HOW TO CHOOSE TO BUY CHEAP AND QUALITY VPS?

For many people, when choosing to buy VPS (Virtual Private Server), price is always an important factor in deciding whether to buy or not. However, when choosing to buy a cheap VPS, they encounter the problem of “losing money and getting nothing”: VPS dies in the middle of running, VPS cannot be renewed, VPS sellers are not reputable and fraudulent, VPS quality does not meet usage requirements, no timely support when problems occur…

Therefore, finding and choosing to buy cheap and reputable VPS is always the problem that VPS users have the most headache and concern about. In this article, Cloudbase will help you choose to buy cheap VPS in the true sense.

To choose to buy a really cheap VPS, we need to evaluate the following 4 important criteria:

1. Reputable supplier

2. Quality of VPS

3. Services included with the price

4. Price

Now let’s analyze these factors in detail.

1.  Choose a reputable supplier:

Cheap and reputable VPS providers have the following factors:

a. Have a clear legal entity and address  along with information for customers to contact when needed such as phone number, email, website, bank account number;

b. Have SLA (Service Level Agreement) commitments:  are the supplier’s commitments to VPS quality and service quality to customers. To maintain reputation and competitiveness, VPS sellers must always fulfill these SLA commitments;

c. Get a refund when the customer does not want to use VPS  because the cheap VPS seller does not fulfill the commitment or does not meet the buyer’s usage requirements;

d. Let customers try VPS before deciding to buy:  cheap and reputable VPS sellers are always willing to let you try it before deciding to officially buy;

e. Server location:  A reputable VPS provider will choose a reputable and secure data storage center to place its server such as Viettel IDC, VNPT, FPT… Placing the server in these places will help the VPS always have a continuous level of operation, without interruption, shown through  Uptime : currently these data centers meet Tier3 standards with an uptime of 99.982%, meaning that in a year of using VPS, there will only be 1.6 hours when the VPS is not working (if any).

2.  VPS quality:

If you choose a cheap VPS but the quality of the VPS does not meet your needs, no matter how cheap the VPS is, you have wasted that money.

Therefore, the important thing to consider before considering cheap or expensive VPS is to find out whether the VPS you intend to buy meets your usage purposes or not?

Here are the factors to decide whether VPS is quality or not:

a. Regular VPS or Cloud VPS:  Surely you already know the advantages of Cloud VPS compared to regular VPS. If you have ever bought VPS abroad, you will be charged for the amount of resources (Storage, RAM, CPU, bandwidth) of the VPS you use, that is, you are buying Cloud VPS. However, if you are in Vietnam, this is a bit difficult because most Vietnamese VPS rental providers usually charge for all the resources of the VPS you buy. But you can still check by asking the VPS provider (or checking yourself) the following questions to know if VPS is a cloud or not:

1. Can VPS creation be fully automated?
2. Does it provide you with reports on VPS resource usage such as CPU, RAM, Storage, bandwidth…?
3. Can VPS be renewed when it expires?
4. And most importantly, when you need to expand resources (Storage, RAM, CPU), how long does it take? (If it only takes 1-2 minutes, it’s Cloud VPS).

If the VPS provider can answer all of the above questions yes and the time to upgrade/expand VPS only takes 1-2 minutes, then it is Cloud VPS, normal VPS can hardly do these things.

 

b. VPS stored on SSD or HDD:  VPS using SSD to store data will increase VPS performance many times, especially when you use VPS to store databases and calculations on it. You can spend a little more money to use VPS with SSD storage, but in return, the time of the applications and calculations you run on VPS is much faster, which gives you more “profit” on this extra cost.

The important factor to help you distinguish between VPS using SSD or HDD is the IOPS index (Input/Output Operations per Second), including 2 parameters: Read IOPS and Write IOPS.

The difference in IOPS between HDD and SSD hard drives is illustrated in the following figure:

It can be clearly seen that the performance of SSD hard drives is many times superior to HDD.

You can check if VPS hosting uses SSD or not by asking the service provider directly, asking friends who have used VPS at that provider for their experience, or checking it yourself while you try out the VPS before deciding to buy.

c. CPU speed:  CPU speed or clock speed of CPU is measured in GHz. When you buy VPS, the price of VPS will be based on the number of CPU cores, the more cores, the higher the price. So if you buy VPS from two providers with the same number of Cores, the price is almost the same, you should choose the provider with the higher clock speed (GHz).

You should ask the VPS provider what the current CPU clock speed is: 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, 3.2 GHz… you will immediately receive an answer from reputable VPS providers.
d. Bandwidth:  is an important factor when choosing to buy VPS, the larger the bandwidth, the faster the data transmission speed, helping you download files faster, users access the website you put on VPS smoother… Some providers charge according to the amount of bandwidth you use, some do not (no limit on how much bandwidth you use during the time you rent VPS). Checking bandwidth is a relatively easy task for those who buy VPS. You should ask the provider for a trial to test the bandwidth in case you need fast access speed.

e. Does VPS have GPU Card or not:  when you use VPS for the purpose of hosting games, making game servers, processing movies, graphics… you should choose a VPS provider with GPU Card (also known as display card). VPS with GPU card support will have a relatively higher price than VPS without.

 

3.  Services included in the price:

You should choose VPS providers that have many accompanying services when you buy VPS, including the following services:

a. 24/7 support service:  You will certainly encounter some unexpected problems while using VPS. At that time, you need support to fix the problem immediately to maintain your business operations. Business interruption will bring terrible consequences such as losing customers, losing profits… especially if your VPS is used to host an online sales website or e-commerce platform.

Don’t be tempted to buy cheap VPS without immediate support when needed.
b. Backup service – data backup:  Some providers will offer free data backup services by week, 15 days… to help you easily restore data quickly in case of data loss for some reason. To do this, VPS providers must invest in an additional storage system independent of the VPS storage location and accompanying backup technology.

To keep your data safe, don’t be afraid to spend a little more money on providers that offer data backup services. On the contrary, if you lose your data, the amount of money you lose will be many times more.
c. Tools to help you manage VPS conveniently:  The more free tools (Tools, APIs) a VPS provider has to help you use VPS easily and conveniently, the more it will help you save time using and managing your VPS. This also shows that the VPS provider is interested in improving the convenience of the product for customers.

Some tools to help you manage your Server such as Direct Admin, Webmin, VestaCP are provided for free by reputable VPS providers when you rent a VPS.

 

 

4.  Price:

We put price as the last factor you consider when buying VPS because nowadays choosing to buy cheap VPS is relatively easy. You can spend only a few tens of thousands a month to rent a VPS to serve your work. Or you can buy VPS according to the promotions of VPS sellers to get price discounts.

What you need to do is create a comparison table and evaluate the 3 factors mentioned above for VPS providers; then fill in the information about the selling price of each VPS provider in this comparison table, you will immediately know at what price you should buy VPS and from whom.

Conclusion:  VPS can be considered a tool to help you make money. At that time, what you care about is who to buy VPS from to help you achieve the highest profit. If you buy a cheap VPS but it does not generate much “profit” for you, besides, you also spend a lot of time managing VPS, spend time waiting for the VPS seller to fix the problem, spend time because VPS does not work or works poorly, lose important data because VPS is not safe – secure… then you will see that VPS price is no longer an important factor.

Hope you choose to buy VPS with the best price from a reputable supplier.