When it comes to cheap VPS hosting providers, you will find several names on websites like lowendbox.com and webhostingtalk.com. Some of the VPS offers on these websites will be cheaper than the shared hosting. Can you really go for one of those cheap offers? I am writing this post based on my experience; it’s not a paid review of any of these hosting companies. I tried and tested 12-15 cheap VPS hosting providers to find these 5 reliable companies.
1. SSD Nodes
SSDNodes have servers in Texas, New York, and Canada. Their monthly price is expensive, but if you opt for annual billing, the VPS will be extremely cheap. These are KVM VPS; not overly sold OpenVZ. These servers have latest E5 CPUs with benchmark greater than 15000 and true SSD drives with DISK IO 800-1200MB/s. Although these plans are unmanaged, the support team is very helpful and is ready to help you 24×7. I have never experienced any downtime in the last 6-7 months. If your website gets maximum traffic from US, Canada or South America, SSD Nodes is one of the best options for you.
EthernetServers have servers in California, Miami, and Los Angeles. Thier monthly price is cheap. You can search for their lifetime discount coupons on webhostingtalk.com. During Thanksgiving week, they give a huge discount on all VPS plans. So, keep an eye on their offers during Thanksgiving week. Although their VPSs are based on OpenVZ, I never found them overly sold. Their servers have E5 CPUs with benchmark 10000-12000. I am not sure if they have SSD drives at all three locations. My server was at NY center and they replaced HDD with SSD. When you buy VPS, it will come with HDD. So, create a ticket to replace HDD with SSD. If your website gets maximum traffic from US, Canada or South America, Ethernet Servers will not disappoint you. They are available 24×7 to help you although the plans are unmanaged. Their server uptime is ~99.98%.
I recently came to know about this German hosting company. I was initially reluctant to buy, but I tried because their plans are the monthly plan. I was extremely surprised by the configuration of the server. KVM VPS with the latest Skylake CPU, 20gb SSD drive, and 20TB bandwidth at less than $3 is more like a lottery. The CPU benchmark is ~17000 and DISK IO is 500-900MB/s. They have servers in Germany and Finland and if you get maximum traffic from Europe, India, Pakistan, and ME countries, you can blindly register for Hetzner Cloud. I never had any problem since purchasing the server, so I can not comment on their support team. Also, no downtime in the last 2-3 months.
4. VPS Cool
VPS cool is a new and small company. I am not sure if they own hardware or rent it, but their servers have extremely fast E3 CPUs with benchmark 9000-11000 and SSD drives with DISK IO 300-700 MB/s. Their support team is very lazy but they are helpful. Response from the support team might take 4-5 hours. Their servers are in Germany and France, so you can give them a try if you have traffic from Europe, India, Pakistan, and ME countries.
Digital ocean is expensive compared to other 4 providers I have mentioned above. That’s why I have put it as the last option. They have servers in many places: US, India, Singapore, Europe. So, depending on the traffic source, you can choose one of these locations.
Out of these 5 provides, SSD Nodes and Hetzner Cloud are my favorites because one of my websites gets traffic from the US and the other gets from India. Although the first-byte time from India is ~1.5 seconds, my website hosted on Hetzner Cloud takes 3-4 seconds to load from India.
You can add Aruba to this list https://www.aruba.it/en/home.aspx . Their 1 euro plan is so cheap.