Nicholas from BHost emailed me a promotional offer for LowEndBox readers. They have recently got into the world of VPS hosting, and would love some cheap VPS die-hards to “test the water” :) Use promo code LOWENDBOXDECEMBER to get 20% off recurring discount on their VPS products — a well informed page by the way, which gives you a test IP (109.169.46.15) and download files, tells you that they are hosted with RapidSwitch in Maidenhead UK, Dell R410-based hardware boxes with RAID1 drives, etc. Package plan “Bronze” would be £3.92/month (ex VAT, ~USD$6.05) after the discount.
- 512MB guaranteed/1024MB burstable memory
- 20GB storage
- 1000GB/month data transfer on 100Mbps
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
It’s cheaper than similar plan from Thrust::VPS which is owned by the same company that also owns RapidSwitch. BHost has been around since 2002, registered as a UK limited company (4483115, as shown on their contact page) so it seems to be pretty safe.
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I submitted an order at 10:15PM EST and their web page says “instant” activations (or max of 3 hour wait for activation if their are problems) I am currently waiting to even receive an e-mail with my client portal login info, which for some reason you do not setup during the sign-up process. Hopefully (even through it is the holidays) the account is activated soon, or I at least receive some information about loging into the client portal to see my order status.
Last time I checked it’s Christmas, which most parts of the world are celebrating for one reason or another…
Was more criticizing the fact it says instant activation, had no client portal sign-up with purchase, I got no e-mail confirming paypal payment to them. I understand its Christmas, thus why I have time to be in front of the keyboard :) Fact is, if its supposed to be automated… so far its not working. I am patient… I have no issue waiting.. but theres defiantly something awry. If I were that concerned with my money, I would have already tried to call them, as they also proclaim to have 24/7 support… but I am not gonna bust someones b*ll* on Christmas, at least on the phone ;x In all seriousness, I hope they are enjoying their holiday and am anxious to hear back about my new VPS!
Update:
I did receive my VPS on Christmas and they even got /dev/tun working for me. I am pleasantly surprised, the routes are pretty impressive, most of the peering in Europe allows the latency to be 30ms or less. Seems to be located on as29131 (RapidSwitch Ltd)(87.117.211.9) As their Tier 1 provider. For the bulk of my servers located in Europe, anything located in UK/NL latency is ~2-10ms or slightly under, my servers in DE have about 23-30ms latency.
Also, it seems that their provider is very close to the servers which Vooservers uses. Latency to Vooservers is aprox. ~2-3ms. Vooservers uses goscomb.net, which i believes also peers with as29131 (RapidSwitch).
I think if BHost is able to show that they have staying power, with the prices they have, they will surely beat out Vooservers. Vooservers LEB offer has aprox. 50% the space and memory as this offer does and about 1/5 the bandwidth and only comes in about 40 cents less. I have had my vps with Vooservers for 2-3 months now though and haven’t had a glitch, or any problems though so the peace of mind may be considered worth the extra money at current.
Now, I have not thoroughly check I/O usages but anything I have run as been quick, and doing updates with apt-get on Debian is very fast. This may change in the future as more customers are added to the node, but right now, I am quite impressed.
So far I would give BHost a easy 8/10, the only hang up was the lack of true instant setup, but as it was a holiday and they are still working out a few glitches, I can’t truly blame them.
They may have their own fraud screening. Which means when they accept you it’s instant activation, alot of host do it such as Burst and Virpus. Just wait, their a Ltd so you have multiple rights if they scam you (if Ur in the uk)
If that was so, and I’ll be the first to admit that I have no clue as to what is occurring here, a follow up email explaining such would be nice. From watching the number of “My account got labeled as fraud” comments around here, seems like many hosts don’t do that.
Not pointing fingers. Just raising a point.
I agree an email keeping you informed would have been helpful. We’ll incorporate this into our order process.
We do have automated processing but about 10% of our orders are flagged for manual processing for fraud prevention reasons (whether paid via credit card or PayPal). Unfortunately in such instances, no email acknowledgement is sent – which is something we should probably change (after Christmas!). We are on the phone 24×7 if you need us urgently.
Thanks for the feedback – all pending orders have now been processed.
I just got set up with them. Other than a few minor wrinkles with my CC being held for manual processing and the VPS password not correct, Nick got me up and running smoothly with a couple of hours.
Thanks Nick!
@Nick @ BHost:
Hi,
can I or You enable TUN/TAP on the openVZ VPS for OpenVPN?
Merry Christmas
http://speedtest.net/result/1084359943.png
Unfortunately Cachefly isn’t that great of a speedtest in the UK, because they don’t have great mirrors here. But that Speedtest is awesome!
Maxi, please log a support ticket and we’ll enable TUN/TAP for you. To log a ticket, visit http://www.bhost.net/?login
http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/f0592101c56e3f5d9b6bc7bdafba09d2/compdetails
Nice to finally have a LowEndBox Company in the UK again that offers decent plans. Since the last one was sadly RackVM, but we all know how that went. But at least its an actual company.
Indeed it is nice to have an actual registered company, especially if you are in UK/EU then you’ll be better protected by the ombudsman.
And kudos to Nick for quick response setting up & transferring Daniel’s VPS for me :)
+20 for LeA and Nick, they both worked on Christmas to give me a prize.
Suggestion: Perhaps a post about what the winners chose and their packages, to compare and see who was the most LowEnd out of the winners.
can someone post any review or test?
Are ipv6 addresses included in this offer? Is VAT at 17,5% for EU consumers? Is it possible to have Gentoo installed?
thank you.
IPV4 only. UK VAT is 17.5% for any customer throughout the world as the service is provided in the UK. This will, unfortunately be increasing to 20% in early January. We can certainly provide a Gentoo template for imaging your VM.
Does RapidSwitch not have IPV6 yet? Although hardly any ISPs in the UK support IPV6 so presume not.
After the VAT increase, will existing customers have their price going up?
any review?
I’ve decided to take a dive and see how well this new company would fair.
As you’d expect, response times are fantastic. Sub 12ms from my own cable modem.
Support were friendly and fast sorting out my order and enabling tun/tap. I/O speeds are excellent, 10MB/sec in either direction.
Can’t say much more at the moment as I’ve only been with them for a short while.
Sadly the coupon looks to be expired (well it is 2011 I suppose :()
I did try to raise an order but the order form seems to be somewhat buggy. Doesn’t recognise my non-EU status (VAT is great) and the order form doesn’t work correctly in Firefox 3.6.
Well if you need a web developer, give me a shout ;)
We’ve extended this deal for a little longer so feel free to use the coupon code LOWENDBOXDECEMBER to get 20% off. Sadly VAT is applicable to all customers, even if you are not in the UK or EU.
Did you confirm that in the end? That seems very strange.
Like this service a lot!
Signed up for a silver package and got the 20% discount last Friday at 15:45. Got an email right away confirming my order along with receipt from paypal. At 16:15 i got a proper invoice, notification of payment received and the login details for customer portal. Then at 16:17 i got another email to say my VPS was up and giving me all the details to log in.
Been playing with it over the weekend and it runs very well! Wish id gone for the gold package now, may see if i can upgrade and keep my 20% discount!
Oh and i didnt see any problems signing up via Firefox now either.
Well i sent a ticket in at 11pm this evening to see if i could upgrade to the gold service and keep my discount etc. Also asked if i could change my payment date to 1st of the month as thats easier for me. 40 minutes later i had a reply to it was no problem, id been upgraded keeping the discount and they moved the billing date for me. Also gate me 2 weeks free as a thank you for upgrading.
Pretty darn good service if you ask me, nice one and thanks again BHost!
Signed up last week (went for the Gold Option) but there was a delay as I had to wait for a new server to be configured. Was kept informed by email and all set up in a couple of hours. Was sent a 1GB USB stick as an apology for delay.
Have set up DTC web hosting panel and all works brilliant. This is my first VPS, previously used reseller hosting but got fed up of the restrictions/having to beg for configuration changes from the hosts. Well pleased and highly recommended so far.