Best cheap VPS host with cpanel included?

minc3d

Gawd
Joined
Nov 27, 2004
Messages
758
Hey everyone,

I am looking to move my company off of (sub par) hosting on MyHosting.com via VPS over to another provider. I have been scouring the web for recommendations and it seems that RackSpace, HostGator, A Small Orange, and Future Hosting are pretty good picks.

I'm just curious if any of you have any top recommendations for the best VPS host. Our needs aren't crazy. Looking for something $40 or less per month for just our own website and a few small clients we host. Cpanel being included is critical.

Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks!
 
cPanel is basically $10/mo which is almost entirely a pass-through fee to the makers of cPanel, that only leaves you with $30/mo for hosting and you do not want sub par hosting.

Liquidweb, $60/mo with cPanel included. Best VPS provider there is, you can call with issues at any time a day and will get someone on of phone within a minute. That tech is actually someone who is North America based, speaks and understands English perfectly, and has the authority and the knowledge to fix your problem.

Money well spent, if you have clients then another $20/mo should be a non-issue, imho anyway.
 
I have 3 VPS's with burst.net

I have ready some good reviews, as well as some bad ones. Personally, I've never had a problem. You could get 2.5GB of memory 2.5GHz and 2000gb/mo for ~$40/mo with cpanel.

volumedrive also has some really good options. You could get a dedicated server for ~$60/mo, which might be worth it in the end. They have VPS too.
 
Digital Ocean or Linode. Worlds better than Rackspace for a single VPS. Hostgator is a joke.
 
They're just a generic megahost and their VPS's are virtuozzo and not Xen/KVM.
 
I hosted with ServerBeach.com from around ~2003ish until about a month ago. Rock solid service, even after they got bought out by Peer1 Network.. I never had an issue that they couldn't get solved quickly. Though I only had one hardware failure during the entire time, it was a hard drive going out. They helped me get things transferred to a new drive quickly and easily. I almost had no down time.

A few times their network went out, never lasted longer than a few minutes. Anytime they do any kind of maintenance, they let you know like 2 - 3 weeks in advance so you can plan accordingly. Though this only happens a couple times a year. (Network upgrades, backup system tests, etc...)
 
I am ideally looking for a host that has servers in Chicago, IL close to where we are. I saw that Server Beach doesn't offer this.
 
I am ideally looking for a host that has servers in Chicago, IL close to where we are. I saw that Server Beach doesn't offer this.

They might not have data centers located in Chicago directly, but they do have a PoP in Chicago. For reference, I hosted out of Herndon, VA. I had excellent pings to them, despite living in South MS with a small ISP. I averaged ~50ms and I could easily max out my connection.

On the game servers I hosted on the server, nearly all of my player base was South American players because they got a good connection to the server despite being so far away.

I do not think you'll have any issue living in or near Chicago, IL hosting with ServerBeach, despite the geographical distance.

Additionally, Peer1 is who owns them so check out peer1.com as well. I think they offer ATL servers.
 
My needs are very small, but I recently moved over to digital ocean and I've been extremely impressed. It's "SSD" storage, which seems to keep things nice and speedy. I'm in chicago as well, and their San Fran location seems to work well. If there's any speed or ping data you'd like let me know.
 
The features/specs and price level at Digital Ocean looks amazing I must say. However, they don't seem to advertise Cpanel inclusion.

Do you know if they offer it?
 
I said something nice about ChicagoVPS a day before they experienced the worst breach ever because they were using known-bad software (solusvm). So fuck them, and the horse they rode in on.
 
Last edited:
digital ocean seems nice. but is it a solution for a medium size company to move 1 website away from a shitty hosting like network solutions? probably not as it would require skill and time to setup the server and then migrate everything over.
 
Last edited:
digital ocean seems nice. but is it a solution for a medium size company to move 1 website away from a shitty hosting like network solutions? probably not as it would require skill and time to setup the server and then migrate everything over.

do you only need web hosting? if yes then a VPS would be way overkill.
 
You can still be a small company and use something like digital ocean or any other VPS. It really comes down to what your site is doing.

Most shared providers make you jump through hoops to use services not given to you by default and in some cases it's simply not possible. Often times they have a dedicated plan they will try to sell you so you can do something as simple as use nginx instead of apache.

If using a fully unmanaged VPS is too much there are services like https://www.webfaction.com who will configure the machines for you. All you have to do is click buttons and in seconds you get a fully provisioned machine with whatever you want.
 
Hosting breaks into a couple main categories managed and unmanaged... I've always gone the unmanaged route because well Why pay a big monthly fee for services that if you set it up right you'll never need.

I config things the way I want them and then NEVER TOUCH CONFIG AGAIN! The main branches for things that can break things like MySQL and PHP updates sometimes newer versions will break some features so I code for a certain combo and then stay there! They do give security updates for older branches
 
Chicago VPS
Burst.net (They are stingy a-holes, accidentally break one of their numerous vaguely worded rules and they shut you down for weeks without a warning).
ThrustVPS
BuyVM.net

Those are the budget ones I've used over the years. I wouldn't recommend a budget VPS for serious sites though. That is best left to AWS/Lease/LiquidWeb, etc.
 
I used chicago vps for quite some time, connections and nodes were quite fast, especially given the cost, but they really had some nasty downtime.

I'm with buyvm now, seems like they run a tighter ship
 
For anyone's that curious, my company ended up going with A Small orange for our VPS needs. Loving them. Excellent customer support and pricing.

Highly recommend them!
 
Rackspace VPS/Cloud has always done us right.
Digital Ocean is looking good so far.
Linode same thing.
RamNode trying them next.
HostGator sucks.
BeachComber still going strong for 3 VPS we have there too.
SoftLayer for dedicated 10+ years there (or rather with their previous names/buyouts ) Now owned by IBM.
 
The digital ocean pricing, as well as their whole imaging setup seems really nice, I have been thinking of going with them if a current project of mine takes off.

Does anyone have first hand experience with them? At the moment it looks like the best priced service that can handle a production site.
 
Digital Ocean is the best I have come across. I started using them for mining some coins, but have now switched over my team website and will host our school website with them.
 
The digital ocean pricing, as well as their whole imaging setup seems really nice, I have been thinking of going with them if a current project of mine takes off.

Does anyone have first hand experience with them? At the moment it looks like the best priced service that can handle a production site.

I have friends with 10+ hosts running there.
Another with 5+.

So far they really like DO.
 
Azure will be overpriced for your needs unless you need something scalable.

ChicagoVPS isn't reliable nor secure. Hell, any ColoCrossing based VPS won't be since they all resell the same exact rack space with the same exact base configs (SolusVM). Not something to use for any real production site.

Check out Mad Genius Hosting. Run by a friend of mine. Prices are decent and they provide good support.
 
so i caved and signed up at digital ocean. wow its fast and awesome.

i had a LAMP stack on centos running in about 5 minutes and though its slightly more manual than i wanted their guides are great. all my virtual hosts are setup and sites that were crawling on my hostgator hosting are flying now. i can't wait to change nameservers and see how it does under normal load. $5 a month cannot be beat.
 
so i caved and signed up at digital ocean. wow its fast and awesome.

i had a LAMP stack on centos running in about 5 minutes and though its slightly more manual than i wanted their guides are great. all my virtual hosts are setup and sites that were crawling on my hostgator hosting are flying now. i can't wait to change nameservers and see how it does under normal load. $5 a month cannot be beat.

What are your ping times to your site? I'm pretty high on mine. At least twice as slow as Google's DNS servers (~150ms to 300ms) with Google at ~27-60ms.
 
ping to my site at digital ocean:
min = 23ms, max = 28ms, average = 25ms

ping to google.com:
min = 27ms, max = 31ms, average = 29ms

now that is pinging my IP address at digital ocean. its possible wherever your domain is registered/nameservers are set is slow ... maybe?
 
Back
Top