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I need a cheap, mostly reliable VPS for offsite network testing and scripting.

My disk space, memory, and cpu needs are modest. However I probably need around 50-100 gb bandwidth for backups and testing.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

Edit

Thanks for the suggestions. Does anyone have any experience with the hosts listed here:

http://www.lowendbox.com/

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closed as too localized by Miles Erickson, Mark Henderson♦ Dec 1 '11 at 5:01

This question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.

21 Answers

up vote 24 down vote

I've been pretty happy with slicehost.com and linode.com. To be honest, I can't really comment on their support, since I've never needed them for something urgent untill now.

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Agreed; both are excellent. Linode is a little less expensive (but not cheaper). – Mikeage May 27 '09 at 9:43
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+1 for Linode, I've been very happy with my Linode 540. – Adam Backstrom May 27 '09 at 12:19
Same experience with slicehost. I don't know how they'll react in a crisis, since I haven't had one with them. Quick, easy, inexpensive. – CoverosGene May 27 '09 at 12:19
Slicehost support has been great - responsive and helpful - for me in the past. – ceejayoz May 27 '09 at 12:54
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+1 for Linode as well. – andyh_ky Jun 9 '09 at 2:12
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up vote 5 down vote

One thing that is important to look out for when choosing a VPS is memory. With most of them you do not have any swap ( and can't use the create swap file trick). So whatever your memory is very well may be a hard limit. Some of the them offer 'burstable' memory which will go above the memory limit for x minutes. This is really handy for compiling and also installing software using a memory hungry package manager like yum.

I found you get what you pay for in my VPS search. Cheap ones often will have something along the lines of that memory gotcha.

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+1 for interesting points. Can you elaborate more on the swap file trick? I heard that with VZ you can get burstable memory, but no swapfile, while with Xen its the other way around. – Unknown May 31 '09 at 18:51
Generally in Linux you create a partition for the swap space, but you can also create a swap file that lives on top of a filesystem: cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-add-a-swap-file-howto – Kyle Brandt♦ Jun 1 '09 at 1:56
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up vote 4 down vote

OVH tends to have good reviews. Their RPS is a good option.

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OVH RPS user here, never had any issues with them. – Andrew Williams May 27 '09 at 12:11
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Wait, what's the catch? There's no cap on bandwidth! I have not seen that before with a VPS. Is the catch that the connection is only 100mbps (vs. gigabit)? – z8000 May 31 '09 at 6:03
Oh, not avail. in the US – z8000 May 31 '09 at 6:30
for OVH's dedicated boxes at least, they come with custom compiled kernels, and getting it to run with your own/default kernels is hellish to say the least. Not an issue, unless you need one of the things they've failed to compile in (like SElinux). – Cian Jul 12 '09 at 13:09
RPS disk latency is terrible (think 60ms) but everything else is great. – Antoine Benkemoun Dec 7 '10 at 12:29
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up vote 3 down vote

I have been very happy with Linode, using them for a couple years now. Their web interface is a breeze and includes lots of great features such as the web-based serial console, a very clean DNS configuration editor, and snazzy performance graphs. Their prices are low and their uptime high.

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up vote 2 down vote

Tektonic seems cheap, and tech support replied in time with satisfying answers, but I have not actually used them.

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I've had an account with them for about 2 years they are very good. – Mark Davidson Jul 12 '09 at 13:19
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up vote 2 down vote

I'm using TekTonic and have only great things to say about their support. At $15 a month they're also the cheapest I've ever found.

As far as the memory issue is concerned, they allow to dynamically add or remove memory without needing to restart, so you end up paying a couple of cents if you temporarily increase it for compilation etc.

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up vote 1 down vote

I recommend BigVPS.com (Xen-based). Specially for the members webhostingtalk they suggest good discounts - http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=627739

And I recommend wowvps.com or linode.com or slicehost.com

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up vote 1 down vote

I've been using PowerVPS for a while now for several domains and while they are not the cheapest host, the quality of their support more than makes it up.

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Since posting this answer a while ago, the quality of their tech support went down significantly and they offered me no upgrade for an outdated CentOS install (to upgrade, I would have had to pay more for stuff I didn't need) so I moved all my sites to Webfaction. – TomA Jun 2 '11 at 23:36
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up vote 1 down vote

We use several VPSs from www.vpsland.com (starting at US$18/month for a Windows VPS) for various test scenarios for our network monitoring software PRTG. They are virtuozzo based and reliability is IMHO excellent for this price.

We have a performance comparison including EC2, GoGrid and others on our blog (search for vpsland on paessler.com).

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up vote 0 down vote

(www.) Digicube (.fr) have small dedicated servers stating at 15€/month (french tax excluded)(near 28$/month). This could be better than a VPS no ?

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up vote 0 down vote

i use serverdedicati.aruba.it vps are cheap, from 10€/month (+vat) for example, a windows server 2003 vps is just 10€/month (+vat) the biggest vps that they have, is 30€/month, windows server 2003, 2gb ram, 15gb hdd, 5mbps internet

the os is all in english and is x64 on a 8-core xeon (they say they host maximum 15 vps on a server... i don't think so, for this price)

so cheap

but... website is italian-only, and registration is EXTREMELY CUMBERSOME you have to send by FAX a copy of your documents, id card, the order form (3 pages in hard legalese), a declaration that you won't use the server for illicit uses, and they will call you (in italian), for confirm the order it is almost impossible to rent one if you are not an italian citizen

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The 10 euro one is a bit cheap I suppose, but not with all those restrictions. With the 30 euro one, you might as well get a dedicated. – Unknown Jun 9 '09 at 3:11
yes, the 10 euro one is kinda useless; just 3 gb hdd 3gb of hdd + windows server 2003 + plesk = they give you a VPS with just 250mb free – Magnetic_dud Jun 9 '09 at 8:25
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up vote 0 down vote

+1 for Slicehost. When I was evaluating their service, I was able to jump onto their campfire chat and they answered all my questions in real time. I haven't had an outage so I haven't tested them under fire. So far, so good.

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up vote 0 down vote

Little while ago I made a neat table on VPS providers under $10/month, check it out here: http://geekness.eu/vps-plans-under-10-dollars-a-month

At the moment, I host with HostGD, and having the ability to upgrade my plan at anytime is wonderful.

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up vote 0 down vote

I'm amazed there's not mention to wiredtree. I REALLY recommend them. Their support is so fast (and good) that I cant imagine myself testing in any other VPS. And for what? 40-60-100 bucks a month? It's my best choise!

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up vote 0 down vote

I can only recommend Keyweb (referal link).

I use their VTS Start 09 for a few months now and I'm really happy with it.

  • 30 GB HDD
  • 512 MB RAM
  • 768 MB Flexi RAM
  • 1500 GB Traffic/month

==> 7,90 € / month (no setup fee, can even be rebated on > monthly payment)

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up vote 0 down vote

Check out VPSFarm (http://www.vpsfarm.com/). I've used them for a little more than a year and have had only 2 issues:

  • I let the CC on my PayPal expire, and the host went down when they didn't get payment. I contacted them and they brought up my VPS without question and let me update payment later.
  • They had some issues with one of their switches a few weeks ago and there was about 3 hours of packet loss in the evening.

Other than those two things, they've been great. No bandwidth limits at the moment (at least on the xen1024 plan). They seem to have room to grow. Also, they use Xen which I like much better than the other VPS options on the market.

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up vote 0 down vote

I'd recommend VPS.net I've had an account with them for about a month now and am find them to be very good overall. You can easily adjust your vps as your needs change similar to what you can do with slicedhost.com, I did look at both and at least for me I found vps.net a be better value for money and also I wanted a UK based VPS they have data centres in both the US and UK.

You can pay a bit extra for backups (£6) which is what I did you get 4 backups a daily, weekly, monthly and one of your choosing.

If you fancied trying VPS.net out you can use the discount code AV408K to get a 90% discount for the first month.

Alternatively another company I could recommend is Tektonic.net I've had my other VPS with them for what must be over two years now. They have been very good as well, you can get quite a good price for both a managed and a unmanaged vps.

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up vote 0 down vote

Have you seen this one?

VPS

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intovps works for me so far. Sometimes you get a complete I/O block for up to 10 seconds (everything in memory works, but ls of an uncached directory will block for example). But otherwise no problems. For that price, I can't complain. – viraptor Dec 29 '09 at 19:47
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up vote 0 down vote

On hostrail you can get a low end vps for $1.05/month. I'm testing it out now, and seems solid. If all you need is to host your own svn and that sort of thing, this is perfect.

65% off recurring discount with promo code DEC10CAN — this applies to all their packages not just Linux VPS.

I don't work for them or anything, found this after digging around in this question.

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up vote 0 down vote

ServerAxis - http://serveraxis.com/

This is easily the best value VPS I have found and the performance is surprisingly good. My response times are 20-25 ms normally. The starter plan is $15 and you get 500 MB RAM, 25 GB Storage, 1 GB Swap. Plus you get 5 contiguous IP addresses!

Their management interface is not the fanciest and if you need hand-holding, you probably want to look at a different provider. But if you want value and know what you are doing, it rocks.

I don't work for this company, but will listen to offers. ; )

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up vote 0 down vote

I will recommend AccuWebHosting.Com. 1 GB VPS, 40 GB Disk Space, 200 GB bandwidth only for $23/month.

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