When looking for an affordable option to host their website, lots of people turn to basic shared web hosting services. And why not? They’re cheap and usually provide a good enough service. However, as your website grows (and hopefully it will), you’ll find that its needs are growing as well - that's when you might find yourself turning to a VPS hosting provider.
When those simple services just won’t do anymore, you’ll have to start looking for a host that can provide you with a virtual private server (VPS) at an acceptable price. VPS hosting is a step up from shared hosting as it provides more power, speed, and advanced features that fast-growing businesses are usually in need of.
As is the case with shared hosting, the online sphere has an abundance of VPS hosting providers, so you might find yourself overwhelmed with great offers. To assist you in the search for a perfect fit, we bring you a list of the 10 best VPS providers.
1. Hostwinds
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Offering as many as 10 VPS hosting packages, Hostwinds does a good job in making its platform suitable for both large businesses and newcomers to the website hosting sphere.
The basic Tier One package at $4.49/month doesn’t seem like much, considering that it includes only 30GB of storage, one CPU core, and 1GB RAM, as well as limiting your bandwidth to 1TB. However, this might be enough for smaller businesses and can even be expanded with various features for an extra payment.
Jumping to $17.09/month, the mid-range Tier Four offers 100GB of disk space, two CPU cores, 6GB RAM, and 2TB bandwidth. Ideal for large companies, the priciest Tier Ten comes with 750GB of disk space, as many as 16 CPU cores, 96GB RAM, and 9TB of bandwidth. It costs a whopping $269.09/month.
Every plan has its own features and perks, such as the support for Windows Server 2008, 2012, or 2016 for an additional $5/month. They also have lots in common, like 1Gbps ports, free website transfer, snapshots, nightly backups, custom ISOs, an enterprise-level firewall, as well as a “99.9999%” uptime guarantee. Hostwinds offers various money-back guarantees, including the 30-day one for annual, biennial, and triennial billing cycles, and an unfavorable 48-hour one for monthly, quarterly, or semiannual cycles.
2. Namecheap
Namecheap is an old player in the web hosting field that, unlike Hostwinds, doesn’t boast with a wide array of pricing plans, although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The company is keeping it simple by offering only two packages, which may be ideal for beginners and all those who don’t like being overwhelmed with so many options to choose from.
Pulsar is the name of the cheaper of the two plans, and its pricing starts at $11.74/month (billed annually). This package includes 40GB SSD RAID 10 storage, two CPU cores, 2GB RAM, 1000GB bandwidth, as well as one dedicated IP.
The more expensive Quasar option at $19.66/month (billed annually) increases the capabilities to 120GB of storage, four CPU cores, 6GB RAM, 3000GB bandwidth, and up to two dedicated IPs. If this isn’t enough, you can also purchase additional RAM, disk space, bandwidth, dedicated IPs, and extra features like cPanel and Softaculous script installer.
Both plans are covered by backups, customized configuration options, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
3. OVH
OVH has several inexpensive options for your VPS hosting needs, starting with the VPS SSD 1 package that includes 20GB SSD storage, one CPU core, and 2GB RAM, at a measly £2.99/month ($3.94), billed annually.
It is followed by the VPS SSD 2 option at £4.99/month ($6.57) accompanied by 40GB storage, one CPU core, and 4GB RAM, while the priciest VPS SSD 3 at £10.99/month ($14.48) will get you 80GB SSD storage, two CPU cores, and 8GB RAM. Additional storage can be purchased.
The speeds of all the plans are somewhat inferior to the competition - only 100Mbps, while there are no limitations on bandwidth, except for the Asia-Pacific region. Every plan also includes simple DDoS protection.
OVH’s main selling point is the large selection of hosting locations - the UK, Australia, US, Singapore, and a few places in Central Europe. Additionally, a dedicated proprietary control panel facilitates easy management of your VPS, without the need to purchase a cPanel license.
Those less experienced with VPS hosting might not feel comfortable with the fact that customer support is only available via phone, during UK working hours (Monday-Friday, 9 am-6 pm UK time), but there's a 99.95% uptime guarantee.
4. Inmotion Hosting
Inmotion Hosting offers fast and reliable managed VPS hosting under three pricing plans. The cheapest is the VPS-1000HA-S option at $17.99/month if you choose the 3-year commitment. It will get you the essentials - 75GB storage, 4GB RAM, 4TB monthly data transfer, and three dedicated IPs.
The pricier plans at $29.99/month and $49.99/month expand upon these capabilities with the top-of-the-line plan providing as much as 260GB of disk space and 6TB of traffic.
For an additional $5/month, you can get yourself the Softaculous app installer with 440+ different apps and scripts. All the plans include a free SSL, Launch Assist, full cPanel license, and the so-called unlocked CPU cores that aren’t limited in number and share your processing load among themselves.
This guarantees higher speeds and stability, and the company promises one month’s worth of credits into your account if the uptime ever falls below 99.99%. If you find yourself disliking the service, you can ask for a refund within 90 days after purchase, which is one of the longest money-back guarantees in the market.
5. Liquid Web
Liquid Web’s services aren’t the cheapest out there but they’re worth it, especially considering that they’re offering managed VPS hosting. The entry-level plan at $29/month (annual subscription) provides 40GB storage, 2GB RAM, 10TB of bandwidth, and two virtual CPUs (vCPUs), while the pricier plans increase some of these features.
For example, the SSD space expands to 100GB, 150GB, and 200GB respectively, while the number of vCPUs is doubled for its second-cheapest plan, and amounts to eight for the two most expensive options.
All the plans offer extra configuration options - cPanel Pro, Plesk Web Pro, and Interworx, as well as 100GB storage for built-in backups. You can also choose between CentOS 6, Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04, and Debian 8. Two-year plans are available upon request.
Customer support is one of the best in the business, with a team on hold whenever you need it, be it restoring failed services the moment they’re noticed or just asking a question about the platform.
6. 1&1 Ionos
Providing some of the least expensive VPS options online, 1&1 Ionos offers some useful perks as well. The cheapest VPS S plan won’t get you far, as it only offers 10GB SSD storage, 512MB RAM, and one virtual Intel Xeon E5 Core CPU, but switch up to the VPS XL option, and they’ll increase these features to up to 160GB of storage, 8GB RAM, and four CPUs.
This is a bit on the low end in comparison to some other top-tier VPS providers but is very appealing considering the price. Namely, the already mentioned VPS S plan will cost you a measly $2./month (monthly billing), followed by the more expensive VPS M at $10./month, VPS L at $20./month (first month only $2.00), and the most expensive VPS XL at $30./month.
If you need more, VPS XXL has got you covered with 240GB SSD, 12GB RAM, and six vCore CPUs. You can choose between various systems and four data center locations (US, UK, Germany, and Spain).
There are no restrictions on the allowed monthly data traffic and help is available at all times via phone and help center on the website.
7. Alibaba Cloud
Despite being known as the largest cloud service provider in China, Alibaba Cloud’s Elastic Compute Service (ECS) isn’t limited to the Chinese market and has data centers all over the world.
Pricing starts at $3.30/month giving you access to 20GB SSD, 512MB RAM, a 1Core Intel Xeon E5 CPU, and 1TB of bandwidth (with most data centers), on top of extra features like the automatic snapshots, basic anti-DDoS protection, and triplicated backups.
There are eight pricing options in total in the Starter package, and the most advanced one will set you back $120/month while giving you 500GB storage, 32GB RAM, 8Core CPU, and an excellent 7TB of data transfer.
New users also get over 40 free products during their free trial. This and the fact that it provides direct access to one billion-strong Chinese audience makes Alibaba a strong hosting solution.
8. Hetzner
Dubbing itself the “truly thrifty cloud hosting” provider, Hetzner is a German web hosting brand that offers VPS plans starting at €2.96/month ($3.28). The basic package includes 20GB of speedy NVMe SSD storage, 2GB RAM, one Intel Xeon Gold vCPU, and more bandwidth than most - 20TB. Furthermore, it will get you access to data centers in Germany and Finland.
Hetzner has a bunch of pricier plans, and they all increase the provided resources to up to 240GB of storage capacity, 32GB of memory, and eight vCPUs (the bandwidth remains the same). This is all included under the €35.58/month ($39.46) pricing plan.
You can further increase the available SSD block storage for €0.0476 ($0.053) per GB per month, but you’ll need to select a minimum of 10GB. Extra bandwidth is available at an additional €1.19 ($1.32) per TB per month.
The lightning-fast 10Gbit network connection will probably suit the majority of users’ performance requirements. There’s also a host of various features to assist you in managing your infrastructure, capable protection against DDoS attacks, as well as a REST-API and a CLI tool for developers.
The optional snapshots feature that allows you to make manual backups of your servers is available at €0.01 ($0.011) per GB per month. For €1.19/month ($1.32) more, you can assign floating IPs to use them on a redundant server or for a highly available server cluster.
9. DreamHost
DreamHost has four VPS hosting plans, beginning at $10.00/month for its basic option if you decide to commit to this provider for three years. It covers a 30GB SSD storage space, 1GB RAM, and more traffic than you’ll ever spend.
The next-cheapest, at $20.00/month, is the VPS Business plan with 60GB SSD and 2GB RAM, followed by the VPS Professional with 120GB SSD and 4GB RAM. Finally, the VPS Enterprise will cost you $80.00/month but will get you 240GB SSD and 8GB RAM.
Regardless of the subscription chosen, all users will get free SSL certificates, unlimited websites and bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, as well as a 100% uptime guarantee. The company handles maintaining your server, installing security patches, upgrading the OS, etc.
While this is all fine and dandy, no information is available on guaranteed CPU resources, and DreamHost says it doesn’t offer refunds for its VPS hosting fees.
10. HostPapa
Hostpapa’s VPS services may be a bit pricey, but they’ll get you access to a robust enterprise-grade managed hosting platform, where the provider takes care of everything from network issues to firewall setup to server upgrades, and more.
Starting at $49.99/month ($19.99 during the first month), you can get your hands on 60GB of storage, 2GB RAM, a 4-core CPU, 1TB bandwidth, as well as the Softaculous installer and cPanel/WHM, all under the Mercury package.
There are several other pricing options, but if we had to pick one - Earth offers a 250GB SSD storage, 8GB of memory, 2TB bandwidth, and an 8-core CPU. Each VPS user will also get essential features including a 99.9% uptime guarantee, two IP addresses, free VPS migration, DDoS protection, and a no-risk 30-day money-back guarantee.
Customer support is available 24/7/365 through mail, live chat, and phone, and is eager to help you with any of your hosting needs.
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