(TIP) Our recommended VPS
Virtual Private Servers
by @admin, october 26, 2020, 11:13am utc
There are many options when deciding where to host your website. These range from hosting at the registrar (where you got your domain name from); to hosting on a dedicated machine (hardware that you buy/rent); to putting your site on Amazon (not recommended); and a wide variety of other types of choices (like running everything from your home desktop).
We have been on most of these options in the past ourselves.
But after undertaking a recent review of the best price/capability choices out there, we now recommend a VPS from InterServer.net.
As the name implies, a VPS is a Virtual Server which is portioned from an actual physical server. There can be many VPS servers within a single physical server. [This is how the VPS vendors make their money].
The CPU, memory, network bandwidth and physical disk space of the physical server can all be allotted to VPSes in different ways. They may have different disk sizes; differing amounts of RAM (memory); different network bandwidths and even different amounts of available CPU.
Or the individual VPS configurations within a physical machine can all be the same -- the approach varies between VPS vendors.
But beyond the configurability, the greatest aspect of a VPS is that it emulates an actual stand-alone machine. You actually get root (admin) access in Linux and can install any applications that you want. You can apt-get update/upgrade your operating system as much as you'd like to; and even upgrade your entire distribution from version to version.
(Don't worry if any of the buzzwords above are unclear, we'll help you with all of it.)
InterServer also has Windows Server VPSes as well.
There are three reasons that we recommend InterServer.
Flexibility. You can pick from a wide range of options.
Cost. They have the best prices that we have found (not counting way-offshore options, or similar things that are a bit murky).
Support. Interserver has been wonderful to work with; and helps very quickly with any technical details to get you started. In fact, when we wanted to praise their tech support to InterServer management, it was tough to single anyone out. They were All good.
A Case Study
As a current price comparison, we moved one of our Windows customers from an ISP, who runs dedicated and hosted solutions.
The price of the Windows solution had been $600/year (and was going to go UP! by a few hundred dollars in 2021).
We moved this client to an InterServer Linux VPS that now costs $120/year. Not only that, but with Linux, future upgrades to newer full versions of the operating system are ~free; and not hundreds of additional dollars, as it would of been with Windows.
That said -- if the customer would of wanted to stick with Windows; InterServer offered that as well, for a little more.
As a current price comparison, we moved one of our Windows customers from an ISP, who runs dedicated and hosted solutions.
The price of the Windows solution had been $600/year (and was going to go UP! by a few hundred dollars in 2021).
We moved this client to an InterServer Linux VPS that now costs $120/year. Not only that, but with Linux, future upgrades to newer full versions of the operating system are ~free; and not hundreds of additional dollars, as it would of been with Windows.
That said -- if the customer would of wanted to stick with Windows; InterServer offered that as well, for a little more.
If you try them out, please use our code (here). It costs you nothing more to do so; and we get a little bit back if you stay with them for a while. This kind of thing helps to keep sites without ads, like ours, afloat.
If you try them out on your own, please let us know what you think.
tags: All users, Tips