Review Of VPS Providers

About a week ago I posted a thread [url]about my experiences with a bunch of VPS providers. Here is an update after one week.

I have quite simple requirements 128 MB RAM Linux VPS, correct time on the system (plus/minus a few seconds), minimum of my time wasted on any issues related to VPS management/communication with VPS provider. I also needed VPS in various geo locations. Here is how it goes so far in addition to what I said in the previous thread. My trivial requirements make my reviews quite limited in scope, though little details like having correct time and provider's reaction on 'please set up correct time' IMO acts like a nice indicator of their attention to details and efficiency of the support.

Generally, when I have not much to say about a VPS provider it is equals to a great thumbs up review

1. thenynoc

got 2 VPS, one in NY one in LA, set up is not instant, but reasonably quick. So far so good. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

2. mosso (Rackable)

Nice low cost VPS in the cloud setting. Location not specified, but looks like Dallas, TX. Instant setup, everything works, great network, hourly billing. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

3. rapidswitch

Ordered 1 VPS, location London, UK. Great experience so far, simple to use website not a cookie cutter WHMC , everything just works, instant setup, good network. I used 1£/month promotion, the price reverts to 7.5£ per month in June which seems a bit pricey. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

4. vpsville

I got a 64MB VPS from them, location Toronto, CA. Wow, turned out that my application works on 64MB VPS. Quick setup, no issues. So far, so good. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

5. slicebox

VPS location - Chicago. Quick setup. no issues. So far so good. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

6. xeneurope

VPS in Amsterdam. It took about 8 hours to get VPS activated.
I initially was disappointed with this VPS since it was quite sluggish, but once I have rebuild VPS via hyperVM to a standard CentOS5.2 image all the issues have disappeared Hence, the only issue with them so far is unsuitable for low memory VPS default system. My time wasted on BS - a little I am going to renew.

7. vixile

ordered VPS located in Tampa, FL. Nice quick setup no problems whatsoever. Good price. Good job. I am happy. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

8. zanyhost AKA wickedvps

Ordered a VPS located in Atlanta, not instant but reasonably quick VPS setup. There was a little issue in the beginning with time on the system being off by 90 seconds. After one ticket and 7 hours later it got sorted. Comparing to some other providers their response to 'please set up correct time' ticket was actually very nice and efficient, they did managed to set up correct time after all. My time wasted on BS - a little. I am going to renew.

9. myprohost

got a VPS located in Denver. Nice and easy, no problems so far. The time on their system is off by 10 seconds, this is kind of acceptable for me. Though, it would be great if they start running some kind of time sync service on host system. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

10. quillhost

Got a VPS located in Washington, DC. My apologies, I was unfair to them in my original review. The delay with getting access to their VPS was solely due to my error. I somehow managed to give them wrong email during sign up. Anyway it got sorted rather quickly. And now I am a happy customer. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

11. buzzservers

got a VPS in San-Hose, CA. Reasonably quick setup time, everything works. Their claim 24/7 on site support and so far it does look like they indeed have it. I again had that error replicated where I gave wrong email during sign up, but once I asked them to help me out resolving that it was done quickly and efficiently. Well done ,guys. This outfit looks and feels quite professional. My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

12. iwebfusion

Got a VPS located in some supposedly very secure and resilient DC somewhere in Iowa, which is nice. Set up time was reasonably quick. Support response is quick, though so far is a bit clueless. This is again all about my pet issue with time. Their system time if off by about 4 hours and 10 minutes. To illustrate my here is our little conversation so far, paraphrased:

Me: time on your system is wrong by 4 hours 10 minutes, please fix it.

Support, 10 minutes later: you can change your timezone using hypervm

Me: nah.. it is not helping, how on earth changing timezone could sort time which is off by 4 hours 10 minutes?

Support, 1h 40m later: we cannot change time on the host system because it would affect other customers, use date command on your VPS to change time.

Me: nah.. date does not work
'[root@ia1 ~]# date 04251425.59
date: cannot set date: Operation not permitted
'
'Obviously it does not work, otherwise I would not bother you with this. Having correct time on the system is important for my application and so far your system is useless for me. Could you please reconsider changing time on your system to correct one. Most other VPS provides somehow manage to have correct time on their system. Just to illustrate my point below is a printout of time on some of VPS systems I work with. ia1- is hosted by you.

lo1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:09 UTC 2009
am1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:09 UTC 2009
fr1: Sat Apr 25 16:23:23 UTC 2009
ba1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:09 UTC 2009
ny1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009
ha1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009
at1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009
ca1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009
ia1: Sat Apr 25 10:09:48 UTC 2009
ch1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009
da1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009
dc1: Sat Apr 25 14:20:02 UTC 2009
ta1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:10 UTC 2009
de1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:02 UTC 2009
la1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:11 UTC 2009
sh1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:11 UTC 2009
sy1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:12 UTC 2009
kl1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:13 UTC 2009
si1: Sat Apr 25 14:19:13 UTC 2009
'
Support, 1 hour later: we are checking why 'date' is not working meanwhile please use ntp command.

Me: nah... ntpd will not work because I simply do not have permission to change date, and it is a good thing. The only one who can change date is root on the host system.

end of conversation so far.

Come on people!!! Get someone who has a clue on the line. Hopefully they will sort it out eventually.

My time wasted on BS - quite some. I am going to renew if they manage to set up time correctly (unfortunately clueless support is quite a common thing nowadays, hence, given my simple requirement and usually no need for support, I might be able to stay with them).

13. euvps

VPS location Frankfurt, Germany. Not instant but reasonably quick setup. Time on the system was almost 5 minutes off. Having correct time on the system is important for my application. I am talking about time not timezone. It is usually impossible to change time from within VPS and it is therefore responsibility of a VPS provider to run properly configured ntpd on the host. I've sent a support request asking to fix the time, responses I got so far were clueless and in English which made not much sense to me. The issue is still not sorted one week after it was raised. My time wasted on BS - quite some. I am not going to renew unless they clean up their act about having correct time on the system.

14. 1gb.ru
VPS location, Moscow, Russia. This is the only VPS provider I could find in Russia with reasonable prices and accepting normal credit cards as payment method. They do only Ubuntu, so I had to use it, not my usual CentOS. They have some weird self coded control panel, the setup is a bit weird For example, to get access to VPS I had to first ssh into their gateway system, which dropped me into my vps shell as root. Than I had to install sshd and set things up so that I can access my VPS using ssh in a normal way. Come on... this is more complicated that it needs to be. But, well, in the end of the day I have a VPS and it working.

Initially I was happy with their VPS. But there were issues popping up all the time. For example, they often override /etc/resolv.conf so that it points to their DNS servers. Apparently they think that customer should not be able to use other DNS servers. A minor thing, I can rewrite that file myself every minute or so. But still additional hassle. By some reason some time after VPS restart it stops letting me in using ssh. This is quite a show stopper. I realize that such thing might happen when in low memory setups, but hey stuff which I run work for me in two dozens of other VPS. Basically just too much hassle to keep this charade up. I will not renew the VPS.

I have used their system to register a .ru domain. No complaints so far on this one. I needed to switch DNS to external DNS servers. They supposedly have this functionality in online control panel, but I have failed to It is just so confusing and not intuitive. Contacted their support with this DNS thing and their have it sorted for me very quickly and professionally. Well done. Definitely will stay with them as registrars for a while.

15. gplhost

This is not exactly sub 10$ VPS, more like sub 20$ VPS. But I still use them because they have VPS in all sorts of exotic locations.

The price I paid is at least double of what I'd like to pay plus rip off Paypal fees on top of advertised rate.

Apparently it is run by the people developing an open source control panel for XEN. Big plus for them is their geographical diversity, I've ordered VPS located in Kuala-Lumpur, Sydney, Singapore, Barcelona, Haifa.

Back to gplhost.com. Again, a bit weird and quirky setup, but does the job done. VPS are activated instantly. Things just work.

Support people are knowledgeable and helpful. One of my processes 'run away' due to a bug in my software and started consuming lots of CPU/IO. They apparently investigated this, and once realized that I indeed run a legitimate application stopped this investigation and contacted me asking what's going on. So I was able to resolve this problem. I am quite happy with the way gplhost has handled this. Well done. In the end of the day I am happy (but counting pennies). My time wasted on BS - none. I am going to renew.

16. hitme.net.pl

A polish outfit. They apparently work on polish market and everything is in polish. I can read Polish a bit so I though I'd be able to get some service from them. Unfortunately, I made the same mistake with wrong email during sign up. It turned out to be a fatal mistake. So far any attempts to get it sorted with them have failed. Maybe it is my fault, maybe communication problems are killing it. I will move on. My time wasted on BS - quite some. I am NOT going to renew.

17. nanihost.

The last one in this review. I even feel a bit guilty for slamming nanihost like that. But hey, I've massacred other VPS providers for far less than this. So it is only fair to not give this outfit any slack. Sorry.

Got a VPS located in Seattle. Set up time was reasonably quick. But I was a bit busy last week so first time accessed VPS just yesterday. How I was surprised by complete lack of any awareness about information security issues by this people (a person actually). More so, because I had a VPS set up by them running untouched for almost a week. Turned out the default username:password they have set up for lxdirect panel which they have installed for me was admin:admin. I have not asked to have any cp installed BTW. Passwords for hypervm, root and other stuff were similarly insecure. I've noticed that the system is being quite actively scanned i.e. someone is already running dictionary attacks on their systems. I bet quite a few of their customers are already owned, maybe their host system(s) as well. Though, it is just my speculation.

By default they installed for me CentOS Hostinabox with all sort of crap running on it. Moreover, it appears that there are no other OS image is available.

The paypal email they have is <some Chinese looking name>@hotmail.com . They have a support phone number located in UK on their website. I called, it was answered by a child. I just apologized and hang up. Is this outfit is being tun by a 10 year old? Or am I being an ageist here?

I have tried to sort a few issues with them, support response was quite quick.

Now their terms and conditions. [url]. This stuff is probably the most valuable part of their website. It has loads of entertainment value. Nice laughs I strongly recommend reading it out loud after a few beers with mates... Just a few fragments to give you a teaser:

'13. Illegal Files/Phishers/Criminal Activity. Please note that NaniHost does not allow illegal files on our servers such as phishers and more. If these files are found by us on our servers they will be deleted and account suspended. If you are from the government please note that we take no responsibility for our clients and their actions.'

or this one:

'OUR 1 HOUR RESPONSE TIME GUARANTEE ONLY APPLIES IF THE OPERATOR SHOWED UP FOR THEIR SHIFT. IF NO OPERATOR SHOWED UP FOR THEIR SHIFT, THEN THE 1 HOUR RESPONSE TIME GUARANTEE DOES NOT APPLY.'

there are also at least 3 different cancellation/termination procedures outlined all with different requirements/time frames Again, nice to read after a few beers

Nanihost promises all kinds of benefits on their website but this outfit appears to be run by a 17 years old (no offence to '17 years old's) and is a one man show. Good effort, but I better stay away from this. I've decided to not waste my breath on this and move on. I've requested moneyback and they agreed. Nice, thank you, it was great to be your customer, see you in the next life.

I think, that this nanihost will not be around for long, but if with time they prove me wrong it would be great.

Just to finish it some data on my little 'correct time' test. This is printout of current time on VPS hosted by providers mentioned in this review with some comments. The script requests time from all of them simultaneously, due to various geo locations some of them take a bit more time to respond than others, hence a few seconds variation is expected.

[root@app1] 5:17pm# ./foreach.vps 'date'
lo1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:04 UTC 2009
am1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:04 UTC 2009
ba1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009
ny1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009
ha1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009
at1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009
ca1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009
da1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009
ch1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:05 UTC 2009
ia1: Sat Apr 25 13:09:42 UTC 2009 # iwebfusion, still thinking whether to fix time or it would affect other customers. :-(
dc1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:58 UTC 2009 # quillhost, a tiny bit off, please run ntpd on host system
ta1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:06 UTC 2009
de1: Sat Apr 25 17:18:57 UTC 2009 # myprohost, a tiny bit off, please run ntpd on host system
la1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:06 UTC 2009
sh1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:06 UTC 2009
sy1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:08 UTC 2009
si1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:08 UTC 2009
kl1: Sat Apr 25 17:19:12 UTC 2009
fr1: # euvps, opps this one is down now, usually they 2 hours 4 minutes wrong, but now decided simply to be unreachable.