Good VPS hosting recommendations wanted

[mventures]

Hey all,

A total new starter here. Nice to meet you.

I am in the process of starting a new forum specific to the Australian audience and I was wondering if anyone could kindly recommend a good server to host the NodeBB Open-source software?

The website does suggest using Digital Ocean but I chose OVH Cloud (Essentials package) on someone else's recommendation. However, I am finding customer support on the latter hard to reach to. Everything is ticket-based and has no LIVE chat support over the weekends or phone calls. I have a Cloudways account also (a Digital Ocean company) but I wonder if they have the features to support NodeBB.

Maybe, you know other VPS providers who are really good, affordable, and have 24/7 customer support. Please do let me know as I am keen to get it all sorted over the weekend

Thank you so much! Looking forward to hearing from you.

[julian]

@mventures hmm that's a tough one. We do quite a lot of business with Digital Ocean and we don't even get chat support... But it's something that we don't need (being hosting providers ourselves we understand that it's not free to support something like that).

We do enough business that we get priority ticket service, which I think is awfully nice of them to offer.

What kind of chat support were you needing anyway, that ticketing won't be adequate for?

really good, affordable, and have 24/7 customer support

Hate to be that guy, but you only get to pick 2

[mventures]

Hey @julian,

Nice to meet you and thank you for the response.

I suppose I've been spoiled by A2 Hosting, Cloudways, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Namecheap, VentraIP, etc, who are available 24 hrs to help you in all sorts of matters. I was expecting the same from OVH Cloud for my VPS service also. I did send them a ticket asking for quick support and they wrote back (10 hrs later), "OVH is an IaaS company, meaning that most of the managing of the server is customer-sided. We offer technical support mainly for any network-related issues and hardware issues on our services". I didn't know that's how their operation was.

My issue with OVH was 2 in nature:

• I couldn't add a Tech contact who would be installing the NodeBB software. Their support team gave me the steps and it's such a long-winded approach. With Cloudways (for another web app I am working on), it took me only a few seconds.

• I couldn't join their community forum to post my questions. As a signed-up customer, it seems I have direct login to the forum but it won't let me. The support team said they don't know why it's happening and asked me to try again.

Those two issues caused grudges

So, if I could choose only 2 things, it would be (1) good/secure VPS (2) 24/7 support

With regards to support - It could be all sorts of things related to my website as and when it happens. It won't be every day I need them but usually during the setup stage or during critical times (like when the site is down, brute force attack, etc). Having hand-held support feels good especially when you are a non-tech person. Maybe, I have high expectations with OVH and I am sure they are a great company but just the ticket support causes a lot of time wastage. My site would've been up by now - all because of a little contact setup issue. Their priority service costs $79/month! My tech person loves OVH, so I may still end up using them and I won't have many issues in the future.

Do you know if the Cloudways option will work rather than just Digital Ocean?
What about AWS, Google Cloud, or any other VPS out there?

Thank you so much for your time, Julian.

[phenomlab]

@mventures the point of a VPS is that it's designed to be controlled by you only (and whoever else you decide to grant access to). This is how IaaS companies are able to sell these services at such a reduced cost - because you are 100% responsible for them.

The reduced fee comes with the consequences of no support from the company who provided it. Realistically, they cannot manage your server as they have no access to it from an admin perspective and therefore, you are on your own.

However, the technology on offer is vastly superior to the managed platforms offered for WordPress for example. Such managed platforms and servers exist, but they would cost you hundreds per month, which is why the cost for the unmanaged VPS is reflective of the price.

[julian]

@mventures if you have a tech guy who recommended OVH, why don't you use that resource for your tech support needs?

At the end of the day, being able to provide on-demand tech support (especially one who knows the ins-and-outs of your specific software stack) is expensive.

That's why VPS can be cheaper because the infrastructure is maintained at scale, but you handle the software.

---

Also, I should say, 10 hours is ridiculously good for a ticket response.

[mventures]

Hey @phenomlab,
Thank you so much for the explanation! It's making sense now. I am totally new to VPS and I suppose I was slightly stressed I couldn't get it all sorted before the weekend. A fresh day today and feeling better

[mventures]

Hey @julian,

Yes, I trust my tech person 100% and will go with whatever he chooses. Last evening, I think I was a bit fed up (and panicked too) trying to get a small thing sorted, lack of info, login issues, etc, that in my haste I came over to this forum and asked for advice for a different VPS. But I am feeling better now because of all the replies & education received above.

Looking at the positive side of things - if I didn't come here, I wouldn't have met you all and now I have an opportunity to learn a thing or two about VPS!

10 hours TAT: Wow! Didn't realize it was a good turn-around time. I was hoping for a few minutes! Very high expectations! Like I said before I have been spoiled by the other vendors!

[cagatay]

@mventures i m using hetzner provider since 2 years. i do not have any problem with my 2 years experiences.

[phenomlab]

@julian said in Good VPS hosting recommendations wanted:

if you have a tech guy who recommended OVH, why don't you use that resource for your tech support needs

He is. Me

[mventures]

@cagatay Thank you for that suggestion! I will check it out for knowledge's sake and perhaps give them a try also if I launch another forum. For now, I have settled on OVH.

[Freelancer]

Hey, How are you doing?
I'm a Freelancer and because of my clients, I have worked with many hosting providers. but none of them amazed me like this provider:
VPS Dime . This is not spam or something for real they are amazing, usually, I get answers to my tickets in 15 minutes only. They are helpful and have never seen my service or server go down for almost now a year. I have my server running on that host and also 4 others for my clients.

This plan is not bad for a stater actually: VPS Plan 6, I'm using this plan for my website as well.

best regards

[Freelancer]

@cagatay I have 30 dedicate servers hosted on Hetzner, the only problem we had in the past 2 years is sometime the attached Disk disappears and gets disconnected or sometimes we lose connection. In those cases, we had always to contact support and ask them to reboot our server because we couldn't even do that on our side.

[phenomlab]

@mventures Hetzner do not have APAC locations, so this will not be an option for you. OVH does, which is why it was chosen.

[julian]

@Freelancer please refrain from posting affiliate links unless you preface them in-post saying as such. Thank you.

I have removed the links in your post for now.