Anyone involved in digital marketing needs a personal virtual private server (or VPS) at some point. They are extremely reliable as you can improve your website’s performance, can have greater control over the root environment, and can upscale your website whenever you want.
With so many VPS service providers available on the internet today, we will take a look at a provider that is known for giving us the fastest VPS servers with the best value per dollar on this segment. We will take a look at its features, what we liked, what we disliked, and whether it is worth spending time and money on this VPS service provider.
About ScalaHosting
ScalaHosting have been serving their customers since 2007 and are based in the United States. They provide shared hosting, reseller hosting, email hosting services and have dedicated servers located in the US and countries in Asia and Europe.
There are lots of VPS service providers that you can find on the internet. But what makes ScalaHosting stand out among them is that they provide the greatest value per dollar in this segment. They are completely independent of any third-party providers, so you can get your personal virtual server for the lowest of prices. With their SPanel that comes for free with all the VPS server plans, you can get access to any new updates or features that they release.
They have gained a reputation over the years for their incredible speeds, customer support, and a ton of features. Even their cheapest plans come jam-packed with features that will benefit anyone.
At present, they have shifted their objectives from profits to innovation. They have developed tools such as SPanel that allow you to control your VPS easily or their cybersecurity system, SShield, which will protect your website from harmful attacks. Their self-developed SWordPress Manager will take care of all your WordPress SEO and help you manage your website like a pro.
What We Liked about ScalaHosting
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Loading Time
The first thing anyone should look for when investing money in a virtual server service is the load time. It is the time taken by the server to respond when a user visits the page. The loading speed of a server is critical as it is directly related to the bounce rates of your website as it affects the visitor’s user experience.
The response rates of ScalaHosting VPS servers are excellent. The average response time of their VPS servers was only 151.7ms. Germany had the fastest speeds with only 30ms of delay. ScalaHosting is surely one of the fastest VPS server providers that you can find in the market.
This is highly beneficial for website owners as Google needs websites to have high response rates in order to get high rankings on the search engine.
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Availability
The uptime or the availability of a server determines its reliability. ScalaHosting provides its users a 99.9% uptime guarantee. The best part of ScalaHosting is that they will credit the users if the downtime of a website increases too much. It provides a tiered credit system where you will get credit based on the uptime of a server. If it goes below 99%, then the user is fully refunded.
Ever since June 2020, the uptime of their VPS servers has remained a solid 97.49% which is slightly lower compared to what they had promised, but still great. The same goes for their hosting servers, with an uptime of 99.97%.
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Daily Backups
There are times when you need to change your website for different purposes. In such cases, keeping a backup of your website is vital as there may be times when you may need to get back to an older version of your site.
ScalaHosting is really helpful when you change websites. It allows you to keep a backup of your data for the last seven days. And the best part is that it is available in their cheapest plan of VPS services.
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Lots of Services in Every Plan
ScalaHosting has lots of affordable services, and you can choose any one of them according to your needs.
With every VPS plan you buy, you can get built-in features worth $74. This is what makes ScalaHosting absolutely amazing, as no other service provider can give you so many features for such low prices.
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Custom VPS Plans
One thing we really liked about ScalaHosting is its customizable VPS plans. You can either select any of the preset plans from their website, or you can build your own VPS by choosing the number of cores, memory size, and storage space by yourself. You can also choose data centers and control panels from their menu. After you have selected the specs of your VPS, ScalaHosting will charge you accordingly.
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Great Customer Service
ScalaHosting’s customer service is amazing. They will respond in 30 seconds in live chat and 15 minutes in the ticket system. They are extremely well-behaved and cooperative, and all our questions were answered as soon as possible.
What We Disliked about ScalaHosting
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Sudden Price Hikes on Renewal
The value for money of their VPS services can be compared to none. But one thing that we felt disappointed about is their sudden price hike on every plan on renewal. For example, the cheapest package of ScalaHosting’s VPS servers costs $9.95 per month in the first month and then suddenly spikes to $19.95 the next month.
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Limited Number of Server Locations
The number of servers that are available for hosting VPS servers is low. For example, Asia has servers located in Mumbai, Bangalore, Singapore, Tokyo, and Seoul only.
This may not matter much to countries located near these servers, but people located in distant countries may face a bit of latency when they visit your website. This may slightly affect the bounce rates of your website.
Pricings
There are four preset plans for VPS servers. The prices vary on the specifications of the storage servers.
The first one starts at $9.95 per month with a renewal fee of $19.95 per month. It comes with one CPU core, 2GB RAM, 50GB SSD, and unmetered bandwidth.
The Advanced plan costs $25.95 per month with a renewal fee of $41.95 per month. It comes with two CPU cores, 4GB RAM, 80GB SSD, and unmetered bandwidth.
The Business plan costs $61.95 per month with a renewal fee of $77.95 per month. It comes with four CPU cores, 8GB RAM, 160GB SSD, and unmetered bandwidth.
The Enterprise plan costs $133.95 per month with a renewal fee of $149.95 per month. It comes with eight CPU cores, 16GB RAM, 320GB SSD, and unmetered bandwidth.
If you choose any of these presets, then you will get built-in features worth $74 with it. You can customize the specs of your private server, and ScalaHosting will calculate the costs accordingly.
All of these plans contain features like full management of your site, free and easy migration of your site, free domains, SSLs, and many more.
Final Verdict
ScalaHosting provides a ton of services for such a low price. Yet, there is no compromise in the quality of their services. They have served customers for over a decade, and the satisfaction of the customers is reflected in their reviews on websites like Trustpilot. So, you can trust ScalaHosting with your eyes closed.
They have the greatest value for money in this segment and give you a 30-day money-back guarantee in case you don’t like their services. The limited number of servers may be an issue for countries located away from them, but their high response speeds greatly compensate for that.
We highly recommend all web developers and business owners to try ScalaHosting’s VPS services for once as you cannot get these many features anywhere else for such a small price.