Moving onward from Solution 1, I have had been working with a few clients who were ASP.NET based. I had worked with many online hosting providers, the most being ServerSea (which provides Linux solutions at most). The problem was same, the frameworks provided and the time they took for migrations and upgrades etc. I cannot wait at all.
First of all, Microsoft Azure is a beast. If you can afford them, they are the best solution providers for ASP.NET based on Windows Server. Did you know,
they have trimmed their virtual machine prices by 50%[
^]? You can get a virtual machine and publish your project, as it was your own entire server.
Finally, if you cannot afford that. Use the solution that I had to end up with. I used my own laptop as the web server for my applications, and I forwarded the same method to my cousin who has his business set up in Lahore (in Pakistan). For more on this approach, consider reading my article,
A simple guide to setting up home server using IIS and ASP.NET[
^].
This approach, lets you update your machine, change the frameworks. Fix everything, even if that requires installation of a new software. For minimal projects, this approach is the best,
in my own opinion.