ServInt Review 2012

Tthis ServInt review is anyone looking for a VPS who has a budget of at least $600/year. ServInt upgraded their services free of charge last year in 2011: the review reflects these service upgrades.

This ServInt review is a product of spending a good week or so researching VPS hosts, taking detailed notes and coming up with a list of the top 5 VPS services that kept being mentioned in the message board posts I've read on several popular web hosting forums.

Before going with ServInt VPS, I previously had a reseller plan with HostGator, and then a dedicated plan with Cheetaweb. My main reason for switching was due to the fact that dedicated hosting was simply too expensive and I was only using a small fraction of my server's resources, making a VPS the best 'middle point' of shared & dedicated.

ServInt is a Virginia-based company founded in 1995 as one of the first public web hosting companies on the internet to offer dedicated web hosting. Today, they offer self-managed, VPS and dedicated hosting in 60 countries. ServInt offers standard services including CentOS with cPanel, unlimited domains & accounts, hardware RAID 10, free daily off-server backups and 24-hour support.

The practicality of shared hosting was no longer an option for the sites I run, which include about a dozen affiliate-based and standard business websites and one video site that uses up to 30 GB of transfer per month. Just that one site practically roasted my shared account. I later moved it to dedicated, which became overkill -- and that's why VPS is such a good median. Below is a screenshot of my bandwidth usage in Dec. 2011:

Regardless of what web host you go with, it's *highly* advisable to start off small and expand only when needed, simply for budget-saving purposes! When I signed up with ServInt, I went with their lowest pricing tier - ServInt Essential VPS: a $49/mo plan with 60 GB storage, 1 TB monthly transfer and 768 MB RAM.

Why Start Small?
It's all about cost. Before migrating to ServInt, I spent around $2,200/year on shared hosting and only used about a fifth of my server's resources...it simply made no sense to continue on that path. Even after migrating my sites over to a starter VPS account, I noticed that the VPS also had more resources than I'd ever need!

Think about this for your sites and needs. Unless you're hosting a gigantic site that gets a monumental amount of traffic (my largest site only gets about 1,200 unique visitors per day, and that's small by web standards), a VPS will have more than enough resources for you.

About Resources
The disk space and bandwidth limitations offered by the Essential VPS are more than enough for the 17 sites I'm managing on the server. Currently, I'm using about 36% memory, 23% disk space usage and 55 GB transfer (out of 1 TB).

How to Estimate Your Usage
The way I estimated how much I'd need from a server is by simply adding up basic numbers and doing an average. For instance -- add up your bandwidth usage for all 12 months, divide it by 12, and you'll get a roundabout figure of usage. Compare it to service plans and see which one you'll have to fall under. If you ever need more resources, ServInt offers a simple upgrade to the next tier.

ServInt has always been reviewed for their excellent customer support. I got a glimpse of it after needing a few odds & ends resolved on my server. In fact, their customer service is probably amongst the fastest and best I've ever received for any service I've ever paid for in my life, and that's no exaggeration.

Customer Support Response Time
Each time, my problem was resolved within 10-15 minutes (no longer than a half hour)...and that goes to show the company's dedication to their customers, at least in my eyes. Below is a typical example of the response time of ServInt's customer support -- check out the time my question was asked (11:19 PM), and the time it took them to resolve everything (11:23 PM):

Price Breaks
If you decide to go with ServInt, it's worth your while to pay for an entire year of hosting rather than to pay by month, simply for the price break. For instance, ServInt gives a 5% discount for paying 6 months at a time, and 10% for a year at a time.

Control Panel & Operating System Choices
You're able to select between cPanel, Plesk or nothing at all. There's no reason to select no control panel, unless you're a hardcore Linux fan. Most of us go with cPanel for its ease of use. cPanel is updated automatically by ServInt, you'll never have to do it yourself (yet another benefit my previous webhost never gave me). Your operating system for cPanel will be the latest version of Centos.

Software Options
Fantastico DeLuxe ($12/annual fee), RVSkin ($20/annual fee) and ClientExec ($2/monthly) are available options that you can choose from now or at any time after getting a ServInt VPS account.

Server Login Information
You'll be able to name your server (typically, vps.mydomain.com) which should preferably be named with your business's domain name (if you're an LLC owner) or a site that you consider to be your main site. All of the site accounts you create on your server from this point on will have the nameserver settings of the domain name you choose, here.

Try a promotional code before check-out! While coupon codes are continually activated and deactivated by the company, it never hurts to try one out and see if it will shave an amount off of your final bill:

50% off of 1st month (any plan)

WELCOME

50% off of 1st month (VPS/SuperVPS)

TALK

50% off of 1st month of SuperVPS

WHTRETURN09

+10 free days of hosting for 1st mo.

WHOISHOSTINGTHIS

In conclusion: throughout all of the research I've done on VPS hosting, ServInt continued to show an edge over its competitors with their package offerings, pricing, up-time, customer support and overall integrity. Look toward an "Essential VPS" account with ServInt for any portfolio of websites that can no longer handle being hosted on a shared account. There simply isn't a better deal for a low-cost VPS, and ServInt continues to be a comfortable and secure choice for the sites I manage.