If you are on hunt of cheap cloud servers for your website, game server etc, then you’ll love this article, where we tested and reviewed over 15 cheap cloud server hosting providers.
Choosing the cheap and best cloud hosting is not easy task, there are hell lot of things you need to consider before deciding the one to stick with. Also this is not a formula of “one size fits all”, at the end of the day it depends on what you were using the server for? What about the resources you need? What operating system? Where is the location of the server? What are your scale-ability requirements?
There is not going to be a solid answer of who is the “best” cloud hosting company. It all depends on one’s preferences and experience; each person will have different factors to determine which host is good for them.
So before moving ahead keep in mind that this list is not the final get to go, there are other cloud hosting providers out there each with different features and solutions, the list is prepared based on our research at the time of writhing this blog post, new providers can be added/deleted from the list.
Here is the list of cheap cloud servers in no particular order.
DigitalOcean one of the well known cloud hosting provider, they proud of being host of big brands such Xerox, Salesforce, RedHat etc. their servers are located around the globe in USA, Canada, Europe, India and Singapore. Their lowest plan starts from as low as $5 or $0.007 per hour, you pay for what you use, they charge bill by hour. However they do charge you 100% regardless of your servers is turned on or off.
Don’t confuse with the term “droplet” they use it for “cloud server”. Setting up a new “droplet” is super simple, it takes only around 1 minute to make your server online. View their plans.
All the servers of Vultr are Intel powered and use SSD, their cloud servers spanning the globe, available in 14 cities including USA, Europe, Tokyo and Sydney (as of writing this article). The cloud servers run on KVM-based platform, so you only get several cloud features such as hourly billing, fast deployment and multiple locations etc.
Their lowest plan starts with $5 per month with below features:
- 768 RAM
- 1 CPU
- 15 GB SSD
- 1000 GB bandwidth
The price is same as of DigitalOcean but they are providing 20 GB SSD instead of 15 GB SSD but Vultr provides you more RAM 768 MB instead of 512 MB, overall both providing almost matching features at the same price. View their plans
iwStack, a part of Prometeus cloud services, is a flexible and powerful cloud hosting provider. All their cloud servers are powered with CloudStack. Their billing is hourly basis, but what make them apart from other cloud hosts is they don’t charge you unless you actually use their services. Most of the cloud providers charge you even if your server is offline (i.e. you only created a cloud server & not using it).
The lowest plan starts with 2.16 (0.0003 per hour) with following configuration:
- 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU
- Transfer 2 TB (incoming free)
- 10 GB SSD
They have a price calculator that shows you how much your setup will cost. iwStack have expanded to the US and added a second data center in Milan, Italy. Visit their site
LeaseWeb offers different kinds of virtualization including cloud servers with hourly or monthly billing cycle. You can deploy cloud server in minutes, and server can be scale as per your requirement and you have 10 different locations across the United States to host the server.
All cloud servers come with standard SSD and Intel Xeon processors. The $5.50/month plan offer 1 vCPU core, 1GB vRAM, 40GB SSD Storage and 4TB Traffic.
View their different plans here
VexxHost infrastructure is largely powered by OpenStack. It offers instant and fast Linux or Windows cloud server that can be up and running within 30 seconds! VexxHost starter plan starts with $5 per month or hourly billing with 2 vCPU cores, 1GB RAM, 40GB SSD and 4TB transfer.
They have built their own control panel to manage cloud servers which offer the most advanced management features at the easiest way possible. view their plans
Atlantic cloud hosting offers you either Linux hosting or Windows hosting but their price is not cheap compare to other, you can sign up for their cloud hosting under $10 ($9.93/month). You can also install a control panel on your cloud if you like.
All their servers are of enterprise SSDs, and offer unlimited inbound data transfer. Their data centers are in USA, Canada, Europe, and soon they will be in Singapore.
View their plans https://www.atlantic.net/cloud-hosting/on-demand/pricing/
OVH.com is the 3rd web hosting provider worldwide. They are using OpenStack KVM infrastructure to power their cloud servers, all their servers having SSD with solid RAID 10 setup, they also provide DDoS Protection.
At a starting price of $4.49 per month you will get 1 vCore, 2 GB RAM, 10 GB SSD Local RAID 10 and Unlimited traffic. Choose the data center from these locations North America, Western Europe, Central Europe or Paris.
View their plans https://www.ovh.com/ca/en/vps/vps-ssd.xml
They have affordable cloud hosting (they called it as InfraCloud )options starting from $5.81/month or $0.0079/hour with features like 1 vCore, 512 MB RAM, 15 GB SSD, 1000 GB. For this price you would normally expect typical shared hosting.
Operating systems option are CentOS, FreeBSD & Windows. Their data centers are in Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, and Chicago.
View their plans https://www.quadranet.com/infracloud/
CloudVPS is the number one cloud provider in the Netherlands. It has introduced the first real public OpenStack cloud in Europe. Their infrastructure is powered with OpenStack. You have choice of Linux or Windows OS. You can get started with their cloud server at $8.45/month plan with features of 1 GB RAM, 16 GB SSD, 1 Core, and 250 GB transfer.
All their data centers (3) are in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is purely for those who looking to host in Europe.
View their plans http://www.cloudvps.com/openstack/pricing/
Linode is not the cheap but you can get started with them under $10 (their plans starts from $10/month OR $0.015/hour) which includes 2GB RAM while most of the other only offer 1GB or less, you get double the amount of RAM.
If you are expecting some heavy lifting work from your cloud server then Linode could be great choice. Have a look at their different hosting plans here https://www.linode.com/pricing
Their servers are located in 8 different data centers around the world, including North America, Asia Pacific and Europe. Though their pricing may not entice customers who are on a low budget, but the quality of their service is more than justifies the price.
OpenVz or KVM cloud VPS from InterServer with starting price of $6/month having features such as 1 core processor, 1GB memory, storage of 25GB and 1TB Transfer. InterServer offers more location options to choose. As of now there are 6 locations worldwide NJ (east coast), Los Angeles, CA (west coast), Houston, TX (mid western), London, Paris and Hong Kong.
Go to their plans page https://www.interserver.net/vps/
Take advantage of strict data privacy of Switzerland by hosting at Exoscale, an EU based hosting provider. Plans starting from $ 6/month with configuration 512MB RAM, 1 CPU core, 10 GB SSD and first 100 GB free outbound traffic. Note that if you need Windows OS then you have to spend extra money as Windows is not available under this plan. Your server will be up and running in an average 30 seconds time. Datacenter is in EU only.
Go to their plans page https://www.exoscale.ch/pricing/#/compute/micro
PhotonVPS provides cloud VPS hosting for Linux or Windows. Each plan includes instant setup, SSD storage, proactive server monitoring, and DDoS mitigation. The starter plan having features: 512MB RAM, CPU1 Core, 20 GB SSD RAID-10 storage, up to 64 TB Transfer for only $5.95/month. All cloud servers are currently housed in 3 different datacenters in the US.
Go to their plans page https://www.photonvps.com/linux.html
This cloud hosting service is not the cheapest on this list but with good reputation and configuration at $10/month, UpCload is here with decent features like 1 GB Memory, 1 CPU Core, 2 TB Transfer and you can deploy your high performance cloud server in under 30-45 seconds. Their servers are powered by MaxIOPS – their proprietary storage technology built on enterprise-grade SSD hardware which is 2x faster compared to industry-standard cloud hosting. Cloud server can be deployed in their 4 datacenters i.e. Chicago, London, Helsinki (Finland) and Frankfurt.
Go to their plans page https://www.upcloud.com/pricing/
Deploy a reliable, fast and feature rich cloud server in seconds available in datacenters around the world (Toronto, Montreal or France). The least plan is available at as cheap as $3.6 per month ($0.005 per hour) with features like 512 MB RAM, 1 Virtual Core, 15 GB SSD-Cached Storage, 1000 GB Bandwidth. All cloud servers are built on top of the OpenStack platform and KVM virtualization.
Go to their plans page https://www.lunanode.com/pricing
Final words
We hope the list helps you pick the cheap and best cloud server at affordable budget. The list is for budget oriented consumers who looking for a server with essential features, in case you think we missed a good cloud hosting – let us know by contacting us.