Nearly every college student, business owner and creative needs a website to help promote themselves. My college professor taught me that the best way to stand out during the hiring process is to have a website that not only showcases your portfolio but your personality as well. A polished, professional website will help you stand out and will draw in potential employers or customers. Building your own website can be daunting at first, but the best place to start is by choosing the right server for your needs.
After making a basic website, you might find that people are discovering it in all sorts of ways. To manage traffic surges or to expand your site with an online store or other features, you might need to upgrade your hosting plan. This is a perfect opportunity to consider virtual private server hosting for more resources in terms of storage, CPU, RAM and bandwidth so your site continues to run smoothly as it grows.
Let’s take a close look at some of the best VPS hosting services available. These include options you may have heard of, like A2Hosting and GoDaddy Web Hosting. For our list, I’ve focused on the best VPS hosting companies, selecting ones that provide 24/7 customer support and a variety of hosting plans.
What is VPS hosting?
There are three basic tiers to remote hosting options:
- Shared hosting: Typically the most basic, least expensive plan available from a web host provider, which many people building a website start off with. While a shared hosting provider should have everything you need for a personal or small business site, you are sharing resources with others on the same server, so if your site grows, you may need a different plan.
- VPS hosting:Essentially a step up from shared hosting, VPS allows you to get similar capabilities and performance to a dedicated server for your site without going up to a pricier dedicated server service. There are two types of VPS hosting: managed hosting and unmanaged hosting (more below).
- Dedicated server hosting:Typically the most expensive plan available from VPS providers, a dedicated server host hosts only one website, not multiple ones. That means you don’t have to share any resources with other sites, so you’ll get far better performance.
VPS hosting comes in two types, managed and unmanaged. A managed VPS hosting plan is typically more expensive, yes. It is best for those with less technical backgrounds, as it lets the company take care of the software and system updates you request. An unmanaged VPS hosting service means the hosting provider is only responsible for the physical server and making sure it’s available. You’ll need to take care of maintenance, upgrades and software installation, which can add up compared to a managed VPS plan.
Best VPS hosting providers
SiteGround has an A+ rating from the BBB and 4.8 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot. It sits in the middle ground between a consumer web hosting provider and one that caters to businesses, with prices for cloud-based VPS hosting starting at $100 a month.
All of SiteGround’s plans include secure socket layer — SSL — certification, daily backups, content delivery network or CDN and unlimited email addresses. The VPS plans also include a minimum of four central processing units — CPUs — and 8GB memory for optimal performance, plus 40GB of storage and 5TB of data transfer per month.
SiteGround’s VPS hosting plans are also managed and allow you to create Hosting Packages to dedicate resources to individual websites, making this a great option for businesses with multiple websites or agencies managing multiple client sites.
Support includes 24/7 live chat and phone access, and tickets that are answered in an average of 15 minutes. SiteGround has won multiple awards for customer service.
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.
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.
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 of 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.
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.
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 unmanaged 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.
Server resources
You’ll need a plan with enough dedicated resources to accommodate your needs. There are four specific things to pay attention to:
- vCPUs/CPU cores: virtual central processing units — dictate how well your server can handle resource-intensive tasks. More vCPUs generally means more capability. The type of CPU being used can also impact your server’s capability.
- RAM: Random access memory or RAM controls your server’s ability to perform simultaneous tasks and run smoothly.
- Storage: The amount of storage space you have dictates how much data — like images and text — you can store on your server. Most hosting companies use regular solid-state drives or SSD storage to ensure reliable performance. Some hosts use nonvolatile memory express — NVMe — storage to provide even faster and more reliable service.
- Bandwidth: Sometimes expressed as data transfer in VPS hosting, bandwidth dictates how much data your server can transmit in a specific period.
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 vs. unmanaged
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.
Uptime guarantee
Your web host should offer at least a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This ensures that your website will be online almost 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.
Operating system options
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.
Customer support
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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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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