Best VPS Hosting

If you need the best VPS hosting with a lot of customization options, look no further than A2 Hosting. This hosting provider is a favorite among many web developers and website owners due to its affordable plans and plethora of options for customizing the VPS.

Features

A2 Hosting offers both managed and unmanaged servers. Therefore, the company provides multiple hardware combinations to suit everyone’s needs. The hardware configurations start with single-core virtual machines that include 512 MB of RAM and 20 GB of SSD storage.

That doesn’t sound very impressive, but the company’s secret weapon is the configurator tool available directly from its website. Granted, it’s not available for managed server hosting, since those plans are fixed. But in case you prefer to manage your own server, this is the tool for you. With these sliders, you can get up to 12 CPU cores, 32 GB of RAM, and 250 GB of high-speed storage space. There’s even an option for increased monthly bandwidth, although there’s no option for the unmetered plan. A2 also offers several OS options, including CentOS and several popular Linux distributions, optional cPanel and Webuzo licenses, and server location selection.

With managed server hosting, you’re losing root access, but benefiting in other ways. These VPS hosting plans come with SSL encryption, free cPanel license, and transfer tools for quick and easy website migration. Security features include a firewall and DDoS protection, as well as automated backups. Some competitors might offer better uptime, but at 99.9% it’s still a highly stable service.

Plans & pricing

All of the plans at A2 are constrained by monthly bandwidth. While this can be mitigated by switching to an unmanaged plan and upgrading to a higher tier, it’s still a far cry from the highly popular unlimited plans.

VPS hosting pricing plans are straightforward. The plans start at a very affordable $5 per month for unmanaged hosting and $25 for managed servers. There are no hidden costs and no sneaky upsells – what you see is what you get. Of course, if you want your VPS to pack a bit more horsepower and you want to add more sliders, the price can rise pretty quickly. The great thing is that you make all of these adjustments from the shopping cart, so there’s no need for any back and forth when placing an order.

Like many of the best VPS hosting services, A2 Hosting also offers a handful of add-ons and licensed software. First up is cPanel, which comes with a license for five accounts and bumps up the price by $15. It will cost you another $15 for CloudFlare firewall, and there are two additional turbo boosts that go up to about $30 per month. For managed servers, there are a few more add-ons, mainly the upgraded cPanel licenses for up to 100 users and five additional IPs. Overall, the cost of these extra features is fair and with multi-year plans, you can save a lot of money.

A2 Hosting is one of the best web hosts when it comes to refund policies, too. The company has an anytime money-back guarantee, offering a full refund if you cancel within your first month or a pro rata amount after the initial 30 days. It’s a truly risk-free service.

Final thoughts

Whether you’re starting a website or looking for an upgrade of your existing hosting server, A2 Hosting will provide you with some of the best tools and servers in the industry to ensure that your project is a success.

If you’re looking for the best VPS hosting for WordPress, DreamHost is an ideal option. Among the many hosting companies competing for their piece of the pie, DreamHost has an offer that’s hard to refuse. This combo of unmatched uptime and reseller-friendly plans comes at an incredibly low price.

Features

Even before you sign up, you’ll frequently come across the word unlimited. The provider offers unlimited monthly bandwidth, an unlimited number of websites and domains per account, as well as unlimited emails and MySQL databases. This lays a solid foundation for your next enterprise or even reseller business.

But before you purchase the best website hosting, you have to pick a virtual private server. The servers come in four flavors and, unfortunately, can’t be tweaked during the checkout process. Your options range from 1 to 8 GB of RAM, with up to 240 GB of storage on ultra-fast SSD drives. If you need more storage and RAM, you can sign up for a plan.

Aside from the aforementioned unlimited deals, DreamHost has an interesting guarantee. With any of the servers, the company guarantees no downtime. The 100% uptime policy is one of the company’s unique characteristics. It also says a lot about the stability of the servers, making it the best hosting service for customers who need rock-solid infrastructure.

DreamHost also has a set of sub-account features. These too have no limits on the number of accounts and web domains you can create. This is ideal if you want to provide further hosting to third parties or just want to host a lot of websites under one account. Since the servers are managed, you don’t have to worry about updating your Linux VPS. The service supports one-click installations and all the popular scripts like Ruby, PHP 7, Perl, and Python.

Plans & pricing

DreamHost is also a great option if you need affordable VPS hosting. Even though you can’t customize plans, the prices here are some of the lowest in the business. You also get a choice between four plans, each coming with a different amount of RAM and storage.

The cheapest option is just $10 per month, while the VPS Enterprise plan costs $120. But the price can be reduced further if you choose to pay on an annual basis instead of monthly. It’s a simple pricing model, and you can get a preview of various discounts that are based on the billing period. The checkout process is quick, and it allows you to switch to a different plan with updated VPS server prices before you enter your payment information.

As for add-ons, there’s really only one option available during the purchasing period. It’s called MySQL VPS, and it’s an AI-powered auto-scaling tool. If you enable it, the system will monitor your database resource consumption and scale your plan accordingly. You can try it for free for a week or pay $15 per month to have it on all the time.

Final thoughts

DreamHost truly is a dream come true for anybody who’s searching for the best hosting providers. It’s an affordable, straightforward, and customer-focused service with a lot of great tools.

Another provider vying for the title of the best VPS hosting is HostGator, a Texas-based company that offers many solutions for website owners. Promoting its VPS plans as flexible, user-friendly, but also powerful, this provider is a favorite among both developers and beginners.

Features

Hostgator promises users “more control + extra flex.” All of the servers come with root access, unmetered bandwidth, and a suite of tools for different kinds of webmasters.

When it comes to hardware specs, there’s a lot to like. VPS servers start with 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM, and 120 GB of SSD storage. That’s already enough to place this company among the top VPS hosting providers, but it’s just the starting offer. The maximum horsepower on offer includes 4 CPU cores, 8 GB of RAM, and 240 GB of storage. Of course, you can increase all of that once you sign up, but we would have liked to see the site allow any customization of these plans right off the bat.

The provider really stands out by removing limits that some other virtual web hosts impose on their VPS offering. That means unlimited bandwidth, email accounts, databases, and FTP accounts. Other companies give you just one free web domain, but HostGator has an unlimited offering.

A lot of user reviews of VPS hosting providers commend this company for catering to both beginners and advanced users. That’s because of the toolset you get with each VPS, which includes site templates, one-click installers for CMS and scripts, and even development tools. It doesn’t matter if you’re building an eCommerce site, a batch of portfolio websites, or just want to launch a gaming VPS – HostGator has you covered. Even better, the provider runs automated backups, with manual backups as an option, so your hard work is always protected.

Plans & pricing

While the plans cannot be customized until you start using the VPS you’ve paid for, HostGator doesn’t make the purchasing process complicated in any way. The VPS hosting price is listed underneath all three plans, and it starts at $19.95. Granted, it’s a little bit steeper compared to the previous companies we reviewed, but you won’t get stuck with a slow server that has no room for any of your files.

As always, picking an annual or three-year billing cycle is the way to go if you want the best bang for your buck. This way, you can get a discount of up to 75% off the full price. There aren’t many add-ons, either. In fact, there’s only one, an optional cPanel license that costs $10 per month. The purchase is risk-free with a 45-day money-back guarantee.

Final thoughts

HostGator offers the best VPS server hosting for anyone looking to get their VPS operational right away. It’s simple, powerful, and affordable.

Bluehost’s services are an ideal option for modern eCommerce entrepreneurs who need a lot of speed and a high level of security. In many ways, this is the best VPS hosting for startups.

Features

When it comes to hardware, you can choose from 2 or 4 CPU cores as your starting point, accompanied by 2 to 8 GB of RAM. That’s more than enough to run several high-bandwidth web services. Speaking of bandwidth, the minimum is set at 1 TB per month, while the most expensive plan triples that and adds another IP address into the mix. Yes, you can get multiple IPs without having to pay for add-ons.

Unfortunately, there is little storage. In default plans, which you cannot customize beforehand, the maximum you can get is 120 GB. Compared to other top VPS hosting sites, this is a bit of a letdown. We would also like to see an option for unlimited bandwidth, since there’s already an option to get more server resources once everything’s up and running.

If security is one of your priorities and you care about having SSL certificates, you’ll be glad to hear that your VPS gets a free SSL with an optional CodeGuard security tool. In fact, there’s a slew of security features like SiteLock – which detects vulnerabilities and prevents malware attacks – and domain protection, which masks your identity. The provider also accommodates people who need multiple virtual machine hosting options and includes an easy server management tool.

Finally, this is one of the rare providers that offers a set of SEO tools. Bluehost has its own toolset for search engine optimization. The tools are easy to use, with step-by-step optimization and insights so that you can monitor the performance of your websites.

Plans & pricing

Pricing plans start at $17.99 and include one year of free web domain, or you can connect an already existing domain to your VPS. This might not be a cheap VPS hosting option, but the security features justify the price. And, as always, the longer the billing period is, the better the monthly price.

There are precisely two paid extra services you can add to your plan. The first one is Codeguard, which costs $2.99 per month and provides another layer of security, while the aforementioned SEO toolset costs an additional $1.99 per month. In case you’re eligible for any tax exemptions, you can provide the relevant documents during the checkout process. The refund policy is pretty standard. You get a full refund if you cancel your subscription during the first 30 days.

Final thoughts

Bluehost is one of the best VPS hosting options thanks to its focus on security and a modern toolset that no other provider offers right now. Small businesses that decide to run multi-VPS configurations should look no further than this hosting service for all their needs.

Liquid Web offers elite managed VPS hosting with a 100% uptime guarantee. The company’s VPS servers are available on both Linux and Windows, relying on strong SSD-only hardware to keep everything running smoothly. Liquid Web is also renowned for its superb customer support, with a Net Promoter Score of 67.

Features

If you’re looking for the best VPS hosting for small business, Liquid Web probably isn’t the optimal pick. They offer enterprise-quality VPS hosting, as evident from their powerful hardware, impressive speeds, and steep pricing. Liquid Web offers only managed VPS servers, with the cost of managing already included in its pricing. VPS servers are available on both Windows and Linux.

The Linux VPS server hardware ranges from 2 vCPU to 8 vCPU, and from 40 GB SSDs to 200 GB SSDs. They all come with 10 TB bandwidth limits, which is more than decent. Additionally, all of Liquid Web’s servers come with free 100 GB backups and full root access. Windows servers are similar in strength, but there are fewer choices available.

The best virtual private servers offer multiple control panel choices, and Liquid Web is no different. The available control panels are InterWorx, Plesk, and cPanel. Liquid Web has a clear preference for InterWorx; it charges less for InterWorx than any other control panel and spruiks its advantages, such as an unlimited number of accounts.

Liquid Web’s biggest advantages over its competitors are speed, uptime, and support. An independent study by Cloud Spectator demonstrates that Liquid Web’s virtual machine performance is better than many of its competitors like DigitalOcean and RackSpace.

Besides potentially offering the fastest VPS hosting around, Liquid Web has a 100% uptime guarantee, as opposed to the 99% we see with most competitors. The company’s customer support service regularly picks up awards for speed, diligence, and professionalism. Liquid Web’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), which is used to measure customer satisfaction, currently sits at 67, which is considered pretty high.

Plans and Pricing

As usual, pricing plans differ primarily according to the strength of virtual server hardware. The cheapest plan (2 vCPU, 40 GB SSD, 10 TB, Linux) starts at $35/month, while the most powerful Linux server will set you back $115/mo. These prices are for 12-month subscriptions with an InterWorx control panel.

When making a web hosting price comparison, Liquid Web is considered pricy, but that’s the cost of top-class VPS hosting. This hosting company currently offers discounts of up to 40% for six-month and 12-month subscriptions, so now is the best time to snag them.

Additionally, you can bundle in a premium business email service and site protection/remediation for around $10/month extra.

Final Thoughts

If you’re running a high-traffic site where top speeds and stability are key, Liquid Web is probably the best hosting solution you can find. However, smaller sites and businesses might consider turning to some cheaper competitors.