In this series of tutorials, we are going to focus on setting up various services using Ubuntu Linux, version 20.04 LTS. If you have it installed on your local machine, or already have a VPS with it running, great. You can move on. But if you are looking for a VPS provider, the options are seemingly unlimited.
If you google for VPS reviews and comparisons, the vast majority of the comparisons you will see are based on benchmarks that are essentially splitting hairs. In other words, for the most part, if the differences between most of them change how your server will run in a noticeable way, you are clearly doing some very heavy lifting and surely already know exactly what you need. Hence, there is no point in reading this page.
So given that a thousand people will have a thousand different opinions, the vast majority of the "Best VPS Provider" websites you find out there are making affiliate income, and tend to rank them in order of how much they get paid or rewarded if you sign up than how good they actually are. Fair enough, though. People that make these sites need to eat, too, right?
We just want to be entirely honest about that before we make any suggestions. What you see below will be full and total disclosure, and does not mean that what we list here is better or worse than another host, unless the difference is just too glaring. We will also tell you if we get anything out of you signing up with them.
Vultr - Get $100 credit when you sign up with this link.
Vultr is one of the best (and best known) VPS hosts out there. We have been using them for a few years for some of our servers, and their service is excellent. Very fast, lots of datacenters, fast, and great uptime. They offer servers starting at $5.00 per month on the low end, and scale up to just about anything you could want. They also offer a backup service starting at 20% of your VPS price, making the $5.00 service $6.00 per month. Their UI is great as well!
Disclosure: If you sign up through our link, you will get a $100 credit on your account after to be used in the first 14 days of service. We get $35 after the 14 days once you spend $35. So, we super appreciate your support of us, and you get something, too!
UpCloud - Get $25 credit when you sign up with this link.
UpCloud is a fantastic VPS host. We have been using them for a few years, and their service is excellent. Very fast servers, lots of datacenters, fast, and great uptime. They offer servers starting at $5.00 per month on the low end, and scale up to just about anything you could want. They also offer a backup service starting at 20% of your VPS price, making the $5.00 service $6.00 per month. Not bad at all.
Disclosure: If you sign up through our link, you will get a $25 credit on your account after 28 days, and so will we.
Possibly one of the better known VPS providers, they also have servers starting at low as $5 per month, and reliable, fast service. We used to have our sites on DigitalOcean, but moved to UpCloud and Vultr. Our reason for moving had nothing to do with price, but because we didn't like their backup service, which is less configurable than UpCloud and Vultr. We also feel the UpCloud servers are faster, but not enough to make too much of a difference.
Disclosure: If you sign up through our link, you will get a $100 credit on your account over 60 days. Once you have spent $25 on your account, we will get a $25 credit on our own account. You may wonder why would would care since we use UpCloud. Simply put, if we have spare credit on DigitalOcean, we may use that credit for some "test" servers used in building tutorials on this site.
Antoher better known VPS provider, they also have servers starting at low as $5 per month, and reliable, fast service. We have had servers here, and left because of features we felt were lacking. However, they have significantly improved lately, and we would have no problem using them.
Disclosure: If you sign up through our link, you will get a $100 credit on your account over 60 days. Once you have spent $25 on your account, we will get a $25 credit on our own account. You may wonder why would would care since we use UpCloud. Simply put, if we have spare credit on Linode, we may use that credit for some "test" servers used in building tutorials on this site.
And if you are looking for a server for which we don't get any bounty, have at it! We would advise you stick with services like the ones listed above that specifically specialze in high-availability could servers, and not mass-market shared hosting.