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BuyVM / Frantech review. I've been a customer for 8+ years and have been kept happy.
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BuyVM / Frantech review. I've been a customer for 8+ years and have been kept happy.

MannDudeMannDude Host Rep, Veteran

It's rare for me write reviews, for several reasons. But I figure after eight years of services with BuyVM / Frantech, that I can comment on the service, company and support and it actually mean something.

Reviewing my invoices, it appears I was first invoiced on 02/07/2013. Quite some time ago! Over the years I've used BuyVM for many different things, everything from BuyShared (shared hosting) for some quick/simple static sites and email hosting to what they're known for: Virtual Servers.

As of writing this, I am currently using BuyVM for 13 different virtual servers, a few DDoS filtered IP addresses, and 3 bulk storage slabs. Both for personal use for my own projects, as well as hosting some business related items while we work on sorting out colocation stuff with owned hardware. Two of our three VPN locations are current served through BuyVM (Luxembourg and Vegas) as well as our shared hosting (Luxembourg). I'm running some high traffic servers including an Invidious instance (YouTube proxy front end for privacy, proxying requests for YT videos through the server so end user's IP never is logged with YT) as well as some high performance I2P routers (20tb~ mo sometimes of transfer). They've been incredibly supportive of pro-privacy network projects that I have, including running a Yggdrasil network node/peer, the I2P stuff, and they allow for Tor exits/relays.

In regards to the quality of their DDoS filtering, I've been lucky enough to not need it recently, but still pay for the filtered IPs, however in the past they've easily mitigated a 50Gbit~ attack on a forum I was hosting with them and helped me keep it online even after others were determined to see it go down. The $3/mo for the filtered IP seems more than worth it. I'm sure they've mitigated larger attacks for other clients and probably do many smaller mitigations daily, but I know that old forum used to get slammed occasionally and they were a tremendous help in keeping it online.

It's all unmanaged services, so I try to exhaust all options before I open a ticket with them. I always open my tickets under, "Low Priority" and am impressed with the quick response time. Sometimes it's 10 minutes or less at strange hours of the night and it just blows me away. Some of the recent tickets I have submitted include:

  • A question about IP SWIP and their ability to do it. They can / will.
  • Asking if port 25 was blocked at the network level on their end. It was, and I got whitelisted so that my server(s) can send email if needed.
  • SNMP monitoring over a DDoS filtered IP question which was answered promptly. (Requests from the monitoring server were getting blocked by the filtering, but that is no longer an issue)

I don't expect quick support on unmanaged services, if I hear back in 16-24 hours, to me, that is 'good' (for cheap, unmanaged services) but a 15-30 minute response is common, with an hour or so at most during peak times being normal. That's incredible. If it's not Francisco himself answering a ticket then it's someone just as capable to respond to whatever my question is answering.

What really prompted this review is the features they've added to their in-house VPS control panel recently. The DDoS Filtered IP Firewall ( manage allow/deny blocking rules from IP's or subnets for whatever ports you specify) as well as the integration of server graphs. The fact that they seemingly are always trying to better their product, whether it be from the service itself (storage slabs, adding transit to locations, etc) or just adding features to their in-house stuff in the Stallion control panel (like the firewall management and graphs) just shows that they're willing to spend time and money improving upon a service that is already solid. They could have done nothing and likely retained all their existing customers and continued to gain new ones but they add features that add value to what they're already offering with no price increase to the end user. Heck yeah.

I was trying to figure out if this was a 'pro' or a 'con' about the service, but the more I think about it, the more I see it as a 'pro'. Sometimes their servers are out of stock. But, I find that on the first of the month or after the 7th of the month ( I assume after unpaid / terminated services get added back to stock) that you'll have no trouble finding a server. Instead of over allocating resources to accommodate service requests, they simply wait until the resources are actually available. At the lower priced scale that they offer services at, that is rarely seen. So in a sense, while a mild inconvenience at times, it's actually a positive thing that they do.

I'm pretty sure the hardware nodes are the same in each location so things like disk and CPU performance is consistent regardless of location (Consistently good) so there isn't any noteable variance in performance. I expect and receive the same performance in all locations. Network quality in all three locations are comparable, I've not had any major issues but haven't done any testing with the purpose to compare the three locations but can if anyone is interested enough.

All in all, I've got to give them a 10/10. It seems the features they were standard and unique to them 8 years ago when I signed up are features other providers began to implement later. They seem to be ahead of the curve in many key areas in the Virtual Server industry. The company seems to be ran by a small but dedicated team of people who actually care about the service and possess the skills and know-how to handle any issue that they may encounter. They have an IRC channel (if you're old, like me) or a Discord (if you can stand that) that are integrated and it's a good source of entertainment but also an informal way to ask questions.

Comments

  • I Love Pony :)

  • BastionBastion Member
    edited April 2021

    It's always nice when you find a host (like BuyVM) with such a consistently positive reputation from competent customers! Out of curiosity, what size VM do you use the most? I've only used the 512mb and 1g slices so far and I'm pretty satisfied.

  • @MannDude said:
    It's rare for me write reviews, for several reasons. But I figure after eight years of services with BuyVM / Frantech, that I can comment on the service, company and support and it actually mean something.

    Reviewing my invoices, it appears I was first invoiced on 02/07/2013. Quite some time ago! Over the years I've used BuyVM for many different things, everything from BuyShared (shared hosting) for some quick/simple static sites and email hosting to what they're known for: Virtual Servers.

    As of writing this, I am currently using BuyVM for 13 different virtual servers, a few DDoS filtered IP addresses, and 3 bulk storage slabs. Both for personal use for my own projects, as well as hosting some business related items while we work on sorting out colocation stuff with owned hardware. Two of our three VPN locations are current served through BuyVM (Luxembourg and Vegas) as well as our shared hosting (Luxembourg). I'm running some high traffic servers including an Invidious instance (YouTube proxy front end for privacy, proxying requests for YT videos through the server so end user's IP never is logged with YT) as well as some high performance I2P routers (20tb~ mo sometimes of transfer). They've been incredibly supportive of pro-privacy network projects that I have, including running a Yggdrasil network node/peer, the I2P stuff, and they allow for Tor exits/relays.

    In regards to the quality of their DDoS filtering, I've been lucky enough to not need it recently, but still pay for the filtered IPs, however in the past they've easily mitigated a 50Gbit~ attack on a forum I was hosting with them and helped me keep it online even after others were determined to see it go down. The $3/mo for the filtered IP seems more than worth it. I'm sure they've mitigated larger attacks for other clients and probably do many smaller mitigations daily, but I know that old forum used to get slammed occasionally and they were a tremendous help in keeping it online.

    It's all unmanaged services, so I try to exhaust all options before I open a ticket with them. I always open my tickets under, "Low Priority" and am impressed with the quick response time. Sometimes it's 10 minutes or less at strange hours of the night and it just blows me away. Some of the recent tickets I have submitted include:

    • A question about IP SWIP and their ability to do it. They can / will.
    • Asking if port 25 was blocked at the network level on their end. It was, and I got whitelisted so that my server(s) can send email if needed.
    • SNMP monitoring over a DDoS filtered IP question which was answered promptly. (Requests from the monitoring server were getting blocked by the filtering, but that is no longer an issue)

    I don't expect quick support on unmanaged services, if I hear back in 16-24 hours, to me, that is 'good' (for cheap, unmanaged services) but a 15-30 minute response is common, with an hour or so at most during peak times being normal. That's incredible. If it's not Francisco himself answering a ticket then it's someone just as capable to respond to whatever my question is answering.

    What really prompted this review is the features they've added to their in-house VPS control panel recently. The DDoS Filtered IP Firewall ( manage allow/deny blocking rules from IP's or subnets for whatever ports you specify) as well as the integration of server graphs. The fact that they seemingly are always trying to better their product, whether it be from the service itself (storage slabs, adding transit to locations, etc) or just adding features to their in-house stuff in the Stallion control panel (like the firewall management and graphs) just shows that they're willing to spend time and money improving upon a service that is already solid. They could have done nothing and likely retained all their existing customers and continued to gain new ones but they add features that add value to what they're already offering with no price increase to the end user. Heck yeah.

    I was trying to figure out if this was a 'pro' or a 'con' about the service, but the more I think about it, the more I see it as a 'pro'. Sometimes their servers are out of stock. But, I find that on the first of the month or after the 7th of the month ( I assume after unpaid / terminated services get added back to stock) that you'll have no trouble finding a server. Instead of over allocating resources to accommodate service requests, they simply wait until the resources are actually available. At the lower priced scale that they offer services at, that is rarely seen. So in a sense, while a mild inconvenience at times, it's actually a positive thing that they do.

    I'm pretty sure the hardware nodes are the same in each location so things like disk and CPU performance is consistent regardless of location (Consistently good) so there isn't any noteable variance in performance. I expect and receive the same performance in all locations. Network quality in all three locations are comparable, I've not had any major issues but haven't done any testing with the purpose to compare the three locations but can if anyone is interested enough.

    All in all, I've got to give them a 10/10. It seems the features they were standard and unique to them 8 years ago when I signed up are features other providers began to implement later. They seem to be ahead of the curve in many key areas in the Virtual Server industry. The company seems to be ran by a small but dedicated team of people who actually care about the service and possess the skills and know-how to handle any issue that they may encounter. They have an IRC channel (if you're old, like me) or a Discord (if you can stand that) that are integrated and it's a good source of entertainment but also an informal way to ask questions.

    Solid review for a solid provider, from a solid user. Solid stuff.

    Thanked by 1MannDude
  • DPDP Administrator, The Domain Guy

    Truly Frantastic.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    Thank you good sir!

    We try our best and only more to come.

    Francisco

    Thanked by 2MannDude cats
  • HakimHakim Member

    Hey @Francisco , does BuyVM have any plan of coming to the APAC location?

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @Hakim said: Hey @Francisco , does BuyVM have any plan of coming to the APAC location?

    I'd like to I'm just not sure where.

    Singapore has some draconian speech laws that I'm completely against.

    Japan seems to be the only one with laws similar to the west....minus the whole blurred out porn.

    Francisco

  • DPDP Administrator, The Domain Guy

    @Francisco said: blurred out porn

    Pixelated too, sometimes.

    Thanked by 1Francisco
  • seriesnseriesn Member
    edited April 2021

    @thedp said:

    @Francisco said: blurred out porn

    Pixelated too, sometimes.

    It gets tough during Hard times :(

  • MannDudeMannDude Host Rep, Veteran
    edited April 2021

    @Francisco said:

    Japan seems to be the only one with laws similar to the west....minus the whole blurred out porn.

    Time for you to put the spank bank to good use for machine learning. Coming Soon(tm) to Stallion, all Japanese services will have image and video uploads checked against StallionAI to superimpose blurs and add a subtle amount of bush and/or tentacle to all uploads.

    For compliance reasons.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @MannDude said:

    @Francisco said:

    Japan seems to be the only one with laws similar to the west....minus the whole blurred out porn.

    Time for you to put the spank bank to good use for machine learning. Coming Soon(tm) to Stallion, all Japanese services will have image and video uploads checked against StallionAI to superimpose blurs and add a subtle amount of bush and/or tentacle to all uploads.

    For compliance reasons.

    That would be a good April fools joke.

    Make all JP services pixelated with random hello kittys on the page. Poor Stallion.

    Francisco

  • I should end up posting my own review sometime. PONY!

    Thanked by 1Francisco
  • edited April 2021

    @Hakim said: Hey @Francisco , does BuyVM have any plan of coming to the APAC location?

    @Francisco said:

    I'd like to I'm just not sure where.

    Singapore has some draconian speech laws that I'm completely against.

    Japan seems to be the only one with laws similar to the west....minus the whole blurred out porn.

    Francisco

    Well almost all APAC countries have sh*tty speech laws, nothing you can do about it. No APAC countries I know have like literally free freedom of speech.

    Providers/hosts chose Singapore because of it's distance & connectivity to nearby countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, etc)

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @nanankcornering said:

    @Hakim said: Hey @Francisco , does BuyVM have any plan of coming to the APAC location?

    @Francisco said:

    I'd like to I'm just not sure where.

    Singapore has some draconian speech laws that I'm completely against.

    Japan seems to be the only one with laws similar to the west....minus the whole blurred out porn.

    Francisco

    Well almost all APAC countries have sh*tty speech laws, nothing you can do about it. No APAC countries I know have like literally free freedom of speech.

    Providers/hosts chose Singapore because of it's distance & connectivity to nearby countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, etc)

    Even Japan? I haven't dived heavily into JP law, basically got the cliff notes for each country.

    I got a bunch of weeby staff members that would love such a trip :)

    Francisco

  • whats the point of a vps if you cant even host porn on it

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @SirFoxy said:
    whats the point of a vps if you cant even host porn on it

    Hosting it in the USA or LUX is fine.

    I'd have to dig around a lot to see if it's possible in JP, but I'd assume it requires censoring.

    I looked down under and actually got some pricing on that but haven't thought on it much while we're working to get everything else sorted.

    Francisco

  • @Francisco said:

    @SirFoxy said:
    whats the point of a vps if you cant even host porn on it

    Hosting it in the USA or LUX is fine.

    I'd have to dig around a lot to see if it's possible in JP, but I'd assume it requires censoring.

    I looked down under and actually got some pricing on that but haven't thought on it much while we're working to get everything else sorted.

    Francisco

    the age of consent in japan is 13 but u cant even host unminecrafted tentacle porn

  • notarobonotarobo Member
    edited April 2021

    @Francisco said:

    @SirFoxy said:
    whats the point of a vps if you cant even host porn on it

    Hosting it in the USA or LUX is fine.

    I'd have to dig around a lot to see if it's possible in JP, but I'd assume it requires censoring.

    I looked down under and actually got some pricing on that but haven't thought on it much while we're working to get everything else sorted.

    Francisco

    if you have time , watch The Naked Director on Netflix for some indication on how porn industry was like in Japan, and some horny fun fun.

  • postcdpostcd Member
    edited June 2021

    @Francisco My BuyShared review after more than 18 months: fair DirectAdmin reseller hosting in Luxembourg. Good price/value, quite fast support. DirectAdmin supported

    Downside is that they are unable or not willing to prevent downtimes, often MySQL server stop working. I am on a lu-shared01.dapanel.net. Today another such a downtime of 20 minutes. uptimerobot.com shows 99.7% uptime last 30 days., i wish they improve this. Also often such MySQL issue crash my MySQL table and despite i asked they setup automatic fixing, it not happened and i setup the command on my end to fix the results of their MySQL crashes.

    Thanked by 1o_be_one
  • DataIdeas-JoshDataIdeas-Josh Member, Patron Provider

    @postcd said:
    @Francisco My BuyShared review after more than 18 months: fair DirectAdmin reseller hosting in Luxembourg. Good price/value, quite fast support. DirectAdmin supported

    Downside is that they are unable or not willing to prevent downtimes, often MySQL server stop working. I am on a lu-shared01.dapanel.net. Today another such a downtime of 20 minutes. uptimerobot.com shows 99.7% uptime last 30 days., i wish they improve this. Also often such MySQL issue crash my MySQL table and despite i asked they setup automatic fixing, it not happened and i setup the command on my end to fix the results of their MySQL crashes.

    I mean that is still within reason for uptime on the amount you pay.
    Your want something better. Get a VPS.

  • jbilohjbiloh Administrator, Veteran

    Thanks for sharing your experience @MannDude

    Thanked by 1MannDude
  • @Francisco said:

    @Hakim said: Hey @Francisco , does BuyVM have any plan of coming to the APAC location?

    I'd like to I'm just not sure where.

    Singapore has some draconian speech laws that I'm completely against.

    Japan seems to be the only one with laws similar to the west....minus the whole blurred out porn.

    Francisco

    may be hong kong or korea?

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