Vultr is a well-known cloud computing provider with 32 data centers across the globe, a decent alternative to DigitalOcean. Over the years, I have used various cloud hosts, and Vultr delivers decent TTFB, especially on high-frequency servers, which are powered by EPYC and Intel Xeon. (Scores pretty well on benchmarks).
They offer a range of cloud computing solutions, from basic VPSs to modern GPU-powered ones. Vultr, DO, UpCloud, Kamatera, and Katapult are all decent providers of virtual servers as they are all competitively priced.
I enjoy testing out virtual and dedicated servers with various providers, and I’m kind of addicted to them. It is a cost-effective way to host your website, and it is flexible when you need to make changes.
You should obtain a server from a company that does not provide shared hosting. I prefer smaller and medium-sized providers. So, let’s dive into Vultr cloud hosting…
Products and Pricing
Vultr is more than a web host because it offers various cloud computing services, such as storage, load balancers, GPUs, VPNs, and more.
They are cheaper than AWS and Google Cloud (same price as DO/Linode). OK, so let’s see what kind of cloud services and pricing they provide.
Regular Performance
First up, regular performance servers are a good choice for static websites looking for average speed. It uses Intel CPUs from older generations and regular SSDs.
To be clear, these servers are cheaper than high-frequency servers, but I’d prefer HF or AMD EPYC high-performance servers for active websites. Price list:
| CPU | RAM | Bandwidth | Storage | Monthly fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 GB | 1 TB | 25 GB | $5 |
| 1 | 2 GB | 2 TB | 55 GB | $10 |
| 2 | 2 GB | 3 TB | 65 GB | $15 |
| 2 | 4 GB | 3 TB | 80 GB | $20 |
| 4 | 8 GB | 4 TB | 160 GB | $40 |
SSD hosting is viable, but I recommend it only for average sites since my speed test was lower than expected. They have servers with 24 CPUs and 96GB RAM. But I don’t see the point in using regular SSD hosting because high-frequency/high-performance servers are slightly expensive. However, the performance is decent.
When it comes to unmanaged cloud VPS, I prefer small companies. VPS hosting offers more features and flexibility, and can be integrated with your favorite control panel. Try out Webdock VPS; they’re cheaper, but they only have one data center.
High Frequency and High-Performance
As I mentioned, they have two kinds of high-performance servers, AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon, at the same prices. You can pick up to 48 GB of RAM.
| CPU | RAM | Bandwidth | Storage | Monthly fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 GB | 1 TB | 32 GB | $6 |
| 1 | 2 GB | 2 TB | 64 GB | $12 |
| 2 | 2 GB | 3 TB | 80 GB | $18 |
| 2 | 4 GB | 3 TB | 128 GB | $24 |
| 3 | 8 GB | 4 TB | 256 GB | $48 |
If you have dynamic sites or substantial traffic, high-frequency can be the right choice since you can get quick TTFB with fast server performance. They’re NVMe drives, not SSDs. And there is a separate section for high-frequency servers.
Optimized Cloud Compute
Optimized cloud machines run on AMD EPYC CPUs. They deliver fast, consistent performance for a variety of web apps, and they have four types of services:
Storage Optimized: Typical CPU/RAM combo and high NVMe storage. Works well for sites with lots of databases, etc. With 1 CPU, 8 GB RAM, and 150 NVMe, it costs $75.00 per month, but the NVMe capacity can even be increased to 5TB.
Memory Optimized: These VMs provide a significantly higher amount of RAM than CPUs and NVMe. Starting at $40.00/month with 8 GB RAM.
CPU Optimized: More CPU power in these VMs than RAM and NVMe SSDs. Ideal for video processing, data syncing, ad networks, high traffic websites and mining.
You can get 4 cores for under $100. But I think dedicated servers or dedicated CPU virtual machines are ideal for applications that require lots of processor power.
General Purpose: Ideal balance between CPU, RAM, and NVMe. Suitable for online stores, ad networks, games, video streaming, API servers, and web apps with a lot of traffic. At $120.00/m, it’s 4 CPUs, 16GB RAM, and 80GB NVMe.
Often, optimized cloud servers are used for particular purposes, and you can obtain reliable server resources. They’re expensive, but they work for even average websites, and are ideal for large-scale web projects.
Bare Metal
There are two types of bare metal computing with Vultr: GPU and CPU. GPUs are popular these days because of AI training and inference, and they offer ultra-GPUs like AMD MI355X. You can also get low-end GPUs, like NVIDIA A16.
With CPU bare metals, you get super-fast performance because all the resources on the server are dedicated to one client. It’s entirely your responsibility to set it up and manage it. But you’ll get dedicated CPU cores and RAM on your server.
BM is suitable for e-commerce, databases, multimedia applications, ad exchanges, hosts, and other high-scale businesses. Bare metal is ideal for high-traffic websites.
There are a lot of resellers and shared hosting companies that use it. Typically, plans start at $120/m with 4 cores, 32GB RAM, and 5TB bandwidth.
Other Products
They offer a lot of hosting and storage options:
- Block storage: Offers 10GB of block storage for $1/m.
- Object Storage: Object storage lets you store videos, songs, and files online. Monthly bandwidth and storage up to 1 TB.
- Load Balancers: Load balancers are good for minimizing errors or downtime by balancing servers. It’s $10.00 per month.
- CDN: It’s usually not a good idea to use a CDN from your host. You can find plenty of well-established CDN providers.
Vultr High Frequency
Well, here’s the most preferred cloud VPS among bloggers and developers: “Vultr High Frequency“. Several tests show that high-frequency servers are faster than regular hosting (scores well on Geekbench). Powered by Intel Xeon CPUs over 3GHz with NVMe drives. However, these CPUs are still operating in a shared environment.
They also have high-performance servers, which use AMD EPYC. In my experience, they’re just as good as high-frequency. With modern hardware and stacks, it’s easier to optimize TTFB and overall performance.
In many cases, shared web hosts don’t give you much freedom and control over your setup. Basically, you use the hosting offer that they’ve set up.
It’s hard to change anything; they combine Apache and Nginx. Or entirely Apache servers on old-generation hardware. Typical static sites, such as blogs, services, and content-based websites, won’t have many issues with it.
But high-frequency servers are ideal for any kind of website, even ones with a bunch of uncacheable content (suitable for documentation websites). HF features NVMe and fast clock speeds – ideal for websites with heavy themes and lots of features.
Cloudways, xCloud, and ServerAvatar are some providers that offer Vultr virtual servers at an added cost. The solution comes pre-configured with a few extra tweaks, so it’s a bit pricey. It’s useful if you’re unfamiliar with unmanaged servers.
Vultr Data Centers
They manage over 30 data centers all over the world, so it’s like a CDN. Fast and easy deployment of low-latency servers, no matter where you are. The control panel lets you pick a server location when you deploy a server.
Vultr’s data centers:
- North America: Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Silicon Valley, Toronto, Miami, Mexico City, Honolulu, and New Jersey.
- Latin America: Sao Paulo and Santiago.
- Europe: London, Frankfurt, Paris, Warsaw, Madrid, Stockholm, and Amsterdam.
- Asia: Osaka, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi.
- Australia: Melbourne and Sydney.
- Africa: Johannesburg
Point is…. Your DNS connection time should be less than 100 ms. You should choose a server location near your users. Ideally, local websites should set their servers as close to their users as possible. If most of your traffic comes from Asia, pick an Asian data center location like Singapore. And if your traffic is specified to the USA, Canada, or even South America, select a data center in the U.S., like Silicon Valley.
You can choose a Melbourne data center if your users are mainly from Australia, New Zealand, and South Asia. Even so, Singapore is a good choice.
Johannesburg is the only option if you have all African visitors. However, I think it’s still a good idea to keep the website in a steady city like Madrid. And Latinos can choose between Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Santiago.
Where is the best place to keep websites with worldwide traffic?
I’ve tested multiple locations, including Europe, the US, Singapore, and India, but I did not find the right one for everyone. So, check where your site gets the most traffic and use a nearby data center.
For instance, if my website gets 80% of its traffic from the US and EU, I’d choose a server in New Jersey or Frankfurt to keep things balanced.
Now, we have modern hosting with EDGE caching, so your website loads fast everywhere. And use a CDN like FlyingCDN so everyone gets the same experience. But that might not always work, especially for sites with dynamic content.
Keep in mind, always choose a close data center because it’s useful for many reasons. But for average to big websites, you’ll need a good WordPress CDN.
Control Panel
Constant Company‘s Vultr has a fun user interface and control panel, and the features it provides are enough to manage/configure a cloud server. The procedure is simple, easy to deploy, and allows you to manage your servers easily.
I like their deployment process because it is simple and can be completed with a few mouse clicks. They’re good. Once your server is deployed, you can handle it through the dashboard.
I mean, they do not provide fully managed services like a regular web host. But you can start, stop, reboot, and reinstall servers as required.
You can monitor your server’s resource intake using the server console and manage the IP addresses connected to your server. The server health tool can alert you when your application is in high demand.
The panel allows users to control features like firewalls, networks, and DNS. The team management feature will enable you to set up limited access for others. It has all the elements you need to run a server.
But if you are an average user, I recommend using VULTR with cloud hosting control panels such as RunCloud, xCloud, or SPanel.
You don’t need technical or server admin experience to use cloud hosting panels. You can use them quickly, and most features are within reach with just a few clicks. There’s only one problem: using the control panel isn’t free.
Compared to providers, this can cost up to $15 a month. GridPane, for example, can cost more than $100. CloudPanel is free, but you need some technical experience.
And ServerPilot and RunCloud are less than $10/M for a regular user. You can also try xCloud, Ploi, or FlyWP for free.
Or try the VULTR control panel, and it’s not bad. You can try different settings once you know what to change, which is much closer to how normal UI works.
Marketplace
With Vultr, you have access to the extensive marketplace and can deploy popular applications with one click. There are a lot of open-source apps and paid ones too. You have the option of installing a number of operating systems, including Debian, Ubuntu, Rocky Linux, Windows, Fedora, etc. Alternatively, you can upload an ISO.
If you wish to use LiteSpeed WordPress hosting with it, there’s an option to set up OpenLiteSpeed + WordPress on Ubuntu. Drupal, Joomla, and Rails are all supported. It’s good to pick Litespeed because you get a free cache plugin.
Yes, you can use free control panels such as CloudPanel and FASTPANEL alongside paid control panels like cPanel, Plesk, and SWPanel. Marketplace contains notable apps such as Docker, ClusterControl, Bitnami stacks, Colyseus, etc.
You don’t need a third-party panel if you are familiar with these tools. Remember, the server is your responsibility. Well, they have some clear docs on how to do these things. However, for average and new users, you may want to opt for a control panel (connect to the server with an IP address or SSH). Yes, their web console is terrible. Some web hosts provide Vultr cloud hosting instead of the control panel.
Downsides To Vultr Cloud Hosting?
I’ve been using them for years, and nothing’s ever gone wrong. Still, there are some downsides…
- There are a lot of complaints with their customer service; however, it’s unmanaged. Most unmanaged cloud computing services do not offer complete customer service, but they have adequate documentation.
- Similar prices to DigitalOcean, but expensive than Hetzner or Starlight.
- Some customers complain about downtime.
- Advanced packages aren’t available at all server locations.
- I am not happy with the web console (built-in SSH terminal). In this case, it is most likely that you will need an external SSH client such as OpenSSH or PuTTY.
Final Thoughts on Vultr Cloud Computing
With Vultr, you can deploy virtually anything, from a small website to a large one or even AI training. They have high-frequency, high-performance servers built with the latest tech. But I do not have much experience with their Cloud GPU or Bare Metal, so I can’t comment on them. They also accept bank transfers and crypto payments.
You can use VULTR without much trouble if you’re comfortable with these things. They have a nice app marketplace, and you can even upload your own ISO.
They have 32 data centers around the world (all continents). Everything has its pros and cons, and Vultr’s panel is nice, but the built-in SSH terminal is annoying.
There are plenty of other cloud computing service providers like DigitalOcean, UpCloud, Kamatera, Linode, etc. Yes, big companies like Amazon are reliable, but they’re expensive. Read More: Methods To Copy Text From Protected Website
