Hosting Archives - Odin SQL

A Vultr walk-through

April 19, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge 8 Comments

I’ve mentioned Vultr in several of my previous blog posts. I’ve covered how Vultr significantly outperforms their main competitor DigitalOcean in both price and performance in the low cost solid state drive (SSD) virtual private server (VPS) hosting market. Today I thought that I would do a walk-through of Vultr via a series of annotated screenshots. Along the way I hope to show you why I’ve moved away from DigitalOcean for all of my new development servers and why Vultr is currently one of my favorite VPS hosting option.

Registration

So let’s get started with the homepage where creating a new account is as simple as entering our email address and password form the home page.

New user registration

Billing

After clicking on the “deploy now” button you’ll need to enter your payment details. Services are billed based on an hourly rate up to a maximum monthly rate. with servers starting at $5.00 a month or $0.007 (7/10 of a penny) per hour for a VPS with 1 CPU 768MB memory 15GB storage 1000 GB of monthly transfer. The minimum deposit is $5 but it also comes with a $5 bonus credit that it automatically added to your account.

Enter credit card billing information.

Payment can be made via credit card, (visa, MasterCard, AMEX or Discover) PayPal or even bit coin.

PayPal payment option

Bitcoin payment option

Deploy

After entering your preferred payment option you can now get started deploying your first virtual server.

There’s a lot to talk about on this next screenshot.

Server type

First off there are three different server types to choose from :

Performance – Have from 1 to 4 CPU, SSD storage and are available at data centers located around the world.

Storage – Have either 1 or 2 CPU large SATA disks and are available in New Jersey or Los Angles data centers.

Multi-Core – Have between 8 and 20 CPU SSD storage and are only available in the New Jersey data center.

Location

Vultr has a total of 14 different data centers located around the world in the following cities and countries

Chicago, Illinois, USA
New Jersey, USA
Dallas, Texas, USA
Los Angeles, California, USA
Miami, Florida, USA
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Seattle, Washington, USA
Silicon Valley, California, USA
Sydney, Australia
Tokyo, Japan
Amsterdam, Netherlands
London, England, UK
Paris, France
Frankfurt, Germany

Operating System

They have many different OS choices, including verities of Linux, BSD and Windows available and unlike the vast majority of other VPS hosts Vultr also allows for the installation of custom ISO’s. They also have a few applications which can be installed when deploying a new server. I’ll cover the applications latter on.

By default the following OS options are available.

CentOS 5
CentOS 6
CentOS 7
Ubuntu 14.04
Ubuntu 12.04
Ubuntu 14.10
Ubuntu 15.04 (added on April 23rd 2015)
Debian 7
FreeBSD 10
CoreOS Stable
Windows 2012 R2 (at additional cost)

Optional Features

The following optional features are also available IPV6, Private Network and Auto Backup at an additional 20% above the price of the VPS. Auto backup isn’t available on the storage series of VPS.

Deploy performance VPS options

In the next image we have the storage series VPS options.

VPS deploy storage series

At the time I took the next screen shot the Multi-Core series was sold out.

VPS deploy multi-core series

The 32 bit OS options

32bit OS options

Vultr Applications

LEMP on CentOS 6
WordPress on CentOS 6
Minecraft on CentOS 6
webmin on centOS 6
ownCloud on CentOS 6
OpenVPS on CentOS 6
cPanel on CentOS 6 ($15 additional monthly)

Deploy applications

In the next image we show the custom OS installation options.

Deploy custom

Deploy from snapshot

You can also deploy a new VPS from a snapshot of one of your current VPS. If I had taken any snapshots they would have been listed here.

Deploy from snapshot

Startup scripts

when deploying you can optionally set up a start up script which will run the immediately after install.

Manage Statup scripts

Next we have the screen for adding a new start-up script

Add startup script

SSH

An SSH key can be assigned at the time of deployment which, if present will be required to log into the server.

Manage SSH Keys

Manage your servers

Installing new VPS

After the new VPS is finished installing you will be given the option to manage your new server.

Manage new server

Server Information

After clicking on manage you will see your information about your server including it’s location, the type of OS that has been installed, it’s label and any tags that have been assigned to it. For example you could create a group of server that you tag as web servers or database servers. You will also see any IP addresses IPV4 or IPV6 address that have been assigned to your server.

Server Actions

From this interface you can open a console, stop, start, restart, reinstall, change the os, destroy and delete your VPS, manage the root password, view usage graphs, manage DNS, add additional IPV4 or IPV6 addresses, take snapshots or backup your VPS.

Server actions

Although I personally prefer to SSH into my servers, everything can be managed directly from the Vultr VPS management interface. Clicking on the console button will open a noVNC window directly to your VPS.

noVNC VPS management console

Server tags can be useful if you have many VPS and you would like to divide them into groups.

Update server tag

Stop your VPS

stop vps

Restart VPS

Reinstall your VPS

Delete and destroy your VPS

You can change the OS after deployment but it will delete all of your existing data.

Change OS

This next snapshot shows the usage graphs.

Usage graphs

IPV4 and reverse DNS info.

IPV4 configuration

Adding an additional IP address

add another ipv4 ip address

Recovery ISO

upload recovery iso

Take or recover from a snapshot

snapshots

I didn’t have any backups but if I did they would have been listed here.

Backups

I do my DNS through a free CloudFlare account. I highly recommend them to everyone. However if you could also use Vultr’s included DNS manager.

DNS manager

Settings

From the settings screen you can change your password, enable two factor authentication and enable API access.

Settings

Two factor authentication is much more secure. I highly recommend enabling it.

Two factor authentication options

Two factor authentication QR code which I’ve blacked out.

Two factor authentication QR code

Support

Vultr’s support is good and they also have excellent documentation. It doesn’t have as many tutorials as DigitalOcean but Vultr’s servers are much faster and there isn’t anything preventing you from using one of the many tutorials on the internet with your VPS.

Here we have the support interface. These tickets weren’t in regard to any problems that I had they were just a few general questions.

support tickets

Documentation interface

Documentation

Creating a new support ticket is simple.

new support ticket

Affiliate program

So now we’ve come to reason why I’ve put the effort into compiling this long list of screen shots. The affiliate program. Vultr pays $10 for each referral that’s over 30 days old and spends at least $10. It’s not as generous and many other web hosting affiliate programs out there but I don’t feel like I’m being at all dishonest when I highly recommend them. I’ve done the benchmarks and they outperform their competition.

Here we see my January 2015 referrals. I can attest that they actually count their referrals and pay their affiliates which is more than I can say for some other VPS hosting companies that I’ve worked with in the past.

affiliate program

I think I’ve covered pretty much everything so I might as well show you the log out screen

After logging out

and finally the forgot password.

forgot password

So I think that covers just about everything within Vultr’s interface. If you would like to give Vultr a try please use the big green button below.

I keep a list of any current Vultr coupons or discounts here.

If you have any questions or suggestions please feel free to let me know. If this post does well I’ll try to do one on DigitalOcean at some point in the future. If you would like to stay updated with my latest blog posts please join my newsletter by filling out you name and email address in the big black rectangle on the right hand navigation.

DreamHost coupons and promo codes

March 8, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge Leave a Comment

This page was last updated May 7th 2015.

DreamHost Coupons

DreamHost is currently one of the leading web hosts today with a positive reputation. DreamHost offers shared hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), cloud hosting and domain name registration.

This page contains the best available and most current DreamHost coupons and promo codes.

Use the coupon code “ODINFREEREG” and the big green link below for free domain name registration.

Host your site with DreamHost

If one of the coupon or promo codes on this page expires or if you know of a better coupon code please leave me a comment and let me know and I’ll be sure to update this page.

WPEngine coupons and promo codes

March 8, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge Leave a Comment

This page was last updated May 7th 2015.

WPengine Coupons

WPengine is a premium, highly-managed web hosting service for websites and apps built with WordPress. WPengine currently has over 20,000 loyal customers that are provided with a simple, secure and excellently performing way to host their WordPress sites.

From now until the end of May, 33% Off the first 2 Months of a monthly Personal, Professional, or Business plans if you use the special code “SPRINGTIME“ (without the quotes) and use the following link.

I’ll do my best to keep this page updated with the best coupons available for WPEngine. If a coupon or promo code expire please leave me a comment and let me know and I’ll try to find a new one. Also if you have any comments or suggestions please let me know.

GoDaddy vs. HostGator vs. BlueHost vs. DreamHost

March 8, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge 5 Comments

godaddy vs. hostgator vs. bluehost vs. dreamhost

I’ve seen people asking for hosting recommendations several times on Reddit, Quara and numerous other forums and they’re frequently asking which host is better between one or more of the large hosting companies GoDaddy, HostGator, BlueHost and DreamHost.

If you’re in that same position trying to figure out which one of the above mentioned companies will offer you the best deal and performance for your websites I hope that this post will shed a bit of light on the murky world of web hosting and hopefully help you make a more informed decision.

Stop using shared hosting, it sucks!

I know, it’s harsh to say that and that there may be a few exceptions somewhere out there on the internet, but as a general rule, shared hosting should be avoided. GoDaddy, HostGator, BlueHost and DreamHost are all primarily shared hosting companies and the only reason anyone ever used shared hosting to begin with was because it was so much less expensive than a dedicated server. Now that virtual private servers (VPS) have become so prevalent and inexpensive there really isn’t any reason for anyone to use shared hosting any longer. Selecting hosting based solely on the lowest possible price is how you end up with really unreliable hosting and horrible support. If support and reliability are important stop making price your sole consideration when comparing web hosts.

Shared hosting is unreliable

The typical setup with shared hosting will have up to several thousand websites hosted on one server. Any one of those sites could have a poorly written script or a large spike in traffic that could potentially consume the majority of the servers resources resulting in poor performance or downtime for the other thousand plus hosting customers located on the same server. Many websites on shared hosting will see a few minutes of downtime and extremely slow page load times several times daily.

Shared hosting is deceptively marketed

Shared hosting is often sold to via deceptive claims, half truths and omissions.

Here are a few common examples:

Unlimited bandwidth

When a shared hosting service claims unlimited bandwidth the reality is that once you use some predetermined amount of bandwidth the hosting company will either throttle the bandwidth to your sites so that they become so slow that your websites become unusable or they will suspend your account for violating their terms of service. Think about it for a moment why would Google, Yahoo or Amazon spend billions on bandwidth if they could get unlimited bandwidth for $10 a month. If any hosting company actually provided unlimited bandwidth they would be bankrupt very quickly.

Unlimited disk space

Disk space is actually very inexpensive. Even thought it’s cheap the shared hosting companies that offer unlimited disk space know that the vast majority of their customers will never use less than 100 megabytes of disk space and fewer than 1% will use more than 10 gigabytes. When they market unlimited disk space they’re selling something that they have no intention of actually providing. Think for a moment how long it would take you to upload even one terabyte (1028 gigabytes) of data using your internet connection. The majority of internet connection in the United States offer asymmetrical bandwidth. That means that your download speeds are much faster than your upload speeds. For most people it would take several days or even weeks to upload even one terabyte of data. Much like with unlimited bandwidth unlimited disk space will become very difficult to actually use if your intention is to actually use a significant amount of storage.

Fake reviews

The reason that you see so many recommendations for these companies is because the people writing the reviews are getting paid to write them. Each of these companies offers an affiliate program that pays 20% or more of what ever you end up spending on hosting to the person that got you to click on their affiliate link that takes you to the web hosts site. Affiliate links, banner adds and paid reviews is how the majority of bloggers, myself included make money and I’m no exception. However on my blog I only recommend products and services that I actually use for myself or for my clients.

Shared hosting is not a very good deal

Share hosting can be incredibly profitable for the companies that provide it and unfortunately good marketing does a lot better job at selling hosting than providing good hosting. The actual cost involved for the typical overloaded shared hosting package is minimal. Typical costs per customer per month are well under $1 monthly. Here’s a very realistic cost estimate you have a server, bandwidth electricity and infrastructure and employees to look over thing all of these costs added up are usually less that $200 monthly. Now on that $200 a month server many shared hosting companies will pack 1000 – 1500 customers each paying $5 – $15 monthly. That $4800 – $22,300 in net profit per server. I have no problem with people working to make money but that same $5 – $15 could be buying you a low end managed virtual server where you would be 1 of 100 customers with a much greater degree of isolation from having a server crash and your website becoming inaccessible than 1 of 1000 with no isolation at all. If you’re paying more than $1 a month for shared hosting you’re not getting good value for the money you’ve spent.

Why you should avoid GoDaddy

Deceptive and manipulate up selling.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of using GoDaddy you know exactly what I’m talking about. In order to make even the simplest purchase via GoDaddy you will be forced to wade though several pages of deceptively titled additional products and “services” which provide little value. Many people complain about services they never intentionally purchased being added to their bill.

GoDaddy could steal your domain name.

If you somehow forget to renew your domain name and it expires Godaddy will buy your domain name the moment it expired and then attempt to charge you $400 to get it back. If you don’t pay they will auction your domain name off to the highest bidder. They claim that this is a “service” but it seems a lot more like extortion to me.

Support for anti-consumer laws.

GoDaddy has previously supported numerous anti-consumer and pro-censorship laws such as :

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

After a consumer boycott and a lot of bad press GoDaddy backed away from it’s support of these laws but the fact that they ever supported them is enough to keep me from ever recommending that anyone do business with them.

They’re so big that they won’t care if you need support.

GoDaddy is a huge company with a huge marketing budget that has demonstrated very little interest in actually supporting it’s customers. If you have an issue and need support there’s a very good chance that you’re going to end up extremely disappointed if you’re relying on GoDaddy.

If you’ve read everything I’ve said about GoDaddy and you’re still considering using their services perhaps some reviews from actual customers of theirs can persuade you to reconsider.

HostGator and BlueHost are actually the same company.

That’s right Hostgator and BlueHost are actually both owned by Endurance International Group or EIG. EIG acquires smaller hosting companies with good reputations and then “streamline” them. They do this by moving the customers of the acquired companies onto servers in their own data centers and stuffing as many of them as possible onto overloaded server. They actually own and run over 50 different brands. By marketing over 50 different web hosting brands they’ve managed to create the illusion of competition. Their brands are usually heavily marketed and you’ll find numerous dubious positive reviews for their services. If you’re wondering why you see so many recommendations on blogs for both Hostgator and BlueHost it’s because they pay relatively high affiliate commissions. There’s a good chance that you’ve found this article by searching for a comparison between HostGator and BulueHost. The reality is that it doesn’t matter which one of these two you choose as they’re both actually the same sub-par service with a different brand name associated.

Other EIG companies to Avoid

Here’s a list that I pulled from the EIG wikipedia page of other companies that are owned and operated by EIG and I would recommend that you avoid them all.

2slick.com
AccountSupport
Arvixe LLC
A Small Orange
ApolloHosting
Berry Information Systems L.L.C.
BigRock
BizLand
StartLogic
BlueDomino
Bluehost
BuyDomains
Directi
Dollar2Host
Domain.com
DomainHost
Dot5Hosting
Dotster
easyCGI
eHost
EntryHost
Escalate Internet
FastDomain
FatCow
FreeYellow
Homestead
HostCentric
HostClear
HostGator
Hostnine
HostMonster
hostwithmenow.com
HostYourSite.com
HyperMart
IMOutdoors
Intuit Websites
iPage
IPOWER
iPowerWeb
JustHost
LogicBoxes
MojoMarketplace
MyDomain
MyResellerHome
NetFirms
Networks Web Hosting
Nexx
PowWeb
PureHost
ReadyHosting.com
ResellerClub
Saba-Pro
SEO Hosting
Southeast Web
SpeedHost
Spry
SuperGreen Hosting
Typepad
USANetHosting
VirtualAvenue
VPSLink
WebHost4Life
webhosting.info
Webstrike Solutions
Xeran
YourWebHosting

What about DreamHost?

Dreamhost is still primarily a shared hosting company and for that reason they’re not a company that I would normally recommend but they’re by far the best option of the four companies compared in this post. If you choose to use Dreamhost I would recommend their managed VPS hosting which is reasonably priced and much more reliable and with more consistent performance than shared hosting. If you’re determined to use shared hosting despite every reason that I’ve given you to avoid it DreamHost would be a much more reliable option with better support than either GoDaddy or any of the EIG brands.

Try DreamHost

Recommended hosting options

Now that we’ve covered why you should avoid GoDaddy, HostGator and BlueHost and how Dreamhost is the only hosting company of the four that this article is primary about that is worth doing business with I though that I would mention a few hosting companies that personally use and recommend. It’s important that the company that you choose fits your specific business requirements.

Managed WordPress hosting

If you’re site or sites use WordPress I would recommend using a hosting option that specializes in optimizing, securing and scaling WordPress sites. Currently the best available hosting for WordPress is from WPengine. WPengine utilizes several different cloud hosting providers and implements their own highly optimized software stack to provide the best available Performance and reliability for WordPress based web sites. WPengine is more expensive than low quality shared hosting but if your dependent upon your website to generate revenue or referrals then hopefully you understand how important performance and reliability are. Hosting A single site on WPengine will currently cost $29 a month with a $25 site business plan going for $249 monthly.

Host with WpEngine

Managed Magento, Drupal, Joomla, PrestaShop, MediaWiki, or PHP hosting

For managed Magento, Drupal, Joomla, PrestaShop, MediaWiki, or PHP hosting CloudWays is currently my go-to recommendation. CloudWays offers managed cloud hosting on top of Amazon, Google, or DigitalOcean’s “cloud”. When you signup for CloudWays you are offered the option of choosing which cloud hosting service you would like your server to reside on, with Amazon and Google being similarly priced but more reliable and DigitalOcean being significantly less expensive but with slightly more downtime on average. Once you’ve selected your cloud and server you are offered a selection of applications to choose from and CloudWays will configure its managed and optimized software stack. A server with 1GB of RAM and 1 CPU on DigitalOcean with CloudWays will cost around $15 a month while a server with similar specifications on Amazon or Google’s cloud will cost about $40 monthly. CloudWays also offers a WordPress stack but if you can afford it I would recommend WPengine over CloudWays for WordPress specific hosting.

Try CloudWays

Self managed VPS for Development

Up until about six months ago I was using DigitalOcean for all of my development servers but Vultr seems to have copied their business model and surpassed them in every measurable way possible. By no means am I saying that DigitalOcean is a bad service, in fact I think that they’re great it’s just that Vultr is even better. Vultr offers hourly billing and the ability to clone existing servers which is great for testing out different configuration options before deployment. A VPS 728MB Ram and 1CPU will only cost you $5 a month while a slower VPS with 512MB ram will cost you the same on DigitalOcean which is why I’m using Vultr for my development servers now. I’ve written a fairly detailed comparison of Vultr and DigitalOcean if you you’re interested.

Self managed VPS for Deployment

RamNode lacks the hourly billing and the ability to quickly clone or upgrade your VPS that Vultr offers but the performance of RamNode’s servers and their support are both excellent. If you need a single VPS for deployment of a project and you don’t need the ability to clone an existing VPS which can dramatically reduce the work required in deploying and maintaining a VPS, RamNode is an excellent choice. RamNode consistently outperforms every other VPS hosting provider and their prices are competitive.

Select RamNode

Dedicated Servers

Choopa is actually the parent company of Vultr which is my recommendation for VPS development servers. Choopa offers great low cost dedicated servers. If you’re in need of a dedicated server I would recommend giving them a look.

Choose Choopa

Conclusion

Avoid GoDaddy or any brand owned by EIG. DreamHost is great when compared to GoDaddy or EIG but you should go with a VPS over shared hosting and There are most likely better hosting options that are tailored more closely to your specific needs.

That’s it for my comparison of GoDaddy, HostGator, BlueHost and DreamHost. I hope that you’ve found this post informative and helpful. If you’re an employee of GoDaddy or an EIG owned brand I’m not really interested in hearing from you but if you feel like leaving a comment I’m not doing to delete it. If you have any comments, suggestions or noticed one of the undoubtedly many spelling or grammatical errors please leave a comment and let me know.

RamNode coupon, promo, and discount codes

February 2, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge 2 Comments

Last updated May 7th 2015

RamNode Coupons

I’ve been looking over my search engine referrals and I noticed that I’m getting several users per day looking for RamNode coupon, promo, or discount codes. Up until now I didn’t have any information regarding RamNode coupons on my site but If it’s what people are looking for I thought I would create a page specifically with that information.

What is RamNode?

RamNode is a small virtual private server(VPS) hosting company with a terrific reputation for their quality and responsive support, extremely fast servers and low prices. I personally their inexpensive KVM VPS when setting up VPN’s and proxy servers but the majority of their clients use their virtual private servers as web servers.

They have data centers in :

New York New York, USA
Seattle Washington, USA
Los Angeles California, USA
Atlanta Georgia, USA
Rotterdam, Netherlands

Currently available RamNode coupons

You can clink on the following big green button and use the coupon below.

Choose RamNode

The coupon code “NICE10” (without the quotes) This will entitle you to 10% off of new KVM virtual servers in RamNode’s Atlanta Georgia or Seattle Washington data centers.

I’ll be sure to update this page as new coupons become available. If you know of a coupon, promo code that’s better, please leave a comment containing that information. If this coupon stops working please be sure to let me know.

Feeling defrauded by Linode

January 21, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge Leave a Comment

Linode.com Logo

Late last year a client that I work with decided that they would like to have Moodle set up on a VPS and they selected Linode to host it.

After they set up billing they provided me with access to their VPS and I went through the process of setting up Moodle on their VPS.

Around this same time I was thinking about starting a blog related to software, programming, hosting and technology which became this very blog that you’re currently reading.

I was fairly impressed with Linode so I decided to use them as the host of my own VPS. I figured that I would do my client a favor and use their referral link since it was them giving me access to their server which is what led to me selecting Linode to host my own VPS.

A couple of months have passed and during that time I’ve written a few posts regarding or relating to Linode’s services. When I write about something that relates to Linode I link to them using my referral link. I use and like their service and if sending other people in their direction leads to me getting a couple of months of free hosting all the better. These links in turn have led to a non trivial amount of traffic being sent to their site.

It’s been a while and I decided to take a look at my referral stats with Linode and to my surprise there’s a big fat zero in my referrals. That seems rather odd given the amount of traffic that I’ve been sending to them so I decided to look into if there was something wrong. I contacted their support department who then put me in contact with their marketing department. Their marketing department informed me that my account has been marked as fraudulent. The reason being, that I used a link from my clients account which I had access to when I opened my own account. Marketing recommended that I try to clear this up with their support department.

I opened a support ticket and a few hours later they insisted that I had opened multiple accounts in an attempt to defraud them. This isn’t true, but they don’t seem to care all that much, and it’s easier for them to tell me to take a hike than to fix this mess. I’ve been informed that I’ve been blacklisted from their referral program for this “fraud” that I’ve never committed.

Apparently theirs nothing within the support departments power that can undo this once that a decision has been made.

If Linode’s support department doesn’t care maybe someone else in the company will.

I thought I would try to get someone at Linode to pay attention via a blog post.

If they’re not willing to correct this, I’ll send the couple of hundred users a month that I’ve been sending them to this page instead.

I’m in Europe and it’s late so I’m off to bed.

Hopefully in the morning I’ll have so kind of positive reply from them.

It’s frustrating that I’ve had to take things this far.

Update

I woke up this morning with an email from the VP of their support department in my inbox. He informed me that my account is no longer marked as having taken part in “referral fraud” He apologized and said that he would follow up with me today regarding any referrals that I’ve made in the past month (if there are any) being credited. It’s the middle of the night on the east coast of the USA so we’ll see what happens in a few hours.

Update 2

In the end the VP of support gave me a $50 credit and apologized for handling the situation poorly which is more than what I was asked for. I would have been happy if they stopped saying I had committed fraud and told me what was going on with their referral program. The support VP told me that he was unable to find any referrals from my account, which is kind of hard to believe based on the traffic, but it is what it is. If they’re referral program is doing such a poor job of converting interested users into paying customers then they really need to address that. For comparison 2.5% of the traffic I send to DigitalOcean sign up and 9.8% of the traffic I send to Vultr. Linode costs a little bit more than either of them but it’s also more consistent and reliable with faster IO and a better network.

Update 3

A couple of months have gone by and despite sending Linode a fair amount of traffic I still haven’t seen a single referral. I’ve asked them several times to resolve what ever issue they’re having. Either Linode is incredibly bad at converting potential customers into paying clients or their referral system doesn’t work properly. Either way I’m through putting in any effort at steering potential clients their way and I plan on moving my own site over to RamNode once my existing credit with Linode is used up.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve had a similar negative experience with Linode.

Linode vs. Vultr – two leading VPS hosts compared.

January 16, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge Leave a Comment

Linode Vs. Vultr a comparison of two leading low cost VPS hosting providers

While looking through my Google Webmaster Tools search engine referrals I see that there are several people making their way to my site looking for a comparison of “Linode vs. Vultr”. I thought I would oblige and do a direct comparison between these two virtual private server (VPS) hosting services. So without wasting any more time here’s my comparison of Linode and Vultr.

Linode

Linode has been around for several years and have recently done multiple upgrades to their network. They have a good reputation and are marketing themselves to experienced developers and corporations looking or lower cost “cloud” providers than alternative such as Amazon EC2.

Pros

Low cost

The $10 1GB 1 cpu plan maybe be twice the price as the lowest plan on at Vultr and $3 more expensive that a VPS with 1GB of ram on Vultr. They may not be the least expensive but at $10 it’s still a great value.

Scale Up or Down

Linode offers the ability to scale an individual “node” (Linodes name of a VPS) both up and down as needed. If you’re expecting a holiday rush in November and December you could scale you’re node up at the end of October and then back down at the beginning of January.

5GB Network

Linode offers the fastest network of any lower cost VPS provider. Each server is connected with to a 5GB network and each data center has a 20GB network connection

Fast SSD

The SSD that Linode is using are faster and more consistent that the SSD used by Vultr.

Multiple Data centers

Linode offers data centers in London UK, Tokyo Japan , Newark New Jersey, Atlanta Georgia, Dallas Texas and Fremont California

Load Balancers

Linode offers load balancers.

Server Stats

LongView is the name of Linodes server stats package that you can use to monitor utilization. The free version displays information for the past 12 hours. It very useful in determining if you should upgrade your node or diagnosing any issues that may arise.

Support

The support department seems to be pretty well trained and easily accessible. I’ve had a few questions and they were answered quickly.

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting and hourly system administration are available. A managed VPS is going to cost you $100 per month more than the same package that is self managed.

Cons

Low speed CPU
By no means are they slow but they’re significantly slower than some of their competitors offerings. However the performance is more consistent.

Higher minimum cost

There’s not $5 option the lowest price VPS is $10 on Linode. A similarly configured server with Vultr would cost you $7.

Linode Benchmarks

$10 1GB RAM 1CPU

UnixBench score: 520.1

I/O rate: 693.0 MB/second

Bandwidth rate: 44.1 MB/second

View the full ServerBear Benchmarks for this server.

Vultr

Vultr is relatively new to the VPS market although their parent company Choopa.com has been in he business of leasing dedicated servers around for over a decade and has a relatively good reputation. I haven’t personally deployed anything with them yet although I plan to in the near future. Their benchmarks are very impressive and they have a few unique features that some people may find advantageous.

Pros

Low cost

The $5 VPS with 768MB of RAM is one of the best deals you’re likely to find for VPS with SSD. Linode’s lowest cost server is $10 for 1GB RAM.

Multiple Data centers

At the time of writing Vultr has a total of 14 different data centers around the world. They have data centers in each of the following cities: Chicago Illinois, New Jersey, Dallas Texas, Atlanta Georgia, Miami Florida, Silicon Valley California, Los Angeles California, Seattle Washington, Sydney Australia, Tokyo Japan, Amsterdam Netherlands, Frankfurt Germany, London UK, and Paris France

Support for Windows Servers

They offer support of Windows VPSs at an additional cost or if you have your own license you can create your own disk image and upload it.

Performance

The CPU performance of the Vultr VPS are Great as you will see when you get to the benchmarks.

Cons

Network

The data connection can be slow at times.

Disk IO

Disk IO performance can be inconsistent fast one moment and very slow the next.

Vultr Benchmarks

For the benchmarks I used the benchmark script provided by ServerBear.com

I had a credit on my account that was about to expire so I decided to test the $15 a month plan and $70 a month plans as well. I also ran the same benchmarks on Vultr servers located in Sydney Australia. The results were similar with the exception of the bandwidth rate being much lower.

Vultr 1GB RAM 1 CPU $7 plan

UnixBench score: 2250.4

I/O rate: 447.0 MB/second

Bandwidth rate: 31.3 MB/second

View the full ServerBear Benchmarks for this server.

Vurtr 2GB RAM 2CPU $15 plan

UnixBench score: 2723.4

I/O rate: 378.0 MB/second

Bandwidth rate: 91.6 MB/second

View the full ServerBear Benchmarks for this server.

Vultr 8GB RAM 4CUP $70 plan

UnixBench score: 2707.7

I/O rate: 288.0 MB/second

Bandwidth rate: 81.3 MB/second

View the full ServerBear Benchmark for this server

Conclusions

If you were paying attention you would notice that the $15 plan at Vultr actually outperformed the $70 plan. This highlights the difficulty in benchmarking a VPS depending on how the host server has been configured to allocate resources a server could perform great one moment and horribly the next. Vultr has faster CPUs but slower SSD and a slower network. It’s easier for the VM on the server to find 1 free CPU than it is to find 4 underutilized CPUs.

Recomendations

With the extra CPU power and the ability to host a Windows VPS Vultr’s great. Despite having faster CPUs the majority of websites would actually perform better on Linode due to the faster network and faster SSD. I’m hosting this site on a $10 Linode VPS but as soon as my existing credit is used up I plan on moving it over to Vultr.

use the coupon code “LINODE10” (without the quotes) for $10 credit

use coupon code “SSDVPS” (without the quotes) for $20 in free credit but it must be used within 30 days

If you decide to sign up with either Linode or Vultr and have some questions regarding configuration, security or software recommendations feel free to contact me by either leaving a comment on this page or using the link to the contact form at the top of the page.
After reading through all of this you’ve decided that you would rather leave the management of you server in the hands of professionals have a look at

CloudWays Managed VPS

CloudWays offers VPS management on top of DigitalOcean’s network

That’s it for Linode vs. Vultr. I hope that you’ve found the information in this post helpful. If you’ve noticed a mistake, have a comment, suggestion, would like a custom recommendation let me know in the comments. If you would like to keep updated periodically regarding new content please join my mailing list by filling out the form in the right side navigation. Thank you for reading.

Linode coupon and promo codes

January 10, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge Leave a Comment

This page was last updated on April 20th 2015

Linode coupon and promo codes

I’ve been looking over my Google webmaster tools and I’ve been getting a bit of traffic from people looking for Linode coupon codes and promo codes. So I thought that I would give people what they want. I’ll do my best to keep this page updated with the most recent and best coupon codes and promo codes for Linode.

use the above big green link with the coupon code “LINODE10” (without the quotes) for $10 in free credit.

I’ve also done several comparisons of Linode with other SSD VPS providers.

Here are the links to those posts.

Linode vs. DigitalOcean

Linode vs. Vultr

A comparison between Linode, DigitalOcean ,Vultr and RamNode

I’ll do my best to keep this page updated. If this coupon expires please let me know and if you know of a better coupon code to use please post it in the comments.

DigitalOcean coupons, discount and promo codes

January 10, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge Leave a Comment

This page was last updated on May 7th 2015

Digital Ocean Coupons

I’ve been getting a bit of traffic from people looking for Digital Ocean coupon codes and promo codes. More exactly people are looking for “Digital Ocean coupon” and “Digital Ocean promo code”. I thought that I would give people what they want and make this short post. I’ll do my best to keep this page updated with the most recent and best coupon codes and promo codes for Digital Ocean.

If you use the above big green link button along with the coupon code “ALLSSD10” (without the quotes) You should get $10 in free credit after establishing a payment method.

I should also mention that if managing your own VPS isn’t something you want to do, you can actually get a $5 Digital Ocean VPS managed through cloudways for the same price. If you went directly through DigitalOcean you would pay just as much but you would have to manage it yourself.

CloudWays has a free 15 day trial so it won’t even cost you anything if you decide it’s not for you.

If this Digital Ocean coupon expires please let me know and if you know of a better coupon code to use please post it in the comments. If you know of a better coupon for Digital Ocean I would also like to hear about that so leave me a comment.

I’ve also done several comparisons of Digital Ocean with other SSD VPS providers.

Here are the links to those posts.

Digital Ocean vs. Linode

Digital Ocean vs. Vultr

A comparison between Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr and RamNode

Vultr coupon, promo and discount codes

January 10, 2015 by Benjamin Knigge Leave a Comment

This page was last updated on September 18th 2015

I’ve been looking over my Google webmaster tools and I’ve noticed a bit of traffic from people looking for Vultr coupon codes and promo codes. So I thought that I would give people what they want. I’ve been using Vultr for a several months now and I really love their service. The CPU’s on my VPS with them are fast and their network has ultra low latency. I highly recommend that you give them to anyone in need of VPS hosting.

use the above big green link with the coupon code “50for60” (without the quotes) for $50 in free credit. The credit is only good for 60 days after sign up so be sure to use it.

Price and Specifications

Here’s a handy price chart to give you an idea of what they have to offer.

They are currently doing a 20% off sale on the VPS over $5

PRICE	$5	$10 ($8 20% off)	$20 ($16 20% off)	$40 ($32 20% off)
CPU	1	1	2	2
RAM	768 MB	1024 MB	2048 MB	4096 MB
DISK	15 GB	20 GB	40 GB	90 GB
DATA	1000 GB	2000 GB	3000 GB	4000 GB
	Details	Details	Details	Details

Vultr coupons and Vultr promo codes

Current Vultr coupon, discount and gift codes

COUPON CODE

DESCRIPITON

50for60

Using this coupon code you will have up to $52 in credit when you create new account.The first $50 in credit is only valid for the first 60 days of service.

You’ll recieve $1 in credit for liking Vultr on Facebook

and another $1 in credit for sending a tweet on twitter about Vultr

Locations

Vultr has a total of 14 different data centers located around the world in the following cities and countries

Chicago, Illinois, USA
New Jersey, USA
Dallas, Texas, USA
Los Angeles, California, USA
Miami, Florida, USA
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Seattle, Washington, USA
Silicon Valley, California, USA
Sydney, Australia
Tokyo, Japan
Amsterdam, Netherlands
London, England, UK
Paris, France
Frankfurt, Germany

Vultr locations