I was still kinda hoping that we'd eventually have a physical server in some co-location for our exit server. Or that if we ever got a fiber connection somewhere, we'd actually host the exit on or own server. Until that time, I guess we are going to need a VPS.

Digital Ocean is pretty easy to deal with, their prices are pretty transparent, we're unlikely to hit their transfer limits any time soon, they have servers on the SF Level3 tier, and the the "droplets" that we've been using have been totally satisfactory so far. We did get one abuse complaint from an IP troll lawyer, but I just told Digital Ocean that we'd look into and they were satisfied with that answer. I don't know how they would feel about us getting many more complaints.

Gandi only has servers in Baltimore, their prices aren't super transparent (they use that credit thing, and you get discounts for buying them in bulk which encourages being locked in for longer periods of time), but their setups are much more configurable (you can choose arbitrary amounts of various system attributes. I've never used their VPS service, but I imagine that it's fairly comparable, though Digital Ocean's droplet system does make for very simple management. The advantages I see here are that the company is located in France, so there might be some advantageous legal situation. They might be less likely to be bothered by abuse complaints. And they cold called us, which means that they might be willing to make some kind of deal.

I say we take them up on their free trial if we can avoid giving them a credit card up front. No harm in having another machine to test on. I've been meaning to migrate/make a copy of the exit server provisioning script to Ansible, so this would be a decent excuse to make that happen. We could also inquire as to their policy about abuse complaints?