4.8 
VPS Hosting Providers Feature Overview
| Provider | Starting Price | Storage (GB) | CPU (Cores) | RAM (GB) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | $4.00 | 20-4000 | 1-32 | 1-128 | Visit Kamatera |
 | $4.49 | 50-400 | 1-8 | 4-32 | Visit Hostinger |
 | $5.00 | 30-150 | 1-8 | 1-8 | Visit Liquid Web |
 | $5.50 | 30-100 | 1-4 | 1-6 | Visit Ultahost |
 | $14.95 | 50-240 | 2-16 | 4-32 | Visit ScalaHosting |
 | $2.00 | 10-640 | 1-12 | 1-24 | Visit IONOS |
What is a Virtual Private Servers (VPS)?
VPS is a more advanced type of hosting compared to shared hosting. While in shared hosting your website shares resources with many others, VPS hosting gives you dedicated RAM, storage, and CPU power on a shared physical server. This solution provides more control and performance without the high cost of a dedicated server.
When to Choose and When to Avoid a VPS
| Reasons to Use a VPS | Reasons Not to Use a VPS |
| Your website outgrows 2000-3000 daily visitors, or 90,000 monthly users. | You are a beginner and learning the basics like FTP, WordPress, and cPanel. |
| You need to install applications that are not supported by shared hosting, such as PHP modules. | You can’t afford the higher cost of VPS hosting. |
| You need root access to the server for advanced configuration. | When lacking the technical expertise to manage a VPS. |
| You need a virtual environment for software development and testing. | When hosting non-critical, low traffic websites. |
| Your website handles sensitive data or financial transactions. | |
| You experience extreme traffic fluctuations. |
If a VPS is not relevant to your needs, consider these alternatives:
- Shared Hosting—Ideal for small websites with lower traffic and resource requirements. It’s a cost-effective solution for beginners and small businesses.
- Dedicated Servers—Suitable for large websites with high traffic and resource demands. It offers full control and exclusive use of server resources.
- Cloud Hosting—Great for websites with fluctuating traffic. It provides scalability and flexibility, allowing you to pay for only the resources you use.
- Managed WordPress Hosting—Perfect for WordPress websites, offering optimized performance, security, and automatic updates.
How To Choose The Best VPS Hosting Providers
Choosing the right VPS hosting requires balancing factors like hardware, skill level, project needs, and budget to ensure website performance and reliability.
- Choose a VPS Type—Decide between Managed or Unmanaged VPS. If you don’t know Linux commands and can’t manage a server, go with a Managed VPS.
- Match Resources to Needs—CPU cores, RAM, bandwidth, and storage space should all align with your website traffic and workload.
- Prefer High Performance—Aim for high uptime (ideally 99.95%+) and fast response times (below 600ms).
- Assess Ease of Use and Support—Choose a provider with a user-friendly control panel (like cPanel) and 24/7 customer support.
- Review Features & Pricing—Consider VPS features (root access, security, migration) and choose a plan with what you need at a reasonable price.
The Best VPS Hosting Services (Bought and Tested)
Rating based on expert review:
- Overall Score: 4.9
- Features: 5.0
- Reliability: 5.0
- User-Friendly: 4.8
- Support: 4.9
- Pricing: 4.9
Four CPU Types, 1 to 104 vCPU, 256MB to 512GB of RAM, 5GB Storage to tens of terabytes of block storage, and up to 1174 various cloud server setup configurations, entry level VPS plans starting at $0.005/hour or $4/month. Personally, I would go with Kamatera if I had specific requirements (such as OS) since it offers a wide range of services of top-notch quality.
Kamatera is the best VPS hosting for instant scaling. It provides a pay-as-you-go solution on a cloud infrastructure with zero maintenance and no single point of failure.
Kamatera does not have a BBB listing (only applicable for U.S.-based companies), however, Trustpilot awards them 3.3 stars out of five (with more than 71 user reviews).
- Incredible flexibility, customization, and scaling
- Cloud infrastructure with a dozen of data centers
- Round-the-clock customer support with decades of experience
- Managed Virtual private server solutions are a bit expensive
- Requires at least a bit of technical knowledge (luckily, customer support is always available to guide you step by step in the process, even without managed support)
Features: Advanced cloud solutions for businesses of all sizes, leading cloud technology and versatile products, firewalls, load balancers, and more!
Reliability: No single point of failure with 99.95% guaranteed uptime. Data centers in America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
User-Friendly: Flexible, fast, and reliable solutions for startups, SaaS developers, and web & app developers, with maintenance and information conveniently accessible via a single Control Panel.
Support: Live technical support around the clock, 24-hours a day, 7-days a week personal assistance.
Pricing: Pay monthly, hourly, or by the minute and only for what you use. Cancel at any time if you’re not 100% satisfied.
If you want to be in full control of your server, Hostinger is the way to go. It’s the best virtual private hosting – you get the freedom and flexibility to run it as you like, whether you’re hosting one large website or multiple smaller sites.
- Overall Score: 4.6
- Features: 4.7
- Reliability: 4.8
- User-Friendly: 4.5
- Support: 4.5
- Pricing: 4.7
Hostinger grants you full root access and unparalleled control over how you manage your server and resources. You can configure the server environment to your needs, including how you dedicate your resources, install custom software, or transform your VPS for many purposes, including a VPN server, web server, mail server, or game server.
- Impressively fast website loading times and a 99.9% server uptime guarantee
- Top-notch protection (BitNinja, advanced DDoS protection, and other custom-built tools)
- Full control and flexibility to customize your VPS to your needs
- No Windows-based VPS hosting (you can choose from CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and Suse)
- Limited customer support (you are responsible for your VPS)
Features: You’ll get full root access, a user-friendly dashboard that simplifies server management, a dedicated IP address, FTP access and domain-based email service, automated backups, and manual live snapshots.
Reliability: You can choose from five data center locations to ensure maximum performance with minimum latency. All Hostinger servers utilize the latest Intel Xeon processors, terabytes of NVMe SSD storage, 512 GB RAM, and a 100Mb/s Network.
User-Friendly: While you’ll benefit from Hostinger’s user-friendly interface, you’ll still need technical skills to take full advantage of its self-managed VPS.
Support: You’ll be responsible for your VPS. However, you can still refer to Hostinger’s tutorial base for server management, creating your WordPress website on VPS, and other VPS-related topics. Furthermore, you can contact their support team, available 24/7 to answer all general questions.
Pricing: Hostinger offers eight self-managed VPS plans, starting at $3.49 for 1GB RAM, 20GB SSD disk space, 1TB bandwidth, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Who doesn’t like flexibility? With Ultahost, you will get to choose from a wide range of Linux and Windows OS, different programming languages, multiple locations, and host as many websites as you need. You can also install your own ISO and scale your resources with just one click!
- Overall Score: 4.9
- Features: 4.8
- Reliability: 4.8
- User-Friendly: 4.9
- Support: 4.9
- Pricing: 4.9
With Ultahost’s managed low-cost Virtual private server hosting plans, you can host unlimited websites, get unlimited bandwidth, enjoy one-click vertical scaling, and choose the control panel that you prefer (Hestia, CyberPanel, Plesk, and cPanel), and never pay for the resources that you don’t use!
Ultahost does not have a BBB listing (only applicable for U.S.-based companies), however, Trustpilot awards them 4.6 stars out of five (with more than 145 user reviews).
- Excellent flexibility (you can choose from multiple OS options, programming languages, locations, and more)
- The provider does not make you sign a contract or pay a fixed amount for resources that you don’t use
- You can choose between four different control panels, including Hestia, CyberPanel, Plesk, and cPanel
- Storage limitations on all plans (you can get up to 750GB of storage with its Ultra Windows VPS, which is still more than enough for most)
Features: All Ultahost VPS Plans come with fast-paced SSD & NVMe storage, built-in cache including Varnish, Memcached, and Redis, free SSL certificates, SSH & SFTP access, dedicated IPv4 addresses, unlimited application installation, and more!
Reliability: Ultahost offers managed Virtual private servers with the highest virtual server reliability and performance built for speed. It also includes Apache and Nginx as web servers, ultra optimized servers which are powered by 14th generation Dell servers with a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
User-Friendly: You will get fully managed services with which you can enjoy excellent assistance from the provider’s team. Namely, the team will update your security patches, OS, and more, for you. You can also choose from four user-friendly control panels and manage your server from there.
Support: Ultahost offers 24/7 expert support that will help you with maintaining your server and perform automated troubleshooting if needed.
Pricing: Ultahost’s entry level VPS Plans start at $5.5/month for one CPU core, 1GB RAM, 30GB NVMe SSD, managed services, and one IPv4 dedicated IP address.
Rating Based on Expert Review
- Overall Score: 4.8
- Features: 4.8
- Reliability: 4.8
- User-Friendly: 4.8
- Support: 4.8
- Pricing: 4.8
ScalaHosting is a world-class VPS Hosting provider that offers industry-leading speed and excellent performance. It also offers free website migration services to all its customers and an uptime guarantee of 99.9%. What’s best, ScalaHosting includes all kinds of free services in its plans, including free SSL, a free domain, free CDN, and much more.
- Excellent performance
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Servers equipped with enterprise-level hardware
- Turbo-fast All-NVMe servers
- Easy-to-use control panel
- Its prices are higher on renewal
- It does not offer a website builder
Features: ScalaHosting uses fast-paced NVMe SSDs on all its VPS Hosting plans and provides unmetered bandwidth with all of them. It also offers SShield state-of-the-art security protection, daily disaster recovery backups, free snapshots, and more. It supports Softaculous, via which you can install WordPress and other apps with one click.
Reliability: ScalaHosting offers an uptime guarantee of 99.9%. It is partnered with some of the best companies in the industry, including AWS, OpenLiteSpeed, Intel, Nginx, Cloudflare, and Spam Experts, and ensures that each of its users gets the best performance and stability.
User-Friendly: ScalaHosting’s custom control panel is called SPanel. It comes with everything that cPanel offers and more and is built for performance and easy server management. It is easy to use and offers an intuitive interface that everyone can get the hang of.
Support: ScalaHosting’s team will set up, maintain, and optimize everything for you and will keep an eye out for your server 24/7. You can contact its team via live chat, a ticketing system, and email.
Pricing: The basic plan starts from $29.95/month. It offers unmetered bandwidth, 2 CPU Cores, 4 GB RAM, 50GB NVMe Storage, automated backups, free SSL, a free domain, and more.
I don’t believe IONOS’ rating fairly represents its quality. While the host might not have the best reputation, its fully virtualized VPS with full root access and API is worth every dime.
- Overall Score: 1.5
- Features: 1.5
- Reliability: 1.8
- User-Friendly: 1.5
- Support: 1.4
- Pricing: 1.4
IONOS offers the best VPS servers with various options; you can choose from Linux or Windows, standard or memory optimized VPS, optional Plesk web host, and several data centers around the globe.
- Compatible with a variety of operating systems & administration tools
- Certified infrastructure with maximum security and a 99.99% uptime guarantee
- Easy administration with full root access and Plesk Obsidian management software
- Acronis backups cost an additional fee
- Plesk costs an additional fee
- Registration is available from a limited number of countries
Features: 1-click WordPress install and WP Toolkit, SSL encryption, firewall management, DDoS protection, preconfigured email functionality, unlimited bandwidth, and optional backups.
Reliability: IONOS utilizes last-generation hardware, including Intel Xeon E5 processors and 100% SAN SSD storage for maximum availability and 99.99% uptime.
User-Friendly: You’ll benefit from an intuitive IONOS cloud panel, streamlining your VPS management.
Support: IONOS’ server experts are available 24/7 to solve your issue quickly, minimizing downtime.
Pricing: You can choose from monthly or annual billing terms, pre-paid and post-paid billing, and cancel anytime with a monthly period or after 12 months with a yearly term. IONOS’s VPS plans start at $2 per month for 1 vCore, 512MB RAM, and 10GB SSD.
Why Trust Our Recommendations
At HostAdvice, trust and transparency are at the heart of what we do. We combine deep VPS expertise with real user feedback, ensuring our recommendations stand out for their quality and dependability. Our aim is clear: to confidently guide you to the top VPS hosting solutions that best fit your needs. Further down the page, you can find a complete breakdown of our methods to rank VPS providers.
How Do We Test and Rank?
At HostAdvice, we have performed extensive research to figure out the best VPS providers, their features, and what sets them apart from the rest.
Our experts have tested hundreds of products in the past year. More importantly, we are dedicated to continually improving our review methodology.
For instance, we have recently upgraded our uptime and speed monitoring processes. Each review process is based on real-time performance, meaning our experts purchase the plans, just as a regular customer would.
This way, HostAdvice can compare the web host’s promise with measurable results. We give extra points for transparency – we like companies that stand true to their promises, regardless of what they are.
Read more about our rating system here.
Best VPS Hosting: Final Recommendations
Selecting the right VPS hosting provider is essential for your website’s success. Start by identifying your key requirements—such as performance, security, and budget.
Next, compare providers to find those that offer dedicated resources, customizable plans, and excellent customer support. Prioritize those with positive user reviews and robust security features to ensure optimal scalability and protection for your site.
By taking these steps, you can ensure you select a VPS hosting solution that supports your website’s growth and success effectively.
