We have updated The Whitelist, de-listing Bandit Host (ceased operations) and adding four new hosts: Contabo, George Datacenter, MaxKVM, and OBHost.
Lowendboxes Reviews will not be doing in-depth reviews for the foreseeable future, but our staff are still actively monitoring the low-end web server market to continue our mission of curating a reliable list of providers that customers can rely on.
We do not like to de-list our whitelisted providers, but unfortunately we have to make this difficult decision to de-list HostDoc from the Whitelist with effect from today.
HostDoc’s WHMCS implementation has been randomly leaking customer information for several months: see here, here, here and here (LowEndSpirit login needed to read as the information was posted to member’s only section).
HostDoc has admitted the problem exists and claims it was fixed. See here (LowEndSpirit login needed).
However, issue of being able to access a random customer’s services continued to surface this week, with multiple forum members reporting they had access to someone else’s services: see here, here and here (LowEndSpirit login needed).
Given the current state of evidence, we are de-listing HostDoc because compromising customers’ private data is a red line. If we have firm evidence that HostDoc customers’ private data are no longer randomly compromised, we will consider reinstating HostDoc.
Our second LEBRE-X review of the year goes to Bandit Host, a provider who specialises in offering AMD VPSes. They offer both AMD EPYC and Ryzen VPSes, but under review today is the Bandit Host AMD EPYC UT-S-NVMe-VPS. Let’s get into the specs:
With AES-NI enabled, there is no performance penalty on LUKS encryption using AES on the VPS. However, VM-x/AMD-V is disabled, which is not good news for those who wish to run nested virtualization solutions such as Proxmox. Nonetheless, this is not a deal-breaker for most people; nested virtualization offers are relatively uncommon.
We now turn to the results of our extended benchmarking, which we ran daily for 35 days from 13 December 2019 to 16 January 2020. All charts are interactive (i.e. you can mouse over the lines to examine each data point).
Geekbench 5 offers a quick overview of CPU and RAM performance in a single score. The following chart shows the single and multi-core scores of the Bandit Host AMD EPYC UT-S-NVMe-VPS across our test period.
Bandit Host adopts a fair-share policy, but it can be seen that the VPS is both very high performing and the performance is very consistent for both single (mean score 614, SD 7.52) and multi-core (mean score 1177, SD 16.8) over the period of testing. The AMD EPYC is not as much as a performance beast relative to the Ryzen family, but it packs plenty of punch for most web applications.
What is very noteworthy is the very, very low standard deviation, which indicates an extreme level of consistency of CPU performance. This suggests that Bandit Host manages the host node really well. Also, the high number of cores in the EPYC could have contributed to the stability as well; with many more cores, processing can be distributed far more evenly resulting in much more stable performance across VPSes at any random point of time.
We use fio to benchmark disk performance because random read-write is more indicative of real-world use compared to sequential read-write, which normally generates impressive metrics but is a poor indicator of real-world performance. The following charts show the random read and write IOPS performance at 4k, 64k and 256k block sizes.
The NVMe disk clearly show its superior performance in terms of IOPS relative to other storage media in terms of random reading (mean IOPS 43128, SD 1579) and writing (mean IOPS 43138, SD 1565) at 4k block sizes. The standard deviation is very low, suggesting very consistent performance.
Speed is still excellent for random reading (mean IOPS 23372, SD 1008) and writing (mean IOPS 23424, SD 1008) at 64k block sizes. Once again, the standard deviation is really low, a very positive indication of consistent performance.
Finally, in terms of our toughest 256k block size random read-write test, the speed in terms of reading (mean IOPS 6868, SD 116) and writing (mean IOPS 6921, SD 118) was still very, very decent, with an ultra-duper low standard deviation.
The common thread across the fio test data is very, very stable and consistent performance. The AMD EPYC is not a brand new node, and to maintain this level of stability and consistency is a very positive sign of Bandit Host’s management of its host node. There was a weird outlier data point on 15th December, but that appears to be totally random considering all the other data points, so we can safely ignore that outlier.
If you need to host database intensive applications, the NVMe performance of Bandit Host’s VPS is more than sufficient to meet the requirements of most medium websites.
We use ioping to measure how responsive the disk is to requests. The chart below shows the results of average response times to 30 requests.
Again, the disk response times (in microseconds) are excellent (mean 287.8, SD 42.2). Once again, with the exception of that outlier data point on 15 December, the overall latency is fairly stable and consistent.
We use iperf3 to measure outbound internet speeds (i.e. how fast the VPS sends data out to users) to our own collection of iperf3 servers. Keep in mind that there are many factors involved in transmitting data across networks, especially across vast geographical distances. Spikes are not unusual. Note that we present our data in megabytes per second.
We first present the chart for European locations.
Again, our internal Romanian test server’s (mean 63.0, SD 14.6) network isn’t very stable, but there clearly very consistently strong throughput to our Polish (mean 100.3, SD 18.3) and German (mean 110.0, SD 3.7) servers, except for a couple of outlier readings for the Polish server nearing the end of our testing period, which isn’t a major cause for concern.
We now present the chart for our North America servers.
We only have one American test server in Chicago for this round of testing, and the results are again one of very sustained and consistently high performing throughput to Chicago (mean 109.5, SD 4.6), except for that outlier blip on 15th December.
Finally, we present the charts for our APAC servers.
Bandit Host appears to have one of the best networks to Asia. Network performance to our Singaporean test server is particularly strong (mean 91.7, SD 15.3). The performance to Australia tends to be kind of spiky (which is actually not unusual when packets travel over vast distances) but the performance one of the better ones that we’ve seen to Perth (mean 22.1, SD 23.0) and Sydney (mean 33.4, SD 15.3).
If you’ve made it to this part of the review, you can already predict what we are going to conclude: consistently stable high performing VPS. Although the Bandit Host AMD EPYC is not the beast that Ryzen is, the EPYC is pretty decent and more importantly, you can expect it to perform when you need it (if you want to shatter benchmarks, Bandit Host has Ryzens too). If you are an Asian customer, the good news is that Bandit Host has one of the better networks across the Pacific to Asia, and coupled with reliable performance of their hardware, you can’t go wrong with Bandit Host, unless you are willing to be extorted by Asian providers (not their fault because bandwidth in Asia is generally expensive, but you get the drift).
tl;dr: You will sleep well every single night with a Bandit Host VPS
Note: we have reached out to Bandit Host for their response to our LEBRE-X review because we believe that our reviewed providers should also have the opportunity to respond to our observations. We will publish their response in full if we receive any.
Response from Bandit Host’s Management (23 January 2020):
First, thank you for taking your time and the effort required to perform these extended benchmarks! It is a fantastic service you are providing to the community!
Our mission and goal is to provide reliable and consistent performance across the board. Without those two items you are unable to fully utilize any service without worry. Ultimately, we want to provide a rock solid platform everyone can depend on for growth, whether that be a personal project or a business project. We appreciate the fact that this analysis reflects some of our core values.
Additionally, while AMD-V is showing Disabled on your VPS we have updated the flags on most current VPSes to include nested virtualization. All new VPS’s deployed by default have that flag enabled now.
At the end of the day, we’re here to understand what the community wants and see how we can best provide that in a way that everyone can grow and thrive. With that, we’d like to invite you to review and bench our East Coast, Washington DC based services once they are online in late February/Early March. Everyone else, stay tuned!
Thanks again!
Stephen Delacalzada-Delong
BanditHost
The very first LEBRE-X review goes to our Nexus Bytes Ryzen NVMe reference box REBOX1. Readers will already be familiar with REBOX1 because it is the reference box for value comparison using the LEBRE methodology. However, although the LEBRE methodology provides a clear measure of value based on paper specifications, it cannot adequately reflect actual performance. Therefore, we’ve subjected REBOX1 to an extended period of benchmarking as outlined in the LEBRE-X methodology.
The detailed specifications of the VPS is as follows:
With AES-NI enabled, there is no performance penalty on LUKS encryption using AES on the VPS. Also, with VM-x/AMD-V enabled, nested virtualization is possible, allowing deploying of solutions such as Proxmox. Certainly a nice CPU feature set.
We now turn to the results of our extended benchmarking, which we ran daily for 33 days from 14 December 2019 to 15 January 2020. All charts are interactive (i.e. you can mouse over the lines to examine each data point).
Geekbench 5 offers a quick overview of CPU and RAM performance in a single score. The following chart shows the single and multi-core scores of the Nexus Bytes Ryzen NVMe VPS across our test period.
Despite the fair-share policy of Nexus Bytes, it can be seen that the VPS is both very high performing and the performance is very consistent for both single (mean score 1143, SD 16.1) and multi-core (mean score 2122, SD 61.2) over the period of testing. This indicates that the host node is very likely not oversold and well-monitored, ensuring consistently high performance for your applications whenever you require.
We use fio to benchmark disk performance because random read-write is more indicative of real-world use compared to sequential read-write, which normally generates impressive metrics but is a poor indicator of real-world performance. The following charts show the random read and write IOPS performance at 4k, 64k and 256k block sizes.
The NVMe disk clearly show its superior performance in terms of IOPS. The Nexus Bytes VPS is extremely fast and stable in performance when it comes to random reading (mean IOPS 80811, SD 4951) and writing (mean IOPS 80899, SD 4956) at 4k block sizes.
Speed is still excellent for random reading (mean IOPS 30185, SD 7897) and writing (mean IOPS 30319, SD 7926) at 64k block sizes, although the variability of performance increases as evident from the higher standard deviation.
For our most gruelling 256k block size random read-write test, the speed in terms of reading (mean IOPS 9386, SD 2402) and writing (mean IOPS 9241, SD 2366) was still stellar, with some variability similar to the 64k block size test.
The overall conclusion from the fio results is crystal-clear: there is very likely no problem running applications that require strong IOPS performance. Assuming that the database is well-tuned, this Nexus Bytes VPS is likely to be able to deliver a consistently buttery-smooth experience, even for busy database driven CMS websites.
We use ioping to measure how responsive the disk is to requests. The chart below shows the results of average response times to 30 requests.
The spikes in the chart may worry some of you, but there is actually no cause for alarm. The disk response times are measured in microseconds (mean 373.5, SD 126.6). A microsecond (μs) is one millionth of a second, so despite the spikes, you will not notice any real-world difference. Also, if the ioping results are too flat, it is indicative of very low disk activity (meaning the host node is very empty) or there is some caching mechanism going on.
We use iperf3 to measure outbound internet speeds (i.e. how fast the VPS sends data out to users) to our own collection of iperf3 servers. Keep in mind that there are many factors involved in transmitting data across networks, especially across vast geographical distances. Spikes are not unusual. Note that we present our data in megabytes per second.
We first present the chart for European locations.
We see generally consistent performance to our Polish server (mean 107.9, SD 6.7). The spikes to our Romanian server (mean 67.1, SD 14.3) is more of an issue with the network of our Romanian server. Generally, we see speedy network speeds in Europe.
We now present the chart for our North America servers.
You must be wondering about that huge dip in network speed to Utah (mean 95.0, SD 32.6) during the Christmas holiday period. We are not sure what happened during that period, but there were issues. We ran some MTR tests but they were inconclusive; packet losses were random along the entire path. We conclude that the results for that period is a freak anomaly. If we look at the speed to Chicago (mean 110, SD 2.87), the network speed is generally consistent. If we disregard that freak anomaly period, we can see that network speeds to North America can mostly saturate the promised 1Gbps port speed.
Finally, we present the charts for our APAC servers.
The see-sawing is not unexpected, given the vast distance between Germany and the APAC locations. The speeds to Singapore (mean 82.3, SD 29.0) is decent on average, although depending on the day and time, some bottle-necking may be experienced. If you are from Australia, tough luck. Both Perth (mean 15.1, SD 10.5) and Sydney (mean 17.3, SD 11.6) do not perform well.
It appears that the actual performance of our Nexus Bytes Ryzen NVMe REBOX1 lived up to expectation. There is ample evidence suggesting that Nexus Bytes has a very solid VPS management model. The CPU/RAM and disk performance are excellent AND consistent. It is no understatement to say that their VPS is likely to perform on par with or even better than low-end dedicated servers for most use cases, especially their beefier VPSes. We are impressed, and you should be too.
tl;dr: Shut up and take my money now!
Note: we have reached out to Nexus Bytes for their response to our LEBRE-X review because we believe that our reviewed providers should also have the opportunity to respond to our observations. We will publish their response in full if we receive any.
Response from Nexus Bytes’ management (Jan. 15th, 2020):
Thank you admin for sharing your detailed analysis. We are glad that this review validated our company’s philosophy: well-balanced nodes with healthy cpu : memory : storage ratio. Small hiccups may arise here and there; however, we try our level best to nip things in the bud and ensure our family members are receiving steady and consistent service, regardless of how much they paid.
We value our customers and treat them more as a family member and not just a mere customer. We are not flashy in our advertising nor do we offer unsustainable prices. If anything, we prefer to under-sell and over-deliver than the other way round, and we will continue to ensure that our family members who put their trust in us get nothing less than the best that we can offer.
Jay C., NexusBytes LLC
The very first offer to be reviewed for price-performance value in 2020 is the Nexus Bytes LA Ryzen 3900X pre-order special. Nexus Bytes should be familiar with all the readers of LowEndBoxes Review because our reference REBOX1 comes from them. The question is, do they have a better offer than REBOX1 in 2020? Their LA pre-order special looks to be one that exceeds expectations! Let’s look at the specs of the VPS-1G-Pre-Order-Special plan:
Nexus Bytes have done something very interesting of late to give greater value for their products. They have introduced the Switcher special, where if you currently own a VPS with other providers, you can “trade in” for up to four months worth of extra service credit. That means with an annual payment, you get 16 months instead of 12 months with the Switcher special.
In addition, if you post a benchmark of your new VPS on the LowEndSpirit Forum, Nexus Bytes will give you an additional month of service credit, making a total of 17 months for your first annual payment. Effectively, the monthly price stacking all these promos together works out to be $1.76. What a deal!
The results of the LEBRE scoring methodology (using the $1.76 per month amount) is as follows:
Well, it is clear that this LA pre-order special is more than a match for our 2019 REBOX1! Aside from the bandwidth (which is still decent), it effectively matches REBOX1 in terms of the value you are getting for the number of vCPUs and RAM, but you are getting almost double value in terms of the CPU Passmark, disk size, disk type and port speed! The overall LEBRE score of 141 clearly indicates that you are getting much more value per dollar than the previous excellent REBOX1 offer!
Of course, you might be thinking that this is a teeny-weeny little sparrow of a VPS and you need a bad-ass bald eagle instead. Nexus Bytes actually allows you to scale this smallest plan all the way up to 12 vCPUs, 12GB RAM, 360GB NVMe and 12TB monthly bandwidth for pre-order, and all the switcher and bencher perks apply. We just didn’t have time to calculate them all. The range of plans can be found here.
As with all Nexus Bytes plans, you get a free backup NAT storage VPS equivalent to your VPS storage size, free Blesta billing software and for annual payment, a free Windows server 2019 license.
TL;DR Basically REBOX1 rebooted with better value when trading in your current VPS plan, with the option of up-sizing or supersizing to suit your requirements.
If you are afraid of missing this excellent Nexus Bytes LA Ryzen 3900X Pre-order Special, buy your box immediately (or check out their up-sized and supersized variants) and support Nexus Bytes, who is on The Whitelist.
Wishosting is now having a limited time offer with their Boxing Day 2019 special offer. This provider is not one with flashy promotions, but when they do offer promotions, you should certainly take notice because they are usually superb deals! Here are the specs of the current Wishosting KVM Boxing Day 2019 SSD Special:
The results of the LEBRE scoring methodology (using the lower $3.33 per month amount) is as follows:
Well, well, what can we say? Compared to REBOX1, this Wishosting offer only failed to match our reference box in two aspects: CPU Passmark score and Disk Type, although both of these are still acceptable in terms of the price-performance ratio. When we look at all the other indicators, they easily hold their own compared to REBOX1 and is most certainly excellent value for money!
The RAM and bandwidth are very generous for the quarterly pricing, and the 100GB fast SSD storage you get for a mere $3.33 per month (if you pay quarterly) is an absolute steal. You will probably not have to worry about running out of space ever if you are not doing anything particularly intensive on storage like video files, raw DSLR images or Linux ISOs.
The overall LEBRE score of 143 suggests that this box is superb in value and justifiably so. The CPU is doesn’t get speeding tickets like our REBOX1 but it is more than sufficient to power most needs. Everything else is a bargain for that price, and this should be one of your Christmas hauls this year.
TL;DR At a monthly price of less than half of a Starbucks coffee, this is an affordable beast for most use cases. Just buy it already.
If you are afraid of missing this excellent Wishosting KVM Boxing Day 2019 SSD offer, buy your box immediately and support Wishosting, who is on The Whitelist.
Dear LowEndBoxes Review readers,
We wish you a very merry Christmas and a great year end holiday! We hope that you have enjoyed our work this year and we will endeavor to bring you the same great deals, no scammy bullshit standard on the latest deals and development in the low end hosting scene.
To keep you updated with the never-ending deals from providers, we have set up a Twitter account and a Telegram public channel that scrapes the data from our Twitter account so that you can keep up with never-ending flow of latest and greatest offers from The Whitelist providers that we don’t have time to review and we don’t want you to miss out on them!
Once again, happy holidays and may the next year be filled with love, peace, happiness and more banging low end, scam-free deals!
PHP-Friends previously provided a very compelling Black Friday 2019 offer and if you didn’t get that offer then, they are back with another delicious offer for Christmas! In case their name doesn’t ring a bell, PHP-Friends is a German provider with a very strong reputation on various lowend hosting forums. The specs of the new PHP-Friends Winterspecial vServer SSD 2019 offer is as follows:
The results of the LEBRE scoring methodology (using the lower €6.72 per month amount) is as follows:
Compared to REBOX1, this PHP-Friends’s Winterspecial vServer SSD offers pretty weak price-performance ratio in terms of the host node CPU and the disk type. In terms of the number of vCPUs and bandwidth offered, though, it offers decent value, although the port speed at its price point is not that great value.
What is really impressive is the jaw-dropping 10GB RAM and staggering 160GB SSD storage space that you are getting, which is much higher than their previous already impressive Black Friday offer. Based on the current exchange rate, this VPS is slightly higher than the $7 per month cap that we set on LEBRE. However, we are of the opinion that we can let that slide this time because it is an excellent offer that LEBRE readers should seriously consider.
The overall LEBRE score of 101 suggests that this PHP-Friends Winterspecial vServer SSD is definitely comparable to our reference REBOX1 in terms of offering great value. In terms of absolute price per month, this offer is marginally higher than what we usually consider to be a low end box pricing side. However, that price tag is more than well-justified with that 10GB RAM and 160 GB fast SSD storage.
If you prefer an European location and you don’t want to go through the hassle of upgrading to a box with more RAM or storage in future, better grab this offer before it is sold out!
TL;DR Excellent value, period. With such large RAM and storage, your server expansion needs are future-proofed at a price point way lower than a dedicated.
If you are afraid of missing this excellent PHP-Friends Winterspecial vServer SSD 2019 offer, buy your box immediately and support PHP-Friends, who is on The Whitelist.
Update: real-world VPS benchmarks
Today, we have with us the HostDoc LES Ryzen LA offer that is unusual because it is the first AMD Ryzen VPS offering that is being offered by them! They join the select few hosts on The Whitelist such as ExtraVM and Nexus Bytes in offering AMD-based VPSes. The specs of this latest offering from HostDoc is as follows:
The results of the LEBRE scoring methodology (using the lower £4.99 amount) is as follows:
Compared to REBOX1, which is also an AMD VPS, the value of this HostDoc Dallas sale offering is acceptable in terms host node single-core Passmark and disk type. Although HostDoc’s Ryzen 3900X is a little more powerful than the Ryzen 3700X which our REBOX1 uses and similar Nvme storage type, the higher asking price pulled down its value in these areas.
Aside from these two aspects, this HostDoc Ryzen offering goes head to head with our REBOX1 in every other aspect and completely obliterates the REBOX1 with a blazing 10 Gbps port speed (a rare offering for lowend boxes).
The overall LEBRE score of 137 suggests that this HostDoc Dallas sale offering is of excellent value compared to the reference REBOX1. You are pretty much getting the value of REBOX1 except that this HostDoc offer is on steriods in terms of port speed. If we put value aside, in terms of the raw specs, this HostDoc offering will beat many of the Intel VPSes on the market because of the powerful Ryzen 3900X, which can outperform even low-end dedicated machines. If you are shopping for a low end VPS that can rival cheap dedicated machines at a fraction of the cost, this HostDoc offer is your answer.
TL;DR If you missed out on the REBOX1 previously, don’t miss out on this Ryzen VPS that is just as good value for money, but leaves REBOX1 in the dust when it comes to port speed.
Stocks are limited and if you don’t want to miss out this first ever HostDoc LES Ryzen LA deal, buy your box immediately and support HostDoc, who is on The Whitelist.
Update: real-world VPS benchmarks
A list of apparently low-end hosts have suddenly announced their collective closure of their low end box hosting business. The current list of hosts that are currently known to be affected are:
If you have any low end box with the above-mentioned hosts, please back up your data and file disputes with your payment processor as soon as possible. Some of these hosts may still be accepting new orders. Please do not order any service from them. For further news and updates, please see the discussion over here.
We would like to remind everyone that there are many unreliable hosting services online and that is why we work on providing The Whitelist. If you are looking for a reliable hosting service, please consider supporting one of the providers on this list.