I've made a turn based HTML game (PhaserJS, not published on itch yet) that I'd like to host a server side bit to solve (a) simple online multiplayer management, and (b) hide away the <air_quote>AI</air_quote> logic of how the computer plays when playing the game, and (c) protect my game a bit by not having it all fully downloadable/copyable.

Realistically I don't need anything super fancy for hosting (simple ability to create some JSON endpoints that the game would interact with, some light storage to hold game state data, and the ability to run some logic code (its currently in JS, but could easily be ported to PHP/Python/C#/Java/etc.)

I'm expecting to release the game as free/cheap/donate... so not expecting to make a landfall of income to cover expensive hosting, but I'm open to paying whatever is actually needed to get this hosted.

Does anyone have any recommendations on some simple backend/API hosting? I'm currently thinking about choosing between 3 options but I'd like any input/suggestions anyone with experience in this area.

(in no particular order)

1.) basic web hosting (node/php/python) with whatever storage option they might support (mysql/sqlite/mongo or couch db)

2.) as above, but via a cloud IDE package that "simplifies" gluing these together (e.g. a paid Glitch/Goorm project)

3.) Azure (or AWS/GCP) serverless functions with whatever compute/storage they work well with

I think the serverless route might work well but shy of committing to it, I'm not sure cost wise what this might look like.

Any advise from those that have traveled this path before me?

If you're in EU, go with Scaleway. £2 for approx a month of 2GB of RAM, 50GB of space with Ubuntu Xenial, never gave me problems hosting a few Disc bots, so a LAMP server shouldn't hog that much power. Dirt cheap.

I think the US equivalent of Scaleway is DigitalOcean, but I've never used them, although I've never heard anything bad from them.

For multiplayer I think it would be best to use something pre-made specifically for the type of multiplayer style you want. A framework or service.

From what I can tell from the few html5 games i've released so far, theft of games is very much less compared to how it was in the flash era.

To effectively hide code the games logic would have to be all server side, just serving up results from input.