VPSCheap Gives Developers and Resellers an Affordable Option for Specialized, Enterprise-Grade Virtual Environments

TL; DR: As Juliet once asked Romeo, “What’s in a name?” With VPSCheap, there’s very little guesswork. For years, the company has sought to maximize the features and performance available in virtual private server hosting without raising prices. VPSCheap offers stripped-down yet tech-forward hosting solutions geared toward developers and resellers who don’t need a lot of hand-holding. Chief Marketing Officer Drew Breaux shared with us the company’s approach to automation and SSD-powered storage, along with how a shift to enterprise-grade custom configurations can unlock even more savings.

Imagine being an IT department manager at a major university tasked with acquiring 1,000 servers. Your already meager budget barely covers your needs, and the list of projects you’d like to accomplish only seems to grow. You are short staffed and not looking forward to setting up and overseeing this new flood of server environments.

But think of the relief if a quote you requested came in dramatically under budget. The hardware is high quality, the performance is impressive, configuration is minimal, and support services are exactly what you need. The same scenario recently played out at VPSCheap, according to Chief Marketing Officer Drew Breaux.

“When we told him, it was incredible,” Drew said. “He wondered why he didn’t find this sooner saying, ‘It frees up so much of my budget. I’m going to be able to do so many other things, and I’m getting the same if not better service and performance.’”

Those types of interactions are common at VPSCheap, Drew said, as the company includes a surprising number of features in plans that cost much less than what many expect. The company primarily targets developers and resellers already familiar with running virtual servers, but the potential for exponential savings with larger, customized configurations for enterprise organizations means VPSCheap can favorably compete with the big name brands in the industry.

“The mission behind this brand is affordable pricing for everyone,” Drew said. “Someone who wants to resell hosting, someone who doesn’t need a whole lot of hand-holding, that’s who we see coming to VPSCheap. We believe if you’re proving that stripped-down service, then it shouldn’t cost a ton. That’s why our prices are where they are.”

Instead of subscribing to the “you get what you pay for” motto, VPSCheap follows the mantra of “the best things in life are free” — or, at least, close to it. The company provides several varieties of virtualized hosting, with storage options ranging from traditional hard disk drives to NVMe and SSDs. Memory scales from 512MB to 8GB and traffic is allowed to flow over an unmetered network.

Instead of muddying the waters with shared hosting plans, WordPress optimizations, and other niche products, VPSCheap focuses on doing one thing exceptionally well. Because virtual servers tend to attract more experienced customers and site owners, the company can focus on product upgrades instead of diverting extra resources to support.

“Our offerings are very simple,” Drew said. “We try to give people as much as we can for the price they’re paying.”

With an annual plan, VPSCheap’s prices start as low as roughly $2 per month and max out around $60 per month. No matter the product level or price point, customers can expect to find bargains that are even more impressive once the company’s high-powered infrastructure is considered.

“If you compare these plans to pretty much anyone else, it’s going to be less than half of what you’d pay through them,” Drew said. “You’re getting more for your money, and that’s what we’re all about: What can we surprise people with?”

According to Drew, VPSCheap can afford to offer rock-bottom prices thanks to the company’s strong emphasis on automation and scaled-back support. Because the typical customer base is largely made up of developers and resellers, VPSCheap can concentrate on providing the framework for unmanaged virtual environments instead of investing resources into managed services.

Customers can spin up most new environments in less than two minutes, Drew said, thanks to the company’s streamlined backend tools. VPSCheap promises that all servers will deploy in less than five minutes without any configuration errors.

“Obviously, everything we do is automated,” he said. “We have a really extensive backend system. If anything goes wrong, we’re notified.”

Even though VPSCheap emphasizes unmanaged hosting services, the company does maintain 24/7 support operations in case a customer runs into trouble. Employees are stationed around the world and answer questions via email tickets and live chat.

In addition to an overarching blog that advises customers on various security, performance, and business issues and practices, VPSCheap provides an in-depth knowledgebase tailored to virtualized hosting concerns.

“If setup doesn’t go correctly, we’re going to jump in and figure that stuff out for you,” Drew said. “You’re not on your own, even though it’s an unmanaged service.”

Usually when hosting providers offer cut-rate prices, they’re using substandard hardware. But cheap, consumer-grade, or outdated processors and components aren’t part of VPSCheap’s network. Instead, the company concentrates on buying in bulk and passing the savings on to customers.

VPSCheap custom builds all server hardware and base virtual environments around Intel Xeon machines, dedicated ECC memory, and RAID storage powered by optional SSDs. Including modern, high-performance solid-state drives is perhaps the clearest sign that VPSCheap is more than just an attractive price tag.

The flash-based storage devices can read or write data up to 20 times faster than traditional hard disk drives, which feature a spinning platter. Because SSDs have no moving parts, they typically last much longer than HDDs. Drew credits the company’s customers for showcasing the opportunity with SSDs.

“The pricing on our SSD plans was a little bit different, but we saw that so many people really wanted that pure SSD storage,” he said, “We went away from highlighting the more budget-friendly servers we were selling at the time and just got really lean with the SSDs. We asked ourselves, ‘What’s the least amount we can charge and stay in business?’”

VPSCheap moved its five revamped SSD-powered configurations to the forefront and saw an immediate response.

“That was a game changer for us,” Drew said. “Typically when people think cheap VPS or search for those plans, they’re going to find HDD storage. I think they’re a little surprised to even see an SSD option on our site.”

The company’s positive relationship with customers has also uncovered another revenue stream for the company, according to Drew. As site owners spin up a handful of servers and experience strong performance and service, they often refer others to VPSCheap. Particularly through user recommendations is how the company has started tapping into the enterprise pool of business customers.

“Typically when we do a deal with an enterprise organization, the client is just floored by how much they’re saving,” he said. “It’s literally thousands of dollars per month they’re saving with us. We’re able to provide bulk discounts as well, so, at scale, the prices go even further down. That’s where we can shock our enterprise customers with what they’re saving.”

In addition to focusing on enterprise clients, VPSCheap will seek to expand its prominence with resellers throughout the next year. The company’s low price structures leave ample room for tech entrepreneurs, agencies, and new hosting providers to turn a profit — plus, as Drew told us, the company has plenty of expertise to help clients get off the ground.

“Because of our background of starting a small reselling company and acquiring lots of other brands, we have a lot of knowledge to teach people how to start their own reseller company,” he said. “We’re looking to push out a webinar teaching people how to start their reselling company, along with special offers, eBooks, and all that kind of stuff to share our knowledge about what we’ve learned along the way.”

Whether serving individual developers or large organizations, VPSCheap aims to make a splash with a wide range of site owners and application developers behind strong infrastructure, affordable prices, and, of course, a rather clear and direct company name.

“There are so many options at these price points that we’d be doing ourselves and our customers a disservice if we were only marketing to developers,” Drew said. “We want to branch out and be able to say, ‘Here’s something everyone can afford, no matter what you want to do with it.’”