Browsing VPSBenchmark.com I stumbled upon a seemingly good deal on a VPS . The service even offered a referral code to try it out for free. I decided to give it a chance.
Dashboard
Their dashboard looks decent. You can add SSH keys, view statistics and even see what ports are open. Pretty standard stuff. The UI is usually white, but I used a browser extension to make it darker.
Some options are still in French, though.
User Experience
I waited 2.5 hours for my VPS to be ready. That’s way longer than I’d expect. After I finally got my server, it had only 1 vCore assigned, instead of advertised 2. I had promptly messaged support. In the meantime, I started testing it out.
The next day I received a notification. Soon enough, I would discover this to be the source of my frustration.
I restarted the server. This time, something was different. My root password suddenly stopped working. No matter what I did, I was not able to log in.
This would happen every time I restarted my server after getting this notification. If you didn’t know this happens and didn’t make a new user with root privileges… Well, I don’t have good news for you.
I eventually got the advertised 2 vCores, but the user experience was unpleasant at this point.
Hardware
2vCores, 2 GB of RAM and 40 GB SSD for just 3.5 euros? “What a bargain” I thought. The specs seem great on paper, but in reality, the CPUs are weaker than what the competition has.
Take a look at these benchmarks:
- OnetSolutions GP-2 (1 vCore)
- OnetSolutions GP-2 (2 vCores)
- OVH Starter
- Hetzner
- Vultr
- DigitalOcean
- Linode
The computing power seems erratic. It’s either quite decent or weak depending on the type of a workload. The cryptographical performance is below par. VPSBenchmark showed that VPS works great as a web server though.
The network performance is just fine. 100 Mbps is tolerable at this price range. Here are the Speedtest results.
Email Spam
Most of the time, they will send 3 copies of the same message. They adamantly claim they don’t, but my mailbox says otherwise.
They put my email 3 times as the recipient. Most of their emails send 3 copies, but some only send 1. It depends on the type of an email.
Support
Their support was incredibly fast, but rather dismissive.
Cancelling a Service
To cancel a service you have to create a special request, give them a reason then wait. I hate this system. It’s unnecessarily lengthy.
I sent them a request. After a few days, I received a response. I logged in, and I saw that my account was banned? Closed? I can’t tell.
Overall
I’ve been trying it out for about 2 weeks and I didn’t have a great experience. I’m sure they will find their clients, because the prices are competitive. They didn’t ask for my ID, nor do they seem shady. From what I’ve seen, it’s average.