The drama of running a VPS (and tips for avoiding shitty providers)

January 3, 2023

If you have anything more exciting to do, like watching paint dry, by all means feel free to click away and save yourself from the suffering i'm about to inflict upon you.

12bytes.org went off line for nearly two weeks on the 21st of December, 2022. If you visited here during that time you were probably forwarded to a generic landing page. Getting the website back up was a nightmare that lasted 12 days.

Here's the story...

So i got an invoice from my old host (KnownHost) to renew my service and i diddled around for a while before i decided what i wanted to do. I had the site running on a managed VPS and i had zero complaints with KnownHost. Their service and the reliability of their infrastructure is truly outstanding. Open a support ticket at 4 AM on a Sunday night and someone is on it, usually within minutes, plus their support is not tiered like many other hosts; you always get a knowledgeable tech that writes in fluent English and they generally provide details as to exactly what they did to fix the problem, something few other hosts seem to do. The server was costing me close to $300 per year however, plus i wanted to make some other changes. Had i known what i was in for i would've stuck with KnownHost.

The drama begins...

The cost of the server wasn't the only factor that led to me wanting to switching ISPs. I also wanted to try running a self-managed VPS at a lower price point than what KnownHost could offer and so i set out looking for companies which, i assure you, is *not* an easy task, even if money isn't a factor. There is a *massive* number of truly shitty companies out there and they far outnumber the good ones. Many of them are owned by Endurance International Group (EIG), a.k.a Clearlake Capital Group, a.k.a Newfold Digital which is their newest name as far as i know. For more on these clowns, see the "Pitfalls" section here.

In addition to cost, a provider which is protective of free speech was a crucial requirement and unless you go with an off-shore host, which can be both problematic and costly, there are apparently a very small number that meet this requirement. BuyVM is one that comes highly recommended. They are certainly one of the most favored VPS providers on LowEndTalk and their prices are quite reasonable. As a matter of fact, a few of the replies i got when querying hosts who are anti-free speech referred me to BuyVM. This reply came from Jack Bell of Afterburst:

Honestly you're probably better off with someone like Incognet or BuyVM for controversial but legal content.

And this one from Mike at Asura Hosting:

I would strongly recommend you have a look at BuyVM. Although we do tick basically all your requirements, the main issue is our location being in Europe. You should get a location in US to avoid any GDPR/EU laws

The longest reply i received was from Ryan Arp of Catalyst Host who opened with "Hey friend" and then spent 512 more words telling me that he essentially hates free speech and that i would probably agree with him when i was done reading his wall of text. This paragraph pretty much sums it up:

The thing about an AUP for a hosting company is that it has to either be open ended, a lie, or it has to be constantly revised. The reason for this is that if we specify all of the ways someone can abuse our service explicitly, people will just try to skate around it or find new ways to abuse the systems. Regardless of their methods and whether or not we know them exactly up front, I think you'd agree that the big thing is that we can't let a customer harm the rest of our customers. That's really what it's meant to communicate: We love our customers, and anyone who wishes to harm them isn't welcome here.

"His" reply (i hope i'm using the correct pronoun) left me wondering how exactly my lil' ol' website running on one Virtual Private Server on one node in one data center could possibly "abuse" and "harm" his other customers and sink his entire business. That said, i certainly appreciated his candidness.

It's a damn sad state of affairs when several prospective hosting providers all reference the same company with regard to free speech.

My search went on for several days before i finally rolled the dice and chose Floofy Hosting as my VPS provider. And you thought i was going to say BuyVM, dincha? Yeah, well, maybe i should have. We'll get into that in a bit.

I tend to prefer smaller companies because they tend to care more about their customers. Matter of fact, one of the very best hosting providers i ever had was run by one guy. He used Digital Ocean's infrastructure, his support was good and, until i opened my big mouth, he was charging me some minuscule amount like $5 a month for a fully managed VPS. I felt like i was raping the guy and so i suggested he charge a little more for the great service he provided. The problem with the one-man-show deal surfaces abruptly however when that one man decides to challenge the coppers to a shootout ... and loses. Lesson learned: Small is OK, but not too small.

After nearly a week of searching i had a new ISP and it was Floofy, even though they didn't meet two of my criteria; they haven't been in business for at least 10 years and they don't own their own data centers. It wasn't long after getting set up with Floofy when these circus clowns sold the company, transferred everything over to a new company without giving them all the necessary info and didn't bother informing their customers which, again, led to my website evaporating until i figured out what they did.

The hunt continues...

Not being 100% comfortable with some of BuyVM's vetting policies (they are very particular), i continued looking for another ISP and this time i landed on Shock Hosting. I peppered Ashton with lots of questions and was reasonably happy with the responses he provided, though they don't own their data center and their support is based in India. The latter was a significant turn-off, but support has been OK. I would've went back to KnownHost but i didn't like the only OS they offered at the time (they since offer a few more) and i don't like the 3rd party crap they leverage to run their website.

The drama continues...

Still not satisfied with the depth of the hole i was digging for myself, i also decided to go with a different VPS control panel, this time Webmin/Virtualmin instead of Direct Admin. OK, so i'm still too dumb to run without a CP. Sue me. Still, Webmin/Virtualmin is not for the nooblet, let me tell ya. It took quite a bit of reading and fooling around and forum posting and making mistakes and starting all over again and again and again until i got it right... more or less. Getting DNS and a mail server working properly is no easy task.

Drill 'em baby, drill 'em hard...

Getting back to how i pick a service provider, here's some resources and rules i used which proved to be valuable:

Make sure the company is not owned by Endurance International Group (EIG) / Clearlake Capital Group / Newfold Digital. Because the service and support of the companies owned by EIG, Newfold Digital, etc. often nose-dives once they're acquired, they do not usually disclose their parent company but you can reference my list here. Understand though that these offenders constantly change their names and are constantly absorbing more companies, so no list is likely to be complete.
LowEndTalk is a good resource if you're looking for a really cheap provider, however be aware that 'cheap' does not generally equal 'good'. Among them though you're also likely to find some good companies if you troll around long enough. LET is fairly free-speech friendly, so if a company talks shit, they'll often be called out right quick and bluntly. The reviews section of the forum is here.
I'm very weary of the big "review" websites since so many are owned by the company they're "reviewing", but Trustpilot was helpful to an extent. Be sure to leverage their filtering options
Searching the interwebs using terms such as 'quality vps provider', 'low cost kvm vps' or 'united states vps' is generally useless. You'll return piles and piles of garbage. You need to be more creative with your searches and it helps to use different search engines as well. For example you could craft searches like 'free-speech vps' or 'family-owned kvm vps' or 'privately-owned vps' or 'we-own data-center vps' or 'dmca-ignored vps', etc..
Avoid companies that don't offer a personal note about their business. Look for an 'about' page that provides personalized information rather than the typical corporate drivel.
If you care about privacy, pick a host that accepts crypto and doesn't require personal information.
Avoid "U.S. based" companies that aren't based in the U.S.. If their English is lousy, it's a dead giveaway.

Here's an example of how deceitful many of these companies are. I don't remember the exact search terms i used to find these idiots, but i apparently included 'united-states' and/or 'about-us' with the intention of finding a company based in the U.S. that had an 'about' page. Click through them and see if you notice anything odd.

Also see:

Here's a template you might want to adapt if you're searching for a web hosting provider/ISP.

Questions to ask...

i'm looking for a new, long-term host and am considering your company - i'd like to ask a few questions before making a decision...

1. are you affiliated in any way with a parent company such as Endurance International Group (EIG) (a.k.a Clearlake Capital Group, Newfold Digital)? if so, there's no need to answer further questions

2. are you independently owned and, if so, do you plan to remain so?

3. what is your position regarding legal free speech as guaranteed by the 1st amendment to the U.S. constitution?

4. in what country/state is your company registered?

5. who provides your infrastructure (datacenter)?

6. is there any redundancy in your network (what teir is it)?

7. where is your support based and what is the average response time for weekends/holidays/weekdays?

8. do you ask your customers to submit reviews or automatically enroll them on 3rd party review sites such as Trustpilot?

9. what personal information do you require to establish service?

10. do you offer any coupons/discounts?

Lastly, you always have the option of self-hosting your website, but there's a learning curve to doing so. If this is something you wish to explore, i might recommend keeping it simple by deploying a static site and a 3rd party email provider which can save a lot of headaches and be far more resistant to hacking.