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Your thoughts on ExtraVM and Evolution Host - customer support, performance, reliability?
I've tested a bunch of providers on LET and found several excellent ones that I'm happy to use on current and future projects -- my own personal test results over time will surprise no one here, as they have pretty much mirrored several in the recent LET top provider survey. There are some real gems in the top 10-15 providers for sure. ( https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/192410/provider-poll-2023-the-results/p1 )
However, there are some other great providers tucked away down that list in the LET survey that don't have as much exposure as the top 10-15, that I'm also interested in checking out at some point too.
What makes me ponder this, for example, is that one of the outstanding providers that doesn't get a lot of coverage here is Oplink ( @oplink ) - they are ranked way down the list, but I know personally they are outstanding. They just don't do fancy marketing and viral threads here, and they tend to not offer ultra-low budget services, so they don't get the action some other providers do. I have no doubt that if they did that, they'd be rated much higher for the 2024 list. But I get that it's not their marketing style or business model, which is fine.
So in the spirit of discovering more of these outstanding providers that are also not as high on the LET top list, there are two providers further down the list that popped out at me that I'm also considering testing, specifically:
ExtraVM ( @MikeA ) and Evolution Host ( @EvolutionHost ).
These two seem similar in prices and features, and both have good external reviews, such as on Trustpilot, etc... so I thought I'd ask here to see if any of you have good (or bad!) experiences with these two specific providers?
They both seem under-represented here, and that could be because they are also not running clever promos very often and they may just be low-key, low-drama, non-flashy providers (similar to Oplink in that respect). Which is fine of course. But they both look like they are worth checking out.
So please let me know your experiences with these two! Especially with customer support, reliability, and performance!
Cheers!
Comments
I've not used Evolution Host, but I've been a happy customer at @MikeA's ExtraVM for some years now.
Whenever I've needed something, he's been of help, so I'm satisfied when it comes to customer support (although I've not needed anything complicated, usually just things I can't do by myself).
No complaint with his services either; they perform well, and I've happily got a couple of them, plus I have referred friends which also have been happy with the service.
At most there's been a couple of service migrations in the past with IP changes, but nowadays, it's (I believe mostly? at least for my services) running under his own IPs, so it's least of a worry.
Thanks, @JeDaYoshi, appreciate the info! Good to hear about the support and performance of the services, and that you recommended ExtraVM to friends, which is one of the biggest compliments you can give them. Curious about the IP changes, hopefully that's extremely rare. That would break whatever I'm hosting there obviously. Did they give you a good heads up and a transition period so you had minimal downtime?
Just comes down to pricing. Popularity on LowEndTalk comes down to how cheap you can go the longest. Plus the services I have are more targeted towards DDoS protection, especially in Europe and Asia where costs are high, so it's impossible to give out the $19/y deals that others do all year round. It's why once popular providers 5+ years ago now are almost never mentioned here anymore. OPLink brought out some great cheap deals (and they are great with the large NVMe storage), so their popularity tripled overnight.
Plus I don't post advertisements here usually, I just like LET for the community and to chat.
Yeah, it was never an overnight change or any of the sorts. It's rare, and I believe that at this point it should be something of the past, too.
Been a customer of @MikeA
This guy knows what he's doing, great customer service!
I've heard good things about you. If you feel like quoting me something for a small VM in Singapore hit me up on my DMs
I haven't used Evolution Host myself either, but have used ExtraVM for 11 months now. I have 3 VPS with them and things have been great. All of the North America offerings are Epyc/Ryzen from what I've seen. Well priced, great performance and on a stellar network. No complaints here. Although I haven't had to reach out to support much, if at all.
P.S. @MikeA even upgraded some of his servers/packages -- which resulted in a slight price increase. He let me keep my instances at their current price and included the upgrades for free. Outside of that, I haven't needed much support but from my interactions so far, I expect it to be handled well if needed.
Have used @MikeA for some offsite 3-2-1 DR stuff (and will again), and he'd be very high on my list if I were making a recommendation to someone else looking in his service areas. Reliability was great, no issues, definitely recommend.
Shamed of me not to have tried extravm yet. Seems the offer has expired already.
This is a great topic, I'm just surprised someone chatted about it before me.
Polls are one sided in some ways, it's a combination of heat/price/quality, so of course there are a lot of very good vendors that don't make the list.
For Europe, @hybula is basically my first choice. They have modern hardware, quality internet, and a friendly and professional service.
I've only recently become aware of @Oplink, and after using them for a few months, I think that at least for as long as I've been using them, their network is great, and Uptime is good and trustworthy.
And I like the fact that they're trying to do the SSD/NVME storage only thing, respectable.
Of course, @crunchbits is my first choice no matter what, I have a lot of servers here, more soon, and they are reliable and professional.
I took a look at them some time ago, they just appear to resell OVH and that's about it. OVH IP's and everything, they don't appear to own any hardware or network.
I'm gonna nominate RamNode and InceptionHosting. I've been with both of them for 10+ years, and they have always been decent.
We no longer see 123systems, bluevm (gang of colocrossing, which was great), tacticalvps, crissic, who were extremely active in this community, hanging around here now. Providers come and go, and it's always sad to find someone leaving here for good. Biz targeting lowend market is vulnerable, just like everyone's life, I presume.
Respect to all the merchants who keep working hard in the lowend market, even those who have left this very community.