LowEndBox - Cheap VPS, Hosting and Dedicated Server Deals

ShardHost - £13/Year ($20~) 256MB SSD KVM VPS in Dallas, Texas or Buffalo, NY

NOTICE: ShardHost has closed down with a one-hour notice to customers before starting to shut down servers. The reason for this is unknown.

Marc, from ShardHost, recently wrote in to share a couple of their new SSD specials, completely different from their last offer. These are LET/LEB exclusive and have not been advertised anywhere else.

Specials – KVMSSDANNUAL

  • 256MB RAM
  • 256MB Swap
  • 1 vCPU Core
  • 3.75GB RAID10 SSD Diskspace
  • 512GB Bandwidth
  • KVM/SolusVM
  • 1 IPv4 Address
  • 1Gbps Port Speed
  • £12.90/Year ($20~) | Order Link
Specials – KVMSSDMONTHLY

  • 1024MB RAM
  • 1024MB Swap
  • 3 vCPU Cores
  • 15GB RAID10 SSD Diskspace
  • 2048GB Bandwidth
  • KVM/SolusVM
  • 1 IPv4 Address
  • 1Gbps Port Speed
  • £4.51/Month ($7~)| Order Link

ShardHost have been featured on LowEndBox twice before. Marc tells us that on their last offer, they were inundated with signups, picking up nearly “1000 happy clients” as a result of being featured on here. They’re using Supermicro Servers with the Intel E3 1240v3 and 6 x Intel 520 SSDs with the Raid 10 LSI 9271 8i with Cachevault. The infamous DD test is apparently pushing 1.4-1.5 GB/s! These servers are owned by shard host and colocated with Colocrossing. ShardHost is a registered UK company (reg 07679837), who have been in business since June 2011. Reviews on their previous posts have been pretty decent.

ShardHost accept payments via Paypal or Debit/Credit card (Stripe). They offer a 7 day moneyback guarantee. EU clients will be liable for VAT charged @ 20% (GB136446902). Plans come with one IPv4, additional IPv4 are $1/mo. IPv6 is not currently available. They can double/triple resources on these plan for double/triple the price, simply open a ticket after ordering. To summarise their Terms of Service: Be a good neighbour, No spam/abuse, Legal stored content only and finally No TOR. For more information, have a read of their Terms of Service and their Acceptable Usage Policy.

Network Information:

Dallas (Colocrossing @ Tierpoint (formerly Colo4dallas)

Test IPv4: 172.245.61.2
Test Files: 10MB | 100MB | 1000MB

Buffalo (Colocrossing)

Test IPv4: 192.3.136.2
Test Files: 10MB | 100MB | 1000MB

61 Comments

  1. Ryan:

    I think the diskspace on the $20 p/y plan is a little bit low !

    September 25, 2013 @ 6:29 pm | Reply
  2. Ryan:

    The order link for the 1024 plan leads to the 256 one

    September 25, 2013 @ 7:21 pm | Reply
  3. Dan:

    Be warned, they have the slowest possible support and aren’t very good at it unfortunately:
    http://i.imgur.com/gteLK3U.png

    Yes, thats an actual Ticket I have currently open with ShardHost to get an ISO loaded into SolusVM. Its only been about 17 days…

    September 25, 2013 @ 8:56 pm | Reply
    • Gold, silver cup, it is better to the people of the word-of-mouth

      September 25, 2013 @ 9:29 pm | Reply
    • Hello Dan,

      I’ve had your ticket looked in to and you should have a reply offering you some options. That ticket is highly embarrassing and we apologise for the delay it is certainly not reflective of normal service and I hope others can attest.

      September 26, 2013 @ 1:45 am | Reply
      • black:

        These guys have been solid in terms of uptime and consistency. I highly recommend their services.

        September 26, 2013 @ 7:35 am | Reply
      • Dan:

        Thanks Sarah.
        I just want to re-iterate I had no problems with the VPS and no problems with uptime.
        Only issue was when I contacted support to add an Ubuntu ISO.

        This however has been resolved amicably.

        September 26, 2013 @ 11:58 am | Reply
        • I appreciate your honest feedback. The ticket speaks for itself. We dropped the ball and we hope your refund will in some way help bridge this inconvenience.

          September 26, 2013 @ 12:34 pm | Reply
          • Trent:

            What about refund and compensation for that shutdown?

            November 12, 2013 @ 5:56 pm | Reply
      • cygni:

        I just came to say, thumbs up in the response to the customer.

        September 26, 2013 @ 4:25 pm | Reply
  4. shardhost stability is very good, from my view of the time used before. However, disk IO is very bad, hope this SSD can improve this problem. I think I will buy an SSD.

    September 25, 2013 @ 10:02 pm | Reply
    • Please let us know of any disk IO problems you might have. Our previous plans were mechanical disks. What IO was you receiving?

      Our arrays on these plans are 6 Intel 520 on an LSI 9271 8i

      September 26, 2013 @ 1:46 am | Reply
  5. John:

    Marc why are you posting under Sarah?

    September 26, 2013 @ 2:08 am | Reply
    • Hello John,

      We’re both directors and often have the same IP. Information can be verified at companies house website.

      September 26, 2013 @ 8:21 am | Reply
  6. What OS is available to install?
    Do you have some control panel installed by default?

    September 26, 2013 @ 5:35 am | Reply
    • Hello there,

      We have standard minimal linux flavours: Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Suse, Scientific, Fedora

      None come with a control panel preinstalled

      September 26, 2013 @ 8:23 am | Reply
  7. nfm:

    shardhost’s vps is very stable. I bought one on July. I am very satisfied.
    Of course, if the disk can be upgraded to SSD Cached, I will be more satisfied;-)

    September 26, 2013 @ 6:51 am | Reply
    • Current mechanical setups will not have SSD cache added. We do however have these new SSD plans. We may consider SSD cached plans in the future.

      September 26, 2013 @ 8:25 am | Reply
  8. DalComp:

    I like your previous offer better, sadly it is out of stock…

    September 26, 2013 @ 9:26 am | Reply
    • DalComp:

      Good uptime from that July offer. :)

      # uptime
       09:28:00 up 66 days, 22:15,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
      
      September 26, 2013 @ 9:29 am | Reply
    • We really would have loved to offer more of those plans, but the hardware is full and as it was a yearly offer unlikely to come back in stock any time soon!

      Sorry

      September 26, 2013 @ 12:34 pm | Reply
      • DalComp:

        Get some more nodes! :D

        September 26, 2013 @ 8:41 pm | Reply
  9. dustin:

    I signed up with these guys 3 weeks ago. Website says “ask” if you don’t see the OS you want. Opened a ticket, got a question asking if an ISO would be OK. I responded that it would great. 3 weeks later after a few vague responses they close my ticket saying I haven’t responded. I clearly responded to all of their questions.

    September 27, 2013 @ 6:20 am | Reply
    • We’ve had some issues specifically on the point of ISOs being added. This particular aspect of the hosting was handled by a single person. Needless to say that person no longer is part of our business. I believe your ticket has now been taken care of and the ISO added and a refund issued for your months hosting.

      September 27, 2013 @ 5:54 pm | Reply
      • dustin:

        Thanks Sarah, up and running with Slackware 14 now.

        September 27, 2013 @ 8:24 pm | Reply
  10. I appreciate their network very much!

    September 27, 2013 @ 7:11 am | Reply
  11. Lucas:

    Is this nessesary buy USA based VPS for GBP and pay VAT as addition if in EU? This increase price much. Most easy ways buy directly from US providers in USD and no VAT for all :)

    September 27, 2013 @ 10:12 am | Reply
    • Only EU residents pay VAT.

      September 27, 2013 @ 5:57 pm | Reply
      • Lucas:

        Yea, but this will increase price from 12 to 16 GBP, and make EU buyers keep out from your deal :)

        September 28, 2013 @ 11:22 am | Reply
        • Sadly there is not a great deal we can do about taxes. They must be paid.

          September 28, 2013 @ 2:52 pm | Reply
  12. Stefan:

    I need a VPS in Dallas but i could not spot an option during signup to pick where you want to be located?

    September 27, 2013 @ 2:22 pm | Reply
  13. Tom:

    What the fuck can we do with 3.75GB??? Are you serious?

    September 27, 2013 @ 6:12 pm | Reply
    • Hi Tom,

      I am not sure for the purpose of your comment. These plans are not OpenVZ and are not thin provisioned. The disk space is reasonable at the price point and the plan size.

      September 28, 2013 @ 3:39 am | Reply
      • Lucas:

        Hah..Why not simply round to 5 Gb for example, this will cost a lot of money? Remember me EDIS :)

        September 28, 2013 @ 11:30 am | Reply
    • mitsuhashi:

      3.75GB SSD is more than enough for doing lots of things (duh!): small blogs, small forums, small stores, VPN… Plenty of value there for $20/year.

      September 29, 2013 @ 8:47 am | Reply
  14. IRC allowed?

    September 29, 2013 @ 2:56 pm | Reply
    • No problem. Please check our ToS for situations where it is not allowed (basically to be used to control a botnet)

      September 29, 2013 @ 4:57 pm | Reply
  15. HMK:

    Ordered and received it instantly, so far so good!

    October 6, 2013 @ 6:29 am | Reply
  16. Just to note for those looking for our annual offers, we have these restocked here:

    http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/14680/shardhost-1gb-annual-kvm-30-512mb-annual-kvm-ssd-30-512mb-annual-kvm-20-more#latest

    October 10, 2013 @ 2:19 pm | Reply
  17. Jr:

    Just to let you guys know that their support is slow. It could take two days to answer your ticket!
    I’ve order one, and received the login details. But unable to connect after install their CentOS5 Min.
    It was two days ago, and I am still waiting for the solution!

    October 15, 2013 @ 10:17 am | Reply
  18. Trent:

    This company has just ceased operations without warning!

    “Due to recent unexpected trading circumstances Shard Hosting Solutions LTD has ceased trading with immediate effect. We urge all clients to take a backup of their data immediately as we cannot guarantee how long services will operate for before being disconnected by our upstream suppliers.”

    This would make the second company out of the UK to do this this year.

    November 12, 2013 @ 2:42 pm | Reply
    • Trent:

      I barely made it..I managed to get the data which was not most currently backed up off from there before they shut all servers down! Less than a two hour notice!

      November 12, 2013 @ 2:49 pm | Reply
    • peter:

      This is CRAZY! I received email on the cease operation notice on 2.51am (my local time), in less than an hour, 3.40am the server already offline. can’t even have chance to access the server (I supposed to sleep by this hour). you have been lucky, not sure how many people caught with this scam. This is totally unacceptable. really expensive lesson, not on monetary, its data loss that upset me.

      November 12, 2013 @ 4:04 pm | Reply
      • Trent:

        I wish lowendbox.com could do something to check the financial stability of these companies before posting their specials/advertising.

        November 12, 2013 @ 4:43 pm | Reply
    • a:

      Which is the first uk based?

      November 12, 2013 @ 10:45 pm | Reply
      • Trent:

        That would be Pink VPS

        November 12, 2013 @ 10:50 pm | Reply
      • upstage:

        Might be vpscorner ;d

        November 13, 2013 @ 1:39 am | Reply
  19. Nicolas:

    Is it often such situations on LB? When hosting company goes offline with money in several hours.
    They took money… and they have our data

    November 12, 2013 @ 4:25 pm | Reply
  20. I dont have any chance to get backup of any datas on my server. The server is shutdown.

    November 12, 2013 @ 4:45 pm | Reply
  21. Trent:

    I suggest everyone who paid recently try to make a claim with their payment provider. I was paying them with PayPal and filed a complaint.

    November 12, 2013 @ 6:10 pm | Reply
    • Enric G. Torrents:

      I second this. They are making it perfectly clear that any attempt to get a refund directly from them is futile.

      November 14, 2013 @ 12:44 am | Reply
  22. dustin:

    Learned my lesson about paying for a full year to a company without a proven track record. I was stuck at work and didn’t get to try to get at my stuff for 2 hours, it was mostly all backed up, but still it sucks they shut down so quick. Got set up with ramnode, costs a little more, but hopefully will be more reliable.

    November 12, 2013 @ 9:33 pm | Reply
  23. Sonic:

    Lucky me that i have backup daily so my site is back online now. I will never pay yearly anymore.

    November 12, 2013 @ 10:23 pm | Reply
  24. I don’t have backup. Is there any chance they will turn on server and allow us to backup our data?

    November 14, 2013 @ 4:06 pm | Reply
    • Trent:

      I think they were finically insolvent because of this statement, “we cannot guarantee how long services will operate for before being disconnected by our upstream suppliers.”

      Seems they could not pay their bills.

      November 14, 2013 @ 5:14 pm | Reply
  25. terminating service is not the solutions, they should ask other host to make a good deal and transfer the clients and make a win win solution.

    November 18, 2013 @ 8:53 pm | Reply

Leave a Reply to Jr Cancel reply

Some notes on commenting on LowEndBox:

  • Do not use LowEndBox for support issues. Go to your hosting provider and issue a ticket there. Coming here saying "my VPS is down, what do I do?!" will only have your comments removed.
  • Akismet is used for spam detection. Some comments may be held temporarily for manual approval.
  • Use <pre>...</pre> to quote the output from your terminal/console, or consider using a pastebin service.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *