Website or Blog (WordPress, Ghost, Static Sites)
For a typical WordPress site or a static site generator, 1 CPU core, 1–2 GB RAM, and 15–20 GB NVMe SSD is enough. If your traffic is up to 5,000–10,000 visitors per day, this will handle it with room to spare. WordPress with php-fpm uses about 256–512 MB of RAM depending on plugins. Leave some headroom for MySQL/MariaDB and the system. If you plan to install WooCommerce or other resource-heavy plugins, get at least 2 GB of RAM.
Game Server (Minecraft, CS2)
Game servers are demanding in terms of CPU frequency and RAM. For Minecraft (Paper/Purpur) with 10–20 players, you need at least 2 cores and 4 GB RAM; for 40+ players — 4 cores and 8 GB RAM. A CS2 dedicated server uses 2–3 GB RAM and heavily loads a single core; get at least 2 cores and 4 GB RAM. 30–40 GB of disk space is usually enough. Network latency is critically important — choose a data center closer to your audience.
Telegram Bot or Microservice
A lightweight bot built with Python (aiogram) or Node.js uses 50–150 MB of RAM. The minimum plan with 1 core and 1 GB RAM is sufficient even if the bot handles several thousand messages per day. If the bot works with a database (SQLite or PostgreSQL), media files, or uses ML libraries — increase RAM to 2 GB. For most bots, 10–15 GB of disk space is more than enough.
Database (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB)
Databases love RAM — the more data fits in cache, the faster queries run. PostgreSQL with a database up to 5 GB will run comfortably on 2 cores, 4 GB RAM, and NVMe SSD. For MongoDB with heavy writes, get at least 4 GB RAM and make sure you have an SSD — performance on HDD will be unacceptable. Keep an eye on the
shared_buffers parameter in PostgreSQL — it should be around 25% of available RAM.Development and Testing Environment
For a dev/staging environment, 1–2 cores and 2 GB RAM is usually sufficient. If you run Docker Compose with multiple containers (app + DB + Redis + Nginx) — go with 4 GB RAM. For CI/CD runners (GitLab Runner, GitHub Actions self-hosted), 2 cores and 4 GB RAM is recommended — project builds actively use both CPU and memory. 30–40 GB of disk space is enough for most tasks.
General Recommendations
Start with the minimum suitable plan — it's always easier to scale up than to overpay for resources you don't need. Monitor the load during the first week:
htop
For disk I/O analysis:
iostat -x 1
If the CPU is consistently above 70% or swap is actively used — it's time to upgrade your plan. NVMe SSD provides a significant boost in I/O speed compared to regular SSD, especially for databases and servers with many small files.