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What's Your Best Low End Box Experience in 2009?

Merry Christmas all the Low End Box readers! I might take a break in the next few days and wrap up for the year. Before I sign off, here is one question I would like to ask —

What’s your best low end box experience in 2009?

There has been heaps of low end providers profiled over the last 12 months — some has failed, some has raised their price so can no longer stay low end, some are still struggling but some just shine amongst the others. I have used/tested out plenty of low end virtual servers this year, and currently there are still 5 under my inventory doing various tasks (mostly boring idle jobs). And the one that I am mostly happy with is… Surprise surprise…

2HOST.com!

They were first featured here in May, and then I signed up in June to demonstrate how to run Debian 4 Etch on it. I have sinced rebuilt that 512MB Xen 8-core Xeon “beast” with Debian 5 Lenny to run one of my app that takes periodical screenshots of websites using VNC and Firefox. I was a bit worried when they cancelled my PayPal subscription, but it turns out to be a non-event as I have continued to pay manually month after month.

Performance has been rock solid as I would expect from any good Xen host, but it could be just because of lack of work on that $5 VPS. Great stability as well.

$ uptime
 10:20:10 up 173 days,  7:01,  1 user,  load average: 0.02, 0.01, 0.00

Support was a bit slow at the beginning but I never needed them afterwards. I could be lucky — but it’s definitely my best experience from a low end virtual server this year. Unfortunately I think the deal is no longer available.

What about yours?

LEA
Latest posts by LEA (see all)

32 Comments

  1. The wht.php link forwards to this which is listed at $5 a month:

    Virtual Private Servers – VPS Budget
    XEN VPS HyperVM CP 300GB Bandwidth

    I’m tempted to run that through and see what I get.

    December 24, 2009 @ 1:24 am | Reply
  2. I’ve also noticed at that 2host article that they were my best Lowendbox experience. But there’s a strange thing: I didn’t pay for my 2host vps for 2 months (I don’t need it anymore). And it’s still running! Seems that nobody cares :)

    I also would like to recommend Rentavps. I’m with them for5 months and I can’t complain.

    December 24, 2009 @ 4:19 am | Reply
  3. I had actually 2 best experiences.
    The first one is LowEndBox :). Literally. This site, lowendbox.com. I found it searching some info about VPSs (in general, not the low end boxes). Since then I’m loyal subscriber of the site’s RSS.
    And the second is 2HOST. Since July I host few my sites with them. Great performance.

    December 24, 2009 @ 5:59 am | Reply
  4. cling[y]:

    2HOST wins. I tried several VPS offers and 2host has by far been the fastest and most reliable. My only complaint about 2host is the lack of a control panel, such as vePortal, but other than that they are my favorite.

    December 24, 2009 @ 6:04 am | Reply
  5. It’s a pity that the $5 plan is not available now. Now going through the wht link will bring you to the $39 plan.

    December 24, 2009 @ 7:06 am | Reply
  6. Uncle Bob:

    Merry Christmas, Low End Box
    I used your posts to take my first VPS
    and second as well :-)

    December 24, 2009 @ 11:20 am | Reply
  7. 2HOST are great. I’m currently on 132 days of uptime – and for just $5 a month!

    @weakish – It doesnt re-direct to a $39 plan for me, but it does try and charge $14.99!

    Thanks, LowEndBox!

    December 24, 2009 @ 11:22 am | Reply
  8. May be a nice host for you guys but that thread over on WHT scares me away from them.

    December 24, 2009 @ 8:49 pm | Reply
  9. Ben Thomas:

    Thanks to Low End Box I have actually had two very good VPS experiences this year.

    First is with delimiter.us (VPS50) – I saw them here, and signed up with them about a week before they were taken over by Yomura Holdings. Before the takeover, they were terrible but since the takeover they have been fantastic. 100% uptime this month according to Pingdom’s reports (I have it checking at one minute intervals) and support with them is generally fairly good too, which is always a plus.

    And secondly more recently with servercomplete.com (LowEndBox Special $5/month) – Originally the idea behind this one was just going to be a slave DNS server. However, I was inspired by your “Yes, You Can Run 18 Static Sites on a 64MB Link-1 VPS” article and decided to have a go at installing & optimizing Debian. It now runs lighttpd/php/MySQL/bind9 and various other things and leaves about 95MB RAM free (it’s got 256MB, 270MB with Burst). The bind9 setup is GeoIP aware, and so one site is provided to US clients exclusively by this VPS – as it’s obviously faster for them than the EU based delimiter VPS. Another thing that you get with this is absolutely fantastic support. Daniel and the team at Server Complete always go the extra mile – and I think every support ticket I’ve thrown at them has had a response within 5 minutes.

    Thanks again for taking the time to put together this fantastic site and keep it so regularly updated – I have learnt a fair bit from here over the last few months. :)

    December 24, 2009 @ 11:28 pm | Reply
  10. My favorite so far has been RAMHost.us. They may not have the most specs for your money, but they most definately have the most reliable pricing and their admin is very helpful and you get to chat with him one on one with any problems that you might have.

    Their lowest plan (which is a year-round deal not a special btw) is $2.99 paid quarterly and runs gentoo (the fact that they also have gentoo as a OS choice is amazing also) quite nicely.

    December 26, 2009 @ 7:28 am | Reply
  11. Andrew Ketchum:

    Well I had a great experience with Site Penguin (http://sitepenguin.com). Their VPS never goes offline and I’ve never had to wait for support. I currently have 3 VPS with them (all of them being their small VPS plan). I read about them on here as well.

    December 26, 2009 @ 9:42 am | Reply
  12. @Malcolmputer — I’ll be surprised that you can `emerge world` on a Gentoo with just 128MB of burstable memory!

    December 26, 2009 @ 10:25 am | Reply
  13. @lowendadmin—-Most of the time “emerge world” will work with the 80MB of ram on their lowest plan and the only exception to that is GCC. (when the compile gets to GCC it dies but I was able to ask the ramhost staff and they temporarily up’d my quota and updated GCC for me.)

    I am just really happy that ramhost.us even allows you to have gentoo as a choice.

    December 27, 2009 @ 5:39 am | Reply
  14. Kanga:

    I have 2 512 VPS’s with 2 Host. Have > 120 days uptime on both. No issues with the servers and now that they have a full control panel up I don’t really see why you need support at all. I swapped my image to Ubuntu 64bit and have been really happy with the performance and uptime.

    December 27, 2009 @ 5:14 pm | Reply
  15. I’ve got a VPS with Prgmr.com, seems to be really great. I was lucky enough to get one while they had space.

    December 27, 2009 @ 10:35 pm | Reply
  16. cling[y]:

    @Kanga

    I wasn’t aware 2host had a control panel up, how do I access it?

    December 30, 2009 @ 2:15 am | Reply
  17. Kanga:

    @Cling[y]

    I had to email them and get the IP’s and username/pass. The Ubuntu image has been great.

    December 30, 2009 @ 2:19 am | Reply
  18. cling[y]:

    @Kanga

    Thanks for letting me know, I just emailed them and hopefully I will receive the information soon. I try not to email them or send support tickets too often, because for $5 I feel I am already getting more than what I pay for, especially with 2host’s XEN vps.

    December 30, 2009 @ 6:35 am | Reply
  19. Alaettin:

    Here is their new deal, go go go!

    * 512MB RAM (Dedicated)
    * 1024MB SWAP
    * 10GB Webspace (15.000RPM SAS RAID10)
    * 300GB Bandwidth (Gigabit link)
    * HyperVM control panel

    Not that many GBs but very good!

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=915658

    January 1, 2010 @ 4:34 am | Reply
  20. H4mster:

    I think there is still an offer with 2host.com

    Currently they have $9.95 monthly for 512ram, 10gb HDD, 300gb BW. Not sure whether is the same specs for the previous offer. If so, it is still quite worthwhile isnt it?

    Can anyone confirm it?

    Thanks!

    January 2, 2010 @ 9:16 am | Reply
  21. @Alaettin — that’s HostLatch not 2HOST?

    @H4mster — where did you see that offer?

    January 2, 2010 @ 12:00 pm | Reply
  22. H4mster:

    @LowEndAdmin: This link: https://www.2host.com/support/cart.php?a=confproduct&i=1 I am sorry, it is $9.99.

    January 2, 2010 @ 12:32 pm | Reply
  23. bobert:

    I have a 2host account as well. They have been quite decent for the price. The only problem I’ve noticed:

    1. Sometimes their entire network disappears from the internet for a couple hours at a time (happens about once a month at random times). Still better than some shared hosts.

    2. They stopped paypal subscriptions, you have to manually pay each month.

    3. They didn’t have a control panel for a long time because of the HyperVM incident. Now that it is back up, I can’t log back in.

    January 3, 2010 @ 1:38 am | Reply
  24. I have been with 2HOST since May 2009. I always paid manually. Its a 1G xen VPS. I do not really send support tickets because I only pay 10 dollars a month.

    Here is the uptime record taken just now:
    top – 08:17:45 up 198 days, 13:02

    The server was never down due to them, it is me who restarted several times at the beginning.

    I am also interested to use the control panel, waiting for the user/pass.

    January 3, 2010 @ 1:17 pm | Reply
  25. 1. Sometimes their entire network disappears from the internet for a couple hours at a time (happens about once a month at random times). Still better than some shared hosts.

    We actually have a datacenter requirement to bring down our servers once a month and reboot them due to a certain *cough* organization also being in the same datacenter on their own locked floor. They may be in the same boat.

    January 3, 2010 @ 5:03 pm | Reply
  26. Chris:

    Bobert, open a ticket and tell them that you cannot access HyperVM anymore. I was in the same situation and the problem was fixed pretty quickly.

    January 4, 2010 @ 10:27 am | Reply
  27. bobert:

    @drmike: sorry but I don’t understand. Can you elaborate on why you need to reboot just because of another organization?

    January 5, 2010 @ 3:13 am | Reply
  28. Malcolm:

    Just a warning with 2host: They apparently delete tickets they don’t want to answer. This has happened with me a few times with very simple questions.

    January 13, 2010 @ 4:10 am | Reply
  29. @Malcolm Can you share with us some of the simple questions that were not answered? I’m just curious.

    January 13, 2010 @ 4:15 am | Reply
  30. @bobert, not without violated federal law a few times. Think guys in suits with dark glasses. :)

    January 13, 2010 @ 12:56 pm | Reply
  31. Garfield:

    2host’s $5 VPS is actually back now.
    But you will have to pay for the whole year if you want the price become $5/month.

    February 24, 2010 @ 4:34 am | Reply
  32. HAd realy bad experience with them. Worst support, ok servers were just fine, but the rest, sucks, had to wait 3 weeks for reload. Any how, hope they are doing better this time around.

    March 11, 2010 @ 7:32 pm | Reply

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