hellogoodbye
New Member
@MannDude said it won't hurt to try my hand in contributing content to the forum, so here is my attempt at writing a review. Don't laugh too hard! 
I had a VPS with GreenValueHost from late January up until a couple of days ago when I cancelled it, which makes it about a month and a half or so. Since this is my first review ever and I wasn't with them for very long, please excuse the tl;dr mess up ahead. I'm going by chronological order rather than organizing my review into neat sections. It's also not going to be very in-depth because frankly, I lack the knowledge and background for a true analysis. I will try my best to be impartial and neutral, though.
After the multiple threads about GVH, I honestly was not very keen on ever purchasing anything from them given their attitude and overall way of handling the situation. However, their announcement about leaving ColoCrossing piqued my interest and I took a look at their LET offers to see who they were with now and what the plans were like. I decided to give them a chance after all and purchase one of the plans since it did seem like a pretty good deal and, if nothing else, I was only going to be short $5 anyway.
These were the specs at the Dallas, TX location:
LET February Special #1
100GB LSI HARDWARE RAID-10 SSD Cached Disk Space
30TB Premium Bandwidth, 500mbps Port
2048MB Guaranteed RAM
4096MB vSwap RAM
4 IPv4 Addresses - Additional IPs @ 0.25/m per IP with justification
32 IPv6 Addresses - ADDITIONAL IPs FREE upon Request!
$5.00 per Month OR $45.00 per year (SAVE $15/y by paying yearly!)
My vSwap did not show the correct amount when I was provisioned with the VPS and the speeds I was getting were just downright awful (I had posted some of the benchmarks I was getting here in an older thread). Since I also wasn't able to change my hostname in their control panel, I opened a ticket to address all of that at once. Support was very quick but like many others have noted, the replies are very curt and only two of my issues were fixed. There was no explanation offered regarding the slow I/O speeds and nothing was done to fix it as far as I'm aware. I believe they mentioned in a comment somewhere that it was due to people abusing the nodes, but I honestly did not see much of a difference as time went on. I/O was around ~20 mb/s at first, afterwards it was typically around 60-80 mb/s. I didn't save a recent benchmark before I cancelled the plan so I can only offer an older one:
I monitor uptime using Uptime Robot, which showed quite a few downtimes during the time I had my plan. To be fair, most of these were short and lasted on average around 4-7 minutes, but the longest lasted over seven and a half hours. At one point, my uptime was down to around 96% for the last 30 days. But since I was only using that particular VPS as a file repository at the time, I wasn't pleased but not to the point of opening another ticket either.
Around mid-February, they posted at LET with another set of offers that changed up some of the specs but were essentially at the same price. I didn't think anything of it until I noticed someone asking if they allowed changing or upgrading plans, to which GVH-Jon replied yes. Someone else said he was experiencing problems until he requested a move to another node which was granted right away. I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask as well, so I opened my second and final ticket with GVH and asked if I could 1) switch my plan to the current offer (at the time) since the pricing was the same and 2) if it was possible to move me to another node.
Like before, support was quick to respond but the first reply I received informed me that they did not allow plan switching, though I could purchase a new one if I wanted. Once I linked to GVH-Jon's comment on LET, they changed their mind and switched my plan-- in fact, they gave me another extra 25 GB of disk space and allowed me to keep 2 extra IPv4 addresses, which I have to say I was pleased with. I was asked if I was happy with the changes that were made to which I answered truthfully yes, but that I would be even happier once I was moved to another node. Again, it felt as if the topic was avoided and no attempts were made to address the node issue (be it to give me a definite yes or no).
I was originally planning to use the extra disk space - now at a sizeable 200 GB - for backups and possibly hosting a Wordpress site, but after a few more downtime stints and consistently low to mediocre I/O speeds, I realized as great of a deal as it was, I was lacking trust in the server to be reliable in terms of uptime and speed. Since I already had two other plans with other providers that were more than adequate for my needs, it only made sense to cancel the one I had with GVH.
The good, in a nutshell:
- The specs were honestly a steal for the price, and they went above and beyond for me when I asked about switching plans (after what I presume was a misunderstanding).
- Support was always quick to respond, and if it was too late in the evening they do respond the next morning. Both tickets were opened on weekdays, so I can't vouch for their ticket response on weekends.
The bad, in a nutshell:
- I/O was honestly subpar and did not improve much throughout the duration of my time with them.
- Downtime was frequent, with the longest lasting over seven and a half hours. Definitely not a good choice if you're running anything that is mission critical.
- Repeated requests to change nodes were ignored (though to be fair, I wasn't very assertive or demanding about it either).
(Note: They did mention something about the issues lying with their upstream provider and that they were planning to move all the Dallas clients to Chicago in the near future, but there was no ETA given and I'm already content with the two plans I currently have so I didn't bother to stick around.)
Conclusion:
Overall, I would say it's a mixed review with some positives and some negatives. I can only speak for the Dallas location since that was the only plan I had, but if speed and uptime are some of your chief concerns when buying a VPS, I would advise you to save your money and look elsewhere. I'm not tech-savvy so I didn't run more tests on the server to see how well it handles high CPU loads or heavy RAM usage, but the specs are very generous and if you're bored with $5 to spare and want a test environment or something to play around with, why not give it a try?
I had a VPS with GreenValueHost from late January up until a couple of days ago when I cancelled it, which makes it about a month and a half or so. Since this is my first review ever and I wasn't with them for very long, please excuse the tl;dr mess up ahead. I'm going by chronological order rather than organizing my review into neat sections. It's also not going to be very in-depth because frankly, I lack the knowledge and background for a true analysis. I will try my best to be impartial and neutral, though.
After the multiple threads about GVH, I honestly was not very keen on ever purchasing anything from them given their attitude and overall way of handling the situation. However, their announcement about leaving ColoCrossing piqued my interest and I took a look at their LET offers to see who they were with now and what the plans were like. I decided to give them a chance after all and purchase one of the plans since it did seem like a pretty good deal and, if nothing else, I was only going to be short $5 anyway.
These were the specs at the Dallas, TX location:
LET February Special #1
100GB LSI HARDWARE RAID-10 SSD Cached Disk Space
30TB Premium Bandwidth, 500mbps Port
2048MB Guaranteed RAM
4096MB vSwap RAM
4 IPv4 Addresses - Additional IPs @ 0.25/m per IP with justification
32 IPv6 Addresses - ADDITIONAL IPs FREE upon Request!
$5.00 per Month OR $45.00 per year (SAVE $15/y by paying yearly!)
My vSwap did not show the correct amount when I was provisioned with the VPS and the speeds I was getting were just downright awful (I had posted some of the benchmarks I was getting here in an older thread). Since I also wasn't able to change my hostname in their control panel, I opened a ticket to address all of that at once. Support was very quick but like many others have noted, the replies are very curt and only two of my issues were fixed. There was no explanation offered regarding the slow I/O speeds and nothing was done to fix it as far as I'm aware. I believe they mentioned in a comment somewhere that it was due to people abusing the nodes, but I honestly did not see much of a difference as time went on. I/O was around ~20 mb/s at first, afterwards it was typically around 60-80 mb/s. I didn't save a recent benchmark before I cancelled the plan so I can only offer an older one:
Code:
wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/null|bash
CPU model : Genuine Intel(R) CPU @ 2.00GHz
Number of cores : 4
CPU frequency : 2000.054 MHz
Total amount of ram : 2024 MB
Total amount of swap : 4096 MB
System uptime : 4 days, 20:51,
Download speed from CacheFly: 47.4MB/s
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 36.1MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 54.7MB/s
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 7.46MB/s
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 11.1MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 10.8MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 5.47MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 28.8MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 27.7MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 31.3MB/s
I/O speed : 82.9 MB/sI monitor uptime using Uptime Robot, which showed quite a few downtimes during the time I had my plan. To be fair, most of these were short and lasted on average around 4-7 minutes, but the longest lasted over seven and a half hours. At one point, my uptime was down to around 96% for the last 30 days. But since I was only using that particular VPS as a file repository at the time, I wasn't pleased but not to the point of opening another ticket either.
Around mid-February, they posted at LET with another set of offers that changed up some of the specs but were essentially at the same price. I didn't think anything of it until I noticed someone asking if they allowed changing or upgrading plans, to which GVH-Jon replied yes. Someone else said he was experiencing problems until he requested a move to another node which was granted right away. I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask as well, so I opened my second and final ticket with GVH and asked if I could 1) switch my plan to the current offer (at the time) since the pricing was the same and 2) if it was possible to move me to another node.
Like before, support was quick to respond but the first reply I received informed me that they did not allow plan switching, though I could purchase a new one if I wanted. Once I linked to GVH-Jon's comment on LET, they changed their mind and switched my plan-- in fact, they gave me another extra 25 GB of disk space and allowed me to keep 2 extra IPv4 addresses, which I have to say I was pleased with. I was asked if I was happy with the changes that were made to which I answered truthfully yes, but that I would be even happier once I was moved to another node. Again, it felt as if the topic was avoided and no attempts were made to address the node issue (be it to give me a definite yes or no).
I was originally planning to use the extra disk space - now at a sizeable 200 GB - for backups and possibly hosting a Wordpress site, but after a few more downtime stints and consistently low to mediocre I/O speeds, I realized as great of a deal as it was, I was lacking trust in the server to be reliable in terms of uptime and speed. Since I already had two other plans with other providers that were more than adequate for my needs, it only made sense to cancel the one I had with GVH.
The good, in a nutshell:
- The specs were honestly a steal for the price, and they went above and beyond for me when I asked about switching plans (after what I presume was a misunderstanding).
- Support was always quick to respond, and if it was too late in the evening they do respond the next morning. Both tickets were opened on weekdays, so I can't vouch for their ticket response on weekends.
The bad, in a nutshell:
- I/O was honestly subpar and did not improve much throughout the duration of my time with them.
- Downtime was frequent, with the longest lasting over seven and a half hours. Definitely not a good choice if you're running anything that is mission critical.
- Repeated requests to change nodes were ignored (though to be fair, I wasn't very assertive or demanding about it either).
(Note: They did mention something about the issues lying with their upstream provider and that they were planning to move all the Dallas clients to Chicago in the near future, but there was no ETA given and I'm already content with the two plans I currently have so I didn't bother to stick around.)
Conclusion:
Overall, I would say it's a mixed review with some positives and some negatives. I can only speak for the Dallas location since that was the only plan I had, but if speed and uptime are some of your chief concerns when buying a VPS, I would advise you to save your money and look elsewhere. I'm not tech-savvy so I didn't run more tests on the server to see how well it handles high CPU loads or heavy RAM usage, but the specs are very generous and if you're bored with $5 to spare and want a test environment or something to play around with, why not give it a try?
