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GreenGeeks has an A+ rating from the BBB and 4.1 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot, plus relatively affordable managed VPS hosting plans starting at $40 a month. The "green" in the company's name reflects GreenGeeks' commitment to the environment. It buys three times the energy it uses in wind energy credits and plants one tree for every hosting plan purchased.
All of GreenGeeks' VPS hosting plans are managed and include at least four vCPUs -- virtual central processing units -- and at least 2GB of random access memory or RAM to provide a high baseline of performance. You'll also get a minimum 10GB of data transfer and 50GB of storage space, plus easy server management through cPanel, free SSL certification, free website transfer and unlimited email addresses.
GreenGeeks offers 24/7 customer support via live chat and email, with an expected response time of 20 minutes for email queries. Phone support is available from 9AM to 12AM ET, every day of the week.
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Cons
Ionos from 1&1 has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and a TrustPilot score of 4.5 out of 5. It's targeted at small and medium-sized businesses, with a focus on taking your first steps online or scaling up.
Ionos uses an unusual pricing structure for VPS hosting, with many different plans available for users who want the server customization options of VPS but don't need a lot of data. This allows Ionos to offer VPS hosting starting at $2 a month.
All Ionos VPS hosting plans include a firewall, DDoS protection and email hosting for up to two email addresses. You'll also get 24/7 access to customer support via live chat and phone, with country-specific phone numbers available for 14 countries.
The big downside of Ionos is that backups cost extra. You'll also find that pricing for most Ionos VPS hosting plans gets significantly more expensive after the first six months.
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HostPapa has an A+ BBB rating and a 4.8 out of 5 TrustPilot rating. HostPapa offers a wide variety of plan types, including unmanaged VPS hosting starting at $20 a month. You can add full VPS management for an additional $129 a month. These prices are only available if you purchase a three-year plan.
HostPapa's VPS hosting plans come with a minimum of four CPU cores, 2GB memory, 60GB of storage and 1TB of data transfer. All VPS hosting plans from HostPapa also include a firewall, site monitoring, DDoS protection, SSL certification, brute force detection and other security features to keep your server safe. This makes it the best VPS hosting option for built-in security.
Customer support can be contacted via 24/7 live chat, email and phone in a variety of languages. I've used HostPapa's shared hosting for years and always had an excellent experience with both live chat and email support.
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Hostinger is based in Lithuania, so it doesn't have a BBB page (that organization only lists US-based businesses). It does have a TrustPilot rating of 4.6 out of 5 with more than 28,000 reviews. Unmanaged VPS hosting plans from Hostinger start at $5 a month, with the highest-tier plan priced at $20 a month. These are introductory prices based on purchasing a two year plan. On renewal, the lowest-tier plan goes up to $8 a month and the highest-tier plan rises to $45 a month.
Hostinger uses NVMe storage to ensure optimal server performance, including fast loading speeds, and allows you to choose a data center close to your audience's location to further improve loading times for them. You'll also get automated weekly backups, a firewall and DDoS protection. Hostinger also offers an AI assistant to help you with various tasks of server and site management.
In terms of actual specs, Hostinger's VPS plans include a minimum of one vCPU, 4GB RAM, 50GB of storage and 4TB bandwidth.
You can contact Hostinger customer support through 24/7 live chat and email.
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Hostwinds has an A+ rating from the BBB and 4 out of 5 stars from TrustPilot. Its web hosting offerings are best suited for business owners, with specific business hosting plans and reseller hosting plans. Hostwinds also offers unmanaged virtual private server hosting starting at $5 a month for one CPU, 1GB RAM, 30GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth. Hostwinds also offers a variety of managed VPS hosting plans, starting at $8.24 a month and featuring the same storage, bandwidth and processing power as the equivalent unmnaged plan, plus full server support.
Hostwinds VPS plans all come with a 99.99% uptime guarantee -- higher than the usual 99.9% -- and 24/7 monitoring that will automatically open a support ticket for you if something goes wrong with your site. You'll also get free website transfer and an enterprise-level firewall.
Unfortunately, Hostwinds' listed prices are only available for the first term. When you renew, your plan will be upgraded to "then-current" pricing, which is significantly higher and may change between when you sign up and your renewal date.
Hostwinds customer service includes 24/7 live chat, support tickets and phone support.
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You'll need a plan with enough dedicated resources to accommodate your needs. There are four specific things to pay attention to:
Most web hosting companies make it easy to upgrade your plan, so if you need more resources than you initially imagined, you'll be able to accommodate your increased needs with ease.
Managed hosting involves the web host conducting essential server maintenance, including software updates and adjustments, for you. Unmanaged hosting involves you -- or a system administrator you hire -- handling all of this maintenance. Managed hosting tends to be more expensive than unmanaged hosting.
Your web host should offer at least a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This ensures that your website will be online near-continuously, with no more than 10 minutes of downtime caused by server issues each week. Some hosts go beyond this to offer 99.99% uptime guarantees, meaning that sites hosted through these companies won't experience more than two minutes of downtime per week due to server issues.
Many VPS plans let you choose between Linux and Windows operating systems. Pay special attention to this if you want to use programs that are only compatible with servers running a specific operating system.
Your web host should offer 24/7 customer support via live chat and email. Many offer 24/7 customer support via phone as well.
Remember that 24/7 customer support doesn't necessarily mean good support. Read reviews of any company you're considering to determine how effective its customer support actually is.
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It's important to note that we didn't explicitly "test" the VPS hosting provider options on this list. Instead, we compiled a competitive overview based on a variety of factors, including third-party ratings and features offered by each web hosting company and shared hosting provider. We've also weighted the rankings of each hosting service by the Better Business Bureau and TrustPilot. We're in the process of testing various web hosts, with a focus on shared hosting, and have included relevant notes from our tests on the hosts we've reviewed so far. You can learn more about our process for this from our article on how we test web hosting services.
The VPS host vendors on this list all have a rating of A or higher from the Better Business Bureau and a rating of 3.8 or higher out of 5 from TrustPilot. Except for three vendors with between 300 and 400 pieces of user feedback, all of the TrustPilot rankings are based on at least 1,000 user reviews. All of the vendors listed in our top picks also say they offer 24/7 support and an uptime guarantee of 99% or better.
Important caveats you should keep in mind: The Better Business Bureau does not rate companies outside of North America, and to be BBB Accredited, companies have to pay a fee to the organization. TrustPilot also offers a paid tier that provides companies more interaction with their user ratings. It removed 2.2 million fake reviews in 2020.
A note on pricing:We've made every effort to verify that the prices listed here were accurate at the time of the last publication. Prices in this category are subject to frequent fluctuations and they're consistently subject to special offers and limited deals. Furthermore, many of the VPS provider prices listed here reflect the monthly rates if you prepay for 12 months of service or more. Please click through to the vendors in question to verify current pricing at any given time.
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Pros
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GoDaddy has an A+ rating from the BBB and 4.7 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot. GoDaddy's unmanaged VPS hosting plans start at $9 a month and its managed VPS hosting plans start at $99 a month. However, you must purchase a three-year plan to get these prices and your renewal costs will be significantly higher.
VPS hosting plans from GoDaddy include a minimum of 1 vCPU and 2GB RAM. GoDaddy uses nonvolatile memory express or NVMe storage, on all of its VPS hosting plans for optimal performance. You'll also get firewall protection, distributed denial of service -- DDoS -- protection and SSL certification. VPS users can also create their own email servers with unlimited email addresses.
GoDaddy offers 24/7 phone support and live chat support as well. I tested GoDaddy's services in June 2024 and had a good experience with customer support, receiving competent help within minutes via live chat, text and phone call. My only complaint was that the live chat agent pushed me to purchase a more expensive plan than I needed.
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A2 Hosting has an A+ rating from the BBB and 4.6 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot. A2 Hosting offers unmanaged VPS hosting starting at $3 a month and managed VPS hosting starting at $27 a month. These are introductory prices that require you to sign up for one year -- your hosting cost will increase significantly in future years if you choose A2 Hosting.
All of A2 Hosting's VPS hosting plans include at least one computer core, 1GB of RAM, 0.5TB of data transfer and 25GB of storage. However, essential features like cPanel and SSL certification must be purchased as add-ons on unmanaged VPS plans.
A2 Hosting's customer support team is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year by phone, online chat or support ticket. I reviewed A2 Hosting in June 2024 and tested all three of these avenues, discovering that A2 Hosting's chat support is top-notch but phone and ticket support were slow.
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If your site has outgrown the highest-tier shared hosting plan available through your host, you may need to switch to VPS hosting -- or to another web host with more generous shared hosting options.
You may also need VPS hosting if your site has complex data needs or you want to be able to customize your server.
VPS hosting costs vary widely, with unmanaged plans costing anywhere from $2 a month to $400 a month. Managed plans cost anywhere from roughly $10 a month to $500 a month.
VPS hosting is more expensive than shared hosting because it provides dedicated resources and a safer server environment. VPS plans also offer more server customization options and may include more advanced developer tools.
The main disadvantage of VPS hosting depends on whether you choose managed or unmanaged hosting. The main disadvantage of managed VPS hosting is that it will cost a lot -- often $30 or more a month. The main disadvantage of unmanaged VPS hosting is that you'll need to handle software maintenance for the server yourself or hire someone to do it, which can be time-consuming, complex and expensive.
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Source: cnet.com