Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Do you always get what you pay for?

[latitudehopper]

I have been through a few hosting providers in my time. I have a VPS with bhost at the moment. 1GB dedi ram and seems great. Price is awesome. I do wonder however if I am missing something as it is about a third the price of comparable packages. Ping speeds don't really tell me anything as I have pinged my host and others like racksvr who get great reviews. Can you think of any way to tell I am getting a good deal? weather.teign.net is hosted there and it seems a little sluggish to me, uploads are also very slow (it seems). Any thoughts? If you are on a more expensive VPS.... why?

Thanks in advance.

J

[Kintallon]

For me it is as much about peace of mind and reliabilty than about saving a few bucks.

Cheaper VPS can be great value especially if you are on a lightly loaded node, but 9/10 times the cheaper the price the more likely it is that the host will have to oversell/overload the node to make it pay and that's when the performance & reliabilty starts to suffer or the host goes bust when the reality of the unsustainable pricing finally hits them.

Going with a premium provider such as Knownhost, Futurehosting, etc generally means that they will not oversell/overload the node at all or as much because they have more sustainable/realistic pricing and of course they are less likely to go bust taking your data with them.

Ultimately though it can depend on what you are using the VPS for. If it's for hosting clients then I would always look to go with a premium provider, if it's only for testing, dns server(part of a cluster) then a budget vps can be fine.

[latitudehopper]

Thank you for your reply. They say they "do not oversell", can I take this to read that a guarantee of 1GB of ram means that total ram / number of VPS = 1GB?

[VectorVPS]

Originally Posted by latitudehopper

Thank you for your reply. They say they "do not oversell", can I take this to read that a guarantee of 1GB of ram means that total ram / number of VPS = 1GB?

No, you can't. The exact definition of overselling is debatable. What your host does not consider overselling might be considered otherwise at a different host, and vice-versa.

The main question to ask yourself is this: Are you happy with your current service? For example, does the VPS perform well for you, is downtime minimal, does support respond and take care of problems in a reasonable timeframe, and so forth.

If you're happy where you are, I wouldn't fret about whether service might be "better" at a more expensive host. I'm hosted at BurstNET, and have 2 of their bottom-end $6 VPS accounts with 512MB each. One is set up as a webserver and primary nameserver, the other is a MySQL server, mail server, and secondary nameserver. Both have identical configurations, so is one goes down, the other can pick up the workload temporarily. I wrote a simple script for each server to check the status of the other every 5 minutes. If the other server is unreachable for 3 consecutive cycles (15 minutes) , the necessary services on the working server are started, and alternate configuration files that point to the single server are activated for each site. While I've tested this "poor man's failover" from both ends, it's never had to be used, because both servers have had 100% uptime except for when I broke something or intentionally rebooted them.

My point is that I'm perfectly happy with the performance, uptime, and support from BurstNET, so why would I consider paying double or triple the amount somewhere else? If something happens that changes my opinion of BurstNET I'll switch, but unless that happens I'm sticking with what works.

I would advise you to do the same.

[tchen]

If you're uneasy about it, make sure to test your recovery/contingency plans. I've got several low-budget hosts and when they work, they're great. Sometimes even better than the expensive ones. But I've seen a few slowly decay over time, either because they ended up loading the nodes, or through slipping support. Variability over time just seems to be higher in this segment.

Like the above posters have said though, it can be a very cost effective solution if you can manage it properly, but do so with your eyes wide open.

[HostXNow]

Good advice. And no matter who the provider is always keep offsite backups.

[dotHostel]

Originally Posted by tchen

Variability over time just seems to be higher in this segment.

Very true and some changes may be not easily noticeable as moving some routes from a first-class carrier to a cheap one; decreasing the number of cores your VPS can use or moving your VPS to lower spec hardware node; lowering limits of parameters as size of the TCP buffers or I/O throughput; ... yet the uptime is 100%

[kpmedia]

Yes, you get what you pay for. That's the rule.

There are some exceptions. There are exceptions to every rule. However, most people are poor judges for what is or isn't an exception. Off the top of my head, I think Stablehost is a good example of an exception. Low cost, yet very high quality shared Linux hosting.

"Do not oversell" is a marketing term now. Would you trust a divorcee who says he/she has no baggage? Or a female that says she doesn't play games? Do you assume everything on Wikipedia is a fact? If you do believe anything you read or hear, then you're gullible and a fool. Verify it, don't just believe it blindly.

[iTom]

99% of the time you will get what you pay for, however there are always some exceptions to the rule.

I have been using RamHost for a while now and their shared/vps services are better than a lot of more 'premium' services that I have used in the past.

However I have used providers in the past where the VPS was $4-10/pm and a few days later the company just disappears...

Check around on WHT/Google and find some reviews before you go with someone, actually even do that if they are not a budget provider

[samkak]

"you get what you pay for" isn't necessarily true every time. You will find many good providers who have put in cost cutting measures to ensure the quality status high while the price is low. Check out offers section