May 2013
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10 VPS buying tips

VPSs are good! better than the dedicated servers. A good VPS is more reliable than a dedicated server if your host knows what he’s doing. Here are my tips on buying a new VPS.

  1. Never,ever ever enter a long term contract with a new company. No matter what others say or what kind of deal they are offering. Always test for a few months before entering a contract. If they are offering a good deal, ask them if they will let you test for a few month and then pay yearly.
  2. If you have shared hosting and don’t know anything about managing a server get a managed VPS, till you learn how to handle your server. VPS/dedicated is different from a shared hosting which you cared about nothing.
  3. From my experience, spending less than $25/month for an unmanaged and $50/month for a managed VPS is not recommended for a business website. But for hobbies, don’t spend more than 5!
  4. If your VPS died and the host told you it was another abusive customer, then your host can’t do VPS!
  5. If your VPS is abusive and the host turned it off(instead of limiting it), then your host can’t do VPS!
  6. If your VPS is dead and the reason isn’t hardware failure,and none of the above or anything reasonable, then probably your provider is overselling. VPS software can’t tolerate overselling and bad things start to happen if the host oversells. You will notice bad things.(Like butterflies in your stomach!)
  7. Unlike other webhosting types hdd performance is critical in VPS hosting. download a test file( a linux 700mb iso) and test the copy and delete speed.(delete in linux is slow comparing to win) . It shouldn’t be slower than your pc.If it is then your VPS is unusable except for hobbies.
  8. If you got a too good to be true deal, specially on bandwidth (like 2TB bandwidth for $10) and are going to  use it then ask the host if they are OK with it.If they asked what you’re site is or whatever probably they can’t do it). Avoid the headaches.
  9. Ping the server, if you haven’t got the server yet ask for a test ip. High pings are ok since it’ll be low for some visitors anyway,however pings over 1000ms is not good. Dropped packets are worse.