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BuyVM.net 3 month review
Review of BuyVM.net
I've been a customer of BuyVM.net since 1st January 2015, and I have 3 of their 256MB VPS's, one in each location, as well as a DDoS protected anycast IP.
Pricing and features
First of all, I have to say that I love the Stallion control panel. It's beautifully designed, and incredibly easy to use. I love the little features that really show the attention to detail, such as the pop-up that says "I come to serve." when you boot a server.
The pricing might seem a little expensive at first, but when you take into account the great uptime, support, and bonus features like anycast and failover IP addresses, it certainly seems good value.
Benchmarks
All these benchmarks are taken while running my semi-production application, so they are most likely a little bit lower than they would be. However, they're still fantastic.
The low uptime figure is my fault, I've rebooted them manually for updates.
OpenVZ, New Jersey
# wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/null|bash CPU model : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630L 0 @ 2.00GHz Number of cores : 2 CPU frequency : 2000.042 MHz Total amount of ram : 256 MB Total amount of swap : 256 MB System uptime : 3 min, Download speed from CacheFly: 79.5MB/s Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 49.8MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 32.6MB/s Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 5.30MB/s Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 10.7MB/s Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 43.8MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 6.87MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 23.1MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 21.6MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 12.1MB/s I/O speed : 250 MB/s
OpenVZ, Luxembourg
wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/null|bash CPU model : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz Number of cores : 2 CPU frequency : 1999.999 MHz Total amount of ram : 256 MB Total amount of swap : 256 MB System uptime : 1 day, 18:05, Download speed from CacheFly: 59.1MB/s Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 15.3MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 15.9MB/s Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 4.04MB/s Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 14.6MB/s Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 6.81MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 5.70MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 11.5MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 12.3MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 15.9MB/s I/O speed : 109 MB/s
KVM, Las Vegas (with KVM networking config changes)
wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/null|bash CPU model : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5639 @ 2.13GHz Number of cores : 1 CPU frequency : 2133.408 MHz Total amount of ram : 238 MB Total amount of swap : 511 MB System uptime : 1 day, 19:16, Download speed from CacheFly: 22.8MB/s Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 848KB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 5.83MB/s Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 2.77MB/s Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 1.04MB/s Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 11.1MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 2.61MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 7.96MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 17.4MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 4.42MB/s I/O speed : 139 MB/s
Uptime
I haven't had uptime monitoring on these servers, however, I've not noticed any downtime, nor have any of the people using them.
There was some minor downtime recently for SSD upgrades in New Jersey. This was communicated well in advance, and now seems to be complete. I suppose I would have liked a more specific ETA, but that's the only criticism I can find.
Communication & Tickets
I have submitted 3 tickets since getting the services. None of them were for issues like a server being down, they were simply questions.
My first ticket was answered in 22 minutes for the first reply, the other replies took around that time, although slightly less. Support staff were very helpful and efficient in all of the tickets, even though some of them were tickets that other providers would have turned down for being rather silly questions (such as querying whether the setup for adding an anycast IP to the VPS was the same as the unicast IP's).
Overall
I'm incredibly happy, and the helpful attitude of support has meant that I intend to stay with BuyVM for the forseeable future. They have a huge feature range that is simply unparalleled in the Low End market, although I suppose their prices are a tiny bit higher to reflect the work that that must involve.
Proof of services
I manually removed the invoice numbers, but here are the first invoices I received.
Comments
Indeed @Francisco provides an excellent service. I'm considering to purchase a new DDos Portected VPS so I can start a new IRC network.
They definitely provide a solid service, and they've been recommended a lot of times in LEB/LET.
Good to see LEB provider doing great service.
Thanks
We always hated competing on price, that's why we simply push hard on features and the likes.
While BuyVM was originally seen as a very affordable brand (It still is, just maybe not quite by LE standards), our pricing was simply scaled down from what we charged on our Frantech side of things. We marked down what we felt our own personal time was worth for managed vs unmanaged, etc.
The LU speeds are a smidge low on the IO and I'm embarrassed to say I didn't update to the latest AACRAID driver when I installed them - woops! I'll schedule a maintenance on them at some point but given it isn't hurting anything short of benchmark porn, I'm not going to rock the boat if I don't need to.
Francisco
That makes sense, and I respect that viewpoint. The features definitely make up for the price
Yeah, it's been performing fine I certainly haven't noticed any issues.
one of the first vps i got was from buyvm
Agreed that BuyVM is rock solid provider, and stallion is indeed a very good CP.
Thanks
There's a big V6 overhaul/improvement coming down pretty soon. Anycast V6 & routed subnets oh my!
Francisco
Solusvm decoded with fixes now named as Stallion?
Yeah, didn't you know? You just open your /usr/local/solusvm/includes/solusvm.conf, change the text after the : to 9805d825ff898d9356b6d16dd44e15e82d376b89 . It's a feature unlock key and will give you access to the beta backups & Solus' unannounced anycast features.
Francisco
Somebody-beating-a-dead-horse-alarm...
BuyVM is awesome. Their pricing model is genius. When they started, they were so inexpensive that no one thought they would make it. Keeping that pricing in place, it became more expensive compared to other options, but that also (I assume) gave them more money to work with as the cost of doing business in the industry has dropped so much since then. As a result, quality keeps improving, and the rest stays the same
Thanks
It's amazing what great things you can do for your customers when you actually make enough off each account to cover it all.
Francisco
http://stocknj.com
Anthony still answers the tickets?
Anthony hasn't been with us since June of last year. We brought on 3 other works and are able to provide 24/5 coverage during the weeks and Aldryic handles the weekends for the most part.
Francisco
Note to self if a BuyVM goes down contact on Monday not weekend.
Lol jk
Loving the music
Aldryic & I are around for most of the weekends with the only hours we miss being when we're both asleep (not often, I usually stay up for shift change).
Francisco
great news! anthony scares me alot
News to me as well! He's the reason I bother Fran instead of opening tickets. He would never understand my requests and I'd just give up trying. He could do stuff well, but he would read what he wanted from what you would say and ignore the rest, even if you kept it painfully brief. Fran can rest now!
He makes my knees shake a bit when trying to open a ticket. I would usually just go to IRC instead and look for Fran just like you
Heh, same here, looking through my emails:
2 x BuyVM-128MB - (08/15/2011 - 08/14/2012)
Rock on @Francisco!
The 'BOFH effect'? (Time to start a thread in /General about Simon Travaglia's characters.)
BuyVM is probably the most dependable provider I know of. Have 2 DNS server VMs with them. Honestly I don't even monitor them or think about them. And when I see their emails about MNT or emer MNT, I don't even give the emails a second thought because they always do what they say they are going to do, and usually much sooner.
He's the reason I try to never open tickets at any provider anywhere, ever. Well, him and what's-his-face at 123Systems. But mostly Anthony...