Scaling New Heights: Finding the Top 9 Best VPS Hosting Providers (July 2025)

Buying Guide: The Best VPS Web Hosting Services for 2025

What Is a VPS Used For?

Your VPS-hosted website sits in a partitioned server area with its own operating system, disk space, memory, and monthly data transfer limits, so you can expect smoother and more stable website performance. The websites you share your server with can affect your website far less – or even cause it to fail altogether – than would be the case with a shared server. Knowing how VPS configurations work, however, is just the first step. You still need to familiarize yourself with the essential features required to build a stable website hosted on a VPS.

Is There Any Free VPS?

Due to the hybrid nature of VPS hosting, the costs are not quite as low as shared host fees but not nearly as high as dedicated host fees either. Depending on the configuration, you can expect to pay between $20 and $100 per month. On the other hand, shared web hosting is an extremely affordable hosting that you can often set up for less than $10 per month. Dedicated web hosting usually costs $100 per month or more.

Most VPS hosts only offer servers with Linux-based operating systems; you’ll have to search a bit to find VPS hosting with Windows. Knowing if you plan to run software that requires a Microsoft-compatible environment is important. Nevertheless, you can save a few Euros with Linux-based VPS hosting; Linux servers usually cost 10 to 20 Euros less than Windows servers.

How to Choose a VPS

Once you have registered your website’s domain name, it’s time to choose the specifications for your server. Web hosts usually offer several VPS plans that include different amounts of email features, RAM, storage space, CPU power, domain hosting, and monthly data transfers. The plans usually include website builders, allowing you to quickly create a face for your website without doing much – or even any – coding.

A solid web host should offer at least 4 GB of RAM, 100 GB of storage space, and a sufficient volume of monthly data transfers. If you expect your website to grow considerably, you should look for a web host that has as many unlimited offers as possible. Hostwinds, for example – PCMag editors’ choice for VPS hosting – offers unlimited email, domains, and monthly data transfers. Note, however, that you should read the fine print to make sure you understand what the hoster means by “unlimited,” as this can vary from company to company.

Speaking of email and limits, you should be able to set up unlimited accounts. Should your website grow significantly, you’ll appreciate being able to scale your email accounts without spending extra money. Web hosts usually impose an upper limit on the storage space per email account. In other words, while you can set up an unlimited number of email accounts, there is a 10GB storage cap for each account. Take the time to review a potential web host’s email offering so you’re not surprised by messaging limitations. Find out about the possible drawbacks of unlimited accounts here as well.

Usually, with a web hosting service, you have a choice between a conventional hard disk and a solid-state drive as the storage medium for your website. Traditional HDDs have large capacities and lower prices but aren’t quite as resilient as their SSD counterparts. On the other hand, solid-state drives are often faster and more reliable than HDDs, but they cost more and have lower storage capacity. Unless you really need blazing speed, a traditional HDD should suffice.

Are you planning to sell products or services? Then you should invest in a web hosting service that offers a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). An SSL connection encrypts the financial data that is exchanged between users’ web browsers and your website, protecting the transmission of purchase data. Some hosting companies offer a free SSL certificate when you sign up for a web hosting plan, while others charge almost $100. You can save money by looking for services that offer cheaper SSL plans.

You should also consider how long you will need the VPS web hosting. If you only need the hosting for a short period of time, for example, less than a month or two, you will usually get a refund if you cancel your hosting within 60 days. These money-back guarantees vary from web host to web host. Company X, for example, may offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, while Company Y offers a long 90-day money-back guarantee. As always, shopping around for the features that best suit your web hosting needs is best.

VPS Uptime & Downtime

All the features we have described up to this point are valuable for web hosting, but none is as important as website availability. If your website is unavailable, your customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services. It doesn’t matter how great the features are or how good they look; if your website doesn’t work, it might as well not exist at all.

We’ve included formal uptime monitoring in our evaluation process, and the results show that most web hosts do an excellent job of keeping websites up and running. Even if they do everything else right, websites with uptime issues don’t qualify for a high score. There are ups and downs with all services, sometimes for reasons beyond their control. Websites that fail to fix the problem in time are penalized accordingly.

Which VPS Is Best?

VPS is a good option for your business if you want inexpensive server space that won’t load pages at a snail’s pace when a neighboring website sees a huge rush of visitors. We have tested many VPS hosting services and included the best of them in this guide. You should consider a dedicated server if you want to build your website on an even more solid foundation and can afford the cost.

If you’re just getting started with web hosting, be sure to check out our guide to building a website. On the other hand, if you think you’re ready to start your own web hosting company, you should check out our guide to reseller hosting. The Best Courses for Learning How to Build Websites has excellent video tutorials for those who prefer this type of learning.