[thewhk]

I work for a VPS provider in the US. These situations are common and we usually just issue a credit and give a reminder to the customer to please secure their server

That brings me to my point. How did the hack occur? When you get a VPS you are fully responsible for what goes on in there. It is your responsibility to secure it and keep it updated. It's not the provider's fault you did not apply the latest security updates. It's not the provider's fault your Java application was using outdated and vulnerable libraries nor is it their fault you didn't set a CAPTCHA in front of your submission forms. Either hire a competent sysadmin if you can't take care of that yourself or find a provider that offeres managed hosting instead of a VPS, as that's what you'd most likely need.

There are some cases where it's the provider's fault such as the Linode BitCoin hack a few years back but mostly it's just poor server maintenance

[waxjar]

People that rent a $15/year VPS use it to run an IRC bouncer or a small web log, something you don't need to know a whole lot of sysadmin stuff for. They just need a machine that's always on.

It's hardly worth hiring a sysadmin for (I find that suggestion laughable, to be frank). Managed hosting doesn't allow you to do much else besides hosting a website in PHP, which is not enough for plenty of use-cases, including OPs.

[lucb1e]

> $15/year VPS

Do tell, where do I get one of those? Cheapest I know of is $60 ($5 a month).

[travoltaj]

Here's one that I know of: http://ramnode.com/vps.php

Other than that, I'm sure you can find something on webhostingtalk forums.

[briandh]

Check http://lowendbox.com/ , though YMMV.

[xrjn]

http://serverbear.com/compare/vps is a great place to find these VPSs, they list some of the smaller services.

[waxjar]

I rent one on BuyVM (http://buyvm.net/). I use it to run an IRC bouncer and an IRC bot.

[vacri]

cloudatcost has $1/mo small servers, or you can buy one 'permanently' for $35.