OP. To preempt the methodology and "you used the wrong host" questions:
1. Yes, $10/mo Hostinger KVM 2 is 8GB RAM, 2 cores, 100GB. The plan
naming "KVM 2" misled me at first, I assumed 2GB. Genuinely 8GB.
2. Why not DigitalOcean. Cheapest DO plan that matches the resources
is $24/mo. Not a meaningful price comparison at 2.4x the cost.
3. Yes the DNS issue was my fault, not Vercel's. The point of the
post is the gotcha is real and the recovery sequence isn't documented
anywhere clean.
4. The Indian card thing is a real pattern across many US-first SaaS,
not just Vercel. Stripe and Lemon Squeezy rejected my onboarding for
similar reasons earlier this year.
Happy to dig into any specific step or share configs.
