Well, posts here from the last few months have been slow, irregular and unenergised. Here is one post that I have intended to write for the last couple of months. TL;DR version — for personal reasons and for the future of LowEndBox blog and LowEndTalk community, I have decided to step down and take an exit.
Looking for Cheap VPS?
| United States | Other Locations | Virtualization/OS | |
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5ITE – $5.96 256MB OpenVZ VPS in Chicago or Germany
5ITE, founded by Andrew and first featured here in October 2010, seems to have quite a few issues in October 2011. It appears that they have been sold, and was having some transitional issues. Earlier this month Nancy, the new 5ITE account manager who also represents Swift Communications (new owner of 5ITE), contacted me regarding to their new LowEndBox offer. So here it is — use coupon code LEB2012 to get 25% off recurring discount on all their VPS plans. “VZ-1″ would be $5.96/month after the discount. Sign up link here.
- 256MB guaranteed/384MB burstable memory
- 30GB storage
- 3TB/month data transfer
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
Servers in either Nuremberg Germany or Chicago IL. This is actually worse when you compare it with previous offer given by Andrew, although the ordering link still works on that. They are now a part of a bigger company also means that you might be able to get phone support, and VPS might actually moved to migrated to their own facility in the future. Well, recent review wasn’t so positive. Maybe it’s just the migration pain, but hopefully things will become more stable.
Jolly Works Hosting – $13/Year 128MB OpenVZ VPS in Phoenix
Mark from Jolly Works Hosting emailed me their new offer that has also been posted on WHT. “Tiny One” is how this hosting plan is called. $13/Year and here is the signup link.
- 128MB guaranteed/256MB burstable memory
- 15GB storage
- 500GB/month data transfer on 100Mbps
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
Servers in PhoenixNAP in Phoenix AZ (test IP: 174.138.175.114). Jolly Works Hosting is based in Philippine and was founded in March 2009 — makes them almost 3 years old. Looks like they are trying to aggressively grow their customer base with this yearly plan. Being 3 year old and relatively good track record I do hope it’s not an attempt of pump and dump :)
OpenVZ.ca – CAD$7 384MB OpenVZ VPS in Canada
Joseph from OpenVZ.ca has sent me a special LowEndBox offer. It sits between the “Small” and “Medium” plans on their OpenVZ VPS plans page. Here is the signup link, and the cost is CAD$7/month (~USD$6.87). It comes with the following resources:
- 384MB memory
- 20GB storage
- 300GB/month data transfer on 100Mbps
- 1x IPv4 + 1x IPv6 address
- 2x vCPU cores
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
Coupon code LowEndFirstMonth also gives you 80% off the first month. Payments can be made using PayPal, credit card, mail-in cheque or money order. Servers are housed in CANIX3 in Montreal CA (test IP: 199.167.128.10) and they have been running their own BGP (AS14442) since April-May 2011. Being part of Media Hosts they have been in business since 2002.
RethinkVPS – $6.60 128MB OpenVZ 1Gbps Unmetered VPS in LA/Scranton
Here is a new offer for the new year from ReThinkVPS, from an email from Sam. According to Sam, they will be ReThink’ing the strategy for 2012, doing things a little bit differently and trying to penetrate the low end VPS market. Well, best of luck. The promo here is not much different from what they have offered 2 months ago though. Use the coupon code 2012 to get 17% off of the same package. So “VPS 1.0″ comes down to $6.60/month after the discount. Signup link.
- 128MB guaranteed/512MB burstable memory
- 30GB storage
- 1Gbps unmetered bandwidth
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
There’s a bit more info on the same offer posted on WHT. Nodes are located in either Los Angeles CA or Scranton PA. Servers themselves are connected to 1Gbps ports, although what you might eventually receive depends on a lot of other factors. From section 9 of their Terms of Services, they would contact abusers if a VPS is slowing down others. They have been around for more than a year now.
If P2P, IRC and public proxies are forbidden according to ToS, what other applications would you use such VPS for (1Gbps unmetered but only 128MB guaranteed memory)?
Castlegem – £4.25 256MB Xen VPS in UK or Austria
Bernhard from UK-based Castlegem emailed me about some of their low end VPS hosting packages. They do have quite a few different plans to offer. Here they are:
- UK/AT – XEN/OpenVZ mini
- 256MB memory
- 20GB storage
- 100GB/month data transfer
- £4.25/month Xen (Direct signup link)
£3.50/month OpenVZ (Direct signup link)
- USA West Coast – XEN/OpenVZ mini
- 256MB memory
- 20GB storage
- 500GB/month data transfer
- £4/month Xen (Direct signup link)
£2.50/month OpenVZ (Direct signup link)
Servers in either Manchester UK, Vienna AT or Fremont in West Coast USA. 20% VAT is payable for those in UK/EU. Both PayPal and Google Checkout are accepted. Also note that provisioning is currently a manual process which can take up to 12 hours wait. According to CompaniesHouse, Castlegem Ltd has been registered since 2008 and they are boasting 1,400+ customers according to Bernhard. Bernhard was from Austria running the Progipark team that has been doing business since the ’80s, and been on the Internet since 1995.
They do have funny DNS server name. Fartling? YouNaughtyMonsters? Geez…
RhinoRack – $7 512MB OpenVZ VPS in Orlando
New Business Name Rule #1 — do not use an already established name, even in a total different market, unless your aim is confusion. Now, Nicholas from RhinoRack Networks emailed me their special offer — not a new roof rack for your automobile, but a low end OpenVZ VPS plan that’s also posted on WHT. Named “OpenVZ – Node1 BEAST”, it’s $7/month and you have to use this link to order as it’s not publicly visible on their website.
- 512MB guaranteed/768MB burstable memory
- 30GB storage
- 200GB/month data transfer
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
PayPal only. They own their hardware, which are colocated with HostDime in Orlando FL — see Nick’s data center hunting thread. Yes, it’s the same Nick who used to run RackMountain, which he sold it 2 months down the track. Lots of informative comments in the old posts there so do check them out. Anyway he is back! RhinoRack.net is a new venture that he has only recently started.
We’ll see how long this one is going to last.
NixDot – $4.49 256MB OpenVZ VPS in Phoenix
Chris, director at ico7 Network which manages NixDot Web Solutions, emailed me their offer a few days ago. According to this WHT thread they have recently re-launched NixDot and have one low end OpenVZ VPS plan that fits my listing criteria. “OpenVZ I” is $4.49/month and it comes with
- 256MB guaranteed/512MB burstable memory
- 30GB storage on RAID10
- 500GB/month data transfer
- 2x vCPU cores
- 2x IPv4 addresses
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
Signup link here. If you pay yearly it will get discounted to $30/year. They take PayPal or Google Checkout. Servers with PhoenixNAP in Phoenix AZ (test IP: 199.30.48.138). IRC and legal P2P are allowed. ico7 Network is based in UK. Domain has only been registered since May 2011 and wasn’t trading until November so pretty much a new provider. Any one knows about these folks?
Dead Pool December 2011
ipap.co, leetnet.net, qualityservers.co.uk, rapidovps.com, sisvps.com, vpsvibe.com 
January 9, 2012 @ 3:38 am Another month has passed and here’s another pool of dead providers.
IPAP.co
Current Status: 502 Bad Gateway on CloudFlare
Yes I know that they should been in dead pool long long time ago but their website was working all the way until a few days before Christmas. I guess by now everyone would have hopefully recovered from the scam there. IPAP.co was first listed here last February, and I think the final nail in the coffin would be their $6.99 2GB offer that was just “too good to be true”.
Binary Computer Solutions – $5.95 256MB OpenVZ VPS in Chicago with 20Mbps Unmetered
Here is another Chicago offer. Blaine from Binary Computer Solutions emailed me their 2012 promotional package. Here is the sign up link, and for $5.95/month you get
- 256MB memory/256MB vswap
- 20GB storage
- 20Mbps unmetered bandwidth
- 2x vCPU cores
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
Payment in either PayPal, Google Checkout or AlertPay. Servers with SingleHop in Chicago. Do note that they are doing firewall white-listing on allowed ports for incoming connections (See comments from previous offer), but you can use support tickets to get them to open ports for you. Domain has been registered since November 2008.