Best VPS Hosting (2023)

Comparing the best VPS hosting (Uptime, Features & Support)

I’ve spent several years testing and reviewing VPS providers – I’ve narrowed my search down to the best VPS hosting in this detailed guide.

When it comes to thinking about web hosting, many people choose shared web hosting as it’s affordable and a good starting point for beginners.

However, as your website grows, your hosting service needs to support it as your needs will increase. That’s where virtual private server (VPS) hosting comes into its own.

VPS hosting customers will still share a server with other websites, but there are fewer websites compared to shared hosting.

VPS plans tend to offer more resources and allow customers to increase or decrease resources as and when required. For this reason, your website should respond quickly and offer a faster experience for your website visitors.

Much like shared hosting, there are loads of VPS web hosts to choose from, so choosing the best VPS hosting can be a tricky thing. Fear not my friends, you have landed in the right place, as I’ve personally signed up to all of the VPS services on this list to help you find the best VPS hosting.

I took the time to research a large amount of VPS hosting providers as well as their services, performance, pros and cons, and more.

Best overall VPS web host

Best VPS runner up

Best VPS host for performance

also great

Best for customer support

Best reliable VPS web host

Best VPS host for resources

Finding the best VPS host hasn’t been easy, however, I suggest you read my guide below to help you decide on the best provider for your needs.

Dive in and let’s begin!

Inside This Article...

1. Liquid Web

Speed & Performance

 4.5/5

Pricing

 3/5

Features

 4.5/5

Liquid Web Pros:

Liquid Web Cons:

Read our full review

Liquid Web boast a high-end hosting service, offering a range of cloud, dedicated, reseller, VPS, and WordPress servers. For businesses who want to maintain their online presence, or for high-traffic websites and enterprises, look no further than Liquid Web. Opting for managed hosting with Liquid Web gets you the full VIP experience, allowing you to spend time on what matters the most – your business and your website.

Speed & Performance

Liquid Web offers a 100% uptime SLA. There are certain situations that are not in the scope of this SLA including scheduled network maintenance, hardware and software maintenance, malicious attacks, legal actions, and cPanel issues.

If for any reason Liquid Web cannot keep to their SLA, they will offer a percentage of compensation. In addition to this, Liquid Web offers response time SLAs for their customer support agents which we’ll go into more detail later on.

In 2020, Liquid Web maintained an uptime of 99.998% across all of their services. We’re pleased to confirm that after signing up to Liquid Web in May 2020, they have consistently provided our test website with 100% uptime.

In addition to this, my website was averaging out at a 521ms response time. Using Bitcatcha, I wanted to investigate this in more detail, so after inputting my website’s URL into their speed checker, I was really happy to see that my website’s performance scored an A+!

My response time was the quickest in US (E) with a mere 29ms, followed closely by Canada (33ms) and London US (W) (78ms). In terms of speed and performance, it’s true that you get what you pay for, and that’s clear with Liquid Web’s VPS hosting.

Pricing

Liquid Web’s VPS hosting plans are actually the most affordable service they offer. From $15 per month you can get 2 vCPU, 40GB SSD storage, 10TB bandwidth, and Linux with InterWorx, Plesk Web Pro, or cPanel Admin.

They are also one of the few web hosts that allow customers to pay monthly, 12-monthly, or 2-yearly. Of course, paying upfront gets you the biggest discount. If you choose to pay monthly, the very affordable price of $15 per month shoots up to a whopping $59 per month.

Features

Liquid Web VPS hosting is certainly a cut above the rest. All VPS servers include the choice of Windows or Linux operating systems, as well as Liquid Web’s 100% uptime SLA.

Their VPS servers boast some pretty incredible features too, including:

CloudFlare CDN
DDoS protection
Root access
Integrated firewall
Dedicated IP addresses

Liquid Web Pros:

Liquid Web Cons:

2. InMotion Hosting

Speed & Performance

 4.5/5

Pricing

 3/5

Features

 4.5/5

InMotion Hosting Pros:

InMotiong Hosting Cons:

Read our full review

InMotion Hosting offers a wide range of web hosting, including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, and VPS hosting. They offer two types of VPS hosting; managed VPS hosting and self-managed cloud VPS hosting. If you don’t feel comfortable setting up your own server and managing the settings, I’d recommend the managed option. However, if you have some server experience, their self-managed VPS plans will give you more control.

Speed & Performance

InMotion Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, meaning your website should never be offline for more than 0.1% of the time. Some other web hosts offer a 99.99% or even 100% uptime guarantee, so at first, I was a bit wary of InMotion’s reliability.

After signing up to InMotion, I monitored my VPS hosted website with UptimeRobot. This provided me with details of my website’s uptime and response time, as well as any downtime, and how long it lasted for. The data looks at the last 24 hours, 7 days, and 30 days.

My website’s uptime totalled 99.998% over the last 30 days. It’s not 100% but it’s not bad either! They met their SLA which is the main thing, and the downtime I experienced was only for a matter of seconds, so it’s hard to grumble (though other hosts I’ve tested have offered me 100% uptime. The server response time was also good at just 311.04ms, which is just over 0.3 seconds.

After monitoring my website with UptimeRobot, I used Bitcatcha to log my website’s server response time (in real-time). The results were fantastic, scoring an A+ in terms of performance, with super-fast server response times. My website’s response time in U.S. (W) was 51ms and U.S. (E) was 30ms! It doesn’t get much better than that.

Pricing

	VPS-1000HA-S	VPS-2000HA-S	VPS-3000HA-S
RAM	4GB	6GB	8GB
Storage	75GB SSD	150GB SSD	260GB SSD
Bandwidth	4TB	5TB	6TB
Free SSL	Yes	Yes	Yes
cPanel + WHM	Yes	Yes	Yes
Price	$29.99/mo	$49.99/mo	$83.99/mo

InMotion Hosting’s VPS plans are quite expensive in comparison to other VPS hosts, however, these are their managed VPS plans.

It’s worth taking into consideration the amount of RAM, bandwidth, and storage you get with InMotion Hosting compared to other hosts, as I feel despite their high prices, they are very generous.

InMotion Hosting is certainly more of an upmarket VPS host if I had to put a name to it, ideal for business customers who want exceptional customer support and service.

Features

InMotion Hosting’s VPS plans come with plenty of features to make the cost of their plans worth the money. For example, all plans include access to cPanel and WHM (which can be expensive on its own).

Let’s take a look at InMotion’s best features:

High availability (real-time redundancy)
Automatic server snapshots and backups
Root access
eCommerce optimized
Free site migrations
90-day money-back guarantee

InMotion Hosting Pros:

InMotion Hosting Cons:

3. BlueHost

Speed & Performance

 4.5/5

Pricing

 4/5

Features

 4/5

BlueHost Pros:

BlueHost Cons:

Read our full review

BlueHost may be better known for their shared and WordPress hosting, however, they also offer some pretty fantastic VPS hosting too. In fact, I ranked BlueHost the best VPS web host for performance and uptime. They are also one of the few VPS hosts that include a free domain for 1 year and offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. There are lots of reasons why I love BlueHost, so let’s take a look at exactly why that is.

Speed & Performance

BlueHost is a bit of a risky hosting provider in that they don’t provide any kind of uptime guarantee. This can be a bit concerning, especially when you’re forking out nearly $20 per month on hosting.

However, much like their shared hosting, BlueHost has always outperformed any expectations I have of them. Even though they don’t honour uptime SLAs, they always seem to pull through, this time offering an outstanding 100% uptime over the last 30 days.

The only downtime I have had with BlueHost so far was back in April, and that lasted just 1 minute. Another area BlueHost always seem to excel in is their server response times. According to UptimeRobot, my server response time averaged out at 123.26ms in the last 24 hours.

Knocking the ball straight out the park, BlueHost’s Bitcatcha results came in with top marks. In the U.S. (E) results, my website’s server recorded a response time of just 9ms! That’s absolutely insane, just less than 0.1 seconds, which I think is the fastest server response time I’ve ever seen or experienced. What I’m trying to say is if you’re looking for a VPS server that’s reliable and fast, BlueHost is going to be hard to beat.

Pricing

	Standard	Enhanced	Ultimate
Cores	2	2	4
Storage	30GB SSD	60GB SSD	120GB SSD
RAM	2GB	4GB	8GB
Bandwidth	1TB	2TB	3TB
IP Addresses	1	2	2
Free Domain	Yes	Yes	Yes
30-day money-back guarantee	Yes	Yes	Yes
24/7 support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Price	$19.99/mo	$29.99/mo	$59.99/mo

BlueHost’s VPS hosting pricing plans are cheaper than InMotion’s. However, you’ll also see that you get fewer resources in terms of storage, RAM, and bandwidth. Of course, if you’re paying less, you kind of expect to get what you pay for.

Considering the free domain, 24/7 support, IP addresses, and other features, I think BlueHost’s pricing is actually quite fair. By no means is it the cheapest on the market, but cheap isn’t necessarily a good thing. I think BlueHost’s VPS plans are reasonable and well-balanced, offering a suitable starting point for beginners and experts alike.

Features

BlueHost has been known for raising the bar in terms of features. Their pricing isn’t the most affordable out there, but you certainly get a lot of extras. Unlike many web hosts, BlueHost offer a free domain name for 1 year and a free SSL certificate.

On top of this, they also boast the following:

Full root access and enhanced cPanel
Open-source technology including OpenStack and KVM
Instant provisioning
Guaranteed resources
Optional add-ons including domain privacy + protection and SiteLock

BlueHost Pros:

BlueHost Cons:

4. A2 Hosting

Speed & Performance

 3.5/5

Pricing

 4.5/5

Features

 3/5

A2 Hosting Pros:

A2 Hosting Cons:

Read our full review

A2 Hosting is an ideal web host for VPS hosting if you’re a beginner or not particularly confident about VPS hosting. They have three types of VPS hosting which include unmanaged VPS, managed VPS, and core VPS. Their VPS hosting is incredible value for money and their support team are at hand whenever you need them and will treat you like an actual human being (unlike some web hosts).

Speed & Performance

A2 Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Whilst a lot of hosts have this kind of guarantee, I would prefer it if more hosts were able to offer 99.99% as this would instil a lot more confidence in existing and potential customers.

Needless to say, I signed up for A2 Hosting’s unmanaged VPS plan and started monitoring my website with UptimeRobot. Regardless of their low uptime guarantee, I was pleasantly surprised with my website’s actual uptime.

I honestly wasn’t expecting such great things from A2 Hosting, considering their customer support is so good too. In the last 30 days, my website had 100% uptime, with my only downtime recorded back in January 2020 which lasted a mere 1 minute. In the last 24 hours, my servers response time was 889.55ms. As we know, UptimeRobot records an average speed over a certain period, whereas Bitcatcha records server response time in real-time.

I didn’t expect much from my Bitcatcha results given my servers response time wasn’t great over the past 24 hours. Whilst the response times weren’t as good as other hosts like InMotion Hosting and BlueHost, again, A2 Hosting surprised me. All of my response times against the locations listed were under 300ms, which is a great result.

Pricing

	Entry	Mid	Elite
Storage	20GB	30GB	50GB
Cores	1	1	4
Transfer	2TB	2TB	2TB
RAM	512MB	1GB	1GB
SSD	Yes	Yes	Yes
Root Access	Yes	Yes	Yes
Anytime money-back guarantee	Yes	Yes	Yes
Price	$5/mo	$10/mo	$15/mo

In comparison to the other VPS hosts we’ve reviewed so far, A2 Hosting is by far the cheapest web host. Unmanaged VPS prices start from as little as $5 per month, which is incredible value for money.

Their pricing plans certainly don’t offer as much as other hosts, and you’ll pay less for the privilege, but they are enough to get you started and are suitable for VPS beginners, or experienced developers who don’t need that many resources.

Features

A2 Hosting has multiple VPS plans, all offering different features. As you can imagine, their managed VPS plans offer quite a bit more than their unmanaged plans, however, that doesn’t mean their features aren’t good.

Considering their low prices, let’s take a look at A2 Hosting’s best features:

24/7/365 support (which is honestly amazing)
Choice of server location and SSD drives for enhanced speed
Root access and choice of Linux OS
Perpetual security
Anytime money-back guarantee

A2 Hosting Pros:

A2 Hosting Cons:

5. HostGator

Speed & Performance

 3/5

Pricing

 3.5/5

Features

 3/5

HostGator Pros:

HostGator Cons:

Read our full review

HostGator are a great all-round web host for shared hosting and VPS hosting. Unfortunately what lets them down is their pricing plans as they are quite expensive compared to other hosts, whilst weighing up their features.

Needless to say, HostGator are a reliable web host, offering great uptime and fast speeds, so if you don’t mind paying more for a host that won’t let you down, I can definitely recommend HostGator. If HostGator is the best choice of VPS host for you, I would advise signing up for a longer-term as you’ll get a better discount.

Speed & Performance

HostGator is a little different to most web hosts in that it offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee. Although this is only 0.01% of a difference in comparison to other hosts, it makes all the differences and provides a lot more reassurance to people.

Once I had signed up to HostGator, I input my website’s details into UptimeRobot so that I could monitor my uptime and response time. This kind of data is useful as it shows you just how reliable a web host is, and you can monitor in set intervals, e.g. every 5 minutes.

HostGator’s results were exceptional. In the last 24 hours, 7 days, and 30 days, my website hasn’t experienced a single second of downtime, with 100% uptime. This is what reliable web hosting looks like, and I can see why so many people rate HostGator so highly.

My website’s server response time was nowhere near as fast as other hosts I’ve reviewed, and in fact, it was slightly disappointing. However, it’s not the end of the world, and there are other things you can do to speed your website up. For example, a CDN from CloudFlare will help to alleviate some server stress when delivering content to your website visitors.

Although my server’s response time results weren’t great with UptimeRobot, the Bitcatcha results appear a lot better. These results are produced in real-time, which means as I write this review, these are the response times I’m experiencing. In the U.S. (W) the server’s response time was 153ms and U.S. (E) was 88ms.

Pricing

	Snappy 2000	Snappy 4000	Snappy 8000
RAM	2GB	4GB	8GB
Cores	2	2	4
Storage	80GB	100GB	160GB
Bandwidth	1.5TB	2TB	3TB
Price	$19.95/mo	$29.95/mo	$39.95/mo

HostGator’s VPS pricing is very similar to BlueHost. In fact, they offer almost the same resources at the same cost. However, if you compare HostGator’s pricing to A2 Hosting’s pricing, you’ll see there’s a big difference in cost, and actually not that much difference in terms of resources, making A2 Hosting a lot more affordable.

On the flip side, HostGator do offer insane reliability and good server response times. Sometimes paying more does get you a better service and if you want your server to perform well and offer good features, you’ll need to dish out some extra dollars. However, I do think HostGator’s pricing is a little too expensive for my liking versus their features.

Features

Paying more for HostGator’s VPS plans, you’d expect more features than other web hosts. However, that’s not really the case. I’m not saying their features aren’t good, because they are, but other hosts do offer better value for money.

Here are some of HostGator’s finest VPS features:

Full root access
100% uptime results in my tests
Scalable resources you can add at anytime
Weekly off-site backups
Free cPanel to cPanel website migrations
24/7 customer support

HostGator Pros:

HostGator Cons:

6. HostPapa

Speed & Performance

 2.5/5

Pricing

 3/5

Features

 3/5

HostPapa Pros:

HostPapa Cons:

Read our full review

HostPapa is no mean feat, serving up delicious VPS hosting that will leave you wanting more. Their VPS hosting plans are on the more expensive side, but in terms of resources, you’ll be able to host a full-blown business website with bags of storage space and RAM. They aren’t as well known as some of the other hosts in this list, but they are worth considering, especially since they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Speed & Performance

HostPapa guarantees your website will be up 99.9% of the time. Much like other web hosts, this seems to be a common uptime guarantee now offered. As lots of people haven’t heard of HostPapa before, and their brand is a little gimmicky, I was initially worried they wouldn’t perform well.

Given their expensive pricing, I cautiously signed up to HostPapa and started monitoring my website with HostPapa’s VPS hosting plan. The results were in and it was time to analyse them against the other hosts I’ve been reviewing.

In the past 24 hours and 7 days, my website has had 100% uptime which is obviously very cool. However, in the last 30 days, the average uptime of my website has been 99.985%. Of course, I can’t turn my nose up to this too much as it’s not a bad result, but it’s no match for other web hosts like A2 Hosting and BlueHost.

I was also a bit put off by the average response time of 1537.08ms. Hopefully, this is just a result of a few response time spikes which my website experienced at around midnight and 11 am.

Thankfully my website’s server response time results on Bitcatcha were more appealing compared to UptimeRobot. In the U.S. (W) the response time was 148ms, which is just over 0.1 second. In Sydney and Japan the response times were a little higher, almost reaching 300ms, however, that’s not where my audience is based so I’m pleased with the results.

Pricing

	Mercury	Venus	Earth	Mars	Jupiter
CPU Cores	4	4	8	8	12
Memory	2GB	4GB	8GB	16GB	32GB
SSD Storage	60GB	125GB	250GB	500GB	1TB
Transfer	1TB	2TB	2TB	4TB	8TB
Price	$19.99/mo	$59.99/mo	$109.99/mo	$169.99/mo	$249.99/mo

In my best VPS web hosts, HostPapa offers the most VPS pricing plans of all my reviews. However, their pricing is also the most expensive, ranging from $19.99 per month to $249.99 per month, which is way more than a dedicated server.

However, HostPapa also offers the most RAM than any other web host, with a total of 32GB on their Jupiter plan. Even their cheapest plan has 2GB RAM and 4 CPU cores which are a lot more than most hosts offer. After all, if you get more resources, expect to pay more money.

Features

Considering HostPapa’s expensive pricing, I expected quite a lot in terms of features. I know their resources are much better than most web hosts, but I still don’t feel their prices justify what’s on offer. Their features were certainly good, but felt pretty much the same level as a lot of the web hosts on this list:

Provisioned on blacklist free IP’s
Full root access
VPS management portal
Server ready in less than 60 seconds
Server firewall and DDoS protection
Free Let’s Encrypt SSL

HostPapa Pros:

HostPapa Cons:

About the Author...

David Morelo

David has a thirst for technology and has spent over a decade testing and reviewing web hosting companies worldwide to provide his readers with honest and accurate accounts of the companies he’s had direct experiences with. Above all, he is enthusiastic about providing in-depth and helpful guides at all levels, from beginners to experts.