HostGator vps virtual private server review

Visit HostGator

I've tried a lot of shared hosting plans with different hosting providers over the years, now my site out grew shared hosting so I had to get a VPS. My choice was HostGator, as I've been happy with them in the past.

VPS from HostGator

They offer a range of features for an added price when you offer VPS, I chose level 1, which is the minimum (at about $20 a month). I got 2 IP adresses, but I can upgrade to a maximum of 32 if I need it.

My domain is not registered with HostGator, as I like to keep domains and hosting plans separate. However it was not a problem to point my domain to the IP adress of the VPS server, and I then contacted support using a ticket and asked them to set up rDNS (reverse DNS). rDNS was set up in matters of minutes, so as always: Great customer support.

Control panel for the VPS

All VPS hosting plans come with an administrative control panel (Parallels' Infrastructure Manager, screenshot below). This is not as advanced and feature rich as cPanel, but it does the most basic tasks you need to perform, like starting and stopping services, reinstall VPS, administer the firewall, take backups etc.

Since I selected the smallest VPS i did not get cPanel. With larger VPS hosting packages you can get cPanel for an additional $10 per month. I chose to set up another control panel (ISP Config 3 open source) to administer domains, email accounts and so on.

Anonymious surfing and hiding IP

To hide my identity on IRC I've installed psyBNC, furthermore I set up a tunnel using SSH to surf with the second IP on the server.

Conclusion for HostGator VPS

Great customer support, great value, centOS is ok. I love the pricing and I now have had the VPS for 4 months without any problems. I'd call this a bestbuy. :)

Click here to visit HostGator.