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[Review] ContraWeb €8.50/year KVM
I recently stumbled across a really enticing offer from a new LET member: @ContraWeb offers a 512 MB KVM VPS in the Netherlands for €8.50/year.
I didn't know anything about them yet, but at 8.50€, there wasn't much to lose.
Apparently I wasn't the only one thinking that — they got absolutely slammed with orders and didn't have enough capacity to provision them right away.
Now, 10 days after my order, things have settled down and I thought I'd share my experience:
Like I said, they had a bit of a hiccup when they got slammed with orders and had to set up a new host node to compensate — the ETA for my server was pushed back twice, and only when I explicitly asked for an update. Ordered on Feb 7th, got the server on 15th. Oh well, for a €0.71/month server I can wait a few days.
I ran the usual tests when the server was provisioned; results below.
Note that the server isn't installed automatically, so it won't be reachable until you select and install your OS via SolusVM!The server comes with a single IPv6 by default, but you can request a /64 subnet via ticket (for free).
SolusVM doesn't support setting reverse DNS (IPv4 and v6) yet, but it's on the roadmap and until then you can open a ticket for it.
Now that the "host node crisis" is over, ticket reply times are impressive: All my tickets except one were answered (and solved!) within 1 to 10 minutes. Brian is very friendly and seems to know what he's doing.
And finally, there are also options to upgrade the €8.50 plan, e.g. double the resources for double the price, or additional storage for €3/year per 10 GB.
Bottom line: really impressed so far, would recommend.
Edit: Apparently it wasn't obvious enough, so I'll state it clearly: I've had the server for 2 days so far, so I can't judge its long-time stability yet, only the service and performance I've seen so far.
And no, I don't get anything for writing this review.
Unless @ContraWeb would like to …
ioping -R /dev/vda
--- /dev/vda (block device 10 GiB) ioping statistics ---
min/avg/max/mdev = 29 us / 158 us / 3.33 ms / 66 us
bench.sh -46
System Info
-----------
Processor : QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6)
CPU Cores : 1
Frequency : 2099.998 MHz
Memory : 494 MB
Swap : 1023 MB
Uptime : 1 day, 15:28,
OS : Debian GNU/Linux 8
Arch : x86_64 (64 Bit)
Kernel : 3.16.0-4-amd64
Speedtest (IPv4 only)
---------------------
Your public IPv4 is 185.166.238.x
Location Provider Speed
CDN Cachefly 43.4MB/s
Atlanta, GA, US Coloat 9.95MB/s
Dallas, TX, US Softlayer 12.5MB/s
Seattle, WA, US Softlayer 10.3MB/s
San Jose, CA, US Softlayer 9.66MB/s
Washington, DC, US Softlayer 2.40MB/s
Tokyo, Japan Linode 6.59MB/s
Singapore Softlayer 5.15MB/s
Rotterdam, Netherlands id3.net 104MB/s
Haarlem, Netherlands Leaseweb 72.9MB/s
Speedtest (IPv6 only)
---------------------
Your public IPv6 is 2a06:7a01:12:0:x
Location Provider Speed
Atlanta, GA, US Linode 17.7MB/s
Dallas, TX, US Linode 4.90MB/s
Newark, NJ, US Linode 19.8MB/s
Fremont, CA, US Linode 208KB/s
Chicago, IL, US Steadfast 11.7MB/s
Tokyo, Japan Linode 6.56MB/s
Singapore Linode 6.17MB/s
Frankfurt, Germany Linode 603KB/s
London, UK Linode 49.7MB/s
Haarlem, Netherlands Leaseweb 54.7MB/s
Disk Speed
----------
I/O (1st run) : 300 MB/s
I/O (2nd run) : 306 MB/s
I/O (3rd run) : 314 MB/s
Average I/O : 306.667 MB/s
Comments
You should! I just bought one to test it because of this thread! :P
Nice review. ContraWeb looks very promising so far. Do you know if it's run by one person?
We are with 2 people total.
Can you provide a test IP?
I shared an extensive test in a different thread
I would like to give people something for writing reviews but some people will call it unfair, and others will be mad because i don't give everyone who writes a good review about us something in return for it...
They seem to be pretty forthcoming with handing out 1-hour test VPSs, but I guess you can also ping their hostnode: 185.166.238.2
If that's their host node, why is ssh enabled on port 22...
uh? port 22 looks pretty closed to me here
It is now
Too bad, I can resist last time, but cannot after reading this. Ordered 1 to test and might add it to idle list later :-)
Nice review then ...
Yay, I've already convinced two people to buy new idle VMs! Now I feel like a proper member of LET!
If you're missing a operating systems please open a ticket, we are adding most missing operating systems tonight.
This node has been up since yesterday thats why we don't have all operating systems on it yet.
probably forgot this on the last post, can't remember if I did already: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/1883954
so far no problems, yet it only have been a few weeks since the offer first came up. IO seems to keep on being stable so far, as does the network freshly checked:
so far I like it, haven't put any work on it though. just don't know what to use it for. simply needed to have one, as long as they are available ^^
>
Heck, if it went down to half the performance, it would still be a great deal!
Feb 2017?
I think so. In the order thread they posted that their original node had gotten full and that people could preorder if they wanted to wait for a new node to come up. It sounds like that happened here.
I got one on the original node and it worked very nicely after original setup (probably while everyone else was slamming it with tests too). Per the usual LET lifecycle it's been idling since then, but I just ssh'd in and it's still up and doing fine.
I was joking, definitely do not follow this route...
Yup.
So you've had the server less than 2 days?
Correct.
Could you summarise what you've learned in that time, briefly?
Friendly and competent support, good hardware and network performance.
Would it be fair to say that the latter two points are somewhat anecdotal assessments, based on the short period of time so far?
@Nekki It's pretty obvious what you're aiming at.
I never claimed I could judge their longevity (contraweb.net was registered on 2016-09-28, by the way). We'll see about that in due time and you can bet your bottom that I'll chew them out on here if they kick the bucket in any non-graceful way.
↑ Oops, race condition there.
As in, what will happen when their node fills up? Yeah, guess you're right about that.
On the other hand, I've seen long-established providers (I'm looking at you, Netcup) that had admirable performance for years — which then suddenly went to hell.
That's left me with the opinion that benchmarks are only ever small snapshots that can give you a rough idea, but that you need to personally try out a service for a while before you run anything productive on it.
I'd like to ask if you feel it's right to recommend a provider to other members of the forum based on less than 48 hours experience?
It's fine saying that you'll 'chew them out', but by that time the damage may have been done and people have purchased off the back of your thread.
To me, it feels somewhat irresponsible, but I'm interested in your thoughts on the matter.
That's left me with the opinion that benchmarks are only ever small snapshots that can give you a rough idea, but that you need to personally try out a service for a while before you run anything productive on it.
Have you seen many long-established providers go to shit? Anyone aside from Netcup?
Off topic, but what's so bad about Netcup?