I wanted to put a new caresheet together to hand out when I sell animals at shows. The thing I find myself explaining the most is a proper setup. Of course people are looking to get away without spending any more money than they have to, I wanted to put together a "cheapest cage" list so people can see the bare minimum cost of a cage. Which honestly isn't much, 3 dollar tub, 1 dollar water bowl (just need the right shape), 10 dollar heat pad, (they can could flexwatt pre wired from another vendor there), 3 dollars of cypress will last you quite a while if you only got 1 snake. but then they cringe when I mention a thermostat. I have to honestly tell them I only have experience with 100+ dollar thermostats, I've only dealt with herpstat and helix.

So my question is what is the cheapest thermostat you could recommend without feeling like a jerk for recommending it?

also now that I think about it, whats a temp gun you could recommend? I have only used my proexotics one. I can't recommend the digital accurite thermometers/hydrometer that are mentioned a lot, i think they are garbage.