Vultr review: Solid Unmanaged VPS Hosting for Experienced Users
Vultr is web hosting for nerds by nerds. Many users hold it in high regard, but its uptime isn't always consistent and the difficulty in reaching the support team is problematic.
Vultr review overview
Speed
Access to the very latest server hardware – great speed.
Uptime
100% uptime guarantee – complaints about some data centers.
Support
Email support with often a full day of waiting for a response.
Simplicity
Intuitive and convenient self-designed dashboard.
Features
Everything developers could ever need (and more).
Costs
Transparent pricing and VPS hosting starting from $2.5.
Our score:
4 / 5
Benefits of Vultr
Disadvantages of Vultr
Vultr has existed since 2014 and has since then been a widely used hosting solution for developers who want to quickly and easily launch their own web app, video game, or website for a fair price.
Complete beginners don't need to think about choosing Vultr. But when you have experience with managing servers – or are willing to learn this (which doesn't take very long) Vultr can be an interesting hosting option to consider.
It's a bootstrapped company that has never raised a cent in external investments. By now, the company serves 1.5 million customers.
Vultr at a glance
| Uptime guarantee | ✓ |
| Customer Service | Support tickets (responses may take a day) |
| Managed WordPress | ✕ |
| Types of hosting | VPS, cloud |
| Basis features | Launch a server within minutes, super wide range of server options (bare metal, kubernetes and more), 100% uptime guarantee |
| Most suitable for | Developers |
| Server locations | 32 data centers, including one in Amsterdam |
| Price from | $2.5 per month |
Vultr speed, uptime and customer service
Vultr is lightning-fast, has uptime that is generally fantastic (although problems are reported at some data centers) and customer support that practically doesn't exist.
Speed
Vultr's cheapest servers run on previous generation hardware. But if you're willing to pay a bit more, you can get access to AMD EPYC or Intel Xeon CPUs and NVMe SSDs.
It's very simple: what you pay for is what you get and when you spend just a little more money at Vultr, you get access to extremely fast hosting.
Their high-frequency offering is super fast yet still attractively priced.
Uptime
Vultr has a robust infrastructure and doesn't hide this fact:
In my own tests, I haven't experienced any downtime. That said, on some forums and blogs you'll find comments from users complaining about servers going down. It seems to be a matter of which data center you choose. The Amsterdam data center didn't cause me any problems, although my testing time and scope were ultimately limited, of course.
Customer Service
DigitalOcean is a direct competitor of Vultr that already doesn't score well in terms of customer service, and Vultr takes this even further. It can easily take a day before you receive an answer to a question. The customer service is only available through tickets – not via live chat or phone.
This is the point however. Vultr is unmanaged hosting through and through. If you want meaningful support, then you should choose managed hosting.
Vultr's knowledge base is fortunately extensive, and if you understand the subject matter, you should be able to solve most problems with it.
Usability and features
Vultr has an easy-to-use dashboard and all the features you would expect from a leading cloud hosting company.
Dashboard
Vultr has a self-developed dashboard that looks reasonably attractive but, and this is of course much more important, feels intuitive and is easy to use.
You can use the dashboard to order and launch servers within a few minutes, access support and the knowledge base, and of course handle matters such as setting up your backups.
Hosting features and extras
- Keep an eye on your server's health and capacity with ease
- Set up new servers within minutes
- DDoS protection
Costs
You can get started with Vultr for as little as $2.50 per month.
Please note: for this amount you will be assigned a server from the previous generation. For heavier firepower, you'll pay a few euros more per month.
Vultr is slightly cheaper than direct competitor DigitalOcean and also costs less than parties such as Google Cloud and AWS.
What do users think of Vultr
It's clear that Vultr doesn't care at all what people say about them.
While other hosting companies carefully manage their online reputation (for example, by bribing their customers with a free month of hosting if they leave a review about them), Vultr couldn't care less about this.
Their target audience knows how to find them anyway and doesn't care much that they're reviled by a handful of users.
The problems that are being raised are serious, and relate to the automatic blocking of accounts without a quick way to reach Vultr.
Vultr alternatives
You could check out the previously mentioned DigitalOcean. They don't do anything substantially different from Vultr, but they offer slightly better support. Visit their site here.
For unmanaged VPS/cloud hosting, your best option is mijn.host. You can read more about them in our mijn.host review.
Conclusion
Vultr is a no-nonsense hosting company for experienced users. It's the type of rock-solid web host that I can appreciate: no external investors, no cute UI, no frills.
It's a shame that there are some complaints about accounts being blocked without warning. The chance of this happening is small, but Vultr should be more vigilant about this issue.
Nevertheless, it is a hosting provider that gets my recommendation.
