VPS.net Review
September 29th, 2009 by MattI signed up for an account with VPS.net at the beginning of September, installed Ubuntu, and I’ve been slowly migrating my various websites over since.
What exactly is VPS.net? They are a provider of Cloud Virtual Private Servers. You can affordably purchase as much hosting firepower as you need, and have full control over the management of it. VPS.net isn’t like other providers though. Their unique “cloud” twist makes things a bit more interesting…
What makes VPS.net different from other services? Instead of simply partitioning a physical server into slices and selling them as virtual servers, VPS.net has what they call a “Virtual Private Server Cloud.” They break their infrastructure into “nodes,” which are blocks of resources (256MB of RAM, 10GB storage, 250GB transfer, and a certain CPU share) that you can pool together in various ways to create custom virtual machines.
Suppose you need a server with 512MB of RAM, 20GB of storage, and 500GB of monthly data transfer. Just order two nodes, create a new virtual machine, and assign the nodes to it. Press the switch to boot it up, and then you can choose one of the many OS images to install. (Ubuntu, CentOS, Gentoo, Debian and Turnkey Linux are are distros available at the present.)
What if you’re experiencing unusually high traffic? Just add another node and assign it to your virtual machine. It will reboot gain access to the new resources. (You can even purchase “temporary” nodes on a $1/day basis, which work great for handling short-term traffic spikes, or creating a temporary development test server.) I really like this concept. It’s very nice to be able to pay for the resources you need when you need them, instead of being stuck upgrading from a $50/month plan to a $100/month plan with a traditional VPS.
The service has seemed stable thus far, and customer support is truly awesome. I’ve rarely seen management so actively involved with their customer community. If I had a pre-sales question, all I had to do was send a quick message on Twitter. Ditlev Bredahl, CEO of the UK2 Group, which is the parent company of VPS.net, participates actively in the VPS.net community forum, along with the rest of the people at the hosting provider.
The servers are speedy, though your mileage will depend on your skills at configuring Linux servers.
I would definitely recommend VPS.net to anyone who has outgrown shared hosting. Between their flexible resource node model and their customer service, they’re definitely worth considering.
Affiliate link: VPS.net.
I would love to say I would try this innovative idea and see just how good it can be…
BUT… the fact it is linked with, and is part of UK2 Group just tells me to stay the hell away from it.
Sure this is a completely different product, but the customer service is still UK2 and quite frankly in the hosting industry they are hands down the worst I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.
More downtime on email than anything I have seen, and a total disregard for actually looking after customers in a nice friendly manner.
So, thanks for the review and I really am tempted to try this myself, but sadly UK2 are just too damn poor at just about everything for me to be tempted enough.
Which UK2 Group service did you have problems with? I've yet to hear anybody complain about bad customer service with VPS.net or 10tb.com, though I've run into some people occasionally with bad experiences with some of their other (older) properties. Don't forget that your bad experience isn't necessarily representative of the company. (There's always a no-so-great support rep, or some other problem that doesn't necessarily occur for everyone.)
Thanks for your input Steve . UK2Group runs a whole range of services and brands, and just like most airlines has a first, business and a 'tourist' class – we run web hosting companies catering clients looking for almost free hosting (http://www.another.com) to very highend hosting (http://www.vi.net – currently hosting the Home Office, NHS and other prominent services).
Now, that being said, the service of UK2 has improved significant. I took the step to in source all support recently (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2.....k2_chang... closing down my Indian and Ukrainian offices, and we've hired more than 40 people the last year to cater for the mass market support setup.
UK2 still has some way to go before being fully transformed into the company I'd like it to be, but we are doing very well – and our client satisfaction studies shows significant improvements.
VPS.NET is a totally different setup though, the management of it has nothing to do with the Level1-2 support team of UK2 or any other of our mass market companies. It is a highly customized and very flexible platform that we've invested heavily into the last year – and it is currently our fastest growing entity. We have only been out of beta for a few months, but have deployed more than 8500 servers, and we have a long list of positive reviews posted by clients like Matt here on webmaster-source.com…
I'd be happy to discuss this – or anything else – and invite you to contact me directly: ditlev@uk2group.com, if you want more details on what changes we've gone through the last few years. Also, if you'd like a demo of VPS.NET, send me an email and I'll arrange it
Best,
Ditlev Bredahl
CEO, UK2Group.com
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2.....k2_chang... – seems the link to TheReg was formatted wrong in my post above…
Thanks for the update Ditlev, it does help me to appreciate the improvements you're implementing for the advantage of customers.
One thing I will say impresses me about UK2Group is your hands-on approach as CEO.
I follow you on Twitter so I am well aware of your passion for the industry and keeping customers happy, and comments like this directly from you does convince me that my impressions of UK2 could change.
We will be looking to change our server setup in the next couple of months, and based on your convincing argument, I may well opt for VPS.net at least on a testing basis and see if this is for us.
If it is not, then we can part based on another experience. I hope however I can be proved wrong!
Lastly, as a Silver-Tongued CEO I believe you are a rare commodity in this world and I believe many business leaders could learn a thing or two from you.
I am a hard man to convince 'most' of the time, but you always impress me with your style of communication, so I wish you all the success in your venture/s.
Thanks for taking the time to comment and clear that up, Ditlev. And Steve, good luck with your possible VPS.net trial.
And dont forget, you also get a FREE http://www.cannybill.com account which enables you to re-sell VPS.NET to your customers:
http://vps.net/blog/2009/08/11.....integrat...
I'm not at the stage yet of needing a service like this but I'll be bookmarking this post for future reference.
It sounds like a super concept.
Cheers,
Rod
We will be looking to change our server setup in the next couple of months, and based on your convincing argument, I may well opt for VPS.net at least on a testing basis and see if this is for us.If it is not, then we can part based on another experience. I hope however I can be proved wrong.now leaving for my music songs classes so c u later.
We've been using UK2.net for a couple of years now for running Windows VPS and have been very happy.
hehe – nice way to add (read: spam) incoming links to your hosting company. UK2 does not even sell windows VPS's.
vps.net suck, their customer service is non-existing, ISPmanager is very poor, has lousy documentation, stay away!!!!!!!
zoyapets
ISPmanager is not a vps.net product, but it's a good product, and it's used by thousands of users worldwide very successfully, they also have very good documentation.
I will assume you where unable to setup your system, I'd be interested to know more of why, you can contact me at carlos_at_uk2group.com
I know ISPmanager is not a vps.net product, am not an idiot, but you have chosen it, and it really does suck.
I can’t edit htaccess file, get unsupported coding error, this is ridiculous.
Also it’s funny you people are so fast at responding here, how about having some proper support when you get mail instead, but I guess you don’t have time for that, you are here all the time……..
zoyapets
We also offer cPanel, and you free to bring your own
I would prefer Cpanel, how do I install that, and is it free?
If not then I’m done with you.
ISPmanager is a selling point and it SUCKS.
cPanel is used by a lot of shared hosting providers, and it's not free. Hosts that offer it have to pay for it in order to offer it to their customers. If you want to install it on a VPS, you can, but you would have to purchase a license for it yourself.
Personally, I don't use a control panel, either cPanel or ISPmanager, at all. They're unnecessary and they use up valuable system resources. Learn to use the command line and you'll be able to do things much more efficiently, without depending on a certain graphical interface.
cPanel is $10 /mo
ISPmanager is not free either, they have paid to let their customers use it and some hosting companies pay to let customers use Cpanel, vps.net made the wrong choice.
I didn't say ISPmanager was free, I merely stated that cPanel wasn't. (I haven't compared the prices in awhile, but cPanel might be more expensive?) Yes, *shared* hosting companies pay to let their customers use cPanel. However, VPS.net is primarily for people who know how to configure servers for themselves, of which most have no need for control panel software. Most VPS providers (including Linode and Slicehost) do not include cPanel with their servers either. That doesn't mean you can't pay for a license and install it for yourself though.
Yeah, I prefer cPanel as well. I like ISPmanager too though – and the reason we went with ISPmanager for VPS.NET was because it has a very low resource footprint. CPanel has a hard time running with less than 512mb ram – you CAN put in on 256, but there wouldn't be much room left for your websites/applications. Now, ISPmanager only uses like 60-64mb and runs perfectly on 256mb (one VPS.NET node) with a bunch of busy sites on it.
So, yeah – I love cPanel, but in this case ISPmanager was the better choice.
D
As a new arrival and certified noob from one of their newly purchased US companies where they have marketed the hell out of this whole Cloud thing I have to say their tech support and general readiness to deal with the massive wave of mid-level developers looking to move to the Cloud is NONE. ZERO. ZIP. NADA.
a) Right off the bat: Their entire support is based on….a forum. Kid you not. Sticky notes and let the People Help the People. Their Wiki is 8 pages, one entry per page. If you develop Drupal you are used to the painful process by which sometimes you need to extract information from their site, but…it is open source, a free thing. For $40 minimun a month you now have to basically do the same thing: Search -hopefully for the right terms and with words more than three letters-, differentiate between what an instruction and an opinion is, shift through posts, etc, etc. And just to add to the frustration, they keep the forum and their accounts separately…
b) They market their products to the intermediate vps-type developer, but then their tech support basically tells you: “No Linux? Learn. Bye, Bye mate” They have no guides, no manuals, nothing other than some basic VPS set up routines and a few other items. They are about as ready to deal with these type of clients as a hippy is to sign up for the army. There are not even basic explanations of what is what for the less-informed.
c) Tech-heads run the show. I have been doing this since 1995, I can tell. I would guess this company is made of corporate and lots of techs, but little in customer development. I UNDERSTAND that perhaps they do have to thin the herd a bit and set a “bottom line” as who they want their customers to be and who they prefer remains in shared-vps-semi universe. (after all, there is a formula by which selling to higher trained customers saves money in tech suport operations) But even with that into account, you can see in the way they answer in the forums, the way they address customers (“you guys?” “mate?” Who are you? my freshman year roommate at college?) I don’t know, maybe it is a British thing…
Now it is always easy to dish out criticism without giving any suggestions or providing some constructive ideas. That, however is something one saves for friends and family. This is business and in business either you LISTEN and ACT or you get stucked with the shitty company name and the poor impression for the rest of your corporate life.
PS: Do keep in mind I had almost zero interaction with their reps other than reading their responses in the forums and using their client account. All and all, not a very positive experience.
I suppose I’m what you might call a “tech head,” but when I signed up I didn’t have any server experience, and only a little Linux experience. It only took me some Google searches and a couple of books to get going.
VPS plans, no matter the provider, will have a learning curve. I don’t think it’s fair to take them to task for that, especially when most of their users so far are “tech heads.” They do need more guides though, you’re definitely right about that.
Anyway, they’re fairly new. I hope they will improve with time.
I’ve used this service for a one day ($1/day!!) experiment and it was PERFECT. they gave me root on an empty machine (Ubuntu 8.04 x64) and I did all my tests on it (I even upgraded the Kernal of this node!!!)
Internet speed is decent ~ 1024 KBps.
It was a good place to be in
At first I thought VPS.NET was the right choice; good speed, fexibility, technology, data centre etc. But not for too long. I configured a private DNS server in their space and it did not work, contacted the support and still didnt get to work. I wanted my DNS sever like
ns1.domain.com
ns2.domain.com
After lot of days of passing multiple messages every day, they said I have to enter IP address also. When I enter IP address through the domain register it basically fowards to the IP, so this is nothing fixed by VPS.NET
Hope this helps other host seekers. Now I’m looking for moving out.
Anyone who had good experience with VPS.net, has got to be a very lucky person. Please, please, please, do yourself a favor and stay away from these people. reliability is non existent and Customer support is meaningless here. just this month,our site was down for 8 days, YES, 8 days and now, today, the site has been down for 5 hours already and they are telling me they will get it fixed in the “next couple of hours”
“supreme Support”, is nothing more than a joke and it can take up to an hour just to gt a reply on a Critical ticket. Don’t buy into their “5 minute response time” it is just not gonna happen.
Their customer support is another sad story. Listen to this,,, they do not even queue calls and you could be calling and calling ans calling and they keep on telling you to call back again as there is no one available to help.
Stay away guys, These people could make your life miserable and ruin your business
I don’t think it’s as uncommon as you think to have good experiences with VPS.net. Aside from a DDoS attack and a power outage that caused complications, I haven’t had any downtimes that weren’t a result of my lack of experience with server administration.
If you know how to administer a server, I highly doubt it should be a problem. Joost de Valk doesn’t have issues with them, and Cats Who Code has been running on the same datacenter as I for a couple of weeks now.
Signed up – I made an error an selected the wrong number of nodes. No way to progress without intercession from billing… oh, they are closed over the weekend. So, nothing for 48 hours!
So much for high-speed deployment – they also don’t tell you they are closed???
Disappointing to say the least!
Horrible company. After dealing for years with server burnups and 2 total destructions of my site by Midphase I was told to move to vps.net. (at first I didn’t even know it was the same company) 3 months went by after inital horrible problems in migration. I had high hopes they were different (despite being the same company), they are not. Support is horrible to say the least, as many have said, if you aren’t a nasa engineer just too lazy to run you own server from home, you can forget help from them. You’ll get 5 different front end support people who’ll do 5 different “Solutions” on your site and still leave you down. Just like Midphase, if they mess up something (hardware failures abound, glitches, misconfigurations, ect) they will blame you, admit they havent’t a clue, and tell you to go to PAID support. Yes, paid support just to find out what went wrong when you yourself never changed a thing or touched a thing. If you have a single bit of self survival instanct, avoid vps.net and all their services (The UK2 group) like the plauge. Unless of course you enjoy headaches, anger, frustration, and even a good bit of smarmy abuse.
It sounds like you’re comparing apples to oranges here. Midphase aims their services at a different niche than those seeking a VPS. It’s standard, from any company, to expect the customer to manage their VPS without help, unless you’re looking for a “managed” plan, which is essentially what VPS.net’s paid support it.
Yes, it takes specialized knowledge to run an unmanageable VPS. If you aren’t a “nasa engineer,” you should be looking for a managed VPS, rather than a do-it-yourself service.
Wrong, up until VERY recently Midphase had (And probably still does, unless they’ve managed to get all their VPS clients moved by now) a total vps package, a very good one actually if only the techs behind it could keep their servers from burning up and crashing like wingless planes every other week. They did indeed begin pushing all VPS customers out (Shunting them to VPS.net actually) to concentrate on the simpler and less responsibility required “niche” of small simple shared server websites. I do agree with you though that IF a client wishes to do anything but HOST/PARK a finished and virtually unchanging website (Aside from simple databse manuipulation of accounts…say a static game for instance) then yes, they should learn what is required to accomodate their actions and activities. However that is not the total market, there are many people who use VPS servers to host bigger websites or games that require more space and power for a database but do not know how/nor need to know the finer points of in depth ITTech because those sites are unchanging (Code,settings, configurations, ect). BUT in conclusion, that was not the point of my review, REGARDLESS of the knowledge of the client, when changes, actions or issues on the servers end cause problems within a client’s site it should be the responsibility of the HOST to address, investigate and problem solve said issues and deliver to the client an honest, understandable and workable solution. VPS.net (UK2 group in general) have the horrible habit of sticking to the UNETHICAL ideal that “unmanaged” means “we have no responsibility what-so-ever, even if it is our issues that cause a problem.” They will and have ignored, shunted, passed the buck, side-stepped and flat out lied on more than one occasion and I’m just 1 client, who was with midphase for 6 years!…a google search can find you a whole lot more. They spend more time training their front line support on how best to shunt clients to paid support and how to side-step support questions than they do on the ins and outs of their own service and actual ITTech knowledge. But you’re right, if a client wants to manipulate their vps they should know what they are doing OR pay for someone to do it for them. But that does not mean “We have no responsibilities here” and yet THAT is the actual mantra of VPS.net in my experience and many many others.
The proof UK2 sucks: I am a member of West Host for many years. Truly and hands down THE best hosting company ever. Never had an issue that did not get solved, never ONCE had a major event go down with them.
Enters UK2.
First, they pull the same “move to the Cloud. VPS is done.” Everybody freaks hard enough that they get a bit scared and back off “allowing” current VPS set ups to stay put but that is it.
Then….BAM. A MAJOR data center screw up, servers in some accounts gone for two days.
I knew it the moment I got the letter from West Host this was bad, bad, bad news…My fears were confirmed further by the fact the company used the EXACT same excuse that VPS.net used when THEY had they major melt down last year: It wasn’t us, it was a fire in the data center.
Wow. You ought put some extinguishers in there Don’t ya think? Because that is TWO major fires in one year.
——
This outfit is NOT ready for prime time. Regardless of whether you know or not know enough about Linux the fact remains: Their set up is fragile. Period. They keep “adding” features and this and that, but their cloud is more like a fog…no quite a cloud yet and very confusing. And they do themselves no favors by ignoring the criticism, but the fact is their shinny new toy sort feels juts like that…a very nice, very cool, very neat toy, but not a real tool….
If you are running a “flake-site” (another file sharing site, another whatever-blog advertising network, another millionth whatever-Tube clone, etc, etc) then this is cheap useful web service. By this I mean if eventually crashing, eventually loosing stuff or having so-so service matters not.
If you are running a corporate-level or a robust branded site – or even more importantly, if you are reselling or hosting the clients yourself- you do yourself a great diservice by using these guys and your putting yourself at risk of getting sued or worst. REMEMBER that once you take on to your client’s hosting YOU become responsable for them and they cannot take legal action against VPS.net, they take legal action against you REGARDLESS of whether it was the fault of VPS.net or not. So think twice before you get in bed with these guys OR MANY of the others just like them.
Personally, I am sticking to Amazon for now. More complicated and certainly more corporate and not as much of a friendly “door room” vibe that these guys have, but in the long run safer and a hell of a lot more stable.
I had some problems at first with VPS.net but the staff helped me very quickly. They’re not perfect but they answer your emails in less than 10 minutes, which is great and quite rare.
They also gave me a free month of hosting to apologize for several hours downtime.
In my opinion, it’s not bad results at all, not to mention that their server are very fast.
Just feel like they are still in beta stage after 1 year of live service:
1) lacks of documentation
2) remove image/template without announcement
3) failled backup system
4) incompetent support
5) hardware failure
You can simply not rely on their uptime, if you website require reliable uptime do not use VPS.net.
Simply notice that some part of their forums are private, guess what, lots of issue are posted there.