Hello LebGeekers! I wanna tell you about my plans and what i'm willing to do and i really want your opinion.
First of all, i'm developing 2 Android Apps that requires a lot of data communication online and so far all the free servers failed to give me good results so i'm seeking into participating in premium plan.

Finance:

Currently i have 45$ in my pocket and every month i'm going to add 45$ on top of that. So each month 45$.

Bank:

I currently don't have a credit card yet in any bank, and i currently have null idea about the fees i need to pay to open an account. Can someone inform me which bank is the best? and the cheapest?.
Also, i'm looking for a credit card that can send and receive money.
And what papers do i need?

Server:

First, i want to test the server for one month. And i'm willing to pay no more than 15$ for a month.
Then if it all works out, i'm looking to participate in 12 months plan and i have a budget of 15$ maximum / month.
What's the best plans?

Your opinion :

Guys, i need to publish the application in February 2014 and by then i should have 135$.. i can add a bit of extra money on top of that to fulfill my needs and what's required. Can you give me your opinion?
Thanks.

P.S : I have 0 ideas on that subject of matter
I can't help you with the other things, but concerning the bank, I heard that HSBC make you pay for paper work other banks don't.

I have a bank account with Bank Audi and I can tell you so far (Past 6 years), they've been great, and they are also striving to get the latest technologies to make your experience better. They have this new Novo thing in malls. Also, I've been to several banks, and my best experience dealing with banks was with Bank Audi (in different branches). So they are my suggestion. It doesn't mean they are the best bank in Lebanon, but one of the best for sure.
Thanks Obviously for the reply!

But you didn't complete answer me, do you have any idea how much does it cost to create a Bank account? and how much should i pay each months? can you give me more details?
Thanks again! your help is appreciated!
KingOmar wroteThanks Obviously for the reply!

But you didn't complete answer me, do you have any idea how much does it cost to create a Bank account? and how much should i pay each months? can you give me more details?
Thanks again! your help is appreciated!
I did not open my own bank account, so I am not sure. Contact a bank and ask tomorrow. You don't have to pay anything to maintain a bank account, but I think I pay 1$ per month to have a Debit Card. Sorry for not having any more solid details concerning this. But your best bet is to contact the bank(s).
1 - You will need a debit/credit card which works for internet purchases, somehow. You can't pay cash, not with your budget anyway.
2 - You should define what you mean by "server". What software will you be running on it? There are many types of server. We don't want to be making guesses.
Thanks dear rolf for replying!

1- Exactly, but can you explain why it's int in my budget? and why i can't afford it? Can you be more precise?
2- Web Server
Bank Audi requires a deposit of 500$ cash or cheque to open an account with a "gold" or "platinum" card, the gold one is about 1 or 2 dollars a month while the other one is for 4 $, plus you have a fee for the account every year, i think it's around a few dollars also, but if you are under aged, then well my man, you have a problem.
You won't have the right to open an account unless someone backs you, and it won't be a "full options" account, you won't be able to pay online, wont be able to close or withdraw all your money at once etc etc etc, depends of the bank and depends on what you agree on with the person backing you.
(please not that this was for me a long time ago, maybe those numbers or their policies changed.)

What i can suggest for someone like you, is a prepaid card working like a credit card on the net:
http://www.mypiccard.com/Default.aspx
the fee is a bit expensive (5$ for a 30$ card) but i heard that there is no strings attached nor the need to have a bank account / papers.
Many banks provide a Web Internet Card, you pay 12$ per year. It's only usable for purchasing items/services from the internet and can't be used in an ATM. So you can't withdraw your money from it. You can deposit up to 500$ in total without any extra fees. You can contact Bank Byblos, I'm pretty sure they have it.

About the web server:
- Can you configure your own linux VPS? if so you can check DigitalOcean, they are very good and their cheapest plan is for 5$/month.
- If you can't configure your own VPS, you can check Webfaction or Hostgator. They provide a shared hosting, with a simple GUI to do your job. I'd do with Hostgator, because it's easier for you to get everything up and running and they have one of the best supports.

In case you want a Windows server, I think your budget isn't enough.
I use sgbl, and I have the esurf debit card, it takes around a week to issue an esurf card and it costs $12 / year if you have a sgbl account... refilling the card with any amount cost $1

If you need a card quickly, you can always buy a "PIC" Card from any liban post, though it cost like $15 more than the money in it... for example, a card filled with $100 cost around $115

$15 / month is more than enough to get a decent server...

Answer the below questions, and we will help you better with finding the right server

- What kind of OS do you want the server to be? (Linux, windows..)
- What kind of webserver are you looking for (Apache, nginx, tomcat....), if you don't know, which language will the server process (C#, java, php..)
- When you say a lot of communication online, do you mean you want a lot of bandwidth, a lot of cpu processing, a lot of memory (RAM) ?
- Is your app adult/warez/drugs/alcohol/bots related?
- Which market are you targeting? Lebanese or Worldwide?
- How many users do you think the apps will have at peak time the first year?
- Do you know how to configure a server (install a webserver, firewalls, database, caching etc...) ?
KingOmar wroteThanks dear rolf for replying!
1- Exactly, but can you explain why it's int in my budget? and why i can't afford it? Can you be more precise?
Because if you had a budget of $50/month or something like that you can find companies in Lebanon who will do the hosting - and you can probably pay them cash.
Even if you can find one, I recommend against this solution anyway.
KingOmar wrote 2- Web Server
I wonder how hard you're trying...

Well, thanks for answering anyway. Maybe try answering Hybrid's post, right above mine.
m0ei wrote In case you want a Windows server, I think your budget isn't enough.
I have a Windows (2008 R2 Server) VPS on hosteurope.de
It costs 13 Euros, which is just a little above $15

https://www.hosteurope.de/en/Server/Virtual-Server/Starter/

The problem is that, their server management interface is in German. Now I see that they added an English version of their website, but I don't know if they translated the interface... I don't think they did, but I can check if you want. Also, their backups work once ever other time - it often "get locked" and you have to mail them for them to fix it. Also keep an eye on "minimum contract period" when you sign up. Otherwise, they're good.
m0ei And Hybrid :
That's a great solution as long as i don't need to withdraw money, but i urgently need a card that receives Money.

As for the server:

- OS : Windows
- WebServer Kind: Apache
- I mean a lot Bandwith and a capable CPU, Currently i have an android application that connects to an online database through a lot of scripts.
- My App is destined to Smartphones, and in the next version i'm adding a forum to it and i'm sure that requires a capable Server.
- WorldWide Market
- In the first year, i guess the 2 apps i'm creating should have more than 100,000 users.
- Yes, Definetly!

Thank you for your time answering my question :)
For servers, I very highly recommend Digital Ocean

https://www.digitalocean.com/

Full disclaimer, I have a referral code, if you register I get 10$. But that is not why I recommend it. I have been with them for 6 months on a 5$ server(1 core, 512 ram, 20 GB ssd 1 terra byte monthly transfer, 1 gbps speed), it has proven to be a very good server. Good latency, huge bandwith (1 gbps) their support is amazing. They answer non urgent questions in 2 minutes. Best of all. You get a free 10$ credit when you register, so you can try them out for 2 month, and if you don't like it you can move on. It's 4 times cheaper than any other server provider, you can get a dual core server for 20$ whereas it costs 40$+ anywhere else.

Use this coupon code when registering to get the 10$ credit: VPSERS10

Edit: I am not sure they support windows. But with windows you'll need more hardware and more cash to buy the windows copy+to buy the extra ram and cpu to handle windows. Why not use ubuntu? it boots with 20 mb ram
Your capacity depends a lot on how you code things, if you try to do things in an efficient manner or not.
If you code carefully with regards to performance, I estimate that a regular shared hosting should be able to handle that amount of users.
I don't know which company in particular have best performance, you can try to research that yourself... I just know that GoDaddy have a Windows plan, and a couple of other hosting companies I know are Bluehost and Dreamhost. The next step (starting in the $15-20/month range) is usually setting up a VPS. You will have to set up Apache and the other software yourself. Then again, if you have a lot of users and traffic you can also get your own dedicated server for $60-100/month, which should be able to handle millions of users.
PS: You can also go toward cloud instances, instead of having our own dedicated server... it may cost more for the same capacity, but it has many advantages.
Your requirements doesn't really narrow it down a lot, you basically want a perfect server or you're not really sure what you want.

For example,
Why apache with windows?

You know if you're gonna get a VPS or Dedicated, you're gonna have to pay for a windows license separately, which is around $10~20 / month, unless you go with shared host.

You can't install windows on Digital Ocean afaik, at least not on the 512MB RAM droplet. Plus you need AT LEAST a server with 1 GB RAM for windows.

Thing is, there is a difference between having 100K users in total, and 100K users hammering the server with concurrent requests. If you're expecting to have the 100K users using the app at the same time, then you're definitely going to need a dedicated server with a decent amount of RAM, probably even more than one depending on how heavy your scripts are.

Also, since you want apache, I'm guessing your site/scripts are written in php. You might wanna look for nginx webserver instead of apache if you're planing to have huge load.

Just out of curiosity, what will the job of the server side scripts be doing, are they only authenticating the user and doing basic stuff like small calculations and counts, or they are going to do huge calculations, image rendering or video encoding etc.. ? Because if you're planning on having a CPU intensive web application, you're gonna need a dedi, VPS or shared hosts will ban you if you abuse the CPU.

I'm not really sure how CPU intensive your application is, but if it's only normal database querying with some calculations and loops, my suggestion would be to start with a shared host, or a linux VPS with ~2 GB RAM, then once you feel the load on your server is increasing, you can get a dedicated or move to the cloud. By then you will be making enough money to be able to pay for the server.
KingOmar wrote m0ei And Hybrid :
That's a great solution as long as i don't need to withdraw money, but i urgently need a card that receives Money.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as i know, it's not possible to receive money directly to your debit card/credit card in Lebanon, you can look for options like bank audi payment gateway or netCommerce on your site or some abroad bank account with an abroad credit card and a paypal account.
You can always receive money by bank wiring, or western union, but receiving money to your credit/debit card in lebanon, I would love to know how its done.
Hybrid wrotereceiving money to your credit/debit card in lebanon, I would love to know how its done.
Why "in Lebanon". I don't think you can do that anywhere in the world. There are cards issued by Western Union, that you can use to receive funds, or other such things...

Anyway, I wanted to bring to your attention that I have a Windows VPS (with 2GB or Ram, I think), and I'm paying less than $20/month - I believe it includes the license, as I previously wrote.
Hybrid wroteAlso, since you want apache, I'm guessing your site/scripts are written in php. You might wanna look for nginx webserver instead of apache if you're planing to have huge load.
nginx is faster for static content, but there's not that much difference if you're mostly serving PHP, AFAIK.