A few years back - around 2011, Redhat released a Free Cloud server tier to compete with Amazon EC2's offering (IMHO this was an attempt by the big boys to try to annihilate the downside of the market). While EC2 continues to offer free tiny servers, Rackspace bowed out; their minimum offering these days is somewhere around $16 / month. I came across some references to Rackspace continuing to offer free services, b ut this time only to OSS developers . The benefits are great for those who qualify; while it sounds somewhat flexible no doubt depending on the marketing gains to attracting a big name project, even somewhat niche projects are being offered $2000/month in free services . That buys a lot of muscle for the smart consumer. Jesse Noller is the man with the hookup. Send him an email to see what you can get if you meet the requirements.