Here’s a quick announcement on last quarter’s poll on the best Low End Providers. The ranking I am revealing here might be a bit different from the vote scores on that LET post. Basically I am NOT counting the negative votes, and here is the result…
Winners
- RamHost (24 votes, not counting 4 negative votes). “RAM IZ DA BEST!!!!!!!!!!” –ViceCheese
- QuickWeb (24 votes, not counting 5 negative votes). “Overall, the quality of bandwidth, the server specs, and performance have exceeded all of my expectations for a LEB” –rajprakash
- BuyVM (24 votes, not counting 7 negative votes). “…awesome IRC Channel and the friendlyness of staff!” — maxexcloo
Yes, they turn out to have exactly the same number of +1 votes. They are also exactly the same as last quarter’s top 3.
Honorable Mentions
These providers have done pretty well in the last poll.
- Hostigation (19 votes, not counting 1 negative vote). “but Hostigation is the next big thing in VPS market” –asim
- VooServers (13 votes, not counting 1 negative vote). “very stable, user friendly service with mature approach” –Spirit
- EvoRack (12 votes, not counting 3 negative votes). “One of the few providers who know IPv6 is important and understand how it works” –rm_
Hopefully we’ll see at least one UK provider getting into the top 3. It’s also great to see so many hosts providing affordable servers and yet never skimp on support.
Related Posts:
QuickWeb - OpenVZ and Xen VPS from $1.99/month in Phoenix and Los Angeles
VPS Provider Customer Support Review
QuickWeb - $15/Year 200MB OpenVZ VPS in Phoenix, Los Angeles and Jacksonville
LowEndBox Top Providers 2013 Q1 Results
BuyVM - $7 250GB Storage & $5 256MB KVM in Las Vegas
BuyVM - $7/month 250GB KVM Storage VPS in Las Vegas
The Founder at LowEndBox
The original owner of LowEndBox known as LowEndAdmin or LEA for short founded LowEndBox in 2008 and created the concept of hosting applications on low resource Low End Boxes. After creating the roots of the community that we know today, LEA stepped aside and allowed others to carry the torch forward.
Latest posts by LEA (see all)
- 5 Reasons Why You Want a Low End Box - May 26, 2021
- Dead Pool January 2012 - February 2, 2012
- exit(0); - January 19, 2012
Congratulations to all. Hostigation is quickly becoming popular in the VPS-community.
Er, one thing I wanted to ask LEA, can we not put the 24-votes on 1st and move the Honorable mentioned to second and third place? OR we should at least have a wiki entry with votes and Honorable mentions in place
Wow, BuyVM got 7 negatives. Oh well, grats to the winners.
Probably haters – Doubt they actually have a valid reason for down voting.
Not having capacity for new accounts, and not timely expanding to meet that need are not valid reasons?
Agree
And yes, I downvoted for more reasons
At the start supposedly providers without stock supposedly could not be nominated.
And my experience with MY vps has not been very good (well, recently is more acceptable).
Bah, node 27 will be humming along soon enough, you just wait ;)
Francisco
We actually got downvoted by some other providers, it was quite sad. I’ll gladly state that the only votes I cast in this quarters vote was 2 upvotes, one for hostigation and ramhost. I didn’t even upvote ourselves since that’d just look bad. :P
Francisco
Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to try out your offerings; it’s just that there haven’t been any offerings every time I’ve tried to sign up since late last year… making it seem a bit weird in my book. :)
I actually downvoted you to see what will be the reaction of LEA, true enough then rules starts to get clearer afterwards hehehe
So, you are the reason LEA took action by not counting negative votes
the number of downvoted gives wrong impression about BuyVM, Providers downvotes should not be included even in the number of downvotes. Also it looks like LEA has ranked the TOP 3 based on the number of downvotes.
Down-votes without a reason are pointless. Good thing that LEA noticed the down-voting and decided to not count them
@Todd – Yeah, stock doesn’t come often :) We have a large stock release coming up and hope to get a sales post on the front page to let people know what’s going on ;) We’ll be doing weekly releases of 128MB’s for the whole summer, i’ve nicknamed it ‘The summer of Fran’
Francisco
“stock doesn’t come often” doesn’t inspire confidence in the service. Most businesses would be flocking to install new hardware to keep ahead of demand.
I guess, but equipment is quite expensive :) Tons of new clients = more staff needed and it gets into a vicious circle.
We’re happy at the rate we grow ;)
Francisco
@Asim: I’m the one who asked for downvotes not to be included, no one ‘noticed’
@cd thanks a lot :)
@Francisco and Todd,
Todd you are right, any host doing well should be working very hard to stay ahead of the curve to insure the constant flow of sales.
The slow expansions to me relate to a fail business model and don’t have the money to fund the expansions needed to keep up. A machine they need is a little under $2500, and can fit about 140-150 VPS’s on it. If you add this all up it just does not make sense in the long run… just my 2 cents.
BUT……
Don’t get me wrong, from what I heard BuyVM is a great home for many people, its just hard to wrap my head around their operations I guess.
Regards,
Chris
@Marcopolo yeah pretty much only to get noticed easily, i can try and choose less popular but it may not get notice so choosing the most active here does the trick.
In response to Todd’s “The slow expansions to me relate to a fail [sic] business model…”, speed of growth is not always a good thing. Dozens-scores-hundreds of hosts have failed because they grew too fast, taking on more customers (and infrastructure) than they were able to effectively support. BuyVM have their problems, but a ridiculously overtaxed staff that have stopped caring isn’t one of them, and I for one, not being a jealous competitor, kind of like it that way. :)
Sorry Fran but anyone taking yearly payments could easily say what you are right now. The real test will come in the later months down the line and thats when time will tell, not at this stage. BMW’s and fancy build outs are a quick way to slide down.
@Chris Fabozzi
two out of three LEB top3 providers, are out of stock right now. Just a lucky incident???? nah, I don’t thing so
Considering we’ve made enough in the past year to cover this entire build as well as get me a brand new BMW in cash has to say something :) If we were so hard strapped for cash wouldn’t we be hardcore selling like W2/etc? Anyone that has come by our community chat can see just how many people come by looking for inventory.
At some point the US economy is going to dive bomb and I’d rather not chance getting sucked into that with a big monthly recurring bill on gear that may end up filling too slow/not at all if things go REALLY bad. We grow slow and base everything off worst case scenarios on every single front. We’re not ‘ok’ only making a 30% profit margin off our company. Anything less than a 70% net profit is seen as a ‘hey, lets see what we can do’.
Francisco
I should add, I didn’t actually buy a BMW, just saying we could ;P
Francisco
Sorry Fran but anyone taking yearly payments could easily say what you are right now. The real test will come in the later months down the line and thats when time will tell, not at this stage. BMW’s and fancy build outs are a quick way to slide down.
You’re aware that our yearly people are on their 2nd term right? :)
Even on the 128MB’s.
It either rolled over a few days ago or will in the coming week or so, check whenever our 128MB sale was posted to WHT and subtract a couple days.
Francisco
Now I think Francisco should give us all a treat by releasing some stock! :P
yeah,
that’s worth more than thousand of words
I got quoted! Thanks for the awesome blog and for providing such a good way for us to decide which providers to choose :)
I got quoted too, wow. Just noticed. Thanks LEA.
On another note, I feel that we are going to have some good competition in Q3 polls :)
congratz to all :)
should we have a party tonight? LOL
Top 3 are not really a surprise, but Hostigation is. They must be doing something right!
Anyway, it’s nice to see there are LEB providers out there capable of constantly providing great service, and there are new providers with promising future.
Keep up the good work everyone, and stay away from the deadpool :)
staying away from the deadpool is not enough. adding some more stock & promo is what we need :) :) :)
I’ve used them all, and they deserve it. :)
I have used them all too, I have active VPS with all of them except EvoRack (I don’t know what I was thinking when I cancelled that one months months ago)
They are excellent provider too. Perhaps not many people know them here. Jonny from Evorack is a gentle man too. IPv6 /64 subnet is a point plus.
Great to see non-US providers on the lists this time.
Congratulations to all the winners :)
since the 1st LEB Top providers poll, there is non-US provider: quickweb.co.NZ
Yes I should have keep the word European providers before changing it to non-US :)
Great work by Quickweb, never come across any complaints about their service.
Indeed it is a great work for a New Zealand company to come up at the top spot, consider they are working in quite a different timezones than most of their users. Let alone the constant lag in their SSH session trying to fix something on the severs.
i’m not sure what lag are you talking about? :) we can even do OS reload when necessary via KVM on nodes as far as London so SSH works pretty well.
Did they finally upgrade that 128kbit link to NZ?
OK, so we now know which are the best/most liked providers – congratulations to all. Now lets see the deadpool :)
LOL, yeah, lets see the deadpool
Good result for LEB buyers’ refference.
While I like my two VPSes from winner list as they are good, my favourites are actually those two uk hosts from “Honorable Mentions” list. In term of performance and support their service seems unbeatable. As we talking about cheap lowendboxes it’s acceptable to wait a bit more for simple task to be done but it’s still difference between 5 minutes of waiting and 2 days of waiting.
Anyway, congatulations to all 6 hosts to be mentioned here. I am sure that you all deserve it :-)
I’d be more impressed if it were actually possible to get a new LEB account in North America with any of these providers, so as a “reference” it’s pretty close to useless.
Here is the list of scores of everyone who offers a plan **right now** that costs $24/year or less:
* Hostingnation 18 ($16 year/500 BW/30 disk/64 mem/96 burst)
* eNetSouth 7 ($23 year/500 BW/15 disk/160 mem/160 burst)
* AlienVPS 7 ($19 year/190 BW/19 disk/192 mem/220 burst)
* Serverdragon 5 ($20 year/100 BW/10 disk/96 mem/192 burst)
* Curlhost 1 ($24 year/50 BW/5 disk/64 mem/64 burst)
Please be aware the listed plan is a backup VPS for Hostigation, I will not turn on tun/pptp or any other features on that plan.
Also didn’t RamHost just restock their Georga location?
Ramhost.us has no stock in Atlanta, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be put on my list because their plans cost over $24/year.
Tim,
Do you want me to remove your “backup” plan from my list of low-cost VPS hosting accounts at http://samiam.org/low-cost-hosting.html ?
How would you feel if someone put nginx on the box and used a “backup” plan to host static HTML files?
Sam: I don’t see an issue with it being listed on your blog, just let them know it is a backup plan, our next low end plan is too high at $30/yr for a 128mb KVM that would allow them to do whatever.
…or perhaps SFTP? (I might point out that this could provide a rather cost-effective alternative to, e.g., Strongspace in that respect.)
I was going to say the same and @Tim just replied.
Also I think the listed plan is strictly for backups, correct me if I am wrong @Tim
I am thinking on getting one of these, but yes, there is a blacklist of stuff not allowed??
Yomero: I’m pretty easy and laid back about what is and isn’t allowed, it’s a stock Debian 5 32bit template I’ve gutted and installed an ftp server, rsync and replaced opensshd with dropbear and installed the fuse client, it idles in 6-7mb and if more burst is needed as you have a massive number of files for rsync, no problem, but it is solely for backing up data, so I think a blacklist is pointless, are you backing up data or not, it really is just that simple, if you are not, then it is not suited for the plan.
Interesting. I am wondering because with that a lot of RAM (xD) and 500GB probably I can do a lot of stuff,more than backups :P
Honestly, I’ve only had to terminate 1 user for using the plan for other then backup purposes, as they were running mysql, in 64mb, why, I have no idea, if they had replication turned on, I would have said nothing, but he was just being difficult about it and told me to go stuff myself instead of just using the plan as advertised. There are plenty of other providers that offer micro plans for serving content and other useful purposes, and we are very small so it was designed to be useful as backups since most will not be our customer who we are targeting with this. An affordable offsite backup is the targeted audience for this plan, use all the inbound traffic you want, I won’t care, run a warez repo, and find the street. Sure you can technically use it for other purposes, but I intentionally gimped the host node so if you did, it would not be pretty. And while the IO is going to be faster then most other providers, it is still software raid6, I simply manipulated it to give better results for a dd test ;)
Thanks to everyone who voted for us! I’m ecstatic that Evorack has got an honourable mention! :D
Cheers
Jonny
Evorack
Yeah, you owe us a beer!
/joke off :-)
Problem with this is, it’s going to be practically always the ‘top LEB providers’ appearing week after week, which it has been the same handful. Be nice maybe if the same provider couldn’t win two quarters in a row and give some of the others a chance to get up there maybe… otherwise I think it just loses credibility.
LEA tried to pass a rule that a host must have stock in place to win but retracted the rule later on when he felt it singled us out too much. Everyone has worked hard for their positions, but it’s also interesting to see people are holding off nominating hosts that will likely get them karma burned :P
Francisco
No doubt but at the end of the day, if I or anyone keep seeing the same handful of providers at the top, then I have no interest in it and I’d suggest many would become put off voting knowing theirs serves no real use.
Maybe there’s a reason why we keep seeing the same providers over and over again. :)
If they are the best, why should be any other provider on the first places?
I am certainly not crying about coming in 4th, and am proud I placed that well, the 3 on top should take note I did this well as a 1 man show, that says a lot, but they gathered more votes, and deserve the benefits of their work, and frankly I would not want to be considered if they were not as well. I have some hard work ahead to beat out one of them next quarter, and enjoy the challenge.
Yeah, congratulations to you aswell. Keep up the good work. :)
for me? you’re the winner Tim. :) keep up the good work. and let’s beat the top 3 for next quarter!! :D
Hi,
Your service and plans look great, but your website is a little short on details.
1. Do you only offer Cent-OS? (I would prefer ubuntu or deb)
2. Do you have any indication of CPU allocation?
3. Do you have any port restrictions?
Thanks in advance,
:)
@Tim — yes definitely keep up the good work.
@Flea – It is a work in progress, but my wiki answers many of your questions, and maybe a few you didn’t know you had https://hostigation.om/wiki As for CPU, it’s fair share, port restrictions, if you get a spam complaint in the first 30 days, your gone, after the 1st 30 days I’ll block port 25 outbound.
Thanks against for conducting this ;0 I am a customer of all these companies
and totally agree with the results.
I need some new VPSs though so please post some hot July 4th offers :)
Congratulations :D
congratulation guys. i hope hostigation can change the big three domination for the next quarter. great job for Tim Flavin team. ;)
It’s not fair for other providers when BuyVM did not have any stock during terms of voting. They are “inactive” provider, please do not include in votes.
What about all of our current clients that are enjoying their service? I mean, lets be honest, if we had stock we would have had even more points I bet :)
Francisco
As I read many good reviews of BuyVM, I frequently visited the site to order one, unfortunately I couldn’t do. I think this vote is QUARTERLY, so that it’s fair to vote for each provider having concurrent offers during the QUARTER only. I am scared to bet because it seems your service will be the best for OVERALL.
exactly,
I think it’s more than fair to have buyVM voted this quarter.
sorry, the last quarter, i meant,
Congratulations to all the providers and I’m happy to see support doesn’t have to be compromised with a small budget.
Regardless of stock/constant winners/etc., at least there are providers out there who actually are very reliable providers.
A lot of other companies really bog down the VPS industry by allowing customers to lose faith in the system as they always quit/too late to pay bills/run away with ‘X’ amount of money and then reopen a new VPS business and rinse and repeat.
Not always the situation above, but you can see on WHT a lot of people rather scared at picking a provider just because they believe that the very next day that company will just run away/die.
And that has happened to some very unlucky people.
Being a Hostrail victim, I was looking for a replacement. Two of your winners do not have stock to sell, so they can hardly be called a ‘provider’ of VPS.
Can you redo the poll for providers that actually are selling services?
Thanks
I have listed out 6 providers in the blog post. There are also many getting nominated in the linked LowEndTalk thread. Take a look there and make up your own decision. I do not see a need to redo the poll.
@LowEndAdmin: Shouldn’t the front page say “1, 1, 1” instead of “1, 2, 3” now?
But then he would need to have a randomizer to reorder it on every reload :)
Francisco
Good idea. I don’t like how it portrays the top hosts right now. It makes it look like a couple aren’t as good or didn’t win
oh men,
Its now barbecue time.
@cd — well with any kind of competition/poll, there can only be that many winners. There are actually quite a few very good and matured providers that serve the budget end of the market. People also have different needs and the top 3 might not serve them.
For example my preference is US West Coast Xen or KVM — none of the top 3 are offering something like that at the moment.
@LEA US West Coast? Xen? we actually have posted here last time XEN LA and San Jose which are in California but yeah no KVM yet… QW’s main advantage over others is our multiple locations, last time i counted we are present in 12 cities worldwide offering both OpenVZ and XEN while maintaining consistent service levels is a feat it itself which is a testament how we operate.
Dealing with multiple providers/facilities can be a logistical nightmare if not done right.
Ordered in the least number of haters first :)
Do provider haters count in that? *glares at quickweb*
haha, good matrix
Why not for next quarter only consider nominations for companies that have had new offers posted in the last 3 months? Level the playing field a little.
Why? Why should other excellent providers be left out?
Well just figured as the poll is quarterly it would be an incentive for these “excellent” providers to post an offer at least once a quarter and it would silence the people who are crying over BuyVM coming joint top when they have no stock.
BuyVM will have stock, they’re just working on moving datacenters =)
(as a side note: BuyVM usually sells out too quickly to post offers here)
@cd It was only a suggestion to combat the complaints made earlier (Flea, Monei, Jason, Todd Vierling ) and I am by no means a BuyVM hater (I voted for them in fact). Also the time limit was again only a suggestion, 6 months a year, it make no difference to me.
Just figured it was a way of giving the smaller providers a fair shot at the top while silencing those complaining.
Will take my chance to congratulate the winners of Q2. Hopefully LEB will be a place for such open community =P
cheers
Congratulations for the top winners :) And keep it up :)
QuickWeb, Ramhost and BuyVM, all are excellent hosts. I have used all 3 of them. But I feel though the other two are quite generous towards LEB community as and when they release stock, 95-99% of QuickWeb never qualifies as a LEB host. They are more on the premium end of budget hosting providing faster support than the other two but charging a premium for it also. Their 1.99, 2.99 (yearly basis) plans are almost always out of stock as and when they advertise on WHT while that other plans $10 and above are always available. Also the plans aren’t that value for money. You get very low disc space, 10 Mbit port and just 1 CPU core as default with most of the plans.
Ain’t saying anything bad about them. They know how to run their business and are a very friendly sort of people. Just that I find them a bit against the LEB theme in comparison to other similar good providers.
your point being? it’s not a mystery that for some companies LEB is another channel of marketing for their services. do they qualify according to LEB rules? yes, they do. what’s wrong with the fact they also offer premium services?
also, buyvm don’t have stock most of the time. following your way of thinking they should be both not allowed to compete here. I want however to point one fact – it’s the community who have chosen them, nothing else
Is there any news for buyVM?
Are they out of business???
Sarcasm? xD
Not really, but because they are off too long.
Anyway, I am sure many guys here miss buyVM, right? :)
Off in what way? They have not had any downtime since the last HE power failure.
Sorry, just off for me, :)
I not yet have any buyBM stuff.
I do not think they are out of business :)
We’re waiting on the contracts for our new racks so then we can get building :) Everyone is incredibly excited.
Francisco
Thanks, guy,
We are Tous à l’Ouest, :)
I am anxious too but …. an ETA would definitely help everyone (as opposed to your 24 hour early notice). Just my point of view
We’re waiting on coresite to send the papers at this point :( Almost all of the gear is in FMT/a staff members house waiting to get built & racked.
Francisco
Dear Frans,
It is something happened with the entire server? It seems like down, I cannot access my VPS and also buyvm.net.
They are moving right now, this is announced downtime that was posted for the past week on their announcements, twitter and facebook.
Announcements like this should have been emailed to their clients, not posted on twitter and facebook. I don’t have time to patrol their site or various social networking services for downtime notices, whether planned or not.
It was emailed out.
‘out of stock’ is not equal to ‘out of business’
heh, i don’t even know there was a voting here :-/
It was on IRC for a while :P
…naaah, IRC is just location for collecting fan club votes :P
i used to get drunk on irc ^-^
I just get a VPS from Hostigation based on the recommendation here.