include multiple security features and monitoring tools, and you can have a total of 6 VPS servers – 4 Arm servers with 6 GB memory each and 2 AMD servers with 1 GB memory each.

This also means 6 different IP addresses that are automatically assigned to an instance during its creation.

You also get access to the Oracle cloud shell, a 5 GB instant shell that you can use directly from your Oracle account with one click. This is a new feature with the ability to upload/download content.

I have given a very basic brief; there is a lot more available in the Oracle Cloud free tier than mentioned here.

Free trial VS Always Free Tier

This is the most confusing topic when we talk about Oracle. People are often confused between the free trial and always free tier provided by Oracle due to the complicated and not so usual way these two work.?

When you sign up for an Oracle Cloud account, you get one month of the trial of an upgraded account and $300 credits which you can use to try out premium products that are not available in the always free tier and only to an upgraded account.

During this trial period, all resources are available for use, including the ones available only for premium/upgraded accounts.?

Resources available under the Always free tier are marked as?Always free eligible?but used under the free trial during the first 30 days of the trial. Since these resources are created under a free trial of an upgraded account, once your trial expires after thirty days, Oracle terminates these resources and reclaims them after another thirty days if you do not upgrade your account.

Once Oracle reclaims your resources, you can not recover them, so you must stay conscious of the free trial and create necessary backups.

To stop your resources from getting terminated, you can upgrade your account. However, Oracle will place a hold of $100 on your credit card to upgrade your account, and once upgraded, you can not downgrade to a free account.

This does not mean that you will lose the benefits of the free tier; Always free resources are available for upgraded accounts, too, and only charged for when you exceed the limit or use premium resources.

A way to save your data after termination without upgrading your account is to delete the created VM instance yourself and keep the boot disk. Storage/Boot disks are not reclaimed if you delete the instance and choose not to delete the boot disk. They contain all the data and can be attached to a new Virtual machine that you can later create under the Always free tier, which Oracle will never delete.

This has to be done within 30 days of the expiration of your free trial.

This applies only to ARM servers (those with 24 GB memory and multiple cores), but AMD servers are free from this.

AMD servers, which are two small, always free servers with 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB RAM, are not terminated and reclaimed by Oracle even if you created those resources during your initial free trial of the premium account.

So if you want to use Oracle Cloud instantly after creating your account, you should either use only AMD servers since they are never terminated, wait till the free trial expires (30 days), and then create resources under the Always free tier or get ready to keep your boot disk and mount it on another instance which requires greater technical knowledge.?

Limitations of Always Free Tier

Now it’s time we discuss all the restrictions and limitations that Oracle puts on you while you are on a free account and using the Always free tier.

Port 25 –?Port 25 is used to send emails. However, this port is blocked by Oracle by default to counter fraud and spam on its server. Users with an upgraded account can open this port on special requests; meanwhile, free users have to rely entirely on third-party SMTP services to send emails from their servers or two SMTP accounts provided by Oracle.

Help and Support –?Oracle provides absolutely no support for you if you are a free user. You can ask for support and help in the community forum. However, upgraded users enjoy paid support via live chat.

Terms and Conditions Violation –?If you happen to violate the terms and conditions of Oracle, they will suspend your account immediately and give you no chance to recover. This mostly includes crypto mining. Crypto mining is not allowed on Oracle servers, and doing so will result in an instant ban.?

Upgrading Account –?There is no return after upgrading an account. Oracle does not allow you to downgrade your account back to free once you have upgraded it, but it does not charge you either; for services you did not use, which is a common thing in AWS.

These are the only limitations I know of and have encountered. If I missed anything, please let me know.

Why does Oracle Provide a Free Tier?

There are several reasons why Oracle provides its resources for free. While the main reason is to promote cloud computing and the use of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) among students, the other reason is that Oracle is a premium hosting provider meant for large infrastructure and growing companies, and their free tier is a good way to attract future customers and entrepreneurs who are just starting.

They can quickly deploy their application on the always free tier, and when they grow popular, they can easily upgrade to the premium account and scale their application.

Users can review how their applications and data will perform on the platform and use this knowledge to decide the platform’s suitability for their needs. Users can upgrade their plan during the free tier period and take advantage of the platform’s capabilities and services. The different tiers of the platform allow users to choose the level of service they need and the ability to scale as their needs grow over time.

You can, however, use this free tier without ever upgrading.

Using Virtual Credit Card (VCC) for Oracle free tier

Virtual credit cards do not work with Oracle Cloud. They require you to verify your account using a credit card issued by a real bank only.

However, credit cards issued by?Cred?work fine with Oracle Cloud without any issues.

Oracle places a hold of $1 on your account to verify that you are a human and not a spammer. However, if you choose to upgrade your account, they will place a hold of $100 instead.

Over time, I have received feedback from multiple people that their credit cards are not working for this free tier. If that is the case with you, I suggest you retry with another card or contact sales support, though support has not proven helpful while reaching out to them on this issue and gives just general replies.

The credit card you add during sign-up is not used for billing, so there are no chances of accidental billing or random charges. The card used to verify your identity does not appear in your dashboard; you must add a new card or the same card again while upgrading your account.

Oracle vs popular VPS providers.

OCI is designed for large infrastructures and growing businesses with the ability to scale resources easily.

However, popular VPS providers like AWS, GCP, Digitalocean, Linode, and OVHcloud are designed for every user, basic or advanced. They provide multiple platform images that users can quickly deploy as a virtual machine/virtual private server and are easy to use.

Digitalocean has over 200 platform images that you can deploy with one click and easily connect with your domain and automatic preconfigured backups that you can pay for and use without any additional technical setup.

However, the same is not true with Oracle. Oracle cloud infrastructure is more complex and challenging to work with for first-timers, but it has a generous free tier for every type of use that is unmatched by any other CLoud provider mentioned in this article or outside.

Oracle provides powerful resources for free that would otherwise cost you hundreds of dollars on other Cloud providers.

Conclusion

Oracle is the best free cloud hosting and VPS provider for developers and entrepreneurs. It is a good choice for people who want to get their applications and data online as soon as possible and scale them according to their requirements.

Oracle provides a generous free tier that is enough to get your application online, but if you would like to scale your application and use premium services, you can upgrade your plan and take advantage of the extra resources.

Oracle is not for everyone, and it certainly has its own challenges and restrictions, but if you are looking for a reliable, high-performance cloud hosting provider that provides a free tier that is more than enough to get your application online, Oracle is the best cloud hosting provider for that.

Can I use a VCC with Oracle?

No, you can not use VCC with Oracle Cloud, but Cred.AI works fine with it.

Why is my Oracle VM terminated even if I am on the free tier?

The first month is a free trial. All resources created during the first month are automatically terminated by Oracle. Your free tier starts from the second month, and those resources are never deleted.

Why is my VPS not allowing traffic, and all ports are blocked?

By default, all traffic to a VM is blocked on Oracle VM, and you should create ingress rules to open your VM to the general public and use iptables to allow all the needed ports.

Is Windows VPS available on the free tier?

No, Windows VPS is available only on Upgraded accounts.

Can I mine crypto on my Oracle Cloud account?

Mining crypto is strictly banned on Oracle Cloud, and your account will be terminated instantly for doing so.

I got an “Out of capacity” error. What should I do?

Simply wait for Oracle to replenish resources to provide to you.