Most appropriate way to develop a server on limited resources

I am facing a problem which seems to have few, and especially simple solutions. To get to the point; I have written a client application on Windows using C++. This client application takes input from the user, and is supposed to send this information to a server, which find users who's inputs match each other - like matchmaking.

How can I (an indie developer) with most ease solve this problem, IF and only if I cannot host the server application myself, and do not want to spend money on renting a whole virtual private server?

Most preferred, I want to write this server using sockets in PHP and just rent a web-server with unlimited bandwidth, but it seems to have far too many restrictions, related to timeouts (PHP's set_time_limit, Apache's timeout value and the internal OS timeout value).

So to sum up the question, and in a generic form; How can I as an indie developer create a server application which do not require using my own bandwidth and without expe开发者_StackOverflow中文版nsive purchases for items such as a virtual private server.

You can just code your server application in PHP as a webservice.

In your client application, instead of connecting through sockets and a using a home-made protocol, you just have to use the HTTP REST webservice you created. It seems to me even easier than coding a whole server.

Maybe you absolutely want to use socket on your server, but you didn't specify that in your question.

You can try a cloud hosting provider, such as Rackspace.