Cheap VPS Hosting Providers: 8 Money-Saving Services

What’s important to understand about hosting is that most providers offer ‘new customer deals.’ These are promotional prices for hosting that last for a set period of time.

After the promotional period, your monthly price will renew at the regular rate. This may sound like a standard advertising trap, but some of the time periods are very generous! Just take a look at our table below:

As you can see, most promotion periods last between one and three years. For example, Dreamhost’s Basic plan (usually $15/month) costs just 10 dollars a month for three years. 

Other providers are a little more reserved in their promotions, but for the features you’re getting, they still represent great value. Bluehost’s Standard plan is available for $19.99/month for three years. And it’s only $10/month more after that.

So, now that you know the prices, let’s take a closer look at each provider and really find out what you get for your money. Before we start, a matter of security (literally) – all these providers offer an SSL security certificate, so we haven’t bothered mentioning it in each mini review.

If you’re worried about the price increase after a promotion ends, DreamHost is worth looking at. The amount you pay hardly changes – $10/month to $15/month.

On DreamHost’s Basic plan, you’ll only be getting 30GB of storage and 1GB of RAM. The storage space will be fine for most sites, but larger ones may struggle with a single gigabyte of RAM. The real selling points are its unlimited offerings: domains, email accounts and bandwidth, all as standard.

Where DreamHost falls down in our estimations is that it doesn’t give you root access. This means you won’t have full control over the server environment. DreamHost also lags behind in customer support, with no live chat service – so you might be saving money, but definitely not time.

Bluehost is renowned for its WordPress hosting packages, but it also has tons to offer its VPS customers. With an impressive uptime and an array of other features, it’s easy to see why.

Bluehost gives Standard plan users unlimited email accounts and domains, 2GB of RAM and 1TB of bandwidth. Its standout feature is a free domain, which is seldom offered among cheap VPS plans.

Bluehost also scored a 5/5 in our research for help and support, which is an invaluable part of the web hosting experience – and definitely worth a few extra bucks.

iPage is very much price-focused. Even its most expensive VPS hosting plan is under $100/month – a fee only rivalled by A2 Hosting. The major flaw, however, is its uptime. At only 99.94%, it’s one of the lowest we’ve tested.

So what’s good about A2? Well, on its Basic plan you get 1GB of RAM, 40GB of storage, optional root access, and your domain name free for the first year. There are plenty of ways to get help too, via live chat, phone, a ticket system, and its help center.

To be honest with you, based purely on price, HostPapa isn’t a great choice. Its promotional price of $19.99/month looks great on the surface, but scratch a little deeper and you’ll see that it’s only valid for a month. Then it increases to $49.99/month.

HostPapa’s features aren’t awful – you get unlimited domain and email accounts, and a 99.97% uptime is pretty decent. But the fact that backups will cost you a minimum of $35.88 as an extra is enough to keep your money firmly in your pockets.

GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain registrar. It has an intuitive AI (Artificial Intelligence) website builder, and offers web hosting as well. Its services are all above average, but it’s not unfair to call it a Jack of all trades.

Ironically, you don’t get a free domain with GoDaddy’s VPS hosting, nor do you get access to 24/7 live chat or ticket support. The majority of its features stand up, though: its uptime is a respectable 99.97%, and you do get unlimited bandwidth, which is a great bonus.

When it comes to VPS hosting, InMotion is very good. You’ll have to shell out a little more than you would for some other providers, but what you’re getting are quality features and service.

4GB of RAM, 75GB of storage, and 4TB of bandwidth – and that’s just on InMotion’s most rudimentary VPS plan. You’ll also say hello to optional root access, free backups, and unlimited CPU cores, email accounts, and domains.

If you can afford the $29.19/month fee, there’s really very little reason not to opt for an InMotion VPS hosting plan.

HostGator performed the best in our overall web hosting ratings, but it’s not the best specifically for VPS hosting. It does have some great features, though.

Feast your eyes on a whopping 120GB of storage, perfect for large websites with lots of high-quality imagery. Bandwidth of 1.5TB isn’t terrible either, and free backups are a nice little bonus.

Problems arise when you look at the renewal price ($89.95). That said, the promotional deal lasts three years, so that’s not as bad as it first seems. But still – anyone setting up a small to medium-size website shouldn’t have to shell out this much.

A2 Hosting prides itself on offering both Windows and Linux server hosting. Linux is far more common, but not many providers offer both. It also gives you 4GB of RAM, 75GB of storage and 2TB of bandwidth, all on its cheapest VPS plan.

The biggest reason why people opt for A2 as their VPS hosting provider is the help on offer. 24/7 phone and live chat support, a ticket system, and an intuitive knowledge center all lend themselves perfectly to the less technically able.

Promotional prices are great, but let’s be honest – it’s the long-term cost that’s most important. You don’t want to be happily paying $19.99 one month, only to then be hit with a $49.99/month bill the next (we’re looking at you, HostPapa).

So, with that in mind, here are the cheapest VPS hosting plans on offer, based on post-promotional price:

If you’re a real bargain hunter and don’t mind the upheaval, you could even change from one provider to the next after your promotional period expires. It’s more effort on your side, but you’ll never have to pay full price to host your site!

You should now have a clear idea of who the cheapest VPS providers are. Not only that, we’ve also run through a little bit about each provider to help you make the best decision based on your needs.

VPS hosting is cheaper for new customers because of promotions. These are ‘new customer’ monthly fees that usually last for the first one to three years. So, if you’re looking for cheap VPS hosting, here’s a recap of the eight cheapest out there:

8 Best Cheap VPS Hosting Services

1. DreamHost: $10.00/month
2. Bluehost: $19.99/month
3. iPage: $19.99/month
4. Hostpapa: $19.99/month
5. GoDaddy: $19.99/month
6. InMotion: $29.19/month
7. HostGator: $29.95/month
8. A2 Hosting: $32.99/month

How to Choose a Cheap VPS Hosting Provider

As we know, cheap doesn’t always mean value. If you’re looking for that perfect middle ground between cost-effective and great quality, here are a few things to consider:

• Uptime – Be wary of services with poor uptime. It may be cheap, but if your site goes down, you’re paying for nothing.
• Bandwidth – If you expect to get a few thousand visitors every week, bandwidth is important. Slow loading speeds can be the difference between someone browsing your site, or bouncing straight off it.
• Storage Space – For any site that has tons of web pages or high quality media (photos, videos etc.), be sure to pick a plan with ample storage space.
• Purpose of Website – It may sound obvious, but if you’re running a business website, things like free email accounts are a nice touch for employees to save you the hassle.

For example, we recommend Bluehost over DreamHost because, even though Bluehost is $10 more expensive, you’re investing in better quality, better customer service, and more features. Since it’s no small task to create your own website, we think that extra money is well worth it.

All of the providers mentioned in this article – apart from GoDaddy – have money-back guarantees of at least 30 days. So why not give them a whirl – after all, it won’t have to cost you a thing.

How much is VPS hosting?

The cost of VPS hosting can vary massively. You can pay as little as $2/month, or as much as $300/month. Most standard VPS hosting plans will cost you between $20-30/month. There are cheap promotional deals, but these tend to only last for the first one to three years.

What’s the difference between shared and VPS hosting?

Shared hosting is where your resources are split between multiple websites that are all hosted on the same server. The performance of other sites on the server will directly impact upon yours. With VPS hosting, you have more hardware and more control over your site’s quality and performance.

What are the benefits of VPS hosting?

VPS hosting gives you more resource and flexibility than shared hosting, at a significantly lower price than dedicated hosting. It’s a lovely middle ground between the two, where you can download your own software and have more of a say over your site’s security, performance and customization.

What’s the difference between managed and unmanaged VPS hosting?

Managed VPS hosting is where the set-up process is taken care of for you. You are also not responsible for dealing with security issues or bug fixes. With unmanaged, it’s all up to you. Indeed, unmanaged is typically cheaper, but is only usually used by developers and tech experts.