Ninja Mobile Trader VPS
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So this was a huge help.
I host about 20 sites on the side, and I'm migrating them off my GoDaddy hosting. They recommended I purchase Business hosting for about $650/year, which comes with a cert for all hosted sites.
Instead, I set up nginx on an AWS Ubuntu instance, created a cert via letsencrypt, and manually installed by editing nginx.conf. voila! Everything up, running, and secure at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, I now understand the cert creation and installation process.
I really appreciate the recommendation.
Another great option is Netlify + Github. Netlify uses LetsEncypt in the background for you. Your free private Guthub account contains all of the site html, media, data, and Netlify hosts it online. The only cost is ~$10/year for domain name. Otherwise everything else is free, including the SSL. This is the most cost effective way to put up a medium traffic website.