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There is a lot of competition in the VPS hosting market and all have their unique advantages over each other, which may sway your decision between them.

You really can’t go wrong with any of these VPS hosts however I will do my best to break down the benefits and cons of each so you can make an educated decision.

I use these guys for a lot of my VPS hosting because they are more flexible than a lot of the competition. Unlike some of the other hosts on this list, you can customize the disk and memory individually, which is great because if you need to scale up then you can save quite a bit of money by only scaling what you need rather than scaling everything up.

The A2 hosting support is also very quick and they are a friendly bunch, which is a must-have for these kinds of VPS hosting services.

A2 VPS Hosting also comes with a list of benefits like a free SSL certificate, optional managed servers and “turbo servers” which come with CloudFlare CDN built in.

Pros:

Flexible scaling of disk, ram and network.

Great customer service.

Built-in CloudFlare.

Gets great reviews.

Cons:

The only thing I can come up with is the website/admin panel isn’t as pretty to look at.

Promotional Link – http://www.a2hosting.com?aid=devtuts

Linode is another host I have used for years. Their servers are very competitive on pricing and they are always upgrading servers for free. I have actually had a server with them for so long that it started out at 512mb ram and is now at 2gb ram, without me touching a button and without the price increase.

The admin panel is also very intuitive and they have some nice features like the advanced server monitoring through “Longview” and easy access to load balancers.

This is also another host with a fantastic, responsive support team. Whenever I had any queries they responded fast and were very helpful.

The only real issue I have with Linode which is common with VPS hosting is if you want to upgrade 1 thing like the disk space then you need to upgrade the whole server. If you need a lot of disk space then the costs are going to get high very quickly. Although most people who have these requirements will be using another solution like Amazons S3 instances so this may not be an issue for many.

Pros:

Great customer support.

Competitive pricing.

Fantastic admin panel.

Longview advanced server statistics is a great way to monitor your server.

Cons:

Scaling servers up is grouped so if you want to upgrade one aspect then you have to upgrade it all.

Promotional Link – https://www.linode.com/?r=777663d9950db6e584060305a021f8c8883ab156

This host is very similar to Linode and they are often trading blows with each other in terms of bang for buck pricing. Although Linode usually seem to edge it out in that department for their VPS servers.

Digital Ocean is one of the most widely used VPS server providers because they provide competitive pricing with a fantastic interface with great support. Although I will say I have been seeing more and more complaints in recent years about their support team. But I cannot comment on this as I have always had a good experience.

Digital Ocean also has great server monitoring and load balancing tools available that are on par with what is on offer from Linode.

Also similar to Linode though is the restriction on scaling where you need to upgrade the whole server if you want to upgrade one aspect, except they do allow you to upgrade on disk space which is at least something!.

Pros:

Competitive pricing.

Fantastic admin panel.

Great server monitoring tools built in.

Cons:

Not quite as good bang for buck pricing.

Declining reputation for customer support.

Promotional Link – https://m.do.co/c/fcd26c153021

AWS is a big hitter in the hosting department. They have a massive amount of services that all integrate well with each other.

Typically though AWS is quite expensive, putting aside the free 1st year for their base tier services which doesn’t apply to Lightsail. The big problem normally associated with AWS is the seemingly hidden costs.

AWS Lightsail simplifies things a lot however. Previously if you wanted to host a website with an AWS server, you would need to use their cloud EC2 service which compared a typical VPS works out much more expensive for the same power and is more complicated in terms of pricing. Then they brought out Lightsail which is a much similar service to something from the likes of A2 hosting or Linode.

Because AWS have tried to simplify their hosting services, they also have grouped the services into packages so again you can forget customizing the package if you only need to upgrade 1 thing.

In terms of other features though AWS is the clear leader here because they have a whole host of different options like RDS database servers, S3 storage, Advanced monitoring, CloudFront CDN and much much more.

Pros:

Massive infrastructure built in with the largest list of extra tools available.

Cons:

Not as flexible with only 5 different server tiers.

Link – https://amazonlightsail.com/

Vultr is the new kid on the block and is a heavy hitter with some of the fastest and cheapest servers available.

If you are looking at bang for buck then it would seem Vultr wins. However, the lack of support seems to be a big issue with them so far, with lots of complaints posted all over the place.

The stability seems to be another thing that comes into question with people complaining about network speeds being a bit random and servers having outages.

Vultr may end up being one of the best once they iron out some of their issues and mature a bit as a service, however, you have to commend them for coming so far in the 2 years they have been in business.

Pros:

Best bang for buck

Cons:

Bad reputation for support

Questionable stability

Promotional Link – https://www.vultr.com/?ref=7262122

Conclusion

It is tricky picking a winner from this list as all the services are very competitive and all have their own following. However, I find myself using A2 hosting more and more because of the flexibility they provide and the fantastic support. In saying that,you can’t really go wrong w ith any of these providers.