Re: Honestly dont even bother with shared hosting for this. Seriously, totally agree! You definitely need a VPS to avoid that lag. Since you are in Chicago, grabbing a DigitalOcean Droplet 1GB RAM 1 vCPU is a fantastic way to stay under budget while getting that smooth performance you want.

• It is super easy to set up
• Way faster than shared
• Totally fits your 15 dollar limit You are gonna have an amazing time gaming with your friends!

Regarding what #1 said about honestly dont even bother with shared hosting for this, they are spot on. Over the years I have hosted everything from Minecraft to OpenClaw servers, and shared environments just lack the CPU priority needed for games. You end up fighting with other users for resources, which is a death sentence for latency. Since you are working with a 15 dollar budget, you have plenty of room to grab a decent VPS that will actually stay stable. Here is my advice on getting the most bang for your buck:

• Look for a provider with a Chicago data center to keep your ping low. Latency is everything for smooth gameplay.
• You dont need a massive machine. Something like a DigitalOcean Droplet 2GB RAM 1vCPU 50GB SSD is usually more than enough to keep things snappy.
• Check out Vultr Compute Instance 2GB RAM 1vCPU 64GB SSD if you want to save a few bucks. Their performance is solid and they usually have aggressive pricing. I have tried many setups and a VPS gives you the root access you need to troubleshoot if something goes weird. Honestly, for the price of a couple of coffees, the peace of mind is worth it. Just make sure you pick a Linux distro you are somewhat comfortable with, like Ubuntu, since most documentation for server setup assumes you are using that. If you hit a wall with the installation, just ping me back here. You got this.

Honestly dont even bother with shared hosting for this. I tried it back in the day and it was a total headache. The server would lag constantly and crash whenever things got busy during a mission. It is just not designed for game servers and the providers usually throttle your resources anyway. Unfortunately you are just going to have a bad time if you try to pinch pennies there. You should definitely go for a VPS. Since you are in Chicago, look for a data center in that region to keep your latency low. I have had decent results running game instances on a Linode Shared CPU 4GB RAM 2vCPU setup. It gives you enough overhead so you dont have to worry about the game stalling out while you and your friends are playing. Just be prepared to do a bit of basic Linux configuration, but it is way more stable than shared hosting. Another solid option if you want something managed is a DigitalOcean Droplet 4GB RAM 2vCPU which is pretty reliable. Spending that 15 bucks on a real VPS is worth it because you actually get dedicated resources rather than fighting for scraps on a shared box. Just grab a VPS and save yourself the frustration this weekend.