u/New_Statement7492

I’m trying to get a Hetzner Cloud VPS, but all the server options are showing “not available” for me.

I’m based in Sri Lanka and was planning to use the Singapore location since it’s relatively close to Sri Lanka.

Is this a restriction for Sri Lankan users/accounts, or is it just a temporary capacity/availability issue?

Has anyone from Sri Lanka successfully created a Hetzner Cloud VPS recently? What location did you use?

Buying my first dot matrix and I'd like to hear from people who've actually run one at volume before I order paper.

Setup

• Tea leaf collection business in Sri Lanka, ~400 suppliers
• Each supplier gets one bill a month, so ~400 pages in one run, then nothing for four weeks
• Bills are in Sinhala script
• Buying an Epson LQ-310 (narrow carriage, 24-pin)
• Continuous fanfold — sprocket holes both edges, perforated between forms
• I wrote the software myself. It's a web app, so today the bill is an HTML page and printing goes browser → Windows driver → printer

The layout is already designed and settled — landscape, two columns, money calculation on the left, a daily kilos grid on the right. I'm not looking to redesign it. Two factories I supply to print near-identical bills on dot matrix, full Sinhala rendered by their software, so I know the output is achievable.

What I'm unsure about:

1. Is browser printing the right path here?
Chrome → Windows print driver → LQ-310, which I assume rasterises the whole page and prints it as graphics. Is that what people actually do, or is there a reason to generate a PDF, or go lower-level? I don't need ESC/P text mode — the Sinhala has to be drawn as an image either way.

2. Page creep. This is the one I expect to bite me. If my page size doesn't exactly match the form length, every bill shifts a little further down and by sheet 30 I'm printing across a perforation. How do people get this exact in practice — trial and error, or is there a proper way to set form length on the printer and match it in software?

3. Speed. Realistically, how long does a mostly-text landscape page take in graphics mode on a 24-pin? I've seen wildly different claims. If it's ~10 seconds that's a 70 minute run and fine. If it's a minute a page that's a working day and I need to rethink.

4. Form sizes. What continuous fanfold sizes are commonly stocked? I have samples from two factories that are the same size as each other, so I'll measure those — but I'd like to know what's standard before I commission a print run of my own stationery.

5. Is the LQ-310 the right model for this? 400 pages a month in one burst, then idle. Is there a reason to go up to a wider or heavier model, or is that overkill?

Anything else that catches people out on continuous stationery would be very welcome — I've never loaded a tractor feed in my life.

I built a dealer management system for a tea reseller (basically a billing/accounting app). The tech stack is:

• Frontend: Next.js 15 (App Router)
• Backend: Hono framework running on Bun
• Database: PostgreSQL with Drizzle ORM
• Auth: Better Auth (session-based, role-based access)

About the business:

• ~400 customers (tea leaf suppliers)
• 5-10 staff users max
• Daily data entry (tea collection weights), monthly billing with deductions
• Database will be tiny — maybe 15 MB/year of pure text data
• They want it to feel like a desktop app but with data stored safely in the cloud
• Budget is very tight — ideally free or under $5/month

What I've considered:

1. Free tier stack (Vercel + Render + Neon) — $0 but Render free tier sleeps after 15 min, cold starts are annoying
2. VPS (Hetzner/DigitalOcean ~$5/mo) —
3. Hostinger Node.js hosting — doesn't support Bun or PostgreSQL
4. PWA for the "desktop app" feel — seems like the right call

My questions:

1. For developers who build apps for small businesses in developing countries — what's your go-to deployment strategy? Is the free tier stack (Vercel + Render + Neon) reliable enough for production?
2. Would you switch from Bun to Node.js just to have more hosting options? The Bun lock-in is becoming a pain.
3. Is there a better approach I'm not seeing? Something between "run it on a local PC" and "pay for a VPS"?
4. How do you handle backups for clients who can't manage their own infrastructure?

Any advice appreciated. This is my first time deploying a production app for a real business and I want to get it right — it handles their financial data.