Hi all, I reply to this post because @asabhar mentioned Cultural Hosting.
I totally agree with @ctgraham, there are regular hosting providers for a few bucks/month to deploy your OJS. It’s up to you to choose this way and manage it all by your own. The hosting provider will only help with server side issues and taking scheduled backups.
OJS is not Worpress.
Currently, take this as a good advise. Plugins issues, permissions issues, database issues, buggy releases, broken updates, email deliverablity, are things that our new clients bring within their installations when hire us. So take backup before you start making changes.
See this topic:
That is the reason why IT departaments of many entities outsoruce the OJS maintenance. Make sense?
Recommendation
My recommendation is hire a specific OJS Hosting provider with maintenance included, so you can get really valuable help when problems arise. We do offer fully managed OJS plans deployed on cloud servers, and our clients use to say that are more than happy to pay the price for the SUPPORT (which is peace of mind). Any user who has have experienced the frecuent OJS issues would understand this point.
Below the link to our plans:
https://culturalhosting.com/web-hosting-services-cultural-institutions/ojs-open-journal-systems-manage-journal-articles
What you can do as OJS User
This is an important part in order to get a succesfull result.
- Read the excellent OJS documentation. 80 % of the support tickets we receive could find the solution in the docs. So, if you want to drive your car, learn to drive.
- If need training, hire training. It is simple to understand that any provider will not reply to tens or hundreds of emails/tickets to solve each doubt you have. (and believe me, some users act like this), at least will not do that if the provider wants to pay the bills.
That said, I think OJS is the best tool for editorial management and publishing.
Hope this helps other users when making a decission,
Best regards from Spain,