We tested ten VPS hosting packages and scored them in five key categories. This allows you to easily compare each provider to find the one that best suits your needs. Based on our experience, DreamHost has the best VPS hosting service. With no annual contract, you get quick response times and top-notch uptime reliability, at penny-pinching prices.

The Best VPS Hosting Options for Most

DreamHost

Best for the Most

DreamHost plans include unlimited bandwidth. This makes it an ideal choice for websites that receive millions of visitors each month. You can also enjoy unlimited email accounts and a fully managed VPS hosting environment. In addition, you can seamlessly scale other resources with just a few mouse clicks. Plans start at $10 per Month

DreamHost will make shared hosting easy for you. What is the most important difference between DreamHost’s VPS and shared hosting? Performance.

VPS offers exceptional speed and reliability, rivaling even the most expensive plans. Dreamhost offers everything you need to improve your site’s performance while giving you more control and keeping the hosting costs down. DreamHost offers best-in-class service at a lower price, whether you are switching from shared hosting to launching a new website. You can give your website the performance it deserves for only $10 per month.

These are the 10 Best VPS Hosting Options You Should Consider:

1. DreamHost is the best VPS hosting available.
2. Hostinger Best VPS for your first upgrade from shared hosting
3. Liquid – This is the best way to get extra support when you’re in need
4. InMotion hosting – The best VPS hosting service for ecommerce websites
5. Bluehost is the best VPS to start WordPress websites from scratch
6. Scala Hosting The easiest way to get your customized VPS plan started
7. HostGator is the best VPS host for developers who don’t like managing servers
8. A2 Hosting- Unbeatable Content Storage
9. HostPapa is the best enterprise plan to manage large projects
10. iDrive Compute is the best low-cost alternative for edge computing

VPS Hosting Services: When it Makes Sense

Is it possible to outgrow shared web hosting? This is a simple question, but it can be difficult to answer. This section will help you determine if you are ready to move to VPS hosting.

You have to be willing to share resources with hundreds of websites for shared hosting to work. They can’t all be kept in one place for your purposes.

You can simply click a few buttons to keep your VPS running smoothly. You’ll also get an improved control panel that provides better analytics and tools to help you avoid performance problems.

VPS hosting is the next step if you have a website that does not meet your needs in terms of performance. This is a great option for people who need to scale their web hosting resources without incurring the high upfront costs associated with dedicated servers (one step above VPS Hosting).

You might be a developer who needs flexibility and customized configurations to make your website or application more user-friendly.

You are locked into pre-configured servers with shared hosting that may or not be compatible with custom projects.

Perhaps you are an ecommerce retailer, and your website requires extra power and performance to handle the heavy traffic and interaction that you get with your online shop.

VPS servers can be more expensive than shared hosting. However, you do get what you pay.

You get a lot more performance and control for a fraction of the cost than shared hosting.

VPS hosting is the best choice if your site or app is experiencing critical performance issues.

It is best to upgrade before users and visitors start leaving because of poor performance.

VPS hosting is a great option for anyone. Shared hosting is better for those who are starting new websites. VPS hosting is not for beginners and is not worth the price. You are unlikely to be dealing with traffic spikes or constant visitor counts in the thousands.

Another popular use for VPS hosting is to deploy and manage the Internet of Things (IoT).

This is possible thanks to edge computing. It’s also fast and affordable. Edge computing makes use of VPS servers distributed across multiple physical locations to transmit large amounts of data.

You don’t want your customers to be worried about their location. Your business needs to have quick response times and connectivity to provide a great experience.

You need reliability for remote locations, even if they’re hundreds of miles apart. This is what VPS Edge and cloud computing can do for you, and what you require if your business deploys IoT.

#1 – DreamHost – The Best VPS Hosting For Most Users

DreamHost

Best for the Most

DreamHost plans include unlimited bandwidth. This makes it an ideal choice for websites that receive millions of visitors each month. You can also enjoy unlimited email accounts and a fully managed VPS hosting environment. In addition, you can seamlessly scale other resources with just a few mouse clicks. Plans start at $10 per Month

Overall Score: 4.3/5

VPS Hosting is reliable and can deliver speeds and uptime you don’t have to worry about. However, VPS providers that are the best combine this reliability with a simple setup and a competitive price.

DreamHost is the best choice for VPS hosting.

Our DreamHost website topped all scoring categories. It also won the award for fastest response time and uptime. We have found it to be reliable, affordable, simple, reliable, and cost-effective.

The best thing about DreamHost is the fact that you don’t have to sign a long-term contract. DreamHost’s monthly pricing is comparable to other VPS hosting providers’ annual plans.

Let’s dive into how they performed as VPS hosts overall.

1. 4.5% ease of use
2. Server reliability = 5/5
3. Server response time = 5/5
4. Pricing = 4/5
5. Support = 2.3/5

Easy to Use: 4/5 – DreamHost has a simplified onboarding process and a custom-built control panel that makes it one of the most user-friendly services.

You don’t need to switch between panels or remember which setting you are to see it all.

The checklist walks you through the setup and takes away the need to contact support. This is something that other providers on the list couldn’t do well with.

DreamHost also offers unmanaged and fully managed cloud VPS plans.

Our welcome email included clear instructions on how to proceed, making it easy for beginners to get started. It didn’t score a perfect 5 out of 5, because it contains confusing upsells during checkout.

We went through the entire onboarding process.

After selecting a plan, set up an account at DreamHost.

You’ll be presented with an upsell after you do that. To speed up your site’s loading time, they offer a separate VPS server to host your MySQL database. Your database is typically shared with other MySQL databases.

Perhaps you are asking “What is MySQL?” MySQL can be described as a programming language that creates databases. 

Your website will have dedicated resources if it is placed on its own VPS server.

This improves website performance.

The upsell gives you the first month free, then $15 per month.

For consistent testing purposes, we didn’t accept the upsell.

Next, enter your name as well as your phone number. Below is an overview of the plan that you have selected. You’ll find the payment details at the bottom of this page. Then, complete your order.

Your order is confirmed. You will also be prompted to log in to your web panel to modify the rest of your account.

You can save time by using the quick checkout.

You will receive an email confirmation of your payment. It also contains instructions for how to log in.

If you require a migration, there is a link that will allow you to log in.

Below, you’ll find a link to register a domain name for free and a link to an article about setting up an email account.

Although it is well-designed, there are many add-ons or upsells.

You can add more hosting by clicking the link to the left. The middle section contains DreamHost SEO tools, as well as additional security. To the right are domain registrations.

We received an email confirming that our VPS server was available six minutes after we completed checkout. To get started, it also advises you to create a new user account and domain. DreamHost is very clear about what should happen next.

We then went to the web panel, and then to the websites. You will need to enter your domain name here.

You can then choose the location you wish to host it.

You can then choose to install WordPress with just one click.

DreamHost makes it easy to do this and offers more functionality through a “deluxe installation”. You get a large selection of themes and standard plugins, as well as security enhancements.

This is a great choice for beginners. Pre-installing a WordPress website builder comes with hundreds of templates and starter content.

It starts the process when you click the “Set Up Website” button. You will also see a progress bar at its bottom that lets you know when it is in the process.

Point your domain name to this new VPS server. You can find the IP address under Billing & Account > Manage Account and scroll down to the servers section.

Your WordPress site will be ready in about 10 minutes.

DreamHost will set up SSL for you.

It takes only 45 minutes to create everything, from payment to the finished website.

Reliability of servers: 5/5 – DreamHost does a remarkable job in this area. They are the only provider that guarantees 100% uptime. No incidents, no problems.

Check out our complete test:

This is huge. Your site will not be inaccessible to visitors.

You can’t say more when there is 100% availability. This test was a success for DreamHost.

Server response time 5/5 – DreamHost also outperformed a lot of its competition in this area. A load time of less than a half second bodes well for overall speed and load times.

It barely rises above one second even with traffic spikes. It is possible to count on loading times of less than one second.

DreamHost adds some additional features to help keep your site fast:

• OPcache compiles and stores your code in memory, making it much easier to retrieve.

• During setup, you can choose between Apache or Nginx servers

• For $15 per month, you can host your MySQL database on an isolated managed VPS Server.

Pricing: 4/5 – The DreamHost price and risk-free option are the best on this page.

To keep things fair, however, we compared the annual plans of each provider. We also include details about DreamHost’s monthly plan below.

VPS Business is the most affordable DreamHost VPS plan, with 2GB RAM and starting at $27.50 per month for the first year. This is $330 upfront.

However, your monthly cost will remain the same when you renew your plan. This is something few providers can offer.

It is $660 when you add up two years of VPS hosting.

DreamHost reduces cost concerns further with a 3-year agreement if you are willing to commit. You will pay only $720 for the entire tenure. Your monthly price is $20.

All plans include a custom-designed control board at no additional cost.

DreamHost does not offer promo pricing. This is the price that you will pay for your service forever unless DreamHost raises its prices.

You can pay monthly to get the best and most affordable plan.

You can see that the VPS Business plan costs only $30 per month if you purchase the 2GB of RAM plan.

These amounts come out to $360 per annum and $720 for two years. It is still a significant discount from the $900.51 average for VPS hosting plans over two years.

DreamHost will not offer any promotional pricing. This price is set to remain the same as it has been for as long as DreamHost does not change its rate.

Support: 2.3/5 – Customer support for DreamHost wasn’t where it shined brightest.

We didn’t have long to wait for a representative so they responded quickly. However, most of the representatives we spoke to were not very knowledgeable about VPS.

They didn’t go above and beyond to help us, but they only pointed us to articles that could be helpful and gave general advice that wasn’t specific to VPS users.

It was also difficult to get to the chat.

One support article will appear when you enter your question in the chat box at the bottom of the screen. Scroll down to the bottom and tell it not to answer your question. It will then bring up several more. After you have answered your question with those, you can finally contact support.

After reading all that, you will be brought to another page where you must fill out a form.

After that, you will be able to connect with a representative.

At 9 PM PST, the first chat began. A rep connected us immediately and we asked about DreamHost’s VPS security procedures.

After retrieving our account info, the rep said, “Our security is managed through FTP or SSH here you will see more information about it: https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001051531”

This was not a particularly useful feature for us.

We don’t feel safe using this service because users might not be familiar with FTP or SSH. We wish they had provided more information and explanations.

They could have shared much more information to make sure we feel safe using their service. They could have spoken about physical security, backups, or other security features like the rest of our hosts.

Next, we chatted about optimizing our VPS server to host a WordPress website.

The chat began at 2:06 p.m. In about 30 seconds, someone joined the chat and said “I am sorry that you are having a problem with your website.” Let me take a look.

We reiterated our belief that there weren’t any problems and we were curious to know what we could do to improve the site’s performance.

The rep then sent out a generic WordPress optimization article. He advised that we update our themes and plugins. They also suggested deleting any plugins or themes that are not being used.

We then asked if we could do anything to the server or if optimizing our site was enough. You may be able to use some optimization plugins on your WordPress website.

We found the conversation not very helpful but we did thank them for their help and closed the chat.

It was not the best experience. They could have provided guidance and more information. They could have explained how to update plugins or which plugins would have been most helpful in optimizing our website. We also asked them about the server.

We had our third interaction when we asked “How can I make a backup of my server and website?”

At 7:47 p.m., we started a chat. After 14 minutes, a rep joined and said, “Thanks for waiting.” The Backup option in your Panel can be used to back up your entire account. Here are the instructions on how to backup your account: https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/215089918″

We thanked them for their help and asked if they could automate or schedule backups. We were told that this feature was not available at the moment, and they ended the chat after 16 minutes. 14 of those were waiting for their initial response.

It would have been nicer if DreamHost support had given us more information and spent the time explaining things to us.

DreamHost surpassed the rest in every way, even though their support was lacking. DreamHost is the best option for anyone looking for VPS hosting.

#2 – Hostinger — The Best VPS to Upgrade Your Shared Hosting Account

Hostinger

The Best Upgrades from Shared

Shared hosting plans start at $3.95 per month for one CPU core and 1GB RAM. You get 20 GB of storage space, 1 TB of bandwidth, and 1GB of RAM. You get dedicated IP addresses, high-level data backups, and 24/7 live chat support.

Overall Score: 4.1 of 5

It can be daunting to make the transition to VPS hosting. What happens if you find a poor deal? What if the deal is too complicated, to begin with?

Hostinger makes it easy to get VPS hosting that is both affordable and accessible to all.

Web hosting is easy to set up and provides more than you pay for. You can have full control over your server or allow them to handle it for you.

You also have access to a lot of resources that you can change at will.

Let’s find out how Hostinger performed in the VPS grading categories most valued by users.

1. Easy of use = 4.5/5
2. Server reliability = 4/5
3. Server response time = 5/5
4. Pricing = 5/5
5. Support = 2/5

Hostinger is one of the most user-friendly VPS hosting options.

It is easy to navigate the dashboard with large, easily readable icons. Even if you’ve never managed a hosting account before, it makes managing it easy.

You should choose an operating system carefully. You can choose from a variety of operating systems when managing your VPS hosting server. When you sign up for a plan, you can choose the operating system that suits your needs best. This is not something to worry about.

Linux is available for advanced users. There are five Linux operating systems to choose from.

It’s similar to choosing the right tool for the job. While many tools might be useful, there is one that works the best.

CentOS is an easy-to-use operating system that we recommend to beginners. Why? It’s the easiest method to install cPanel. This makes it easy for you.

Once you have made your selection. Now it’s time for you to complete your checkout.

The checkout process is simple and free of upsells. There are many payment options available, including PayPal and crypto coins. This isn’t as common as you might think.

After you sign up and pay, you will be taken to a screen where you can configure your VPS server. This is how it looks:

Give your server a name, and select a location in the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Singapore, the Netherlands, or the United States.

Next, create a password to choose your operating system. There are many operating systems (OS) configurations available. Some OSs come with a control panel, while others require a command-line interface (think DOS and The Matrix).

CentOS was chosen with the CyberPanel dashboard. We found the CyberPanel control panel interface to be easy to use and it doesn’t cost any extra.

Because it is easier to manage your website and server without a control panel, we chose to go with the version that has one. If you do not want cPanel, you will need to use the command line interface as a developer.

Our server was now ready to go. It was as easy as that.

This isn’t the case with most VPS plans. It was almost like setting up a shared hosting account.

CyberPanel is another option. What’s the problem?

Not at all. Start with a quick login page.

It has all of the hosting settings we expect, and it is simple to use. We could install WordPress easily, create email accounts, change DNS settings, and do everything else that we needed.

We took only 30 seconds to install WordPress.

It is so much faster and easier than other providers on the list. You can learn everything quickly even if you have no previous experience with VPS.

It took us approximately 40 minutes to set up the entire website.

Hostinger didn’t provide step-by-step instructions for installing WordPress. If you have a VPS account you should be able to set up WordPress yourself.

Hostinger is the host with the most seamless setups. It was much easier than we expected. Hostinger was a great choice compared to some of the more costly options.

The downside? The downside? This includes:

• Manage the server
• Backup your website and pages
• Security updates and management

Over time, it will be more difficult to manage your server than a managed VPS plan.

You get a simple setup for a low price, which makes it easier to switch from shared hosting to VPS hosting.

Hostinger offers a 30-day guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with your experience. You can test them out yourself to see if you like them.

Server reliability: 4/5 Hostinger performed well, but was just one notch below the best performers on our list. Over 25 days, we saw just 17 seconds of downtime.

When we received this data, we were stunned. Our site was nearly always available. This is what you should expect for VPS.

What is an incident? It is simply the reason your website goes down. It was a connection error. This means that someone tried to connect to the server but couldn’t for 17 seconds and then stopped the request.

Hostinger could have done a better job (though you’ve seen one provider provide 100% uptime). Hostinger is not available from all providers.

Server response time: 5/5 – Speed rules. Your site will be a mess without it.

Hostinger’s average response times during testing were 471 milliseconds. This means that your visitors will blink, and your page will load, greeting them with smiles.

Speed was thoroughly tested and there was no room for error.

You can see that on July 18, there was an increase in response time of just under a second. However, that was not the only concern. It was otherwise steady and fast all the way.

Hostinger is the leader in VPS hosting.

Hostinger’s VPS 2 Plan is the most affordable, with a minimum of 2GB RAM.

2GB should be sufficient to handle steady traffic on a basic site. You will require more as you grow.

You’ll need to pay $12.49 per month for 12 months. This is $149.40 for your first year of hosting with Hostinger’s promotional pricing.

Your second-year rate for renewal is $18.15 per month, which works out to $217.80. This is a 46% increase in renewal rates.

You can save even more by purchasing a 4-year plan. This is how you get your monthly rate as shown in the above image. For four years of hosting, you’ll only pay $429.60.

There are many options for free control panels. Cyber Panel was our favorite control panel. We loved its simple-to-use interface. Unless you wish to use the official cPanel which costs $15 per month, you don’t need to purchase one.

VPS hosting is affordable and you can get started quickly.

Hostinger’s VPS 1 entry-level plan is ideal if you are starting a new website or need to migrate an existing site. Hostinger’s entry-level plan, VPS 1, is not able to handle a lot of traffic or offer a lot of functionality.

This is a limited VPS plan. Your site will be faster than shared hosting but it’s still an entry-level VPS with very few resources.

Hostinger was tested on the VPS 1 plan. However, we recommend the VPS 2 plan. You have more potential for growth.

Support: 2/5 – Hostinger was not responsive when we needed VPS support.

It was extremely frustrating to wait for so long. On occasion, we waited almost two hours.

We didn’t receive much help.

We first interacted at 8:08 AM PST. Hostinger wanted to know what security measures Hostinger took to protect the environment.

Finally, we received a reply at 8:59 AM PST– which is a 51-minute response.

According to the rep, “Our servers are equipped with advanced security modules that enable us to ensure the highest level of security available today.” Let me know if you have additional questions. I’d be happy to answer them!

Then, we asked them if the security module applied to VPS servers. They replied, “Please allow me to check this situation, and as soon as there is any update, I will get back to you.”

At the beginning of the chat, we specifically selected VPS. They had to check our account and send us a general reply.

After five minutes, the rep returned and poured a lot of information into the chat. He said, “We have firewall rules in-house to protect our users from DDos/brute force attacks.” You can also install/use iptables/ufw/csCSFand many other rules. However, we do protect our VPS servers.

Although we didn’t find the answer very helpful, it is specific to VPS servers so our question was somewhat answered.

The chat ended at 9:14 AM PST. The chat lasted an hour and six minutes.

It took too long for a response to be given. Although the rep was friendly and helpful, we felt that he could have done more to answer our questions.

The chat began at 12:16 PM PST in our second interaction. Our question was about optimizing the VPS server to host a WordPress website. We finally received an answer at 2:01 PM PST, one hour and 45 minutes after our initial query.

We felt this was not the best support and that it was too quick. In the nearly two hours that we waited, we only received one minute of help. This is a terrible situation.

Although they did eventually give us the information we requested, we could have asked more questions. We felt very disappointed by their lack of effort to explain the issues.

In our final chat, we discussed how to back up our website and server.

We began the chat at 6:49 p.m. Pacific Time (PST) and were connected to a rep at 6:51 p.m.

Rep replied, “Server backups are automatically generated weekly, but snapshots can be created anytime. A snapshot is a copy of the VPS state at the time the snapshot was taken. This state contains the power state of the virtual machine (e.g., powered on, powered off) as well as the data for all files.

The rep then sent us an article on how to create it.

After we said we could find it, the rep asked if there was a backup section because the account wasn’t yet one week old. The rep replied 30 seconds later that the week countdown for backup generation begins on the date the server was created.

We thanked them, and the chat ended at 7:01 PM PST. The chat lasted 12 minutes.

After waiting nearly two hours, it was a pleasant surprise to see how quickly we were connected with a rep.

Although we appreciated the prompt response, we wished that the rep had done more than copying and pasting a paragraph of a support article and sending it to us. They could have provided more information on what to do and expanded on the contents of the article. This chat was average for us.

Hostinger’s support is slow for most people. Although you are connected to friendly reps, it takes so long for you to receive answers you can find yourself.

We feel that the emphasis is on getting chats resolved quickly, rather than helping. They don’t seem to be in tune with VPS users.

Despite this, Hostigner’s price, ease of use, and overall performance make it the best VPS host option for anyone who wants to move from shared hosting.

#3 -Liquid Web- Best way to get extra support when you need it

Liquid Web

Best for Extra Support

Liquid Web offers fully managed VPS hosting plans that provide reliable support and white-glove service. They are known for being “the most helpful people in hosting” with a response time of 59 seconds. VPS plans start from $15 per month

Overall Score: 4.1 of 5

Liquid provided us with the best support of all VPS hosts. It was a close race.

This is obvious when you consider the professional answers they provide to your questions.

Their team includes more than 250 Cisco, Windows, and Linux-certified techs who receive over 300 hours of training within their first year. They know how to fix anything, even if it is broken.

This is further supported by their 100% uptime. Liquid Web’s reliability is unsurpassed.

Let’s look at how they performed overall.

1. Easy of Use = 3/5
2. Server reliability = 5/5
3. Server response time: 4/5
4. Pricing = 2/5
5. Support = 5/5

Easy to use: 3/5 – There were no exceptional aspects of Liquid Web’s setup process. It was average in terms of ease of use.

Liquid Web provides fully managed VPS hosting both for Linux and Windows.

Windows plans are more expensive than Linux OS and we have not tested them.

There are two options: a core-managed environment or a self-managed environment. These plans are only for monthly plans. These options are not advertised. These are slightly more expensive, but you can manage and maintain everything yourself.

If you are looking for better pricing on unmanaged plans there are many other options.

Checkout is easy and quick if you choose a long-term hosting package.

You have more options for configuration when you select a monthly plan. It can be confusing and overwhelming if you don’t know what you are doing.

Once you are ready to move on, create an account, fill out your billing information, enter your domain name, and complete your order.

After we paid, someone called to confirm our order. But no one did.

It was done all via email instead.

Although we liked the explanations, it was confusing as we expected a call.

While our server was being set up, there were still a few emails. It took approximately 15 minutes to complete the entire process.

Once you have access to your account, you will be able to see your servers.

Although it was not easy to set up WordPress, it was possible. 

We first had to log in to the InterWorx control panels, which are separate from Liquid Web dashboards.

InterWorx has two sides: NodeWorx and SiteWorx. It is similar to web host management (WHM), and cPanel – cPanel can be used for site management.

All of this was not clear when we first signed in. It was up to us to solve it all on our own.

After 20 minutes of digging around, we finally found the solution. You will need to create an account in NodeWorx under the SiteWorx tab.

SiteWorx will allow you to log in after you have added yourself as a user.

This should not make it difficult to access a login page. To make things worse, you have to type “[your IP address]:2443/siteworx” to get to it, which is far from obvious.

But we weren’t quite done yet.

Softaculous was needed to install WordPress on the server. It was located on the left-hand corner of the SiteWorx dashboard.

We had to go through many hoops to install WordPress.

We were expecting things to go smoothly after this. But, there was another problem.

We tried to log into WordPress but got an error saying that the PHP version we were using was outdated and we should upgrade it.

We expected things like PHP to be up-to-date for a new server and environment.

After updating PHP, the site was ready to go.

It took me two hours and fifteen minutes to get everything set up. It is not the most user-friendly.

We were disappointed in the end, as there was no documentation to assist us.

You should expect to work hard to set up Liquid Web. There doesn’t seem to be much help. They have exceptional customer support that you can rely on whenever you need it.

Server reliability: 5/5 – Keeping your website online is our top priority. We made sure Liquid Web offered the highest uptime possible for the price.

Did they deliver?

Impeccably.

Liquid Web was operational after 25 days of research. For the full 25 days, there were no incidents.

What is Liquid Web doing differently?

They are proactive in monitoring your server’s uptime. Liquid Web’s managed plans ensure that your server is always in good health. This prevents any potential downtime.

They also keep off-server backups for your site in the event of an emergency. This allows you to quickly switch to a functioning server and prevents any downtime.

Response time from server: 4/5 – This is a mantra we’ve heard a million times. Speed is key to providing visitors with a quality user experience.

We found Liquid Web’s 689 milliseconds average response time to be an excellent value for the price.

The rolling hills in the image tell the story that visitors can access your content in less than a second almost every time. This is a lot faster than the two-second Google website speed standard.

We like the fact that Liquid Web offers additional speed benefits with lots of bandwidth allowed on each account, 10 global Data Centers, and the Cloudflare Content Delivery Network.

They put in a lot of effort to ensure your website loads quickly from the beginning. Our research shows that you won’t have any worries about this.

Pricing: 2/5 – It’s rare to find a deal when you buy managed hosting. Liquid Web is a good example of this. They are the most expensive provider on the list.

We wanted to compare the prices of similar plans, just like the others. We tested the plan with 2GB RAM, which is Liquid Web’s most affordable managed VPS package.

For your first year, you will pay $35 per month. This is $420. Your monthly cost for renewal is $59. This 69% increase brings your second-year total up to $708.

It’s $11,128 for hosting for two years.

A two-year agreement will allow you to save even more money. The monthly rate will drop to $15 per month. This is a significant difference and you will pay only $360 for hosting for two years.

For long-term plans, Interworx and cPanel are free. Plesk is also available.

Plesk and cPanel cost an additional $7 per month on monthly plans.

A web protection package can be purchased by upgrading to a monthly plan for $20, an annual plan for $10, or a two-year plan for $5 per month. This includes:

• DDoS mitigation
• CloudFlare Web Application Firewall
• CloudFlare CDN
• Malware Removal

You also receive a premium email service for business and a 100 GB daily backup quota as a bonus.

Unmanaged plans can be cheaper than managed ones, but they are still significantly more expensive than the other VPS options. Unmanaged setups do not have long-term plans. They only offer monthly rates.

If you’re interested in this route, we recommend that you choose a different host to save money.

Support: 5/5 – Customer service and support is the bread and butter at Liquid Web. It is the best on this list, by a mile.

Liquid Web was the only host to check all our boxes each time we reached out. We didn’t have to wait long to speak to someone. Each rep took the time to explain things to us and went above and beyond what we had expected.

Their average response time was 59 seconds. They also offer chat, chat, and knowledge-based help to solve your problems in any way you choose.

The first chat began at 8:33 AM PST. We inquired about security measures that would keep the hosting environment safe and whether Liquid Web could offer any tips on how to protect our WordPress website.

We were immediately connected to someone.

They waited for us to finish before they could look into our request.

After about a minute, the rep asked, “Does this concern you?” If you don’t need it, blocking xmlrpc.php is a good idea.

It was immediately noticed a significant improvement over our previous experience with VPS hosting support.

This is a fantastic first answer because it’s specific and makes us feel like the really knows what we’re talking about.

The rep then asked for the domain name. The rep looked at the site and explained that although it had an SSL installed, it did not redirect to the HTTPS safe path. I can create a redirect to ensure clients use HTTPS, which is the secure protocol.

We said that it would be wonderful. They added: “As for security I see that you have APF installed onto your server. Advanced Policy Firewall (APF), an IP tables-based firewall system, is a firewall system. If you see any malicious activity, we can block the IPs in our firewall to stop them from accessing your site.

The rep created the redirect and explained how it worked to ensure that everyone visiting the site uses the HTTPS version. The rep then explained some more best practices. For example, keep your software current as newer versions of the site will fix security vulnerabilities and threats that arise.

We ended the chat at 8:52 p.m. It took only 19 minutes to have a thorough conversation.

This is an outstanding service.

After looking at our website and realizing that one was missing, the rep not only showed us a variety of security options but also created an HTTPS redirect. We appreciate the time taken to provide personalized advice and suggestions.

The second interaction was more similar.

At 1:25 p.m. EDT, we were connected immediately to a representative.

We were curious: “Is it possible to optimize my VPS server so that a WordPress website can be created?”

The rep stated that it should be optimized after four minutes. The rep then asked us if we had any specific goals. We explained that we were just starting with VPS and thought about optimizing site speed, but weren’t sure if it was necessary to optimize it further for WordPress sites.

A minute later, the rep replied that everything was optimized for this server. Apache and MySQL require the most resources. They are also optimized.”

We thanked them for their help and asked if there was any advice they could give us on how to keep the site optimized. To keep the site small and optimized, they suggested that we optimize our photos as well as ensure that all content is kept compressed.

The chat ended at 12:37 p.m.

We appreciated the fact that the rep explained the main points of optimization and the resources required to accomplish them.

We also appreciated the image compression and content optimization advice as it was a simple and free way to make sure things are optimized moving forward.

The rep was very responsive and knew enough about VPS servers to answer my question without me having to ask another person.

We discussed how to back up our server and site in the last chat.

We were surprised to receive a quick response.

The chat began at 7:16 PM PST. Two minutes later, the rep informed us that SiteWorx allows you to schedule backups for your website. To back up your entire server, go to manage.liquidweb.com and click the + symbol. Then click backup. This will open the screen for you to set up daily cloud backups of all your servers. You can also create a server “image” if you only need a single backup.

The step-by-step instructions were more valuable than an article that we could read on our own.

We were able to back up websites, but not the entire server, after following the rep’s instructions. We asked if there was any way to save them so that they could avoid paying storage fees.

After some time, the representative said that while we only offer cloud backups for off-server backups, you can sign up with third parties to use their service to back up your server content.

We thanked them, and the chat ended at 7:26. The chat lasted only ten minutes.

It was great that the rep explained exactly where to go and what clicks to make at each step.

They were extremely knowledgeable about their services and gave us an alternative to paying for backup storage if needed. 

The results speak for themself. Liquid web delivers customer service that exceeds your expectations. They take away the worry of waiting for help, dealing with reps that can’t help, or with reps that don’t want you to help.

#4 – InMotion Hosting — Best VPS Hosting For Ecommerce Sites

InMotion Hosting

Best for Ecommerce Stores

InMotion Hosting VPS plans are optimized for ecommerce. They offer the ideal balance of server resources to ensure your online store runs smoothly. You can install multiple ecommerce platforms with one click. Additionally, you will receive up to five cPanel licenses for free to personalize your server. VPS plans start from $17.99 per monthly

Overall Score: 3.9/5

Do you own an ecommerce website and are looking for hosting that will improve the performance of your store?

InMotion hosting might be what you are looking for.

You need to have a balanced balance of resources that can be adjusted according to your needs.

InMotion VPS can do that for you and it’s just scratching the surface of what you can do with your business.

They are unmatched in speed, so shoppers don’t have to wait long to browse your stock. Their similarly high uptime ensures that your customers have uninterrupted stopping power, no matter what time it is.

Want even more good news?

InMotion VPS hosting plans include the ability to install ecommerce platforms such as WooCommerce, Magento, and OpenCart. It is simple to install them and only takes a few clicks via Softaculous.

What’s Softaculous? Softaculous is an app that allows users to create WordPress websites and install programs through their cPanel. It works with just a push-button interface.

You don’t have to use one type of ecommerce platform just because another one works better.

All servers are PCI compliant (payment card industry).

Let’s take a look at their testing results:

1. Easy of Use = 3/5
2. Server reliability = 4/5
3. Server response time = 5/5
4. Pricing = 2/5
5. Support = 3.7/5

Easy to use: 3/5 – InMotion’s setup process was very simple. One hiccup made it a little more confusing than it was.

InMotion offers managed and unmanaged VPS hosting plans depending on your requirements. Managed plans include five cPanel licenses and unlimited web host management (WHM), at no additional cost.

What is the difference between managed plans and unmanaged ones?

InMotion’s managed plans do not include a control panel. Either you can use the command-line interface, or you can install a premium or free control panel.

These plans don’t cover monitoring, security, backups, or software updates. Everything is your responsibility.

These plans are much cheaper than managed options. These plans require more technical knowledge.

InMotion’s entry-level managed plan was the plan we evaluated.

Managed hosting plans are easy to use and take out many of the tedious setup steps that unmanaged hosting would require. 

InMotion’s entry-level managed plan was the best option. We quickly discovered two additional upsells: cPanel upgrade options, and a backup manager ($2 per monthly, pre-checked). 

These upsell don’t make sense and are not worth your time. You can manage your website easily with the cPanel that you get for free. You can also upload a plugin to back up your website. 

After you have completed the upsells, enter your payment information to be greeted.

Follow the wizard to set up your VPS plan. Your VPS plan will be set up automatically.

A VPS specialist can also provide one-on-one assistance to help you set up your hosting plan.

We decided not to make the free call as we don’t have any experience with whether or not it is worth your time. It could prove beneficial to have a knowledgeable representative. To keep things even, we used the same setup as we did for all other VPS hosts.

But, this decision quickly became irrelevant. This was the point where we got stuck and couldn’t get on with it. The screen remains blank after we hit “No thanks’ ‘.

We didn’t receive a welcome email for about ten minutes. We reached out to InMotion’s customer service via live chat.

All accounts undergo a manual review before activation. This was strange, as it is automatic with other VPS hosting companies.

The rep continued to investigate the matter for about 15 minutes and requested another five to ten more minutes. The rep was not at fault for the issue, but there were technical problems that made it restart.

Our account was created after a few minutes.

After 15 minutes, our welcome email arrived. It contained information on how to set up your account password and details on scheduling our two-hour free call.

Other emails arrived that contained a receipt and notified that Softaculous was installed.

To set a password and log in to our account, we clicked the link in our first email.

After pointing at our domain, we logged in to cPanel. We were greeted by the options of creating an email address or a new WordPress website. We decided to create a website.

We will then fill in some information about our new WordPress installation.

InMotion has many options to set up your theme, which can save you time.

It took only 50 minutes to complete the set-up. Overall, it was very easy. InMotion was hampered by a small bug and the waiting for manual review.

Server reliability: 5/5 – Your web store should be accessible to customers at all times. InMotion is up to the challenge.

InMotion maintained an average uptime rate of 100% during our 25-day testing period.

An unknown error caused the incident. It was only 18 seconds. We don’t know why.

This was all for downtime. One 18-second outage occurred on July 21.

InMotion uses its server technology to increase your availability. Your site can be spun up on any of its redundant hardware clusters, even if the primary site node fails.

The uptime that Motion provides is as high as you can get.

Server response time 5/5 – Shoppers don’t want to wait for products or checkout page loads. You know what a longer loading time can do to a customer who is eager to purchase.

Customers shouldn’t be prevented from buying the goods that you offer.

We were impressed with the testing results of InMotion Hosting, which showed an average response time of 380 milliseconds.

It was extremely consistent with only one point where load time spiked to nearly one second on July 25,

InMotion offers additional features that will help you keep your website open at all times.

• UltraStack is their custom-built web infrastructure. It prevents slowdowns and optimizes speed and reliability. This allows your website to handle large numbers of visitors when you have a sale.

• Brotli is a tool to compress HTTP content and reduce resource usage

• NGINX servers that include built-in caching and load balancing.

• PHP FPM allows for faster processing and greater server stability than regular PHP.

These are the top standards for VPS hosting. Every millisecond matters at this level.

Pricing: 5/5 – InMotion Hosting has the highest price on our list.

This was on their entry-level managed plan, the 2GB RAM InMotion Virtual Private Server. To ensure that we are comparing similar packages across hosts, we always choose a 2GB RAM VPS plan.

The first year’s cost is $503.88. You pay $41.99 per month. Your rate increases by 43% to $59.99 per calendar month after the plan is renewed.

For two years of InMotion’s managed VPS hosting, the second-year cost is $719.88.

This high price can be reduced by choosing a 3-year agreement, which costs $31.99 per month. The hosting costs $72.12 less for an additional year.

Each plan includes five cPanel/WHM licenses that you can use in any way you like. You don’t need to pay an extra fee for them.

InMotion’s VPS plans can be billed monthly if you choose to go unmanaged. You will pay $10 per month for the 2GB RAM option.

These servers are more affordable for those just starting. Remember, you are responsible for all server maintenance.

Support: 3.7/5 – Our experience with InMotion’s support team was pleasant.

Initial wait times were reasonable with the longest lasting being 14 minutes.

Things slowed down after we connected. They felt that a quick connection would be better than a long chat conversation.

Let’s see what we mean.

It was simple to start a chat – simply push the chat button at the bottom right corner of your screen, and you will be on your way.

At 8:15 AM PST, our first interaction began. We received a message stating that we were third in line.

We were curious to know: “What security measures are you using to protect your hosting environment?”

The first response came in at 8:23, which was eight minutes late. After that, the rep requested to place us on hold for a while to review our account. Since we had asked a general question, we weren’t quite sure why they wanted to take so much time.

After about 30 seconds, the rep requested more information about what we were looking for.

“Just in general, what InMotion does do to ensure that the servers are secure?”

The rep stated that they would reach out to another person to obtain “better details” and asked us for a further five to ten-minute delay.

This made us feel that the person was not very knowledgeable about the hardware, software, and other measures they use.

The rep finally provided information about their firewall, cpHulk Brute Force Protection, and 25 minutes later we started the chat.

We thanked them, and the chat ended at 8:45 PST. It took us 30 minutes.

The rep didn’t know how to answer our question. It took over 20 minutes to answer a simple query. Our first experience was poor.

We also had a very useful interaction with Yi when our screen went blank during setup.

Here’s what happened

After I completed the signup process, paid for everything, and went through all the steps, the screen went blank. I was unable to access my account, and I had not received any emails. I waited about 10 to 15 minutes to see what happened. Nothing did.

We were confused and didn’t know what to do so we reached out to their customer service team. We were immediately connected to a representative.

We connected to the rep at 7:28 PM PST. They investigated our issue and confirmed that it was a setup problem. Then, they had to manually approve our VPS plan. We were told to keep an eye out for an email confirming everything was in order.

It took approximately 20 minutes for the interaction to complete.

We received a welcome email about 15 minutes later.

The Interaction took twenty minutes. The rep was very helpful and explained how the system works. We felt very confident. We felt very secure and were able to leave feeling confident that we had not done any wrong. Our question was answered in 20 minutes.

We spoke to a representative about creating a backup for our website and server. We received our first response at 7:22 p.m. PST. The chat began at 7:08 p.m. PST. It took 14 minutes to respond.

The rep welcomed us and requested that we wait for approximately 3-5 minutes to ask our question.

The rep thanked Corry for his patience and said, “Thanks for holding Corry.” It is easiest to download the home directory. This includes all sites within cPanel. However, if you have a particular site that you require, you will need it manually backed up in cPanel. We were then given detailed instructions on how to do this.

InMotion does offer paid backup upgrades. We like that they offered a workaround to allow us to create backups for no cost.

We thanked the rep and asked about the difference between server snapshots and backups. The rep explained clearly and thoroughly how they differ.

We thanked them and ended the chat at 7:15. It took 22 minutes.

It took some time to get in touch with someone but they were very thorough and helpful. We appreciated the fact that they gave us instructions, rather than just sending us an article.

InMotion customer service is not always reliable. It all depends on who you speak to. Although they will assist you, you may need to spend more time than necessary for them to help you.

We spoke to two representatives who were extremely helpful and provided detailed information. However, the first rep could only provide a link that would allow us to solve our problems on our own.

InMotion is a great choice for ecommerce sites looking for speed and high uptime. InMotion is an excellent choice for ecommerce websites that are looking for all the advantages of VPS hosting.

#5 – Bluehost – The Best Virtual Private Server for Starting a Reliable WordPress Website from Scratch

Bluehost

Best for building WP sites

WordPress recommends one of the three hosting providers. You can easily upgrade from shared hosting. Get up to speed quickly using a familiar control panel, plus full root access. Plus, you have 24/7/365 access to VPS and WordPress expert support when you need it. VPS hosting plans start at $18.99 per Month

Overall Score: 3.4 of 5

Do you need to quickly create VPS-hosted WordPress websites? Bluehost makes it easy.

It is as simple as it can get.

You don’t have to worry about starting a WordPress website from scratch. Yi Bluehost is the best choice.

It’s almost like sharing hosting after installing WordPress. It won’t feel like you are on a different level of hosting.

However, you can achieve better speed, resource utilization, and performance when you are in familiar surroundings. This is something we can be proud of.

They also back it up with 100% uptime reliability to sweeten things.

Let’s take a look at their overall performance in VPS hosting.

1. Easy of Use = 3/5
2. Server reliability = 5/5
3. Server response time = 2/5
4. Pricing = 4/5
5. Support = 3.3/5

Easy to use: 3/5 – Every plan includes a customized cPanel user interface, which makes managing your sites much easier than the standard cPanel user interface. It places WordPress at the forefront of the dashboard with a link to it being installed in just a few clicks.

Bluehost is also recommended by WordPress as one of three hosts.

They only offer managed VPS plans, and they have three options. These are quite a few options compared to the other options.

All plans come with CentOS and no other operating system. It’s not a dealbreaker, it’s simple to use and you don’t have any other options.

Bluehost’s setup process has a few flaws. It is full of upsells, right from the checkout process, to your dashboard, cPanel, and even in the emails they send you. After we had already paid for a plan, they sent an email inviting us to return and purchase another one.

Even if you are just looking at support articles for help, they may try to sell you. Every five minutes, a new popup is displayed. It was distracting and ineffective, according to our tests.

This is our experience setting up Bluehost VPS.

After selecting your plan, you will be asked to either register a domain new or use an existing one.

The domain name that we already owned was entered into the box to the right, and then we clicked “Next”.

You can then enter your account information. Scroll down to modify your contract term. You will also find a list with upsells and add-ons under “Package Additionals”.

We wish they would clarify that an SSL certificate is not necessary, as you can get one free of charge. We clicked on the link to get more information, but it didn’t mention anything about it.

It is also disappointing that the products are being billed annually even though we signed up for a monthly plan.

SiteLock Security and Codeguard Basic are preselected. They were unchecked and we moved on as we should.

You can then enter your payment information, and you are done.

This will display a confirmation screen, and then an email with a receipt will be sent. This was a confirmation email for payment. It contained a few details, such as the username and name servers of your account.

Next, create your password for the account.

We were then able to log in to the dashboard.

We first pointed our domain to our VPS server. It didn’t take long to provision the server so we started immediately.

When we tried to set up our SSL certificate, something went wrong. The page kept refreshing itself repeatedly.

We tried to log in using an incognito browser, but that didn’t work either. It loads about every two seconds and then refreshes itself. The account dashboard was completely inaccessible.

Even the header looked a little messed up and was overlapping as if something was broken inside the dashboard. 

You can see the primary domain, shared IP address, and other options on the page. This should not be there by itself.

We tried to reach out to support but the first representative couldn’t help us so they sent us to another one.

They provided a workaround that we could use. The temporary solution was quickly implemented.

After using the workaround to log into cPanel, it didn’t refresh as often but it still felt wrong. As you can see, everything was still overlapped and some links were even piled on top.

Although we weren’t sure what was happening, there was at least a way around it.

After installing WordPress, we activated the SSL certificate. The site was now ready to go.

This is the easiest way to sign up for a WordPress site. It took less than an hour (50 min) to set it up.

Eight days later, the Bluehost dashboard was repaired. We were able to use the intuitive interface immediately.

Server reliability: 5/5 Bluehost demonstrated an average uptime of 100 percent during our testing period. It was also completely uninterrupted.

Bluehost is the second provider to achieve this milestone.

This is backed up with a team watching and keeping an eye on your server 24/7 so that you don’t have to.

They are available to help you with any problem that may arise. They can keep your website safe from going down for any reason.

Server response time: 2/5 Bluehost is well-known for many things. Speed is not one of those things.

During our testing, their average response time was 810 milliseconds. This is too high for VPS hosting.

There are shared hosting plans that offer faster load times for visitors.

You can see that the response time has been just under 1 second for 25 days. It’s not bad, but it is slower than expected, especially for VPS.

Bluehost VPS offers decent speed, but it is not as fast as other hosts. Site speed is up to the standard. They could offer more for premium hosting, which comes at a higher price.

Pricing: 4/5 – Bluehost’s entry-level plan is very affordable when compared to other options. The Standard VPS includes 2 GB RAM and costs $23.99 per Month for the first year.

This is a total of $287.88 per year.

You will pay slightly more per month when you renew your contract–$29.99 This is a 25% price increase, with a total cost of $359.88 for the second year.

Add years 1 and 2 together, and you get $647.76 for two years of VPS hosting. This is a great price.

A three-year plan is a great option for budget-savvy users who want to save money. You pay $683.64 upfront and only $18.99 per month for the long term.

You get a whole year of hosting for $35.88, compared to one year. This is a shockingly low $2.99 per month for VPS hosting.

All Bluehost VPS plans include cPanel for absolutely no extra charge.

Support: 3.3/5 Bluehost is well-known for WordPress hosting. Bluehost has a team of WordPress experts that can assist you if you have any problems.

Live chat is quick and easy to use. There’s no waiting for your response in live chat.

However, they don’t appear to have a direct line for VPS support. You will need to first go through shared hosting support even if your choice is VPS or dedicated support.

This means that you will have to wait in two different queues and then go through the “please wait five-ten minutes while we look up your request” game twice every time you call. This can be frustrating and time-consuming, especially when the wait times are lengthy.

They do however offer outstanding 24/7 phone support.

If you are comfortable talking on the telephone, you won’t need to wait as long. We only had to wait two minutes to speak to someone when we called. That’s great.

However, our test scoring takes place over live chat. All of our interactions take place with live chat.

Bluehost support was our first contact. We asked: “What security measures do your VPS servers have in place to protect the data and their servers?”

The chat began at 8:28 AM PST. In 30 seconds, a rep joined.

After a while, the rep stated that they were happy to assist and requested the validation token which they had sent to our email address.

Next came the transition from shared hosting support to VPS support. This was our first contact with Bluehost support. We specifically selected VPS support at the beginning of the form. 

Two minutes later, a new rep arrived and stated that they had a network team that works 24/7 and would monitor the server for brute force attempts. They also have preventive measures in place. Our concerned admin team has secured the servers. However, the account manager must be managed from the client’s end.

We asked if there were any ways we could keep our account safe.

Four minutes later, the rep answered, “You can have two-factor authentication to your cPanel account which will tighten the security here is the help article – https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/two-factor-authentication And you can secure the VPS & Dedicated Hosting: by having ConfigServer Security & Firewall installed. Here is the help article – https://www.bluehost.com/help/article/configserver-security-firewall”

After 17 minutes, we thanked them all and ended the chat at 8:45 a.m.

It would have been more convenient to be connected directly to a VPS professional rather than being transferred after speaking with someone.

A representative could have provided more assistance, beyond sending support articles and not giving a walkthrough of how to use the documents.

Next, we discussed the issue with the dashboard that we encountered during the setup process.

After trying for about 20 minutes to get it to stop we finally reached out to customer service.

After verifying our account, and passing it to another representative, they offered a workaround. They gave us a temporary solution to a bigger problem: use an older cPanel dashboard rather than the one we would normally use.

It was still not working for eight days and we couldn’t access cPanel using the links provided by the rep.

Sometimes we felt that the reps didn’t listen to our words. One rep thought that I was trying to log in to WordPress. This wasn’t the problem.

We were happy that the problem was solved, even though it was a temporary fix. We were impressed by their kindness and patience. The second representative seemed very knowledgeable. They also tried to reproduce the issue to show us what was happening.

We asked the question “How can I make a backup of my server and website?”

The chat started at 7:09 pm. A rep joined the chat right away. To confirm ownership of the account, they asked us to give them the token via email.

We had to wait five minutes for VPS support to be transferred from shared hosting support.

After some time, the rep asked: “May I know why you are creating a backup?” The new rep asked, “Is it just to keep the backup or to transfer it to another server?”

We didn’t understand the reasoning behind this question. It was unnecessary. It doesn’t matter why we do it. Backups are vital and they seem to not care that we need them.

We felt they didn’t put their customer first in this interaction.

We replied that we wanted to know how to do on-demand backups. A response was provided explaining where it could be found in our cPanel. We asked them about automatic and scheduled backups. They told us that we could do this through WHM.

This chat took 17 minutes, including the hand-off.

Although we did receive an answer, it felt like we needed to ask multiple times to find what we wanted.

Worse, instead of telling us how to make a backup, the rep wanted to know why.

VPS security is incomplete without backups.

They seemed less concerned about our success and more about making sure that we didn’t move to another country. This is not the kind of customer-driven support that we wanted.

Bluehost’s support has been excellent. Bluehost is a good choice for many people looking to get a VPS. It has a simple setup process (upsell-driven), and great pricing. Bluehost is, without a doubt, the best VPS available for anyone looking to create a WordPress site quickly.

#6 – Scala hosting — The Easiest Method to Get Your Custom VPS Plan Started

Scala Hosting

Best for custom plans

Scala Hosting is the best choice if you can determine what your websites require from VPS servers. Scala Hosting allows you to tailor both fully managed and self-managed plans with fine-tuned precision until you get the right combination of RAM, CPUs, and storage at a fair price.

Overall Score: 3.2 of 5

Are you looking for a VPS hosting plan that is custom-fitted to your needs? Do you think it is too complicated?

Rethink.

Scala Hosting will dispel any doubts you may have about setting up a VPS with custom resource allocations.

You can set every resource level before you buy it. This ensures that you have the right mix of storage, memory, and processing power. While other hosts allow you to add resources to your account in the future, they do not let you adjust them beforehand.

Even better, managed plans offer the most resource options.

There is no risk of you outgrowing your plan, or needing to search for VPS features elsewhere.

Let’s take a look at Scala’s performance in the key scoring areas.

1. Easy of Use = 5/5
2. Server reliability = 1/5
3. Server response time: 4/5
4. Pricing = 4/5
5. Support = 3/5

Easy of Use: 5/5 – You’d think that custom VPS hosting would prove difficult, right?

Well, surprise. Scala has a way of making it easy for anyone to set up. Scala scored the highest in ease of use on our list.

Scala Hosting offers VPS hosting plans that can be managed or unmanaged.

Scala Hosting has one cool thing: you can create your server with exactly the resources you require

You can use the sliders for deciding how many cores you want, how much RAM, and how much storage space.

You also have the option to choose from one of three options for your data center: New York, Dallas, or Europe.

It is so easy to get started.

Scala manages all server security and maintenance. We selected a managed plan.

You have two choices for a control panel: SPanel and cPanel. CPanel can be used for free and is easier to use, while cPanel costs $16 per month for five licenses.

These aren’t upselling. They’re options that allow you to personalize your server. Scala clearly explains all options so that you understand what you are choosing.

Next, choose your domain name. If you need one, you can register another one. The plan includes a free domain name for the first year. If you don’t require one immediately, you can transfer it to another registrar.

Next, enter your billing and personal information.

We received confirmation within a matter of seconds that our order had been placed. A confirmation email was sent shortly afterward.

We received emails with server details and links to help us get started with CPanel.

After you click the client area, you will be taken through the wizard for setting up your site.

It is quite surprising to see what happens next.

We were expecting a setup wizard, but instead, we were directed to a support article that walks us through all aspects of creating a website from choosing a name to setting up a CMS to branding.

It’s not exactly what you would expect. The guide was not exactly what we expected, but it was great once we opened it and selected the managed VPS option.

It provides so many details on how to get started — and, to be completely honest, we haven’t seen such a comprehensive guide with any other hosts that we signed up for.

This guide includes:

• How long does activation take?
• SPanel: How do you get started?
• What you can do with SPanel, and where to find it all
• SPanel’s various tools
• How to point your domain name
• How to set up SSL
• How to create email accounts

This guide covers all aspects. You will be able to set up your website and admin account after reading this guide.

After creating your admin account, signing in, and signing in, the tour will show you how to access Softaculous to install the software that you are interested in (e.g. Joomla, WordPress, etc.). ).

There’s an SSL button at the bottom. To install an SSL certificate, we clicked that button. After pointing our domain at the server, the SSL will be automatically enabled within 24 hours.

These steps were completed, and now it was time for WordPress to be installed.

We scrolled down to SPanel and clicked on Softaculous. It opened in a new tab. We clicked on WordPress and it opened in a new window.

The installation took about five minutes and was completed.

From start to finish, the entire process took approximately 25 minutes.

Scala Hosting’s set-up process is easy for beginners, especially if the guide is read. You can have your website ready in less than half an hour.

Server reliability: 5/5 – Your website should be available at all times.

Crazy Egg is there for you and performs the testing for uptime, so you don’t have to wonder if your hard work will be noticed.

Scala Hosting boasts an average uptime rate of 99.98%. VPS hosting is not as reliable. This kind of performance can be achieved with shared hosting.

If you compare it with the other sites, seven minutes of downtime per month is more than you should experience. It could cost you thousands of dollars in lost revenue, depending on how big your website is, what you sell, and how many visitors you receive every minute.

Imagine Amazon going down for seven minutes. It would be a disaster.

These were connection timeouts. This means that our website was not requested, but it took too long to connect to the server.

They need to be better especially when you consider what VPS hosting competitors are delivering.

Scala’s response time was 4/5. Scala loaded solidly even though Scala didn’t offer a highly customized VPS plan with lots of RAM and CPU cores.

They averaged 638 milliseconds during our testing period.

The graph shows that Scala hosting response times are consistent. Websites load consistently in less than half a second.

You can also customize your plan and scale up in the memory or processor departments to give it an extra boost.

Scala has some speed-enhancing features as well.

• Servers OpenLiteSpeed

• 10 enterprise-grade global data centers
• SPanel takes up less space than cPanel because it is lighter than cPanel.
• Quick retrieval with Memcached
• Static content compression

Scala Hosting’s speed can be considered good, but not groundbreaking. Your site visitors won’t be waiting, and that’s a good thing.

Pricing: 4/5 – It is rare to find VPS hosting that is fast, reliable, and trustworthy at this price. Scala Hosting breaks all the rules.

Scala’s customized billing cycles are a great benefit. You decide how you want to pay. Choose from monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually.

Scala is a great way to save money if you know how many server resources you require and you want to be able fully to customize your hosting environment, without having to stick with a standard plan.

Scala Hosting’s Start Plan comes with 2GB RAM. This gives you enough RAM to host thousands of visitors per month, without sacrificing performance.

For $21.95 per month, you receive outstanding VPS hosting. This is only $263.40 per month for the first year.

The monthly renewal price is $23.95 per calendar month, a total of $287.40.

It’s a very attractive $550.80 for two years.

You can save $192.60 more

You can opt-in to the three-year agreement. This will reduce your monthly cost to $9.95 and lock you in for an additional year of hosting. You only pay $358.20 upfront

There are many options for monthly pricing for unmanaged VPS hosting plans. Unmanaged hosting, however, is more affordable but you are in control of all aspects of server- and website-related. Scala Hosting does not provide any assistance.

Support: 3/5 – Scala’s support could have been more helpful.

We received fast service and never had to wait. The reps were also reliable.

The biggest problem is that the reps we spoke to didn’t do anything more than send us an article for us to review and then work through. They did not go above and beyond to assist us.

There is no phone support option.

At 10:24 AM PST, our first interaction began. We connected immediately with a representative and asked about maintaining the security of our VPS server as well as our WordPress site.

We thanked them, and the chat ended at 10:32 AM. The chat lasted eight minutes.

They connected us quickly with the right person. The rep provided us with specific advice on how to keep plugins, themes, and the WordPress core current. We were grateful. They could have been more specific beyond what was provided in the support articles.

We connected again instantly to a rep on the second chat.

We were curious to know how we could optimize our WordPress server.

The chat started at 1:47 PM PST

After reviewing our hosting plan services, the rep said that they had seen a Cloud VPS and could cancel your request. We can install the fastest web server LiteSpeed. Either the OpenLiteSpeed free service or the paid version of LiteSpeed is available. To use the web server, you will need to create a ticket in your Client Area to request assistance from an administrator.

We asked how OpenLiteSpeed differs from the one that we used.

Instead of answering, the representative sent a summary of OpenLiteSpeed along with a link to their website.

Then, we asked if OpenLiteSpeed was the best way to optimize WordPress.

They replied, “Well, to tell the truth, I’m not certain if there is a server optimization for WordPress. You have two options: upgrade your server resources, or change the web server. This will increase the speed of your server. It is important to optimize your website.

We thanked them and closed the chat at 1:57 p.m. It took about 10 minutes in total.

After mentioning that we are new to VPS twice, we felt there was plenty of time for the rep to explain and be more helpful.

Instead, they provided a link that allowed us to work out the details on our own. We felt that they were a bit too short with us at the end. The chat was quick but not great.

The third chat dealt with setting up a backup server and website.

We were connected immediately after the chat began at 8:08 p.m.

After reviewing our hosting plan package for a while, the rep stated, “Thanks for your patience.” CPanel allows you to create a backup of your entire account including your websites. Here is a handy guide with a video that you can follow: https://www.scalahosting.com/kb/how-to-generate-a-full-backup/”

We thanked them for their help and asked if we could schedule regular backups.

They replied, “Our VPS plans include regular backups that are automatically done every 24 hours.” You will always be able to restore from a backup that has been created within 24 hours.

We inquired if these are available in SPanel, and the rep sent us another article about how to restore backups.

We thanked the rep and closed the five-minute chat at 8:13 p.m.

The representative only sent out articles and didn’t go through the details. It is a lazy way to provide customer service. It is a great gesture to have someone explain the process or guide us through the steps so that we can follow the instructions.

Another average result from our perspective.

Overall, the service was poor. The guides are helpful and speedy. It is better to not have to do it yourself.

Scala Hosting’s customer service is still improving. All representatives seemed to be knowledgeable, which is a plus.

Scala Host is a great choice for custom plans. Scala Host allows you to fully customize any resource before you spend any money. This is something that no other provider allows you to do.

Although customer support is not great, it could be improved. However, speed and uptime are so good that you may never need to call for help again.

Scala Hosting is an exceptional option in this category. VPS hosting offers customizable plans at an affordable price. Although support and speed are not the best, it is possible to find better options for those who have specific needs.

#7 – Hosting Provider – The Best VPS Host For Developers Who Hate Managing Servers

HostGator

Best Unmanaged VPS Servers for Developers

HostGator’s entry-level plan gives you the best storage space for your money. HostGator’s entry-level plan offers 120GB of storage for just $19.95 per month. This allows you to share large media files in their entirety. All plans come with unlimited email, 1000+ site templates, and weekly backups.

Overall Score: 2.9 of 5

HostGator allows skilled developers full control over their server, without the need to manage it completely.

You can choose to opt out of cPanel, and you will have full root access without having to worry about server maintenance. HostGator is not required by most managed hosting plans.

HostGator manages the server, which takes care of routine security, monitoring, and maintenance. If you prefer to personalize your environment, but don’t want to deal with server management, you can have the best of both.

Let’s take a look at how HostGator compares overall.

1. Easy of Use = 2/5
2. Server reliability = 5/5
3. Server response time = 2/5
4. Pricing = 1/5
5. Support = 2.5/5

Easy to use: 5/5 – Hostgator’s setup experience wasn’t that great.

We liked that there weren’t any upsells in the signup process.

It took three hours to provision our server. There were many confusing steps and no clear directions.

It took us nearly six hours to make our website live.

The CentOS 7 operating system will be required. You will be restricted in how you set up things.

This instantly makes HostGator’s difficulty meter more difficult than others and makes our HostGator Onboarding experience less appealing.

HostGator offers only managed VPS plans. If you are comfortable managing your own VPS, there will be no discounts.

This is how it looks.

Once you have chosen a plan, you will be taken to a checkout page. Here you can either register a domain new or renew an existing one. It is up to you to choose which hosting plan you would like and whether or not you wish cPanel. However, it will cost you $10 more per month if cPanel is required.

You’ll find billing and account information further down the page.

We love the fact that there are no upsells at all. It’s very straightforward and there are no upsells to make you pay more for things you don’t use.

We received a confirmation of payment, which let us know that our account would soon be available. We were also sent an email with our order details and login information.

We were able to log in to our account within three minutes. We had to wait for the VPS server to be provisioned to allow us to log in.

HostGator support articles stated that provisioning a VPS plan using cPanel can take up to three hours. Provisioning took three hours and eight minutes in our case. This is disappointing as other providers can do this in minutes.

When the server was available, an email was sent. It contained all server information, cPanel login details, and the names of servers.

The six-step checklist included requesting a migration, setting up private name servers, requesting name servers, and logging in to website management (WHM).

This seems to be a very complicated process and more difficult than with other hosting providers.

Once the server is available, click “Manage” in the admin panel. The screen below will appear.

Accessing cPanel via the admin panel is not possible so you will need to use the web host manager (WHM). Once I had logged in, I was asked for my agreement to the cPanel/WHM terms and conditions.

After logging in, we created a new account for the domain name and followed the instructions to connect to the private name servers. This was a lengthy process that involved a lot of Googling, and back-and-forth between HostGator and our domain provider.

It took several hours to get these things working, so we weren’t sure if it was correct. It isn’t a great user experience.

Until you receive confirmation, it can feel very lost.

We found a video that walked us through the process on HostGator. It’s not in the same order as the steps in the welcome email so it was confusing.

We decided to follow the video.

We needed to create the SSL certificate after we had set up DNS.

HostGator claims it will be activated automatically within 24 hours. However, we were hoping for it to happen faster. It was enabled instantly when we went to WHM.

Softaculous made it super simple to install WordPress after you have logged into cPanel. It took only five minutes.

Overall though, it was a slow and tedious process. Provisioning took more than three hours, and we were also delayed by the confusing domain name configuration.

Our site was up and running after six hours of waiting. It felt like certain things were more difficult than they should have been.

Server reliability: 5/5. We expected high uptime numbers for all VPS providers, but HostGator delivered 100% in our tests.

There was no downtime. Visitors were always welcome to visit our site.

HostGator supports these features with network redundancies that ensure availability and server monitoring, and remediation in the event of a problem.

However, our tests show that you won’t have to worry about unplanned downtime.

Server response time: 2/5. During our tests, HostGator’s server response time was an average of 859 milliseconds.

This is a significant drop in response time for VPS hosting.

HostGator is a developer-focused environment. This means that you can configure and optimize the site to meet your needs.

Pricing: 1/5 – HostGator is the most expensive for hosting for two years on this list.

Their renewal rate rose by an incredible 234% in the second year. They seem to lure you in with a promo price, then reward you with a high renewal rate.

Snappy 2000, which costs $23.95 per month, is the cheapest HostGator virtual private server plan. This makes your initial cost for the first year $287.40. Add $120 for cPanel.

It’s $407.40 per year for the first year. The renewal hike starts at $79.95 per month. If you wish to continue with cPanel, you will need to pay $120.

Your second-year hosting with HostGator costs $1079.40. This makes your total of two years $1,486.40.

We think this is excessive, especially when you don’t get half the quality offered by other providers on this page at a lower price.

HostGator’s entry-level VPS plans are priced at a low price. We couldn’t find any HostGator products that justify such a high price.

A three-year agreement can help you save money. It costs $19.95 per month and includes $360 for cPanel.

This is $1,078.20 upfront for three years of hosting. It’s much cheaper than paying $400 more per year.

HostGator is the only host that doesn’t offer a control panel. If you prefer to use something else, you can opt out of cPanel.

Support: 2.5/5 – Customer support from HostGator was not our favorite.

We had to wait for five minutes before we received a reply from the first rep. We were eventually transferred to email support, which took hours to receive a reply.

Below is an example of what we mean:

Our first chat began at 10:57 AM PST.

We were curious to know: “What security measures are you using to protect your hosting environment?”

Instantly, a HostGator representative joined the chat and requested our PIN.

We didn’t know what it was so we inquired if that was something we did during signup, or if we needed to go to a location to find it.

After being asked, the rep left the chat and joined another one. We found this to be an odd way to treat customers. We did manage to find the PIN and sent it via email to the new rep.

The new rep welcomed us and asked for our domain name. We don’t know what happened if another rep left, as we didn’t mention VPS servers. Or if we just got in touch with the wrong department.

The new rep then asked if they could enable SSL certificates for the domain. We told him we had already done that. We were unsure why they would offer to do something that we already had done. We were shocked to discover that they didn’t even look at our account information.

After a while, the rep was able to sort this out and then rephrased our original question. Finally, the rep said, “I appreciate you being patient.” You can find more information here: https://www.hostgator.com/help/article/what-security-measures-are-used-to-protect-my-server”

We waited so long for them just to send us a link. That didn’t appeal to us at all.

We asked them if they had any advice on how to secure our WordPress website.

Rep said that HostGator was protected against DDoS attacks (UDP flooding). Our servers are protected from many types of attacks by a large custom firewall and mod security rule set. Additional server security measures and precautions are also employed by us.

Then, they suggested that we purchase SiteLock to protect our site. They also asked if there was anything else.

After 23 minutes, we ended the chat at 11.20 a.m. It took us 20 minutes to receive a support article. The first rep completely ignored our questions and didn’t respond to them.

We wanted to disable auto-renew billing for the second interaction. This should have been easy, but it was the exact opposite.

To make sure that we don’t get charged for another month, we turned off auto-renew. We were not able to change the settings so we tried to cancel the account. However, we were informed that the account would remain active until the end of the billing cycle for which we had already paid.

We canceled and were told that the services would be active up to 8/1.

We received an email stating that our account had been deleted and that a refund was being issued. This happened a few hours later. We went to the website and found it was not accessible. We reached out to customer service to find out how to fix it.

They canceled our account, and all of our work was lost. Our site was not accessible. Rep said that she had sent a request for the cancellation to be updated and that our site would be reactivated.

We received an email about 20 minutes later from another person, saying “Hello, I understand your concern regarding Hosting.” We have canceled your package (site domain + IP address) per your request. We could not locate any cancellation request at the end.

We were asked to create a new account even though we were told that we could continue with the current billing cycle.

If it said otherwise, we wouldn’t have canceled it. We responded again to their email asking them to activate the package. They said that they could not because the package had been canceled. A refund was issued.

Nine hours later, they replied saying that the server was active under the new hosting plan. It will automatically expire at the end of the billing cycle. We checked again and found that the website had been restored to its original state.

The whole process took twelve hours. It was exhausting.

Our account was deleted and we were very upset. It is not often that a review site experiences a horror story about customer service. We are here.

Although we were pleased with the way they handled it, we had to push them to do more.

They helped to fix it. Although we had to contact several reps via email and chat, they were all very understanding and made sure that we were satisfied. They also checked that our data was safe.

Our third interaction was a question: “How can I make a backup of my server and website?”

The chat started at 7:43 PM PST. After about 30 seconds, a rep joined the chat.

They stated that they were investigating our query. They wanted to confirm the server and website that we were referring to after a while.

Although the rep was very friendly, we felt this question was extremely simple and were worried that it would take so long to get an answer.

After a few more minutes, the rep told us, “Sure sure, let me give the URL here Here’s the URL https://www.hostgator.com/help/article/how-to-generatedownload-a-full-backup however, you will be needing to backup each site that has cpanel :)”

After 18 minutes, we thanked them all and ended the chat at 8:01 p.m.

It felt like we were waiting a long time to receive what we requested. Even then, they sent us an article and didn’t explain anything.

HostGator allows developers to manage the show, but it avoids the most tedious part for most devs. The server management.

Although Hostgator did not impress us, they do have great features for developers. Although the pricing isn’t the most affordable, this service can provide full control without any server headaches.

HostGator VPS offers the perfect combination of unflagging uptime and control.

#8 – Hosting — Unbeatable Content Storage

A2 Hosting

Best Content Storage

The best server control and customization are available at the lowest prices we have seen. You can get a wide variety of developer-friendly tools for just $4.99 per month. Choose your server location and operating systems, SwiftServers top-of-the-line, and one-click installation on various platforms.

Overall Score: 2.9 of 5

VPS is a better option for you if you want to move faster, more securely, and have more resources to help you manage your business.

This also means that you will be creating more content. A2 Hosting gives you the storage space that you need right away.

Site speed will be faster than sites that have the same media.

Why? A2 Hosting offers 150GB free of charge with their entry-level plans.

A2 is the best choice for sites that are heavy on content, images, and videos. The entry-level plan offers a lot of storage and the maximum limit is 450GB for the highest tier.

The best part? To load your heavy content quickly, you can speed things up by making a few adjustments to your dashboard.

Let’s take a closer look at A2’s overall score.

1. Easy of Use = 2/5
2. Server reliability = 5/5
3. Server response time = 1/5
4. Pricing = 2/5
5. Support = 3.7/5

Easy of use: 5/5 – A2 Hosting offers managed and unmanaged VPS hosting. The managed plans include one cPanel account and optional root access.

These include managed server security, network, and hardware.

It’s much easier to start and you won’t have to do much maintenance. However, you will pay more and lose the flexibility of an unmanaged program.

After you click the button to select the plan, you will be taken to a screen where you can choose your domain name. You have the option to register a new domain, transfer an existing one or use one you already own and update your name servers.

The last option was chosen and we entered the domain that would be used for this site. The checkout screen appeared, which outlined the plan that we selected at the top.

Scroll down to see two upsells. The first is for a turbo server (an additional $30 per month), and the second is for advanced SSL certificates (ranging in price from $49.99 to $149.99 annually).

These certificates are more advanced than the Let’sEncrypt SSL that most people can use. Don’t let anyone trick you into buying these certificates unless you need them.

Scroll down to customize your server.

There are four options: Arizona, Michigan, and Amsterdam.

Additional dedicated IP addresses can be added for $5.99 per address

You also have the option of a standard managed plan or root access. Both cost the same.

You can then set up your cPanel username and password.

Amazingly, you can install platforms as early as this stage. ), Drupal and Joomla, OpenCart, and Magento, among many others.

Once you have chosen one, your login information will be sent to you. It’s important to keep it safe as you won’t receive it by email and it won’t be available again.

This is a feature that none of the other options have offered. This can speed up the process and remove a lot of confusion.

To review the package, we chose WordPress and clicked “Continue”.

After verifying everything, we clicked “Checkout”. After filling out the required information, you will be prompted to confirm your details.

You get four emails. You will receive four emails. The first three are general, while the last one is more specific and contains tons of valuable information.

It says that our VPS server can take up to 45 minutes for provisioning and that it will send us an email when it is ready.

Below are two links to the suggestion box as well as a link for the managed VPS startup guide.

Next, login information for A2’s customer portal. How to log in to cPanel. A few tips and tricks to help you use it.

You will receive details about how to migrate your website and DNS/name server information.

This email is overwhelming because it contains so many details. The email is also poorly formatted, making it a daunting wall of text.

This is where you have to be careful. Once your server has been provisioned, you can’t do anything. To see the status of the server, we logged in to the customer portal until we received an email confirming that it was ready.

We still hadn’t received an email after 45 minutes. We received no email for two hours. So we reached out to customer service.

Rep said that our server was ready and that we could install WordPress. The pre-install for WordPress should have been completed by the rep since that was what we did during the checkout process.

We were not given any explanations as to why we didn’t receive an email. The setup took approximately two and a quarter hours and was not particularly user-friendly.

Server reliability: 5/5 A2 Hosting was another one we tested that achieved 100% uptime without any blemishes.

During our month of testing, there were no issues. A2 Hosting also has an expert team that monitors for potential issues and fixes them before they cause headaches.

A2 boasts a unique feature: their data centers are equipped with backup diesel generators that ensure that power is always available no matter what. You won’t be able to stop people visiting your site from other factors than those within your control.

Server response time was 1/5 – We did speed testing on A2 because they advertise their server speed well on their website.

We didn’t expect to receive the exact opposite of what they claimed. Their server response time averaged 1287 milliseconds.

Hosting in general, or VPS hosting specifically, is not good.

The image shows huge spikes in response times. One instance can be seen climbing up to three seconds.

This will frustrate visitors and cause distrust in your website.

A2 offers some unique features that can help speed up loading times, such as OPcache and Cloudflare’s easy installation. You also have the option to choose turbo servers instead of the standard ones.

They are great at clearly explaining all their features and giving an idea of how quickly your website can be made. It might also be true for other plans. These features don’t do much, based on our experience with the 2GB plan.

Pricing: 2/5 – Price is not an important aspect of A2 Hosting.

Their entry-level managed VPS service, the Lift 4, comes with 2GB RAM. This package starts at $35.99 per month for the first year and totals $431.88.

Lift 4 comes with a single cPanel license, but not with a web host management platform (WHM).

Your monthly cost increases by 64% after year 1. This adds up to $707.88 for the second year.

Add up the first and second-year hosting costs for A2’s VPS hosting, and you will get $1139.76 for the lowest-tier managed plan.

You can save like many other people by choosing a longer-term commitment upfront. You pay only $29.99 per month for three years. This is a little more than $60 less than what we have outlined, and you also get an additional year.

Upgraded plans such as Lift 8 and Lift 16 allow you to get more cPanel licenses and WHM access for server-side management and account administration.

A2’s Runway plans are unmanaged VPS options that can save you money.

This is a much more affordable option, and you can manage your entire server without any assistance from A2.

Support: 3.7/5 – Response times for A2 customer service were quick. We didn’t have to wait for more than nine minutes and our first two interactions began immediately.

Two of the interactions were very time-consuming to resolve. It was frustrating to wait for answers, which sometimes felt like pulling teeth.

Reps took forever to answer simple questions.

The first two reps were able to explain everything to us and went the extra mile to help. They also seemed to have a good understanding of VPS servers.

A2 overall scored above average in customer support. However, the performance of the last rep shook A2 hosting.

The first chat started at 8:07 AM PST. We were interested in the security measures A2 has put in place for VPS hosting customers.

The rep joined the chat right away, said hello, and thanked us all for reaching out. After waiting a while, they returned ten minutes later to apologize for the delay. In terms of security, the features we implement are quite broad, and apply to all of our services whether it’s a shared or VPS hosting: https://www.a2hosting.com/secure-hosting.”

They said, “Using non-standard ports, our firewall, brute force protection and the method that we use to protect the filesystems of each user on a Server are some of the most noteworthy.”

They then asked us if we had any concerns.

We wanted to know if DDoS protection was included in the package or if it is an add-on. The rep quickly responded, saying “No worries. We offer a wide range of services to protect our servers, and they will work regardless of the hosting environment.

After an eight-minute pause, they answered our DDoS query directly by saying, “Yes, DDoS protection applies regardless of your package.” We offer Cloudflare support as well as in-cPanel applications.

We thanked them for their help and closed the chat at 8:36 AM. The chat lasted 29 minutes

Although the responses were slow, we loved the detail that the rep provided beyond what was in the support article.

Chat number 2 was an additional example of the same friendly and helpful service.

The chat started at 1:46 pm. We asked, “Is it possible to optimize my VPS server to host a WordPress website?”

A representative joined the chat immediately, introduced himself, and stated that they would be helping us today.

They first said that there are many ways to optimize WordPress sites. The rep sent five articles that were very clear and concise explanations of what they were and their importance.

To reduce server load, they also suggested a content delivery system (CDN).

After 11 minutes, we thanked them and closed the chat at 1:57 pm.

We liked that the majority of articles were very advanced and targeted VPS users. We also appreciated the specific advice from the rep and the fact that they took the time and looked at our server and site.

While some of the advice applies to all types of sites and servers, others are more specific for VPS users with greater control over their servers.

They sent many links but explained everything clearly and simply, even though it was a lot. They went above and beyond to provide us with actionable and specific advice for optimizing our website and server.

The last support request we received was “How can I make a backup of my server and website?”

Nine minutes after the chat began, a representative joined us. He explained that you have two options to create backups: either use the cPanel option (backup wizard) or manually use FTP.

A support article was also sent to provide instructions.

We then asked if it was possible to schedule or automate backups.

He said that there was no such thing, but server rewind is available which performs automatic backups and can be used to restore your site. This is only available for shared hosting plans.

This was counterproductive. Customers who pay this much for VPS should not hear that a lower plan has better features.

We ended the chat after verifying that this was not available for VPS users. It took us 23 minutes.

Since scheduled and automatic backups were not possible, we would have liked for the rep to offer an alternative option. The rep did not do much except send us a support article and inform us about the features that we cannot use.

Apart from the slow replies, it was an awful experience.

A2 Hosting is a great option if you want to host a large website that contains a lot of content. As your traffic increases and your content library grows, your site will scale.

#9 – HostPapa – The Best Enterprise Plan For Massive Projects

HostPapa

Best for Massive Projects

HostPapa has the best VPS hosting packages available. It offers massive 1 TB SSD storage, 12 CPU cores, and 32 GB RAM. There are also 8 TB transfers. AKA… enough power to manage even the largest projects, such as a social media platform, video game server, heavy streaming, or IoT management platform.

Overall Score: 2.1 of 5

You will need to have a lot of server resources if you are looking at a large project, such as a social media platform or IoT management platform, or a large application.

HostPapa combines the functionality and tools that you need to make larger-than-life projects a success.

If you require it, you can have up to 1TB of storage, 12 CPU cores, and 32GB RAM. This huge amount of resources are suitable for many different business uses.

What did HostPapa score in the top VPS categories? Have a look at these:

1. Easy of Use = 1/5
2. Server reliability = 3/5
3. Server response time = 1/5
4. Pricing = 2/5
5. Support = 3.7/5

HostPapa is easy to use: 1/5. Enterprise-grade clients who have an experienced team that can navigate the complex signup process are more likely to find it easier. It’s not for beginners.

There are two options: semi-managed and unmanaged. This allows you to turn on root access with just one click. All plans include cPanel.

Fully-managed plans do not include root access, but you can offload any amount of server management or maintenance you want.

Click “Get Started” to select the plan that you are interested in. Next, choose your domain name. You have two options: either register one new with HostPapa, or you can use one that you already own.

We entered the domain that we have and selected the “I will upgrade my nameservers” option.

The next screen will allow you to review and change your plan as well as the term that you wish to commit to.

Scroll down to see the three types of VPS management options: self-managed (free), managed with cPanel ($19 per month), or fully managed ($129 per month).

The next upsell includes cPanel (you add more licenses to your account or upgrade to a higher one), automated remote backups ($25 per month), Protection Power Website Security ($19.95/year), and an advanced SSL certificate (14.95/year).

You can then finalize your order, and proceed to checkout.

It states that server provisioning takes less than a minute and is ready for use within minutes on the VPS page.

We expected to be able to log in to our account fairly quickly.

We visited the login page and were asked for our client ID. This was not something we had received yet. It’s in your login information email.

A good hour and a half later, HostPapa sent me a welcome email. It contained my client ID as well as a link for setting up a new password, WHM login details, server details, as well as the URL to the name servers.

It took us a while to realize that the website claimed it would be available in under 60 seconds.

After logging in, you will need to create security questions. You’ll be taken to the web panel after that.

One major reason the web panel was so frustrating was

It was like one large ad. The left side had a large upsell, while the right side featured several links. We were afraid to click on any of the links because it felt like a minefield of upsells.

This was a terrible look.

You’ll find three services in the web hosting section. The first is the VPS server, the second is for my HostPapa team and the third is your cPanel license.

The web panel is limited to viewing and managing subscriptions. We wish there were a button or link to log in to WHM. It’s instead in your welcome email.

HostPapa provides a simple panel that allows you to manage the basic functions of your VPS server.

You can access this panel to reboot, shut down, delete, manage passwords, and view your resource usage.

We logged in to WHM and created a new account. After enabling the SSL certificate, we went to install WordPress. However, we realized that the Softaculous license was incorrect.

The free license doesn’t allow for WordPress installation, but all VPS plans that we reviewed come with a premium license.

HostPapa had installed the wrong license when they created our account. This forced us to contact customer service. They stated that they would send a senior tech to fix the issue and that it could take as long as an hour.

We waited for over two hours without any resolution. At 3:30 AM, we received a message asking us for our root password to install the correct version of Softaculous.

This request was answered in the morning during our normal business hours. Later that evening, they informed us that Softaculous had been updated and that WordPress should now be available for installation.

We were finally able to install WordPress after two days.

Onboarding was not easy for beginners. We felt that the onboarding process was not user-friendly.

Server reliability: 3/5. HostPapa delivers high uptime performance. Their little downtime, compared to others who deliver 100% uptime, was enough for them to fall further behind the pack.

One incident was all that caused one minute and fifteen seconds of downtime.

It takes approximately two minutes to go 100% to 99.99% with all the data that we have logged over the month.

HostPapa was able to deliver almost 100% uptime with only one downtime incident and it was still the third worst in reliability.

The list’s average downtime is 1 minute and 9 seconds. HostPapa was slightly behind the average.

Server response time 1/5 – HostPapa’s entry-level plan will cause your website to slow down.

We spent a lot of time testing the speed of VPS providers. HostPapa had an average response time of 1010 milliseconds. 

The dark blue line indicates the stability of your server. It also shows how fast it has moved over the test days. The time interval is approximately one second. This is the most difficult speed test.

We are disappointed that this plan is not more efficient than the one you pay for. However, you are paying for the VPS environment that they provide. This environment can be customized to increase speed.

They specialize in large projects and enterprise websites. They may leave it up to the user to speed things up.

However, we believe that this VPS hosting plan is not the best for small websites.

Pricing: 2/5 – HostPapa’s pricing is a bit high, but enterprise-grade performance can be expected.

The Mercury plan costs $29.99 per month. It is the cheapest HostPapa VPS plans with at least 2GB RAM. You’ll owe $359.88 for the first year and $228 for cPanel. This is $587.88 upfront for year 1.

Good news: DreamHost renewals are 0% higher than the original. For the second year, you will need to pay $587.88.

HostPapa VPS Hosting costs $1,175.76 for two years.

A three-year agreement costs $19.99 per month. You will still have to pay an extra $684 for cPanel for the entire three-year agreement.

You’ll pay $1,404.64 upfront and $228.88 per year.

Support: 3.7/5 – In almost two-thirds of our interactions with HostPapa support the first rep we spoke to couldn’t help us out. Both cases saw us switch from live chat to much slower email support.

It took 19 hours for both times to get an answer. Yes, 19 hours. This is a ridiculously long time to wait, especially when something is wrong and your server is down.

There was a silver lining to it all: the next reps that we spoke with were extremely knowledgeable about VPS and went above and beyond for us to get an answer.

Here’s how it ended:

Our first chat began at 9:19 AM PST. We asked, “What security precautions do you have to protect your hosting environment?”

The rep joined the meeting immediately. After waiting a while, they replied “Thanks for waiting. I hope it wasn’t too long.” I have spoken with the concerned team regarding this matter. I will open a ticket for you and notify them. They will be able to answer any questions you may have and will send an email to address them.

We replied that we were simply curious about security measures for the VPS server. They replied and stated that they would be happy to answer any questions I had via email.

We agreed to do so and thanked them. The chat ended at 9:25 a.m.

We received a reply at 4:05 a.m. on the next day with a brief explanation about the security features of their servers.

This question was not answered by the regular support chat. It’s something that HostPapa employees should be able to answer. It was unclear why the matter had to be escalated and sent to email support.

You’ll recall our first interaction when we had trouble installing WordPress after HostPapa installed an incorrect version of Softaculous.

We reached out to someone and were connected immediately.

Although they were friendly, they had to escalate the issue to a higher level of support to obtain the correct license.

Support switched to email after we escalated the issue. We were told by the rep that they had created a ticket so we could track our conversation in their system.

They asked for our root password almost five hours later. They replied 30 minutes later that they would upgrade our Softaculous license to the premium version.

We were able to install WordPress three hours later after the upgrade was confirmed.

It took 19 more hours to complete the entire interaction. We were impressed with their willingness to accept responsibility.

We were very annoyed at the fact that we received the wrong license. They had to wait for us before we could proceed. It took them so long to get it done. This was due to the long wait times and time differences between the replies. We had to wait for two days to get the site up.

Both reps were friendly and knowledgeable about VPS servers. It was a great thing that they installed the correct version for us, rather than just having us do it.

The only interaction in which we weren’t handed to another level was our third. At 7:51 PM, we asked about creating server and site backups and were connected immediately with a representative.

They asked us five minutes later if we would like to download the entire server backup.

We explained that we just wanted to know how it would work for future reference. About a minute later, they replied that you can download a backup by using the cPanel backup tool. For more information, please see the link below.

The authors also stated that a complete backup is available for download. A.tar.gz file will be generated in your file manager. This is the backup file. You can either save it on your server or download it to your computer.

We thanked them for their help and asked if they could automate or schedule backups. A few minutes later, the rep replied that they had an automated backup service. You can contact our solutions team to help you set it up on your account.

After we inquired about the cost, they informed us that this was an additional charge.

After 15 minutes, we ended the chat at 8:06 p.m.

The rep was very helpful in explaining how backups work and what you can do with them once they are created. This was extremely helpful. The whole interaction was very fast, even though the responses were sometimes a little slow.

We felt like they were very knowledgeable about VPS servers when the rep provided specific instructions.

HostPapa was fantastic, despite the slow response times for email support. They just need to speed up the response time. You can also train those reps who respond first to VPS-specific queries.

They will go above and beyond average in customer service.

HostPapa is a great choice for large projects and enterprise websites, in our opinion.

Their service department will solve your problem regardless of how long it takes.

Their greatest problems are their high price and difficulty of use. It is more expensive than the other providers and has a more complex setup. It’s a double-whammy.

HostPapa can help you with large websites that have more complex project requirements. It is a reliable hosting option and has a reputation for helping clients get the job done.

#10 -iDrive Compute- The Best Low-Cost Option For Edge Computing

iDrive Compute

Best for Edge Computing

iDrive Compute is the best choice if you need top performance to host online games or unbeatable reliability and speeds for IoT devices. With their vast network of data centers around the globe and high-quality infrastructure, worries about syncing and reliability for your business will be a distant memory.

Overall Score: 1.7 of 5

iDrive Compute is not for hosting websites but for leveraging the power of edge computing. It provides a lifetime of storage and access to 4,000 servers on every continent.

iDrive lets you bring your data closer to the source. This improves application management speed, features updates around the globe, and many other benefits.

iDrive is your only option for a blank slate. It’s mandatory to use the command-line interface. It’s a favorite among developers.

From autonomous vehicles and factory line monitoring to wireless inventory trackers and monitoring hospital beds, there are many options.

VPS edge computing by iDrive Compute takes out the hassles of scaling and initial deployment.

iDrive offers the greatest flexibility in terms of customization options and resources.

It is ideal for anyone interested in learning development or who has already gained a lot of experience and needs a VPS server that does not get in the way.

Let’s compare their performance against top VPS hosting types.

1. Easy of Use = 2/5
2. Server reliability = 1/5
3. Server response time = 1/5
4. Pricing = 5/5
5. Support = 1.8/5

Easy of Use: 2/5 – This was the most difficult process we expected.

We weren’t wrong. But the surprise was that customer support didn’t have to be contacted during setup.

Our site was up and running in just over an hour.

iDrive does not come with a control panel. Either you have to purchase one or get one free. You will have to install it yourself via the command-line interface (CLI).

iDrive does not manage your server’s maintenance or management. Backups, security, and software upgrades are all your responsibility.

This is the setup in action.

After you have selected the plan that you wish to purchase, you will be asked to sign in or create an Account.

After that, you will need to verify your email address before you can proceed. After verifying your email, you will be asked to log into your account.

After logging in, you can add billing information and private contact details to iDrive so they can reach you by phone if needed.

You will be prompted to enter the verification code on the screen.

You’ll be taken back to your billing screen. We received an email confirming that our account was available and a link to log in.

iDrive does not offer any additional assistance at this time. We watched all tutorials and read all FAQs on the iDrive Compute website. Although they weren’t very helpful, they may be more useful for experienced users.

Clicking “Add Instance” at the top left of our dashboard brings us to this screen. Here we can select our operating system and choose our data center. We can also choose a plan and set a root password, SSH key, or root password. You can also add backups ($0.05 per gigabyte) or a dedicated IP (free).

We selected CentOS 8.2, the entry-level monthly plan at $5 per month, as our operating system. A root password was created and an IP address was enabled.

It took approximately 30 seconds for our new instance to spin up after we clicked “Create”.

We launched the console. This is how you communicate with the server via a command-line interface. It asked for our root password as the first thing. Then, it asked for our root password. We gave it and moved on.

Next, we followed the instructions to install CentOS’s control panels.

The CentOS control panel was successfully installed. Everything that follows this point is done inside the CentOS control panel. This panel is separate from iDrive Compute. You may also find CentOS Panel on other VPS servers, so these screenshots and steps aren’t limited to iDrive.

Then, we created a new account and logged in to it. Here is the non-root user dashboard.

We went to the add-ons section. We clicked on “Add new WordPress” on the right-hand side.

There are tons of themes available, but we chose the 2021 theme.

Within 30 seconds, we received a notification that our installation had been successful. Overall, the installation was very advanced but also very fast.

Server reliability: 5/5 – iDrive, the next step in data delivery, is one of the options. We expected that the uptime would be above average.

However, iDrive’s response times were disappointing at 965 milliseconds.

It’s fine for shared hosting but not for VPS. They had two incidents that caused them to be unavailable for over two minutes.

Edge computing is dependent on uptime. Many users, clients, and enterprises count on it.

Our testing details say it all.

In the above image, the response time graph shows a wide range of values. The blue line shows a pattern that was not consistent over the 25-day test period.

Both downtime incidents occurred on the same day. Total unavailability was the second-longest downtime suffered by a provider on the list.

The longest incident was the first, lasting 2 minutes and 1 second. It was a connection error, which meant that the server took far too long to respond.

It was an internal HTTP 500 server error that caused the 20-second incident. This means that the server could not fulfill the requested request due to an unexpected condition.

Despite being second on our list for the worst uptime and not meeting our standards for great downtime, we like the fact that iDrive Compute does serious work for us by maintaining and managing physical servers and hardware upgrades to make your uptime more reliable.

Server response time 1/5 – iDrive’s average response time was 965 milliseconds. This is significantly less than the 761 milliseconds list-wide average.

The dark blue line indicates the bumpy 25-day journey. You can also see that they averaged 1.5 seconds per day between July 17th and 19

iDrive’s foundation is built on fast data delivery. We see the potential for improvement in their entry-level plans, especially when it comes to speed.

Pricing: 5/5 – For a niche offering in VPSs, iDrive’s pricing is unbeatable.

The second-lowest plan, the most basic, with at least 2GB RAM, starts at $1 per month. It almost feels like highway robbery when you consider the $12 per month promotional pricing.

It’s cheaper than a shared hosting plan and it will renew automatically. You’ll pay $120 for the second year, which is $10 more per month.

You pay $132 for two years of VPS hosting with edge computing. Do you think about where you will spend your remaining budget?

You have a lot of flexibility. You can still get a great deal on their higher-octane plans.

Monthly payments are also possible, starting at $5 per month for the cheapest plan.

Annual plans are much more affordable.

iDrive is a pay-as-you-go service that allows you to only pay for what you use.

Support: 1.8/5 – There is virtually no support for iDrive Compute.

We said it.

It was tried three times, and we were left with basic questions unanswered twice. They seem to be more interested in billing and administrative issues than they are in the people who use them.

This is the lowest support score on the entire list.

To be fair, the provider is only for developers. They make it clear that you won’t receive any assistance once you sign up.

Is it OK to offer no service?

Our experience has shown that the answer is no.

Customers are the most important thing, so no matter your skill level there should always be great customer service.

Although the first interaction was excellent, it was not the last. The rep was extremely knowledgeable and responded to all our questions lightning-fast time.

The chat started at 9:55 AM PST. Instantly, a rep joined the chat to ask how they could assist. We inquired about their security measures.

After waiting for a few minutes, the rep replied and stated that “IDrive Compute web Console provides a variety of security features you can choose to install while configuring and establishing your VPS infrastructure. This will ensure the safe processing of your important business data, personal information, and other sensitive information. SSH key-based authentication, optional root log-in, and firewalls to manage network traffic are all available.

We followed up with them about what they do to make sure this happens. The rep said that they couldn’t do anything about it and that it was up to us to do it.

We clarified that our question was more about physical security to protect data centers and other such things.

A minute later, the rep stated that the IDrive application was hosted at one of our data centers in the United States. These facilities are world-class and offer the most extensive range of security features.

Include state-of-the-art smoke detection, fire suppression, motion sensors, and 24/7 secured access.

We thanked them for their time and closed the chat at 10:00 a.m., after eight minutes.

We were pleasantly surprised by the interaction, as this was a completely unmanaged VPS provider.

We were impressed by the speed of each response and how clearly the rep explained everything. We also appreciated the clear responses.

The worst part of our second interaction was when things got worse. At 2:30 PM, we started the chat. A representative was already there and asked for help.

We asked them about optimizing their servers to support a WordPress site.

They asked for our email address and stated that they would raise the ticket to the correct team. Rep said that they would take a look at the server and send us more information via email.

We thanked them, and we reiterated our gratitude.

We waited for a follow-up email at 2:33 p.m. The chat was over.

We received an email immediately confirming that a ticket had been created and that they would follow up with us as soon as possible.

We never heard back. We had not heard from them for more than 48 hours.

It was a terrible experience overall.

At 7:30 p.m., our third interaction began when we asked about creating a backup server.

The rep denied that they could find our account. In reply, we took a screenshot from the account information page which had our email address.

After about a minute they said, “You want your CentOS 8 under IDrive Compute to be backed up.” Yes, correct? We told them we did not need to back up now but that we wanted to learn how to do it.

Then they sent us an article about setting up remote desktops and asked us to refer to it. We informed them that it was not about creating a backup, but setting up remote desktops.

We reiterated our need for a backup and not a remote desktop, as the rep only said “yes”.

Then they said, “Am checking please remain on chat.” This was extremely confusing.

A few minutes later, the rep messaged back and stated that they need to contact the backend team to help them and that they would get back to us as soon as possible.

We informed them that we had already solved it and thanked them.

The chat took fifteen minutes. Our question was not answered, and the rep didn’t know what they were doing.

This is one of our most common questions. It is easy to find and can be accessed via our dashboard. It was found in just 30 seconds.

It was very disappointing that they were so unsuccessful in this.

We believe that iDrive customer service has a lot of potential for improvement. The documentation is also poor. If you don’t know what you are doing or need some help, you will spend a lot of your time searching the internet.

iDrive Compute is only for edge computing situations where we expect most users to have more experience than ourselves. If you don’t mind the lack of support, iDrive Compute is an excellent choice for edge computing use cases and especially considering their amazing price.

Methodology to Choose the Best VPS Hosting Service

Numbers don’t lie.

VPS Hosting is a great way to grow your online business. VPS Hosting is a mix of shared and dedicated hosting. It perfectly combines reliability, speed, price, and quality.

Our methodology below will help you determine which provider is best for you.

We tested every provider.

1. We registered for the lowest VPS plan from every provider, using a new domain. We then tested how simple or difficult it was to set things up.
2. Each site was wiped clean, with no images or media. We only installed WordPress with the same theme as each provider.
3. After obtaining domain names from each provider we then collected uptime and speed data using Freshping during 25 days of testing.
4. We evaluated the price and looked at every number. Then we ranked each provider based on two years of hosting.
5. We tested the knowledge and helpfulness of VPS hosts’ representatives in five areas of customer service to determine what quality support means.

After collecting all our data, each provider was rated from best to worst.

Five areas of VPS hosting were chosen because they are most useful to users looking for a faster and more powerful plan.

1. Easy of use (15%)
2. Server reliability (30%)
3. Server response time (30%)
4. Pricing (10%)
5. Support (15%)

After accumulating the data, we converted the ratings into an overall score for each provider.

60 percent of the overall score is about server reliability and response times. These are the main concerns of most VPS users when looking to host their servers.

Why?

These two categories are used to measure the accessibility of your website and its loading speed for each visitor.

This score should be the highest possible. Your website is always fast and online, so no one can say anything. It’s expected.

People will notice if your website is slow or doesn’t load quickly enough and they won’t return to your site.

Our research revealed the successes and failures of every provider in these categories.

Do you want to learn how to make them work for you? This methodology will show you how to use them to your advantage, plus much more.

An Intuitive Control Panel That Doesn’t Get in the Way of Your Success (15%)

We had unlimited access and were able to see every control panel of each provider on the list. This allows us to tell you how easy or difficult they are.

Many control panels allow you to manage backups, add more resources, develop tools, and purchase new domain names, if necessary. There’s much more to it.

If that feature is available, you can also easily move your site to another server. You can access your knowledge base for the selected host from your control panel. This makes it easy to find solutions.

VPS hosting allows you to customize your website with the changes you require, giving your website the performance it needs.

Your control panel acts as a central hub for website management. It was designed to simplify your web hosting experience. It can be used to make changes to your email, CMS, or other domain management issues.

Your cPanel has many powerful tools and resources. However, it is not easy to use if you have a VPS host.

Softaculous is one example. You can install WordPress in just one click, along with other CMS platforms or ecommerce applications.

You would otherwise be struggling to use the command-line interface to install these programs.

We were initially drawn to the ease of managing our VPS. We also took the time to learn about each host’s unique characteristics.

After spending time with each of them, we gave them a score using the scale below.

Each of these items was awarded one point.

• There are no upsells during signup
• In less than an hour, your new WordPress website was up and running
• The host handles server maintenance, security, updates, and other tasks.
• It is possible to set up your website without having to contact support
• You can install a control panel at no extra cost

We then calculated the provider’s performance in each of these categories. Then, we scored between one to five.

We also considered other factors that were not scored but could have made your control panel experience better.

• The dashboard is well-designed and clean.
• It’s simple to find what you need and easy to navigate.
• Three clicks are all it takes to get everything you need

It shouldn’t take away your time to deal with complicated layouts. The control panel should not make life more difficult than it needs to be.

A few providers are rated five out of five by the users for their ease of use. VPS hosting is made easy by the simplified setup process. Their cPanel makes it easy to manage your website and server.

Uptime Guarantees Are Misleading–So, We Tested Uptime Ourselves (30%)

We monitored each provider’s uptime for 25 days.

We know that VPS hosting is a popular choice.

Most people don’t realize that errors can be different. Some can cause your site downtime for hours, days, or even weeks. 

You don’t want to lose customers, your reputation, and a lot of revenue.

Most likely, you’re thinking “heck yeah! What do I do?”. We thought so.

We spent a lot of time and effort checking each provider’s uptime. We present the truth in numbers by testing every provider for nearly a month. This gives them no excuse to not disclose the facts about their uptime.

Uptime guarantees can be misleading. However, our real-life testing with our VPS accounts is not.

Each URL was added to refresh when we set up each provider’s accounts.

Freshping provided all the facts and charts that were needed to make server quality and uptime easier to understand.

Even if it was not obvious, website availability is important.

We don’t give numbers on how a provider performed, that’s just the hard truth.

Here’s how it was done:

Each provider is given the highest score out of five. We score each provider based on how many minutes they spent on downtime during our testing.

• 5 points for no downtime
• 4 points for 1-45 seconds of downtime
• 3 points for 46 seconds to 1 Minute 30 Seconds of Downtime
• 2 points for every minute 31 seconds up to 2 minutes 15 seconds of downtime
• 1 point for longer than 2 minutes and 16 seconds of downtime

Remember that VPS resources cannot be shared with other users so the expected uptime should not be poor. Some might ask, “So why to test them?”

Answer: Not all servers are equal. Our research and methodology show transparency and host reliability.

How did we do it?

You can use the same WordPress theme on all hosts and remove everything else.

Pictures and media are not allowed.

A skeleton with no bones that only use the essentials.

This ensured that everyone was treated equally. Each VPS host was given the chance to show and tell.

This will allow you to see right through the smoke and mirrors. 

Rapid Servers That Respond in 500 Milliseconds or Less (30%) 

Are you tired of seeing your website slow down?

Do you behave like a speed roller coaster?

It’s quick one minute, then it slows down the next.

Speed is the main reason why users switch from shared hosting to VPS.

VPS servers are known for being more efficient because they don’t share resources. There are no other people on your VPS server fighting for resources.

Many VPS hosts also offer an option that allows you to instantly increase your resources by clicking a button on your hosting dashboard. This gives you more power whenever you need it.

If you have high traffic and require more bandwidth and speed, you can add it immediately and then change it later.

It is very easy to make speed adjustments.

Shared hosting is a great option that will allow you to reach for more.

Response times shouldn’t be a problem, right?

But that’s not the case. Many of you still have speed questions, according to our research.

Are you curious about “how can you tell who has the pedal to the metal?” or “Who is fast but not always fast?”

Is it possible?

We bet.

This is where our research shines. This list features the top providers. Our easy-to-understand ranking system was used to show you who has the checkered flag in this race.

• 5 points for less than 600 ms
• 4 points for 601-700 ms
• 3 points for 701-800 ms
• 2 points for 801-900 ms
• 1 point for every 901 ms

Each provider can get a score of 5 out of 5.

The score is higher if the time is shorter. This is a head-to-head battle that shows who has the fastest speed, which most users consider important.

It is 30% of the overall score on VPS web hosting.

We also provide technical information on server performance.

You can improve your site’s speed with Intel Xeon CPUs.

All You Need at a Price that Matches Your Budget (10%)

Right?

We couldn’t be more in agreement.

Based on thousands of customer reviews, it is clear that VPS users are concerned about price right now.

We spent so much time looking at numbers.

Even if VPS hosting costs more, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care about what happens to your money.

This is how we created an easy and clear way to grade each provider based on price. It makes it clear which provider is the most expensive or cheapest.

• 5 points for less than $450
• 4 points for $451-$750
• 3 points for $751- $1050
• 2 points for $1051- $1350
• 1 point = More Than $1251

Like the other models, we give each provider a score based on the price they charge for VPS hosting. We also consider whether cPanel licenses are available at no cost.

Cpanel can be expensive so make sure you are aware. We have provided this information in our review so that you are aware of the differences.

We have done an extensive research to determine the pricing of each item.

We will tell you what to expect in terms of pricing.

Next, we will discuss renewal rates and how much more you’ll be paying for your second year. Next, we will discuss hosting costs and the total cost for year two.

We give you an accurate estimate of the cost of VPS hosting for each provider for two years. We leave you with no surprises.

We also investigated and showed you how to save more, and what savings you can expect when you sign up for other plans from the hosting provider.

The average cost of VPS hosting for two years is $900.51. cPanel can be used by most of the providers listed on this page. Only two companies charge for a cPanel license.

Get connected with a VPS expert in less than 15 minutes (15%)

It is up to you.

VPS providers see things this way. VPS providers know that you are more involved than shared hosting customers.

Does that mean you should not get high-quality customer service? No.

Although customer support is still vital, there is less assistance at this level. Support is more important than pricing but less so than performance.

This is not all. You’ll also encounter more complicated problems at this level. VPS hosting requires you to manage configuration, security, backups, as well as all other tasks.

We wondered if we could find VPS support representatives who were friendly, knowledgeable, and willing to assist.

VPS Hosting Customer Service Research was a little more thorough than many review sites.

Here’s how they were tested:

Once all our sites were up and running, we reached out to all ten providers via live chat. To see how responsive the support was throughout the day, we asked three questions at different times during the day.

1. What security measures are you using to protect your hosting environment?
2. Is it possible to optimize our VPS server so that a WordPress website can be hosted on it?
3. How can we make a backup of our server and website?

Each chat answers only one question.

We go through the chat and award one point to each host based on how each rep performs in each of the five criteria for a good VPS service.

1. The first person we spoke to will answer your question.
2. Our question was answered by a knowledgeable rep who knew a lot about VPS servers
3. The rep was extremely helpful and explained everything to us.
4. Within 20 minutes, the issue or question was solved
5. Phone support is available if you prefer to talk on the phone. It will be awarded half of a point, but not 24/7.

If you pay this much per month or year for web hosting, you should expect the best customer service. VPS hosting offers a wealth of resources, ideas, and tools to help you keep your website fast, secure, and accessible.

It is natural that you will not know everything and may need assistance. You will have a front-row view of how each provider answers simple and complicated questions.

Over a week, we were stuck on the phone talking with hosts or sitting in silence and not moving. You don’t need to waste time doing it.

We provide detailed feedback, including how long each chat took and whether reps refer you to how-to articles. If they are concerned about your problem and solve it, our feedback is also detailed.

VPS customer support is more complicated than web hosting and can sometimes be very difficult to get help. What does this mean? It means that many providers don’t feel the need to offer exceptional service, because they know that you will demand it.

This is unacceptable to us, and we held those on the list responsible.

It will be easy to see if the provider meets your needs.

DreamHost

Best for the Most

DreamHost plans include unlimited bandwidth. This makes it an ideal choice for websites that receive millions of visitors each month. You can also enjoy unlimited email accounts and a fully managed VPS hosting environment. In addition, you can seamlessly scale other resources with just a few mouse clicks. Plans start at $10 per Month

Summary

Upgrade to a virtual private server if you have outgrown your shared hosting plan. This offers solid performance and is less expensive than dedicated hosting.

We believe DreamHost offers the best upgrade option for most users looking for this type of upgrade. All the resources you need at a much lower price than you might think.

There are many things to consider when searching for the best VPS hosting provider. For more specific VPS hosting requirements, each provider in our list could be the best.

This article will be helpful to you if you are looking for VPS hosting. You can also bookmark this article for our testing and advice.