Racknerd the good, the average, the bad.

hanli29 · July 2025

Honest review:

The first option I chose in this world of VPS servers and the like (I've only been here a short time). The annual price seemed affordable, and since I'm a novice, I didn't check the refund policies. A while later, I discovered they don't have one or it's difficult to do so (I read that, correct me).
The good:
I liked that they maintained the prices from past promotions, such as Black Friday. It allowed me to choose something affordable to run. I selected this 2.5 GB KVM VPS (Black Friday 2024) for $18/year USD https://my.racknerd.com/cart.php?a=confproduct&i=0. Looking at the monthly price, I thought it was excellent.
I contacted technical support with various questions, and they generally responded well. They even helped me with tests and changed my instance without any problems.

The tests performed with Yabs and NWS are within the paid price. Although it lacks IPv6 implementation.

The average:
Being a fairly cheap and affordable plan, the transfer speed isn't the best. In fact, I host a VPN service, and it suffers from micro-drops, although you won't notice them when browsing. I have a monitoring program, and it always tells me about these failures. It's not something that keeps you up at night. But that doesn't happen to me with other competing VPSs.
If you want to change something, whether to IPv6 or IPv4, you have to pay.

The Bad:
This is my personal opinion and is subjective to each user's usage. The IPs are "burned," and there are bans everywhere. If you're an expert, I feel there's a lot of instability in the infrastructure. If you check https://status.racknerd.com/, you'll notice all the problems that arise daily. Although at the time of writing this review, I've had 16 days of uptime. Not all data centers are available for VPSs.
If you want to implement something with decent production capabilities, I really don't recommend it. This provider is best for small, simple tests. Everything can explode at any moment.
They should look for alternatives and not oversell.

*https://www.vpsbenchmarks.com/yabs/hostpapa-2c-2gb-20250610-7ada6b

natestamm · July 2025

@hanli29 said:
Honest review:

The first option I chose in this world of VPS servers and the like (I've only been here a short time). The annual price seemed affordable, and since I'm a novice, I didn't check the refund policies. A while later, I discovered they don't have one or it's difficult to do so (I read that, correct me).
**
The good:**
I liked that they maintained the prices from past promotions, such as Black Friday. It allowed me to choose something affordable to run. I selected this 2.5 GB KVM VPS (Black Friday 2024) for $18/year USD https://my.racknerd.com/cart.php?a=confproduct&i=0. Looking at the monthly price, I thought it was excellent.
I contacted technical support with various questions, and they generally responded well. They even helped me with tests and changed my instance without any problems.

The tests performed with Yabs and NWS are within the paid price. Although it lacks IPv6 implementation.

The average:
Being a fairly cheap and affordable plan, the transfer speed isn't the best. In fact, I host a VPN service, and it suffers from micro-drops, although you won't notice them when browsing. I have a monitoring program, and it always tells me about these failures. It's not something that keeps you up at night. But that doesn't happen to me with other competing VPSs.
If you want to change something, whether to IPv6 or IPv4, you have to pay.

The Bad:
This is my personal opinion and is subjective to each user's usage. The IPs are "burned," and there are bans everywhere. If you're an expert, I feel there's a lot of instability in the infrastructure. If you check https://status.racknerd.com/, you'll notice all the problems that arise daily. Although at the time of writing this review, I've had 16 days of uptime. Not all data centers are available for VPSs.
If you want to implement something with decent production capabilities, I really don't recommend it. This provider is best for small, simple tests. Everything can explode at any moment.
They should look for alternatives and not oversell.

*https://www.vpsbenchmarks.com/yabs/hostpapa-2c-2gb-20250610-7ada6b

My experience is the good price, the yearly deals are very reasonable and ive not once been let down by their service,i also had all the modules i could have asked for available and enabled already from the host node, so thats a win to me.

s0n1c · July 2025

racknerd has usually been alright for me, but its like $18/year…. you get what you pay for lol

suut · July 2025

I use RackNerd San Jose, it is very stable and most importantly affordable. Hopefully more AMD VPS will be launched in the future.

hanli29 · July 2025

I agree that you get what you pay for. As long as they can improve, it benefits both suppliers and consumers.

s0n1c · July 2025

yep

eb1995 · July 2025

If I had to pick the provider with the most dirtiest IPs the world has to offer then I would say racknerd is probably up there and also I’m a bit sus of their ISOs or kvm set up tbh. But customer service is good (hi dustin glws).

xaos · July 2025

yeh IPs are mostly burned, and on spam lists, rn is good for testing and developement of dapp, not for hosting your project.

hanli29 · May 29

I was surprised by the stability, at least for me, during uptime. Online activity was great. I don't think there were ever any outages or significant downtime. So, I'm happy with where my server is hosted, and I hope you keep it that way.
The customer service is great; they are friendly and their responses are quick. I hope you always maintain human support and not a terrible AI that doesn't solve anything.

Why I'm not staying? Here are the negative points:

No support for IPv6
IPv4 addresses are too "burned out," and running services like (small) email or VPNs or other services always triggers an alert that these IPs are "bots." The team should make an effort to clean up the IPs.

For the prices, the service specs should be improved, at least with a little RAM. Even before the "RAM Bomb," Racknerd always offered very little RAM; 1.5GB and 2.5GB plans are really poor.

Even though an SSD is not very powerful, it helps improve the experience and performance compared to an HDD.

Upgrading the network speed to 10 Gbps should be considered.

Transfer speeds per terabyte in bandwidth are great, although they can be improved to unlimited depending on the case.

totally_not_banned · May 29

@hanli29 said:
Racknerd always offered very little RAM; 1.5GB and 2.5GB plans are really poor.

Very little is a pretty subjective measure. Even in 2026 you can do quite a bit with something as low as 128-256MB. 1.5 or 2.5GB should be more than enough for the average use case unless it's massively wasted on fluff.

hanli29 · May 29

@totally_not_banned said:

@hanli29 said:
Racknerd always offered very little RAM; 1.5GB and 2.5GB plans are really poor.

Very little is a pretty subjective measure. Even in 2026 you can do quite a bit with something as low as 128-256MB. 1.5 or 2.5GB should be more than enough for the average use case unless it's massively wasted on fluff.

To be honest, I don't agree. What can you actually implement with 128MB to 256MB? Not even a decent WireGuard VPN. Configuring it is one thing; actual performance under constant load is another entirely.
Have you checked the specs for Ubuntu Server, for instance? Perhaps something like Alpine might work, but the learning curve is steeper than with Debian or its derivatives.

totally_not_banned · May 29

@hanli29 said:

@totally_not_banned said:

@hanli29 said:
Racknerd always offered very little RAM; 1.5GB and 2.5GB plans are really poor.

Very little is a pretty subjective measure. Even in 2026 you can do quite a bit with something as low as 128-256MB. 1.5 or 2.5GB should be more than enough for the average use case unless it's massively wasted on fluff.

To be honest, I don't agree. What can you actually implement with 128MB to 256MB? Not even a decent WireGuard VPN. Configuring it is one thing; actual performance under constant load is another entirely.

Huh? What exactly would impact performance so badly? Your base system will use like 45-50MB of RAM (if you don't want to put in work to manually slim down the kernel) and there's maybe another like 5MB for SSHGuard. That would surely leave enough for a bunch of buffers, wouldn't it?

Have you checked the specs for Ubuntu Server, for instance?

Not specifically but 99% of Linux distributions install bloated POS by default, so chances are it's pretty much ass.

Perhaps something like Alpine might work, but the learning curve is steeper than with Debian or its derivatives.

Not really. Sure systemd might waste a bunch of resources and get in the way of trimming fat but overall it's not that hard to make Linux run without needing a ton of resources.

hanli29 · May 29

@totally_not_banned said:

@hanli29 said:

@totally_not_banned said:

@hanli29 said:
Racknerd always offered very little RAM; 1.5GB and 2.5GB plans are really poor.

Very little is a pretty subjective measure. Even in 2026 you can do quite a bit with something as low as 128-256MB. 1.5 or 2.5GB should be more than enough for the average use case unless it's massively wasted on fluff.

To be honest, I don't agree. What can you actually implement with 128MB to 256MB? Not even a decent WireGuard VPN. Configuring it is one thing; actual performance under constant load is another entirely.

Huh? What exactly would impact performance so badly? Your base system will use like 45-50MB of RAM (if you don't want to put in work to manually slim down the kernel) and there's maybe another like 5MB for SSHGuard. That would surely leave enough for a bunch of buffers, wouldn't it?

If you showed me proof of that resource usage, I’d believe it; otherwise, a Debian Netinstall alone has typically consumed around 200MB for me just while idling.
And what do you do after that? You’re not simply going to leave it sitting there; you have to configure services. That’s why I gave you the example of a VPN—which is the most suitable use case for the specs you mentioned—and even for that, you’d be cutting it too close.

Have you checked the specs for Ubuntu Server, for instance?

Official System RequirementsCPU: 1 GHz or betterRAM: Minimum 1.5 GB (ISO installs) or 1 GB (cloud images)Storage: Minimum 5 GB (ISO installs) or 4 GB (cloud images)Practical Recommended SpecsFor a stable, long-term deployment, the official Ubuntu Server System Requirements and community consensus suggest slightly higher specs:CPU: 2 GHz dual-core processor or betterRAM: 3 GB or moreStorage: 25 GB or more to allow for logs, updates, and package caching

Not specifically but 99% of Linux distributions install bloated POS by default, so chances are it's pretty much ass.

Perhaps something like Alpine might work, but the learning curve is steeper than with Debian or its derivatives.

Not really. Sure systemd might waste a bunch of resources and get in the way of trimming fat but overall it's not that hard to make Linux run without needing a ton of resources.

I agree, but optimizing things to this extent requires patience and a lot of time to dedicate.

buggedout · May 29

@hanli29 said:

@totally_not_banned said:

If you showed me proof of that resource usage, I’d believe it; otherwise, a Debian Netinstall alone has typically consumed around 200MB for me just while idling.
And what do you do after that? You’re not simply going to leave it sitting there; you have to configure services. That’s why I gave you the example of a VPN—which is the most suitable use case for the specs you mentioned—and even for that, you’d be cutting it too close.

I am running a dns resolver(used by approx 50 people) on a vultr vps from many months now. It has 1GB RAM, but the server hardly touches 50% memory usage. I would have went with 512MB RAM plan if vultr had that option in India. And I have beszel agent which uses approx 15MB memory and I did not even try removing redudant packages. So i think we can run a wireguard decently with 256MB memory if you are willing to optimize it.

$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           961Mi       490Mi        97Mi        46Mi       587Mi       471Mi

edit: i am not a expert so i maybe wrong...

totally_not_banned · May 29

@hanli29 said:

@totally_not_banned said:

@hanli29 said:

@totally_not_banned said:

@hanli29 said:
Racknerd always offered very little RAM; 1.5GB and 2.5GB plans are really poor.

Very little is a pretty subjective measure. Even in 2026 you can do quite a bit with something as low as 128-256MB. 1.5 or 2.5GB should be more than enough for the average use case unless it's massively wasted on fluff.

To be honest, I don't agree. What can you actually implement with 128MB to 256MB? Not even a decent WireGuard VPN. Configuring it is one thing; actual performance under constant load is another entirely.

Huh? What exactly would impact performance so badly? Your base system will use like 45-50MB of RAM (if you don't want to put in work to manually slim down the kernel) and there's maybe another like 5MB for SSHGuard. That would surely leave enough for a bunch of buffers, wouldn't it?

If you showed me proof of that resource usage, I’d believe it; otherwise, a Debian Netinstall alone has typically consumed around 200MB for me just while idling.

Well, you could also just believe me but if the idea is somehow so outlandish, fine:

And what do you do after that? You’re not simply going to leave it sitting there; you have to configure services. That’s why I gave you the example of a VPN—which is the most suitable use case for the specs you mentioned—and even for that, you’d be cutting it too close.

Well, the average service (like for example a webserver) uses a couple MB. I don't really see how that's some kind of huge problem.

Have you checked the specs for Ubuntu Server, for instance?

Official System RequirementsCPU: 1 GHz or betterRAM: Minimum 1.5 GB (ISO installs) or 1 GB (cloud images)Storage: Minimum 5 GB (ISO installs) or 4 GB (cloud images)Practical Recommended SpecsFor a stable, long-term deployment, the official Ubuntu Server System Requirements and community consensus suggest slightly higher specs:CPU: 2 GHz dual-core processor or betterRAM: 3 GB or moreStorage: 25 GB or more to allow for logs, updates, and package caching

Yeah, bloated to hell and back. That's pretty much my point

Not specifically but 99% of Linux distributions install bloated POS by default, so chances are it's pretty much ass.

Perhaps something like Alpine might work, but the learning curve is steeper than with Debian or its derivatives.

Not really. Sure systemd might waste a bunch of resources and get in the way of trimming fat but overall it's not that hard to make Linux run without needing a ton of resources.

I agree, but optimizing things to this extent requires patience and a lot of time to dedicate.

Well, installing Devuan (which, if you don't know it, is basically Debian without systemd) and not selecting any software suites during setup isn't really all that complicated. Obviously the lack of systemd would likely confuse the average Linux user these days, so there might still be a bit of time investment in that regard.

I haven't installed any actual Debian recently so i'm not sure how an install with no software selected (including "system tools") would come out these days but it should really be pretty much identical to the screenshot above outside of the fact that systemd will be running. Would systemd alone eat ~150MB? It would be kinda crazy but then i wouldn't be overly surprised either.

Edit: For fairness i'll have to admit that Devuan's (just like Debian's) installer will for some godforsaken reason bark at low RAM systems, so the there will be a little cheating and an image transfer involved in the actual installation (a host template obviously also gets around that). Also there's a bunch of gotchas like you can't use argon2 for harddisk encryption since that (again for some godforsaken reason) wants to use a ton of memory while unlocking the disk.

rpqu · May 29

@hanli29 @buggedout @backtogeek has $0.1/m 128MB instance with wireguard

hanli29 · May 29

@totally_not_banned said:

@hanli29 said:

@totally_not_banned said:

@hanli29 said:

@totally_not_banned said:

@hanli29 said:
Racknerd always offered very little RAM; 1.5GB and 2.5GB plans are really poor.

Very little is a pretty subjective measure. Even in 2026 you can do quite a bit with something as low as 128-256MB. 1.5 or 2.5GB should be more than enough for the average use case unless it's massively wasted on fluff.

To be honest, I don't agree. What can you actually implement with 128MB to 256MB? Not even a decent WireGuard VPN. Configuring it is one thing; actual performance under constant load is another entirely.

Huh? What exactly would impact performance so badly? Your base system will use like 45-50MB of RAM (if you don't want to put in work to manually slim down the kernel) and there's maybe another like 5MB for SSHGuard. That would surely leave enough for a bunch of buffers, wouldn't it?

If you showed me proof of that resource usage, I’d believe it; otherwise, a Debian Netinstall alone has typically consumed around 200MB for me just while idling.

Well, you could also just believe me but if the idea is somehow so outlandish, fine:

And what do you do after that? You’re not simply going to leave it sitting there; you have to configure services. That’s why I gave you the example of a VPN—which is the most suitable use case for the specs you mentioned—and even for that, you’d be cutting it too close.

Well, the average service (like for example a webserver) uses a couple MB. I don't really see how that's some kind of huge problem.

Have you checked the specs for Ubuntu Server, for instance?

Official System RequirementsCPU: 1 GHz or betterRAM: Minimum 1.5 GB (ISO installs) or 1 GB (cloud images)Storage: Minimum 5 GB (ISO installs) or 4 GB (cloud images)Practical Recommended SpecsFor a stable, long-term deployment, the official Ubuntu Server System Requirements and community consensus suggest slightly higher specs:CPU: 2 GHz dual-core processor or betterRAM: 3 GB or moreStorage: 25 GB or more to allow for logs, updates, and package caching

Yeah, bloated to hell and back. That's pretty much my point

Not specifically but 99% of Linux distributions install bloated POS by default, so chances are it's pretty much ass.

Perhaps something like Alpine might work, but the learning curve is steeper than with Debian or its derivatives.

Not really. Sure systemd might waste a bunch of resources and get in the way of trimming fat but overall it's not that hard to make Linux run without needing a ton of resources.

I agree, but optimizing things to this extent requires patience and a lot of time to dedicate.

Well, installing Devuan (which, if you don't know it, is basically Debian without systemd) and not selecting any software suites during setup isn't really all that complicated. Obviously the lack of systemd would likely confuse the average Linux user these days, so there might still be a bit of time investment in that regard.

I haven't installed any actual Debian recently so i'm not sure how an install with no software selected (including "system tools") would come out these days but it should really be pretty much identical to the screenshot above outside of the fact that systemd will be running. Would systemd alone eat ~150MB? It would be kinda crazy but then i wouldn't be overly surprised either.

Edit: For fairness i'll have to admit that Devuan's (just like Debian's) installer will for some godforsaken reason bark at low RAM systems, so the there will be a little cheating and an image transfer involved in the actual installation. Also there's a bunch of gotchas like you can't use argon2 for harddisk encryption since that (again for some godforsaken reason) wants to use a ton of memory while unlocking the disk.

Devuan is one of the good ones; I used it for a while, but the lack of systemd forced me to do a lot of research and try to "convert" services (startup scripts) just to get them to run. And honestly, I just don't have the time or energy for that. That’s why I opted for Debian—the compatibility is 100%.

P.S.: I mentioned Ubuntu Server merely as an example; of course, we all know how bloated it is. That’s why I use Debian and optimize it as much as I possibly can.

P.P.S.: All my services run on the wonderful Docker; it certainly adds a layer of resource overhead, but the configuration experience is fantastic.

totally_not_banned · May 29

@hanli29 said:
P.P.S.: All my services run on the wonderful Docker; it certainly adds a layer of resource overhead, but the configuration experience is fantastic.

See, that's where your RAM goes

hanli29 · May 29

@buggedout said:

@hanli29 said:

@totally_not_banned said:

If you showed me proof of that resource usage, I’d believe it; otherwise, a Debian Netinstall alone has typically consumed around 200MB for me just while idling.
And what do you do after that? You’re not simply going to leave it sitting there; you have to configure services. That’s why I gave you the example of a VPN—which is the most suitable use case for the specs you mentioned—and even for that, you’d be cutting it too close.

I am running a dns resolver(used by approx 50 people) on a vultr vps from many months now. It has 1GB RAM, but the server hardly touches 50% memory usage. I would have went with 512MB RAM plan if vultr had that option in India. And I have beszel agent which uses approx 15MB memory and I did not even try removing redudant packages. So i think we can run a wireguard decently with 256MB memory if you are willing to optimize it.
$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           961Mi       490Mi        97Mi        46Mi       587Mi       471Mi
edit: i am not a expert so i maybe wrong...

The situation here is a bit different—let me explain. I used to use AdGuard Home, and now I'm using Technitium. With just the configured lists enabled, it consumes approximately 800 MB to 1 GB of memory (for the DNS resolver alone). Of course, all of this is due to the lists (which contain 2 million entries); otherwise—if I were running my own DNS server that didn't block anything—I would honestly prefer to use AdGuard's public DNS servers.

hanli29 · May 29

@rpqu said:
@hanli29 @buggedout @backtogeek has $0.1/m 128MB instance with wireguard

Can you give me the details on where it is so I can take a look at it?

rpqu · May 29

@hanli29 said:

@rpqu said:
@hanli29 @buggedout @backtogeek has $0.1/m 128MB instance with wireguard

Can you give me the details on where it is so I can take a look at it?

buggedout · May 29

@hanli29 said:
@buggedout said:

@hanli29 said:

@totally_not_banned said:

If you showed me proof of that resource usage, I’d believe it; otherwise, a Debian Netinstall alone has typically consumed around 200MB for me just while idling.
And what do you do after that? You’re not simply going to leave it sitting there; you have to configure services. That’s why I gave you the example of a VPN—which is the most suitable use case for the specs you mentioned—and even for that, you’d be cutting it too close.

I am running a dns resolver(used by approx 50 people) on a vultr vps from many months now. It has 1GB RAM, but the server hardly touches 50% memory usage. I would have went with 512MB RAM plan if vultr had that option in India. And I have beszel agent which uses approx 15MB memory and I did not even try removing redudant packages. So i think we can run a wireguard decently with 256MB memory if you are willing to optimize it.
$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           961Mi       490Mi        97Mi        46Mi       587Mi       471Mi
edit: i am not a expert so i maybe wrong...
The situation here is a bit different—let me explain. I used to use AdGuard Home, and now I'm using Technitium. With just the configured lists enabled, it consumes approximately 800 MB to 1 GB of memory (for the DNS resolver alone). Of course, all of this is due to the lists (which contain 2 million entries); otherwise—if I were running my own DNS server that didn't block anything—I would honestly prefer to use AdGuard's public DNS servers.

Ohh I see maybe aghome and technitium uses more resources as they have UI I guess, I use knot+dnsdist with hagezi pro + tif filters.

hanli29 · May 29

@rpqu said:

@hanli29 said:

@rpqu said:
@hanli29 @buggedout @backtogeek has $0.1/m 128MB instance with wireguard

Can you give me the details on where it is so I can take a look at it?

Link?

rpqu · May 29

@hanli29 said:

@rpqu said:

@hanli29 said:

@rpqu said:
@hanli29 @buggedout @backtogeek has $0.1/m 128MB instance with wireguard

Can you give me the details on where it is so I can take a look at it?

Link?

https://control.tierhive.com/recipes

ColonelPanic · May 29

I have a reseller hosting package from them for years. Uptime is great, but heavy wordpress sites with decent traffic are not an option.

TimboJones · May 31

@rpqu said:

@hanli29 said:

@rpqu said:

@hanli29 said:

@rpqu said:
@hanli29 @buggedout @backtogeek has $0.1/m 128MB instance with wireguard

Can you give me the details on where it is so I can take a look at it?

Link?

https://control.tierhive.com/recipes

Paywalled

rpqu · May 31

@TimboJones said:

@rpqu said:

@hanli29 said:

@rpqu said:

@hanli29 said:

@rpqu said:
@hanli29 @buggedout @backtogeek has $0.1/m 128MB instance with wireguard

Can you give me the details on where it is so I can take a look at it?

Link?

https://control.tierhive.com/recipes

Paywalled

Registration is free

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Racknerd the good, the average, the bad.

Comments

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Categories

In this Discussion

Racknerd the good, the average, the bad.

Comments