HostAdvice experts performed an independent study on the VPS Hosting providers for all types of users. The list was made by our experts, who performed research based on thousands of unbiased user reviews, surveys, and tests. HostAdvice professionals performed all of the tests in-house. However, if you want to get straight to the point and don’t have the time to read the whole article, here is our selection of the top best Linux VPS hosting providers.
Short on Time? Check Our Top Linux VPS Hosting Providers
What Is Linux VPS Hosting, and Who Is It For?
Linux VPS hosting is a hosting solution that runs on the Linux operating system. Most web hosting providers offer Linux-based servers by default in their hosting plans since Linux is one of the most popular operating systems out there and is free to use. Linux VPS hosting providers host multiple users on one Linux-based server. Each user gets their own private resources and is completely isolated from their so-called “neighbors.”
Linux VPS hosting is ideal for more advanced users who want complete control over their server and resources. It is also suitable for those who want to have complete customization freedom and the ability to configure their own server and add the applications, programs, and control panel they prefer. Furthermore, this solution is perfect for those that are on a tighter budget and need a more cost-effective hosting solution, Check out our Cheap Linux VPS hosting page
Usually, most users prefer Linux VPS hosting over Windows VPS hosting because it provides them with excellent stability, scalability, and top-notch performance. So, if you don’t need to run specific Microsoft apps on your server, then Linux is probably the best choice!
The Best Linux VPS Hosting Services of 2023 (Bought and Tested):
If you’re looking for a top-tier Linux VPS hosting provider that allows you to scale up and down without any interruptions, Kamatera is an excellent choice for you. It is one of the best Linux VPS hosting providers on the market, with high-end data centers across three continents and premium 24/7 support.
- Overall Score: 4.9
- Performance: 5.0
- Security: 4.9
- Support: 4.9
- Features: 4.8
- Pricing: 4.8
Kamatera is a top-tier VPS hosting provider that offers excellent services and is compatible with many operating systems. It is an excellent pick for Linux users and is compatible with operating systems like RockyLinux, AlmaLinux, CentOS Linux 8, CentOS Linux 7, CloudLinux, and more!
Research Findings:
Performance: Kamatera offers high-performance servers that run on cutting-edge technology, including 600Gbit bandwidth, SSD drives, and Xeon Platinum/Cascade Lake processors. It offers an uptime guarantee of 99.95% and has data centers located in America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Security: You can add an extended daily backup service to your server with Kamatera. Also, no matter which server you choose (Linux, Windows, etc.), you will receive high-level security from the provider.
Support: You can reach Kamatera’s support team at all times via phone and email. Kamatera’s support team responds quickly to all messages and provides users with knowledgeable solutions.
Features: Ultra-quick setup, scalable solutions, root/administrator access to servers, unlimited storage, no hardware maintenance, assign roles to administrators/users, complete control over subnet and private VLAN, proprietary API, stop & restart your servers at any time, unlimited databases, and more!
Pricing: Kamatera offers a 30-day free trial to its users. After the free trial ends, you can pay by the minute or on a monthly or hourly basis. Its prices start at $4/month, and you can create your own pricing plan by configuring your server to have the resources you need!
Pros & Cons:
Pros:
- Kamatera is compatible with multiple Linux distributions, including CentOS Linux 8 & 7, RockyLinux, AlmaLinux, and more;
- Flexible plans that allow you to configure your own server and choose the amount and type of resources you want it to have;
- Excellent performance with a 99.95% uptime and fast-paced SSD storage;
Cons:
- Better suited for more advanced users (but beginners can get fully-managed services for an extra price)
UltaHost was founded in 2018 and is a US-based hosting provider that offers many different products and services, like shared, WordPress, Reseller, CRM, and VPS hosting. Moreover, it offers managed Linux VPS hosting at affordable prices and many excellent free and paid features. Additionally, it has a 100% uptime guarantee, which will ensure that you will experience virtually no downtime or latency issues. It also has one of the best customer support teams in the game, with an expert team available 24/7 to its customers.
- Overall score: 4.9
- Features: 4.8
- Support: 4.9
- User Friendly: 4.9
- Pricing: 4.8
- Reliability: 4.9
Features: UltaHost offers many free and paid features, like free DDoS protection, free domain transfer, multiple server locations, SSD-only servers, malware scans, SpamExperts, RocketBooster, Cloudflare CDN, built-in cache, free SSL Certificates, Web Application Firewall, unlimited bandwidth, root access, and built-in cache. We only gave it a 4.8 rating because it doesn’t offer a free domain.
Support: UltaHost is amazing when it comes to customer support. It has a special Premium customer support program, which all customers can access 24/7/365 via live chat, phone, email, and ticketing system. It also has a FAQ section, blog, and server support service. The only reason it has a 4.9 score is due to minor issues that customers reported with its ticketing system.
User Friendly: The UltaHost website is extremely user-friendly for both beginners and developers thanks to its clear, straightforward, and contemporary design. Additionally, it provides its users with a variety of control panel choices; Hestia and CyberPanel are free, while cPanel and Plesk are paid alternatives. It also includes a sizable knowledge base where users can find many pieces of advice and solutions. So it’s hardly surprising that we gave it a 4.9 rating.
Pricing: UltaHost has affordable prices across the board. Regarding its Linux VPS, the cheapest plan is its VPS Basic plan, which includes 1 CPU core, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB NVMe SSD storage, a managed server, and 1 IPv4 Dedicated IP address. It costs $5.50 per month, and you can also pay for it annually if you like. We only gave it a 4.8 score because customers need to pay an additional fee for the cPanel or Plesk control panels.
Reliability: Because of UltaHost’s outstanding dependability and 100% uptime guarantee, its clients can expect very little downtime and very low latency. Additionally, it employs exclusively SSD NVMe storage, and all plans come with free Cloudflare CDN. Furthermore, all UltaHost servers are powered by 14th-generation Dell servers and set up to provide the maximum amount of network, power, and hard drive redundancy. Varnish, Memcached, and Redis are used in its built-in caching mechanism to speed up the website. So, we believe that a score of 4.9 is appropriate.
Additional parameter – Server location: 4.8: It is crucial to know where the server that will host your website is. The likelihood that you may face latency problems and downtime decreases with proximity to your location or your audience. For UltaHost, the company has data centers in Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Los Angeles, the US; Toronto, Canada; Frankfurt, Germany; Istanbul, Turkey; New Delhi, India; Singapore; Seoul, South Korea; and Finland. Additionally, Juniper and Cisco are used by its servers for network switching and routing, in addition to the most energy-efficient Intel processors. Therefore, customers who operate in areas close to the regions mentioned above will experience lightning-fast performance, incredible speeds, and almost no downtime. Customers outside of the locations mentioned above may experience latency and connectivity concerns, so we awarded it a 4.8 rating instead.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- A 100% uptime guarantee
- 14th-generation Dell servers
- Built-in cache mechanism
- NVMe SSD storage
- Cloudflare CDN
- DNS Manager
- Snapshots
- BitNinja security
- Malware scans and reports
- A 30-day money-back guarantee
- Integrations with popular apps
- HTTP/2-enabled servers
Cons
- No free domains
- No free domain transfers for monthly plans
Ever since its inception, A2 Hosting has been upgrading its services and has proven to be one of the best hosting providers in the industry. It offers both unmanaged and managed Linux VPS plans and many other excellent features that I will cover shortly.
- Overall Score: 4.7
- Performance: 4.7
- Security: 4.7
- Support: 4.7
- Features: 4.7
- Pricing: 4.6
A2 Hosting’s unmanaged Linux VPS plans allow you to configure your server however you like, choose the operating system you prefer, have full Root access to your server, and add all the tools and features you want!
Research Findings:
Performance: A2 Hosting offers an uptime guarantee of 99.9%, fast-performing RAID 10 SSD storage, and has data centers in Michigan, Arizona, Amsterdam, and Singapore. It is compatible with CentOS 7, Debian (10), Ubuntu (18.04 and 20.04), and AlmaLinux (8).
Security: With A2 Hosting, you will get a free SSL certificate, expert-managed hardware & network, reinforced DDoS protection, SSH access, 24/7 network monitoring, redundant A/B power backed by UPS/Diesel generator, and more!
Support: A2 Hosting provides 24/7/365 customer support via phone, email, and live chat, a ticketing system, great response time, an extensive knowledge base, and a blog.
Features: FutureServe Green hosting, Webuzo one-click software installer, a cPanel control panel license, full network control (IPTables), boot shutdown & reboot control, Inode (File) Limit, and more!
Pricing: A2 Hosting offers four unmanaged Linux VPS hosting plans, starting at $4.99/month for 1GB RAM, 150GB SSD Storage, 2TB Transfer, and one CPU Core.
Pros & Cons:
Pros:
- Excellent performance with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and fast-paced RAID 10 SSD Storage;
- Features rich plans at affordable prices;
- Allows users to get a full refund within 30 days or a prorated refund for unused services after 30 days rounded up to the next full month of service;
Cons:
- Renews for double the price (which is still worth it for the features that you will get)
InterServer has more than two decades of experience in the hosting business and is one of the best overall hosting providers on the market. It is also highly scalable and allows users to configure their own servers by specifying how many CPU Cores they want their server to have!
- Overall Score: 4.4
- Performance: 4.4
- Support: 4.3
- Security: 4.4
- Features: 4.4
- Pricing: 4.5
After you decide how many CPU Cores you want, InterServer will provide you with enough RAM, SSD Storage, and a transfer limit to match! For example, if you choose to get a Linux VPS with three CPU Cores, InterServer will match that with 6,144MB RAM, 90GB SSD Storage, and a 6TB transfer limit.
Research Findings:
Performance: With InterServer, you will get a 99.9% uptime guarantee, high-performance SSD Storage 20x faster than standard SATA drives, and the ability to choose a Debian, Windows, Linux, CentOS, or Ubuntu operating system. InterServer has servers in two locations – Los Angeles and Secaucus.
Support: It offers 24/7 support via live chat, email, and a ticketing system. It also offers phone support through its call centers in the USA, England, Mexico, Brazil, and Israel, a knowledge base, and self-service options.
Security: InterServer has self-healing hardware that detects glitches in the hardware system and instantly redirects your resources to another node. It also offers a Remote Backup Service and uses KVM, Openvz, Virtuozzo, and Hyper-v virtualization platforms.
Features: DirectAdmin/cPanel/Plesk, DigiCert SSL, CloudLinux, Cloudflare, Atomicorp, NodeJs, PHP, NGINX, Let’s Encrypt, Git, Immunify, Backup to Cloud Pro, automated AI-powered regression testing, cloning, staging environment, backup and restore features, and more!
Pricing: InterServer allows you to choose the number of CPU cores and bases your price on that, starting at $6/month for a Linux VPS hosting plan with one CPU Core, 2,048MB RAM, 30GB SSD Storage, and a 2TB transfer limit.
Pros & Cons:
Pros:
- Excellent performance thanks to its 99.9% uptime and high-performance SSD storage;
- It allows users to have full root access to their servers with which they can install the control panel and operating system without the provider’s permission;
- It supports multiple database types, like SQLite, MongoDB, MarinaDB, PostgreSQL, and more;
Cons:
- InterServer allows you to get up to 16 CPU Cores for your server (which is still more than enough to host content-driven, high-traffic sites)
Ranking comparison between the Top Providers
How Do We Rank and How You Should Choose Your Linux VPS Hosting?
- Server Uptime15%
- Customer Support10%
- Security11%
- Server Management Tools5%
- Type of Hosting Service6%
- Linux-Friendly Software4%
- Value for Money10%
- Extra Features9%
- User Reviews30%
We test specifically for each category to provide you with the best that the web hosting market has to offer. Our experts first develop a list of factors that are relevant for the category we are ranking. Then they perform independent performance tests on every provider that qualifies in the field that they are testing.
Furthermore, our experts assign a specific percentage of importance to each factor they are testing. Here are the factors that we tested and that you need to take into consideration when ranking and choosing the best Linux VPS hosting providers:
- Server Uptime (15%): Uptime of 99.95% or above, enterprise-grade hardware, SSD Storage, Cloudflare CDN, etc.
- Customer Support (10%): the technical knowledge and availability behind the support behind the VPS plan – preferably 24/7 support via live chat, phone, & email, guides, and tutorials.
- Security (11%): Does the VPS provider offer additional security features like daily backups, disaster recovery options, dedicated IP addresses, malware scans, constant server & network monitoring, etc.?
- Server Management Tools (5%): Does the provider offer cPanel in its VPS plan? Which other control panels can you use?
- Type of Hosting Service (6%): Does the provider offer both fully-managed and unmanaged Linux VPS services? Can you choose the type of service you prefer?
- Linux-Friendly Software (4%): Apache, programming scripts, GIMP, Firefox, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Visual Studio Code, etc.
- Value for Money (10%): What kind of features are included in the Linux VPS hosting plan? Are those features enough for you? Would you have to get additional features from other places?
- Extra Features (9%): free automatic security patches, free CDN, free website migrations, multiple data center locations, domains, email, etc.
- User Reviews (30%): Independent user reviews can tell you a lot about a provider and its services. By reading independent user reviews, you can determine whether a certain provider is good for you and truly offers the features and services it says it does and more.
What Can You Do With Linux VPS Hosting?
There is much more that you can do with a Linux VPS hosting plan than host websites.
- Video Teleconferences
You can host your own teleconference web application with Linux VPS hosting. Third-party teleconference apps can be a bit risky to use when you’re sharing sensitive information since they are vulnerable to all kinds of cyber attacks. You can avoid such attacks and communicate with people from all over by hosting your own teleconference web application. Linux VPS delivers much better privacy, enhanced security, and endless customization options.
- Host Your Own Game Servers
A VPS server is ideal for hosting multiplayer games. You can create your own game server and use it to play with friends or rent it out for a profit with Linux VPS hosting. Whether you are using your game server for your own pleasure or to make money, hosting it with a Linux VPS server is always the right solution.
- Email Hosting
You can host your own email for your company with even the most basic Linux VPS hosting plan and ensure that all your communication is safe. Also, you will be able to add as many mailboxes as you need and won’t have to worry about running short on storage.
- VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)
VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is a protocol that allows you to use your own VPS server as a phone service over the Internet. In other words, with Linux VPS hosting, you can create and host your own phone service, call people’s phones, communicate with colleagues, etc.
- Host Your Own VPN
If you can’t find a suitable VPN provider that you trust, you always host your own VPN with Linux VPS hosting. This feat requires some technical knowledge, but it will give you the security and privacy that you need. Also, you can create a VPN and sell it as a service with Linux VPS hosting.
- Software Testing
If you want to test certain programs or apps before using them on your company’s or your private network, you can do so by using a Linux VPS server as a staging system. That way, you can freely test the apps and programs you want and dabble with all kinds of safe and unsafe platforms without it ever affecting your business or you.
Linux VPS Hosting Pros and Cons
Now, let’s explore some of the benefits and drawbacks you can experience with Linux VPS hosting.
Pros
- Security – Decades of using Linux have shown us that viruses and malware typically have trouble trying to penetrate the defense system that Linux offers. Also, since Linux is an open-source platform, many experts can access its source code and fix bugs and vulnerabilities.
- Stability – Linux Servers rarely need to be restarted, and they do not experience crashes often. Thus, they ensure excellent stability and optimal uptime.
- Free to Use – Users do not have to pay for a license to use Linux like they would for Windows. That is why Linux VPS hosting plans are cheaper than Windows ones.
- Excellent Performance – Linux VPS hosting plans can handle multiple users on the same server without any problems. It has enhanced processing power and capacity, which allows websites that are hosted on Linux servers to perform faster.
- Full Root Access – most Linux VPS hosting providers allow users to have full root access and total control over their servers. Thus, you will be able to install a control panel of your choosing, configure your server however you like, add the apps and tools that you want, and more.
- Dedicated (Private) Resources – VPS users have their own resources and won’t be affected by other users that are on the same server.
Cons
- Cost – Linux VPS plans offer a lot more resources, enhanced security, better performance, etc., compared to shared Linux hosting plans and are therefore more expensive.
- More Limited Compared to Dedicated Hosting – VPS hosting is like a proverbial bridge between shared and dedicated hosting. Namely, it offers much better features than shared hosting but more limited features compared to dedicated hosting.
Which Are the Top Linux Distributions?
In the next section of the article, I will cover some of the most popular Linux distributions you can use.
Debian
Debian is a widely-known Linux distribution that is completely free to use. It allows users to install and use paid software on their machines and is used both on desktop and server computers. It is one of the oldest Linux distributions and is the basis of multiple popular Linux distributions like Kali Linux and Ubuntu.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution made by Canonical. It is based on Debian and is especially popular among new users. Users can try Ubuntu before installing it on their hard drives, which is something that not many major Linux distributions offer.
Linux Mint
Linux Mint is yet another Linux distribution that is based on Ubuntu. It is powerful, stable, and easy to use. The standard Linux Mint configuration provides multimedia codecs right off the bat; no extra configurations are needed.
Manjaro
Manjaro is based on Arch Linux and comes with preinstalled desktop environments, multimedia codecs that allow you to play audio and video, and graphical applications. It is suitable for both beginners and experts.
MX Linux
MX Linux is a highly stable, efficient, and elegant desktop that was made based on Debian. It is easy to learn and comes with a simple configuration, medium-sized footprint, and great performance.
Elementary OS
Elementary OS is a Ubuntu LTS-based desktop that has been around since 2011. It is completely compatible with Ubuntu’s packages and repositories and is currently on its fifth stable release.
Solus
Solus is a Linux distribution that was specifically designed for office and home computing. It comes with a custom desktop environment and includes a wide range of software right off the bat, which allows users to get started without having to set up their devices. It also offers tools like programming languages, editors, version control systems, compilers, and more!
Fedora
Fedora has three main available versions: Workstation (for desktops), Cloud image, and Server edition. Also, new releases of CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are based on Fedora.
Deepin
Deepin is a desktop-oriented operating system that was created based on Debian. It supports desktops, laptops, and all-in-one devices and is suitable for both beginners and experts.
Best Linux VPS Hosting Services: Summary
Linux VPS hosting solutions offer powerful features, excellent, stable, and reliable performance, enhanced security features, and many other excellent services. You can use a Linux VPS server for all kinds of purposes, not only for hosting websites.
Linux-based hosting solutions are excellent for users who want to have greater control over their servers and enhanced flexibility. With such solutions, users can configure their own serves, add their preferred control panel, applications, and programs, and customize their servers as much as they want.