This is a review of HostUS‘s (affiliate links within this post) unmanaged Virtual Private Servers (VPS) where I have installed the control panel VestaCP.
I have a few VPS’s with HostUS namely because they are international. This blog is hosted on a VPS they provide in England. I have been with them since February 2015. It’s been over a year so I think I’m well informed to provide a review that is of my own opinion.
UPDATE: After almost 2 years of hosting with HostUS I have pulled the plug on 6 servers I had with them. Recently they had terrible slow nodes and very slow response times to support requests (when the nodes were slow). Read more for the in-depth review.
The final goodbye
I have always told praise of HostUS even through their terrible time under DDoS attacks, but a few days ago the node being slow and unresponsive coupled with a slow ticket reply meant I had to move 6 of my servers. First and foremost, I still have one server with them on node LON01-VZ72. So if you’re on that node, it’s got good uptime. For me though, node LON01-VZ86 was a killer.
I had contacted them on a few occasions over the past few weeks regarding the IOWAIT being terribly high which causes the server to become unresponsive. They managed to fix it, offered me a few days refund for bringing it to their attention – it kept me happy. However, on the 14th January I opened a ticket at 13:15 telling them the same thing. Almost 5 hours later and no reply to my ticket I decided to jump ship.
FreeVPS Benchmark Test
First of all, their servers which host the VPS to me are very speedy, and I’ve provided the technical data below using FreeVPS‘s Benchmarking script. To be honest, I know of this tool but really don’t know much of what I’m reading (certain bits I do, others it’s just a numbers game). All I can vouch for here is a super fast WordPress installation. I’ve done many set-ups on the same VPS with installs getting millions of hits a month (with 10+ plugins), and the installation is still performing fast. Props to them, as Google now loves me.
System Info ----------- Processor : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1270 v5 @ 3.60GHz CPU Cores : 4 Frequency : 3600.025 MHz Memory : 6144 MB Swap : 6144 MB Uptime : 17:39, OS : CentOS release 6.7 (Final) Arch : x86_64 (64 Bit) Speedtest (IPv4 only) --------------------- Location Provider Speed CDN Cachefly 66.4MB/s Atlanta, GA, US Coloat 5.98MB/s Dallas, TX, US Softlayer 18.8MB/s Seattle, WA, US Softlayer 15.7MB/s San Jose, CA, US Softlayer 14.5MB/s Washington, DC, US Softlayer 1.26MB/s Tokyo, Japan Linode 8.44MB/s Singapore Softlayer 5.05MB/s Rotterdam, Netherlands id3.net 88.9MB/s Haarlem, Netherlands Leaseweb 95.5MB/s Disk Speed ---------- I/O (1st run) : 134 MB/s I/O (2nd run) : 256 MB/s I/O (3rd run) : 246 MB/s Average I/O : 212 MB/s
HostUS Support
I’ve dealt with HostUS support a few times. It’s either me asking more pre-sales questions or I’m just too tired to use my brain, so I ask stupid ones. Anyway, all of which receive a reply within 5-10 minutes (except two tickets that took 1-2 hours), either way I think that’s fantastic. I feel like I’m virtually chatting, rather than waiting on a reply.
VPS around the globe
That’s right, HostUS can provide locations in the following:
- Atlanta
- Dallas
- Los Angeles
- Washington DC
- London
- Hong Kong
- Sydney
- Singapore
What more could you want?!
VestaCP VPS control panel
I think a lot of us are loving VestaCP – I know I am. I thought I would let you know that my installation of VestaCP on one of HostUS‘s VPS’s is super fast and very easy. As long as you start with a clean installation then you’re good to go; and it’s as simple as using VestaCP’s advanced install settings function on their homepage to completely customise the server install.
I will say this: make sure you get the customisation right the first time as it’s not as easy as you think to change things in future if you decide to switch it up, unless of course you know what you’re doing. A default of PHP-FPM + NGINX will work for the web server as it already has templates for WordPress so it’ll work right out of the box, and for e-mail I would recommend exim + dovecot + spamassassin. You may notice there’s no Virus scanner here but that’s because it likes to eat memory, and let’s be fair your users should have virus scanners on their computers in this day and age. Don’t forget to add an extra level of spam protection by adding some custom rules to SpamAssassin.
Conclusion
I’m in the process of migrating everything to HostUS because they’re reliable and their servers are fast, which is what Google wants these days. Oh, and of course because they’re international. I suggest you do the same. As of writing this post I have been with them for 15 months, so come on – sign up!
Hi Steven. I’ve landed at his blog post because of two reasons. I was looking for reviews of HostUs and I was going to use the VPS for installing VestaCP. Are you still happy with HostUs? And if you talk about a clean install, exactly what does a clean installation of VestaCP mean?
I have been with them since February 2015 – I’m very happy. Essentially a clean install means when you order your VPS with any default Operating System – that’s a clean install.
Thanks Steve. Think I’ve almost got my VPS from HostUS. There was a tiny hickup with the PayPal system at HostUS but by tonight when I get home I think I’ll be ready to start. OK got the clean install now. No default OS. Thanks for the tip.
Let me know if you need any help!
Thanks very much. Last night I was thinking about you as I was loading VestaCP on my HostUS VPS. I was amazed at how well the DNS went, and how fast my VPS is – I’ve got the cheapest one in the range but I tell you the experience from HostUS including sales staff was awesome, exactly how you described it. The installation of Vesta was very smooth. Only big hickup was the phpmyadmin, and then when I searched for answers I landed with a script by VestaCP so that got solved. I even got a WordPress site up, however now have an issue with WP asking for FTP every time I want to install a plugin or theme. I tried define(‘FS_METHOD’,’direct’); solution and that didn’t help either – like it no longer asks for FTP, but says it has deleted a theme for example, and the theme hasn’t been deleted. I wish there was a way that I can get WP to reinstall itself, anyway will Google it further and if I don’t find a solution will start fresh tonight. Like right from rebuilding the OS, and reinstalling Vesta and WordPress, may not be a bad idea so I can get more experience. 🙂
That’s great news!
Did you install WordPress manually i.e. by uploading all the files via FTP?
WordPress only wants FTP details when it cannot write to the directory or that the user/group of the files/directory are different than that of the user. Usually it happens if you’ve installed WP by SSH.
sudo chown -R USER:USER /path/to/wordpress
I figured it out! When I installed Vesta Panel I decided to use SFTP instead of installing an FTP server. So of course SFTP means I installed the WordPress as ROOT. WordPress was looking for ADMIN ownership of public_html. Took HOURS of research at wordpress.org and vesta panel forum to finally realize that :). So my solution is probably close to yours except I gave public_html ownership:
cd /home/admin/web/domain.tld/public_html
chown admin -R *
I sniffed this command out quite deep in the searches of the many posts about the subject that had been posted up at the VestaPanel Forum. Am now a member there as well 🙂 Everything is working perfect now. What was great – I didn’t expect it to – BUT my Duplicator Plugin is working as well. I find that php setup needs to be just so for Duplicator to be OK. VestaCP passed the Duplicator Test. 🙂
Again, HostUS speed is AWESOME! And VestaCP super light. They go beautiful together. Thanks for your help!