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BuildYourVPS - OpenVZ VPS from 75 Cents/Month

BuildYourVPS Via this WHT offer. We have previously covered TOCICI‘s VPS product. It looks like they have completely revamped their virtual server page, and is now hosting on its own site — BuildYourVPS.com. The model has also changed. Instead of listing out plans, it let you mix ‘n’ match options such as bandwidth, RAM, disk and type of IP connection to come out a final price. So if you choose the cheapest options…

  • 16MB burstable memory
  • 0.5GB storage
  • 1GB/month data transfer
  • Nginx Accelerated Shared IP

And it would come out to only $0.75/month! The servers are in Portland OR, and it uses OpenVZ (no control panel AFAIK).

What you can use it for is another interesting question. 16MB burstable might mean you can’t even system level utilities such as apt-get to install/update software. You can probably burn through 1GB of data transfer from just the “noise” on the line. 500MB of disk space is barely enough for the base OS install. Glorified shell account with root access? You don’t even own a public IP.

LEA
Latest posts by LEA (see all)

44 Comments

  1. $0.75*10=$7.5

    But at this price I think I can get a much better VPS. Not interesting at all.

    January 26, 2010 @ 4:10 pm | Reply
  2. Just interesting, not for running sites on it.

    January 27, 2010 @ 2:29 am | Reply
  3. Lao Dze:

    interest for experiment:)
    I ordered a vps, I want to try it to install a webserver, and run the site with a cms without mysql, very interesting how much will inhibit the miracle of 16 mb.

    January 27, 2010 @ 1:34 pm | Reply
  4. Eh, if you can upload custom images, slap FreeDOS on there an off you go the races…though I’d doubt you’ll win anything.

    January 27, 2010 @ 4:05 pm | Reply
  5. It runs OpenVZ so I doubt you can slap FreeDOS onto it. Maybe it could be a business case for virtual private DOS boxes — 640kb ought to be enough!!!

    January 27, 2010 @ 10:35 pm | Reply
  6. very cheap,

    January 28, 2010 @ 3:20 am | Reply
  7. If there was a QNX Demo Disk image for OpenVZ, we’d totally offer that as an OS option (licenses permitting of-course). In the consulting division, a bunch of Linux-based Firewall/NAT/VPN systems are deployed with only 16MB of RAM (granted they’re running a variant of LEAF – an image option not yet available for the VPS environment AFAIK).

    In-all, there’s a lot you can still do with a small memory footprint these days, and that’s basically why we’re offering a 16MB option; eager to hear how customers fare, and always open to feedback & suggestions.

    January 28, 2010 @ 4:48 am | Reply
  8. Do you provide tun/tap interfaces and iptables nat with masquerade?

    January 28, 2010 @ 12:32 pm | Reply
  9. Thomas:

    Ordered one of these VPSes to play with and it still has yet to be setup after 20 hours….

    January 29, 2010 @ 10:26 pm | Reply
  10. @Kaito, yes tun/tap interfaces are supported. We’re currently evaluating whether to offer this as a default-on option, although for the time being, please submit a ticket via support@tocici.com to have this added to your VPS.

    @Thomas, our ordering system has processed nearly 150 new VPSes over the past week, and we’ve quickly added a few more servers to accommodate additional demands. So, while its possible we overlooked you, after double-checking I don’t show any unprocessed orders from a “Thomas” within the past 36 hours. Please check your spam/junk folder for a setup email, and if you don’t find anything, send an email to support@tocici.com with the email address used in your order. We’ll jump on this ASAP.

    ALL – LowEndBox is not a source for official TOCICI support. If you have pre-sales questions, please see the FAQ on our website, or use the email address posted on our site (sales@tocici.com) for further questions. We also have a web-based contact form on the site as well. If you already have a VPS (or have ordered one), and you have a question or feature request, please note the instructions in your setup email(s); send an email to support@tocici.com. Not only will you receive an automated ticket/tracking response to your email, there’s more than one person watching those support queues, and we process tickets in the order that they are created. At the moment, there’s two unanswered tickets in our support & sales queues, and they are both being actively worked on.

    January 30, 2010 @ 5:43 pm | Reply
  11. Adrian:

    FTP (proftpd) configuration:
    Port 11000
    MasqueradeAddress [server’s external IP]
    PassivePorts 11001 11010

    and forward the ports 11000-11010

    January 31, 2010 @ 10:38 pm | Reply
  12. Neves:

    I would like to report my experience with tocici.
    The vps was setup in the deadline they promised (24h).
    I took a 75c vps with 16MB RAM, running Debian 4 32 bits.
    First I couldnt login, cause the bash was unable to allocate memory, so I ask then to replace with dash, and that was enough. apt-get does not work for the same problem.
    I replace sshd with dropbear, that is much lighter. You cant compile nothing either, so I had to wget the pre-compiled from another vps mine.
    I am running only ssh using dropbear and nginx and its using only 4MB, but since its a shared ip, I have to pass them the domains, so they can redirect to my vps.

    I took this as a challenge to run the tiny vps I´ve ever created!
    If I buy an ip address for only $1, I can run a DNS server using MaraDNS or sheerDNS that has the smallest memory footprint that I’ve ever seen for a DNS server.

    $1.75 for a DNS server is a very good price, dont you think?

    Forget FTP and PHP, you would need 32MB minimum. For mysql, 64MB minimum (for INNODB 256MB).

    February 1, 2010 @ 11:14 am | Reply
  13. Lao Dze:

    I ask you to specify the procedure for replacing bash to dash, step by step, and specify how you change the sshd on dropbear. Thanks.

    February 2, 2010 @ 9:38 am | Reply
  14. Neves:

    apt-get -y install dash
    ln -sf dash /bin/sh
    # replace your user shell in /etc/passwd to /bin/sh

    wget -N http://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/releases/dropbear_0.52-0.1_i386.deb
    dpkg -i dropbear_0.52-0.1_i386.deb
    update-rc.d -f ssh remove
    killall ssh && /etc/init.d/dropbear start
    # something like that, but if you cant apt-get, you would need to do on another vps and download the binaries.

    February 2, 2010 @ 10:11 am | Reply
  15. Lao Dze:

    thanks for the instruction. but APT-GET not working.

    February 2, 2010 @ 10:22 am | Reply
  16. Neves:

    Other option is to open a support ticket, so they can do this for you, without the memory limitations.
    I suggest them to make this the default configuration for 16/32MB VPS.

    February 2, 2010 @ 10:27 am | Reply
  17. Lao Dze:

    after
    update-rc.d-f ssh remove
    killall ssh & & / etc / init.d / dropbear start
    ssh off and Dropbear was not enabled. after reboot the server connection is not restored.

    February 2, 2010 @ 10:40 am | Reply
  18. Neves:

    Maybe dropbear does not configure automatically.
    Check if this file exists: /etc/default/dropbear
    If not, try this: echo “DROPBEAR_PORT=22” > /etc/default/dropbear
    Check if dropbear is configured to autostart on reboot.

    February 2, 2010 @ 10:46 am | Reply
  19. Lao Dze:

    I cannot access to vps now. Connection with vps not worked.

    February 2, 2010 @ 11:03 am | Reply
  20. Neves:

    Open a support ticket so they can do it for you.

    February 2, 2010 @ 11:05 am | Reply
  21. Well. After all these support tickets to do trivial stuff because of severely limited VPS, sometimes you got to wonder whether the saving is worth it…

    February 2, 2010 @ 11:43 am | Reply
  22. Neves:

    Sure. It´s just for the challenge :)
    The only things I found to run on a 75c vps are:
    1) uptime monitoring node using python that is built in.
    You could have many nodes for a very low price (5 vps nodes would cost only $3.75)
    2) Other long running task like robots (page scraping, search, etc)
    3) If you buy an IP address for $1, you can have a DNS node for only $1.75
    4) Any other suggestion?

    February 2, 2010 @ 12:02 pm | Reply
  23. While we’ve been able to do many things with a default of openssh & bash, a few of our customers have been experiencing difficulties with this configuration. We’re running tests on default builds with dropbear and dash now, and will likely be pushing them to staging soon.

    As for working with a small VPS, upgrades are cheap; an extra $0.25/month for 32MB of burst RAM, or $0.75/month for 64MB.

    February 2, 2010 @ 5:05 pm | Reply
  24. Lao Dze:

    to Tocici: I recommend you to organize a forum on your site, to discuss problems. For many this would be useful. also requested to organize a wiki.
    I am interested for example, a description of different issues when dealing with such small vps. I have in stock, and other vps, where memory and 512mb and above, but they’ve never worried about the problem of saving memory, and if you, for example, drew on the Web server configuration 16mb, I think many of you would say thank you! For example, I tried to work nanoweb 2.2.9, this web server is built on php, and at low loads, in principle, I believe, should work on 16mb. In fact, these miniature vps very interesting, because there must think :)))) I have multiple vps, where resources abound for work sites, and I’ve never thought about saving, but it is just that, the plant and that excites the mind:)
    I recommend you develop, the distribution system to the presence of a webserver and works on the 16mb, I think it will be interesting to many of the finished product.

    February 2, 2010 @ 5:51 pm | Reply
  25. Lao Dze:

    also want to say that it is interesting vps, which will be a small price to 1 $, even with shared IP. is very amusing to raise the level of development of the mind. And if possible on such a configuration, make a blog, or what some sites, or service DNS. I think if the price to 1 $, it will be all very interesting. Also highly recommended, and will not write until a support, set the configuration of 16mb, the control panel to start, stop, restart, reinstall, and for precisely this configuration, provide a few preliminary settings: a Web server, DNS server, or other areas of application, what else can be.

    February 2, 2010 @ 7:52 pm | Reply
  26. Neves:

    to Tocici: A good configuration for a 16/32MB vps would be dropbear as ssh server, dash as the default shell and no other service started by default, like cron or klogd or other log.
    Here my memory usage:
    total used free
    16384 2980 13404

    Does ruby use more memory then python? I can run python on the vps above, but ruby gives malloc errors when I try to require ‘rubygems’

    February 2, 2010 @ 8:32 pm | Reply
  27. Thanks everyone for the support and suggestions. To update; many of the above ideas have been suggested internally for a few months, some have been implemented already, while others were already on the implementation schedule; in the final steps of testing/staging now. We’ll be pushing some exciting production-ready updates out in the next few days.

    February 6, 2010 @ 5:22 pm | Reply
  28. This was kinda lame. Couldn’t execute ANY command. I’ll pass and stick with my slightly more expensive VPS’s.

    February 15, 2010 @ 3:02 pm | Reply
  29. It’s about 28hrs from payment and I still haven’t got access to my VPS, it was not created. Of course it’s 16Mb one with shared IP ;) it’s going to be pure fun if they create it!

    March 15, 2010 @ 10:20 pm | Reply
  30. @ksx4system – your VPS was setup in the morning of the 16th, please check your email for that setup info.

    @ALL – with a sharply-increased influx of new customers, we’ve been a bit short-staffed these past few weeks (yay for an upturn in the economy!). Our long-term solution is nearly production-ready; currently putting the finishing touches on a fully-automated VPS build engine, so that future VPS setups will occur within moments of your order.

    March 25, 2010 @ 4:25 pm | Reply
  31. michael:

    hi there, I’m interested to get this vps. I’m actually looking for vps to be used as external file/image hosting for my website, it’s not really high traffic, but could we use such tiny vps as image and file hosting?

    April 18, 2010 @ 3:10 am | Reply
  32. Neves:

    Michael, according to my tests, the bandwidth performance is very slow, even for a single site.
    If that is not a problem for you, go ahead.

    April 18, 2010 @ 10:32 am | Reply
  33. @michael Yes, file/image hosting is alright – as long as the data itself does not violate our terms of service (ie: no warez or porn). We strongly you encourage you to perform your own bandwidth tests, and to not rely on subjective offhand comments by others. For most accounts, we guarantee 1Mbit/sec to our backhauls, with bursts up to 10Mbit/sec. While our default 1Mbit/10Mbit CIR/Burst works very well for ~90% of our business customers, we do have the capacity to accommodate other provisions; please contact us via sales@tocici.com to discuss your specific goals.

    We have 10MB and 100MB test files linked from our About Us page at http://www.tocici.com/aboutus.html please do your own tests and draw your own conclusions. Feel free to contact us with specific questions.

    My offhand tests this morning:
    With curl from our primary nameserver to the webserver, sitting on the same LAN:
    ~$ curl http://www.tocici.com/100MB.zip > /dev/null
    % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
    Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
    100 97.6M 100 97.6M 0 0 60.8M 0 0:00:01 0:00:01 –:–:– 64.2M

    With curl from my desktop computer:
    ~$ curl http://www.tocici.com/100MB.zip > /dev/null
    % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
    Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
    100 97.6M 100 97.6M 0 0 860k 0 0:01:56 0:01:56 –:–:– 994k

    With curl from our secondary nameserver (yep, our webserver is in Portland Oregon and the secondary nameserver is in the New York area):
    ~$ curl http://www.tocici.com/100MB.zip > /dev/null
    % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
    Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
    100 97.6M 100 97.6M 0 0 931k 0 0:01:47 0:01:47 –:–:– 990k

    April 18, 2010 @ 3:26 pm | Reply
  34. Good friendly support, and haven’t had a problem with speed here. Slight billing mishap, but this was quickly corrected.

    Though, they appear to be having an issue with their support email the past few days.


    This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

    A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
    recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

    pipe to |/opt/rt3/bin/rt-mailgate –queue “support” –action correspond –url http://rt.tocici.com/
    generated by support@rt.tocici.com
    local delivery failed: retry timeout exceeded

    Happened when I contacted them requesting a reboot for my VPS (I reinstalled openssh on my shared IP plan, but forgot to restart it after killing dropbear. Oops!)

    April 18, 2010 @ 7:33 pm | Reply
  35. Hendra Herviawan:

    i had sigup for buildyourvps.com order $1.5 vps, 18 april 2010 at 6.00 am (GMT+7). but until today i never get single email from them. when i am open ticket at “support@tocici.com” the email bouncing with error :

    This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

    A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
    recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed

    i hope buildyourvps.com had recive my order and process it.

    April 19, 2010 @ 2:15 am | Reply
  36. @Hendra & @Chuck Awesome…and a couple of us were just joking about the “slow” weekend; one of the only things we were not yet monitoring (complete email flows from *outside* the systems). The issue has been resolved, and this has been bumped up on the priority list for implementation within our monitoring system. We’re also working through a few pending orders (did I yet point out that we’re hiring another SysAdmin) :-)

    April 19, 2010 @ 4:19 am | Reply
  37. michael:

    just ordered vps for $3, I want to test the performance before I take bigger capacity.

    May 2, 2010 @ 4:29 am | Reply
  38. michael:

    update: just upgraded my package with 256 mb, with extra $2, upgrade is possible if you ordered a new VPS package and your old order will be refunded, though unfortunately I havent received my refund even after 24 hours.

    June 3, 2010 @ 2:32 pm | Reply
  39. michael:

    just want to add. So far I’m satisfied with the service, despite the slow customer service respond. My only complaint is that it doesn’t have standard client area and doesn’t have any virtualization. Anyway, I recommend this service for these who just wanted to start using VPS. It’s pretty much affordable and I would use the service again in future.

    June 16, 2010 @ 1:41 am | Reply
  40. Neves:

    The same with me. The service is great, but the support is very very very slow.

    June 16, 2010 @ 2:20 am | Reply
  41. Thanks everyone for the positive and honest feedback. Our primary focus has always been to provide stable, fast, secure and predictable VPS hosting services, that are backed by prompt, transparent and friendly communications. I’m very happy to see our internal business processes & goals so accurately reflected regularly in feedback.

    Our VPS offering is very much intended, marketed and managed as a DIY hosting solution. Our public support forums exist to enable peer-support…and we enjoy participating often as well. At this time, ~4% of all customers are signed-up in the forums, and I strongly encourage everyone to checkout our increasingly-active forums at http://forums.tocici.com

    We are also very focused on guaranteeing cost-effective and prompt hands-on support. We provide DIY VPS customers with customized support services at no additional charge, although we’re the first to admit we triage all communications: any rare outage and performance issues are immediately addressed, then there’s support for our managed-services customers, then, it’s our DIY VPSes environments. This workflow guarantees the highest levels of competent and predictable services, and that we’ll continue to be around for years to come.

    We’re also growing; adding team members, more equipment, higher-speed connections, and even more process automation and support resources. Stay tuned for some very exciting August 1st announcements! :-)

    July 22, 2010 @ 1:46 pm | Reply
  42. Adolfo:

    Its good for websites, but not for minecraft. I have a minecraft server with 4 GB of RAM and 45 plugins, with 500 MB RAM free its lagging a lot. We have 50 players connected and I get 5 tps. Definitely not worth it for servers over 20 players

    August 12, 2012 @ 11:56 pm | Reply
    • Adolfo:

      I have to point out that I chose the dedicated server package with Centos 5 64 bit. Its coming to around 46 dlls a month

      August 12, 2012 @ 11:57 pm | Reply
  43. G. Morehouse:

    3.5 years after the last post, I have a review.

    This company is apparently “running” completely unattended. I purchased a VPS through buildyourvps.com (owned and operated by TOCICI) and it was “set up” on a node that was completely down – unroutable – not just my VPS but the entire node.

    Two support requests and a request for refund have gone unanswered. I am disputing the transaction. I do not recommend TOCICI. RamNode Seattle has better ping times from Portland and far better features anyway.

    April 30, 2016 @ 12:50 am | Reply

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