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I will briefly review the four VPS hosts I have used. A VPS, or virtual private server, is a type of low-cost hosting where one has root on their own IP at a fraction of a cost of having their own computer at a colocation. Plans start at only $10 a year.

I described these plans in more detail last year in my blog. Buyer beware: Of the three providers who I listed last year, two are deadpool (no longer exist).

These reviews come from the viewpoint of someone using CentOS on the server.

The very first VPS I have signed up for. $19/year comes with enough ram to allow one to easily update the system once the "fastestmirror" plug-in is disabled. Uptime is about 98%-99%; the company has experienced growing pains but is remarkably stable.

I am very happy with their response time to the tickets I have opened up with them.

The normal price is $19, but they right now have the low-end VPSes on sale for $15/year

As I recently blogged, Cripperz recently went deadpool. My VPS with them was noticeably slower than my nodes with AlienVPS, and they had more downtime. System was easily updated--I didn't even need to disable "fastestmirror" to do so.

This is a really new company offering VPSes. Since they are unproven, they are deeply discounting their service; it's only $12/year. I got one just last week to replace my now-dead Cripperz node. So far, it's really fast, and I'm getting a lot more bandwidth (one terabyte per month) than I am with my other providers. CentOS updates were not a problem.

Sign-up page.

They have been around a while and people seem happy with their service on WHT. Their really-low-cost $10/year nodes are really low-end. Running updates in CentOS was a royal pain; I needed about an hour to finally get the system updated because the VPS doesn't have the resources to do a really big update all at once, and the OS template is an older CentOS release.

The sign-up page for their low-cost solutions is hidden. They do not offer CentOS 6, but unlike other providers listed here, they do offer Scientific Linux 6.

Right now they are out of stock of the $10/year plan. Just as well; I only would recommend this VPS for a seasoned UNIX user who knows their system well enough to update a distribution piecemeal.

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