All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Benchmarks/Review - 4 russian providers, cheap VPS
I already hinted at it recently and here it is, my review of three and a half cheap (as in "about €12 per year") russian VPSs. The "half" VPS is the justHost VPS; "half" because, while they seem to have cheap ones too, the VPS I had and reviewed was not a cheap one and because the benchmarks were run a while ago, but also because my experience with them was very poor.
And I also have a nice surprise for you, just read on ...
The three main VPSs (other than justhost) are from Veesp, a quite well known and well regarded provider, firstByte and Ihor, two less well known providers. Btw, all four providers accept and respond also to tickets in English, but one has just a Russian-only web site.
Here are the benchmark data (those who just want to see the resumee and the nice surprise can just skip to part 3)
First Veesp, the well known provider - with a caveat: I got it for €12 per year, partly because I already was a customer and partly because they ran some promo. The official - and utterly ridiculous - price is €4 per month.
First the system and disk
Machine: amd64, Arch.: amd64, Model: QEMU Virtual CPU version 2.5+
OS, version: FreeBSD 12.2, Mem.: 476 MB
CPU - Cores: 1, Family/Model/Stepping: 6/13/3
Cache: 32K/32K L1d/L1i, 2M L2, 16M L3
Std. Flags: fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36
cflsh mmx fxsr sse sse2 sse3 cx16 x2apic hypervisor
Ext. Flags: syscall nx lm lahf_lm
ProcMem SC: avg 194.2 - min 183.9 (94.7 %), max 204.6 (105.3 %)
--- Disk - Buffered ---
Write seq.: avg 18.69 - min 11.09 (59.4%), max 26.28 (140.6%)
Write rnd.: avg 44.34 - min 27.74 (62.6%), max 60.94 (137.4%)
Read seq.: avg 25.99 - min 25.78 (99.2%), max 26.20 (100.8%)
Read rnd.: avg 759.73 - min 693.89 (91.3%), max 825.57 (108.7%)
--- Disk - Sync/Direct ---
Write seq.: avg 3.09 - min 3.09 (100.0%), max 3.09 (100.0%)
Write rnd.: avg 6.08 - min 6.08 (100.0%), max 6.08 (100.0%)
Read seq.: avg 29.12 - min 29.07 (99.8%), max 29.18 (100.2%)
Read rnd.: avg 24.06 - min 24.05 (99.9%), max 24.08 (100.1%)
Based on the numbers the actual processor seems to be a 56xx. Note that AES is not supported with that VPS. The disk size is 10 GB.
Now the network
US LAX lax.download.datapacket.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 34.20 - min 32.28 (94.4%), max 36.13 (105.6%)
Ping: avg 179.5 - min 179.0 (99.7%), max 180.0 (100.3%)
Web ping: avg 180.3 - min 179.0 (99.3%), max 181.6 (100.7%)
NO OSL speedtest.osl01.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 120.21 - min 120.21 (100.0%), max 120.21 (100.0%)
Ping: avg 18.2 - min 18.2 (100.0%), max 18.2 (100.0%)
Web ping: avg 24.1 - min 24.1 (100.0%), max 24.1 (100.0%)
US SJC speedtest.sjc01.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 35.41 - min 33.97 (95.9%), max 36.85 (104.1%)
Ping: avg 175.8 - min 175.6 (99.9%), max 176.0 (100.1%)
Web ping: avg 177.1 - min 175.6 (99.2%), max 178.5 (100.8%)
JP TOK speedtest.tokyo2.linode.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 20.20 - min 10.32 (51.1%), max 30.09 (148.9%)
Ping: avg 218.6 - min 217.9 (99.7%), max 219.3 (100.3%)
Web ping: avg 245.2 - min 217.9 (88.8%), max 272.6 (111.2%)
AU MEL speedtest.mel01.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 16.35 - min 12.62 (77.2%), max 20.08 (122.8%)
Ping: avg 264.0 - min 263.3 (99.8%), max 264.6 (100.2%)
Web ping: avg 265.3 - min 264.3 (99.6%), max 266.3 (100.4%)
IT MIL speedtest.mil01.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 59.72 - min 55.36 (92.7%), max 64.08 (107.3%)
Ping: avg 41.3 - min 40.7 (98.5%), max 41.9 (101.5%)
Web ping: avg 41.3 - min 40.7 (98.5%), max 41.9 (101.5%)
FR PAR speedtest.par01.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 121.15 - min 112.14 (92.6%), max 130.16 (107.4%)
Ping: avg 43.5 - min 41.9 (96.2%), max 45.2 (103.8%)
Web ping: avg 114.2 - min 45.2 (39.6%), max 183.3 (160.4%)
SG SGP mirror.sg.leaseweb.net
DL [Mb/s]: avg 26.71 - min 22.10 (82.7%), max 31.32 (117.3%)
Ping: avg 188.1 - min 186.9 (99.4%), max 189.3 (100.6%)
Web ping: avg 190.1 - min 190.0 (100.0%), max 190.1 (100.0%)
BR SAO speedtest.sao01.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 20.84 - min 18.62 (89.4%), max 23.05 (110.6%)
Ping: avg 220.1 - min 217.7 (98.9%), max 222.5 (101.1%)
Web ping: avg 220.1 - min 217.7 (98.9%), max 222.5 (101.1%)
IN CHN speedtest.che01.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 27.88 - min 23.36 (83.8%), max 32.40 (116.2%)
Ping: avg 189.6 - min 189.3 (99.9%), max 189.8 (100.1%)
Web ping: avg 192.2 - min 191.2 (99.5%), max 193.3 (100.5%)
GR UNK speedtest.ftp.otenet.gr
DL [Mb/s]: avg 59.20 - min 59.20 (100.0%), max 59.20 (100.0%)
Ping: avg 77.6 - min 77.6 (100.0%), max 77.6 (100.0%)
Web ping: avg 81.8 - min 81.8 (100.0%), max 81.8 (100.0%)
US WDC mirror.wdc1.us.leaseweb.net
DL [Mb/s]: avg 46.80 - min 44.72 (95.5%), max 48.89 (104.5%)
Ping: avg 129.6 - min 129.6 (100.0%), max 129.7 (100.0%)
Web ping: avg 130.6 - min 129.7 (99.3%), max 131.5 (100.7%)
DE FRA speedtest.fra02.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 85.00 - min 35.12 (41.3%), max 134.89 (158.7%)
Ping: avg 30.4 - min 30.4 (100.0%), max 30.4 (100.0%)
Web ping: avg 30.4 - min 30.4 (99.8%), max 30.5 (100.2%)
RU MOS speedtest.hostkey.ru
DL [Mb/s]: avg 187.71 - min 185.26 (98.7%), max 190.16 (101.3%)
Ping: avg 15.7 - min 11.2 (71.6%), max 20.1 (128.4%)
Web ping: avg 15.7 - min 11.2 (71.6%), max 20.1 (128.4%)
US DAL speedtest.dal05.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 38.36 - min 35.47 (92.5%), max 41.25 (107.5%)
Ping: avg 149.7 - min 145.7 (97.3%), max 153.7 (102.7%)
Web ping: avg 149.7 - min 145.7 (97.3%), max 153.7 (102.7%)
UK LON speedtest.lon02.softlayer.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 130.61 - min 121.19 (92.8%), max 140.02 (107.2%)
Ping: avg 38.2 - min 38.1 (99.9%), max 38.2 (100.1%)
Web ping: avg 38.2 - min 38.1 (99.9%), max 38.2 (100.1%)
US NYC nyc.download.datapacket.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 49.12 - min 42.64 (86.8%), max 55.61 (113.2%)
Ping: avg 109.5 - min 109.4 (99.9%), max 109.6 (100.1%)
Web ping: avg 109.5 - min 109.4 (99.9%), max 109.6 (100.1%)
RO BUC 185.183.99.8
DL [Mb/s]: avg 101.00 - min 94.14 (93.2%), max 107.86 (106.8%)
Ping: avg 58.0 - min 58.0 (100.0%), max 58.0 (100.0%)
Web ping: avg 61.8 - min 58.0 (93.9%), max 65.5 (106.1%)
CN_HK mirror.hk.leaseweb.net
DL [Mb/s]: avg 24.55 - min 24.55 (100.0%), max 24.55 (100.0%)
Ping: avg 197.3 - min 197.3 (100.0%), max 197.3 (100.0%)
Web ping: avg 198.2 - min 198.2 (100.0%), max 198.2 (100.0%)
FR_RB lg-fr.hostnamaste.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 124.73 - min 124.73 (100.0%), max 124.73 (100.0%)
Ping: avg 44.7 - min 44.7 (100.0%), max 44.7 (100.0%)
Web ping: avg 45.9 - min 45.9 (100.0%), max 45.9 (100.0%)
Their connectivity is OK, even nice to some destinations and none of my usual test destinations looks poor. Traffic is free but you are limited to 200 Mb/s iirc (which actually is quite OK; others have a 100 Mb/s limit).
Now, on to justHost whose "Start" VPS costs slightly less than 12€ and slightly more than $12 per year
Machine: amd64, Arch.: amd64, Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5650 @ 2.67GHz
OS, version: FreeBSD 12.0, Mem.: 1.985 GB
CPU - Cores: 2, Family/Model/Stepping: 6/44/2
Cache: 32K/32K L1d/L1i, 2M L2, 16M L3
Std. Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat
pse36 cflsh mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss htt sse3 pclmulqdq ssse3 cx16 pcid
sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline aes hypervisor
Ext. Flags: tsc_adjust syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm lahf_lm
ProcMem SC: avg 151.66
ProcMem MC: avg 335.37
--- Disk - Buffered ---
Write seq.: avg 48.21 MB/s
Write rnd.: avg 27.72 MB/s
Read seq.: avg 339.35 MB/s
Read rnd.: avg 458.19 MB/s
US,SJC speedtest.sjc01.softlayer.com 28.7 Mb/s
NO,OSL speedtest.osl01.softlayer.com 84.1 Mb/s
JP,TOK speedtest.tokyo.linode.com 17.9 Mb/s
AU MEL speedtest.mel01.softlayer.com 16.0 Mb/s
IT,MIL speedtest.mil01.softlayer.com 46.0 Mb/s
FR,PAR speedtest.par01.softlayer.com 90.1 Mb/s
BR,SAO speedtest.sao01.softlayer.com 16.1 Mb/s
IN,CHE speedtest.che01.softlayer.com 21.9 Mb/s
GR,UNK speedtest.ftp.otenet.gr 43.6 Mb/s
US,WDC speedtest.wdc01.softlayer.com 43.3 Mb/s
DE,FRA speedtest.fra02.softlayer.com 35.1 Mb/s
US,DAL speedtest.dal05.softlayer.com 32.4 Mb/s
UK,LON speedtest.lon02.softlayer.com 102.8 Mb/s
RO,BUC lg-ro.vps2day.com 37.8 Mb/s
(Again, sorry, that benchmark was done with an older version of my software).
The processor, a 5650 @ 2.67GHz, is about 20% slower than the Veesp VPS but it does support AES.
The disk is just 5 GB and transfer is limited to 100Mb/s with "unlimited" traffic iirc.
Comments
Part 2
Now, on to the next one, firstByte "Start" VPS, by far the cheapest of the bunch at about 60 Euro-cents per month.
The disk is 7 GB and you get 7 TB traffic at 100 Mbit/s. Note that there is also a "SSD-1" package for about € 1.10/mo with a 10 GB disk and "unlimited" traffic at 200 Mbit/s.
This is the slowest one in the group, about 30% slower than the two fastest contenders, plus there is no AES support. But IMO the more important weak point is another one, the underwhelming connectivity. But well, one probably can and should ask for only so much at the insanely low price.
Why did I include this VPS in my review? Because what you get still is plenty powerful enough for a name server or a mail server or even a Sqlite driven web-site with low to medium activity (read: for 50% to 75% of all domains) - and again, for much less than 1 Euro or even $1 per month.
And now on to the final contender, Ihor hosting's "Minimum" VPS which in a way is a counter-point to the firstByte VPS. While the latter is a good bit below €1 per month, Ihor's "Minimum" VPS is a good bit above, more precisely about € 1.50 per month ... but read on, there are reasons for me to include this "expensive" (haha) about $20 per year VPS ...
Machine: amd64, Arch.: amd64, Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz
OS, version: FreeBSD 12.2, Mem.: 476 MB
CPU - Cores: 1, Family/Model/Stepping: 6/44/2
Cache: 32K/32K L1d/L1i, 2M L2, ? L3
Std. Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat
pse36 cflsh mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss sse3 pclmulqdq ssse3 cx16 pcid
sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline aes hypervisor
Ext. Flags: tsc_adjust syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm lahf_lm
ProcMem SC: avg 195.9 - min 195.0 (99.5 %), max 197.4 (100.7 %)
--- Disk - Buffered ---
Write seq.: avg 452.63 - min 420.02 (92.8%), max 504.32 (111.4%)
Write rnd.: avg 1270.64 - min 502.54 (39.6%), max 2593.07 (204.1%)
Read seq.: avg 546.02 - min 527.18 (96.5%), max 569.24 (104.3%)
Read rnd.: avg 2800.15 - min 2736.85 (97.7%), max 2853.80 (101.9%)
--- Disk - Sync/Direct ---
Write seq.: avg 91.91 - min 90.86 (98.9%), max 93.48 (101.7%)
Write rnd.: avg 163.84 - min 157.89 (96.4%), max 166.91 (101.9%)
Read seq.: avg 679.54 - min 662.71 (97.5%), max 697.19 (102.6%)
Read rnd.: avg 411.84 - min 398.54 (96.8%), max 423.09 (102.7%)
--- Network ---
US LAX lax.download.datapacket.com
DL [Mb/s]: avg 33.76 - min 31.91 (94.5%), max 34.75 (102.9%)
Ping: avg 182.8 - min 182.7 (99.9%), max 182.9 (100.0%)
Web ping: avg 184.7 - min 182.9 (99.0%), max 186.5 (101.0%)
Yay, a (relatively) fast processor with AES support, a very decent 10 GB disk, and decent connectivity albeit at 100 Mb/s ("unlimited" traffic).
Part 3
When compiling the benchmark results a clear image became visible. As i think it's quite helpful I'll show an abbreviated version here that should allow you to pick the one that's best for you and you'll see the surprise I mentioned.
The marks are 1 to 5, 5 being the best and of course in relation to the market segment (a 5 here might be a 3 or 4 in 10$/mo systems).
Veesp, well known (also outside Russia) & solid, but not exactly cheap outside of occasional promos, english web-site version.
CPU & mem 5, AES No, disk 2, network 5
justHost, somewhat known, relatively cheap, english web-site version, SSH access very slow, personally had a rather poor experience
CPU & mem 4, AES Yes, disk 3, network 4
firstByte, largely unknown outside Russia, web-site russian only, very cheap
CPU & mem 3, AES No, disk 4, network 3
Ihor, largely unknown outside Russia but english web-site version ('ihor.online').
CPU & Mem 5, AES Yes, disk 5 (SSD btw), network 4
Support is OK at least with all of the providers and even friendly with some (Veesp, Ihor).
The nice surprise? Well, obviously Ihor hosting.
No weak points, all elements good or very good and still a very attractive price. The only drawback, although for most users not really significant, is the 100 Mb/s limit even with large (e.g. 4 vCore) VPS. But there is some candy too: (except for bandwidth) one can upgrade everything in a modular "Lego" way and even "design" one's personal server.
They have the potential to become a "Veesp killer". AFAIC I'm already looking at Ihor first before considering Veesp, who have served me well for years but aren't cheap anymore.
Thanks for taking on this arduous task. There's so much variation in the Russian VPS space that it's difficult to get a grasp of what's good and what's trash.
Probably time to start a blog?
Well, limiting the search to providers who at least accept and respond to tickets in English (or, even better, have a english version of their web-site too) and who are cheap (after all, this is LET) narrows down the candidates allready quite a bit.
And I hope that part 3 of my review provides a pretty useful guideline by grading the most important factors. Basically it breaks down into features and quality vs cost.
I myself still have some half-way critical stuff like my main email server with Veesp, love my super-dirt-cheap firstByte secondary name servers, and of course also love my Ihor VPS, in particular because I can "Lego" extend it say with a larger disk (SSD!) to replace a mid-size Veesp VPS that costs more than 3 times as much.
About the only "problem" I see is that many totally over-estimate what they really need and look down to "them stone age CPUs", which however actually are damn good enough for many, many jobs.
Concrete example: I'm currently running a big fat multi-location benchmark series of a high quality provider with shmick E5 26xx processors ... which however are just about 50% faster than the "stone age" 56xx in the super-cheap VPS I tested (but of course have more and faster memory, NVMe, etc ... and cost 5 times more).
We have a lot of decent providers here in Russia with great quality product and support, but prices mostly higher than LE and BF20 was weak, w/o recurring offers, so I made shopping here
. I have aux VPSes (proxy, storage) with 3 of reviewed providers (Veesp, FirstByte, Ihor) and your evaluation is really good, close to my experience, but! Please don't call Ihor "nice surprise", it was nice surprise 2-3 years ago, just think about Virmach and cociu in one, real superstar beast with fun, f-ups and fans 
But last year Ihor was biggest shit-storm in Russian VPS community, deadpooled with a lot of clients lost their VPS, money, affilates etc. So now we have Ihor v2, with just several months after all this happened. I will not repeat this again: "Держись подальше от Ihor"! 
just a sidenote: proper units declaration in your bench would be helpful to interpret the numbers ;-)
Of course Ihor is well known in Russia, but I was talking about a global level and in particular about here at LET. And yes, some thought like "Hostsolutions and Virmach rolled into one" went through my head too.
Well there was a time when "stay away from Ihor!" was sensible advice because AFAIK some financial director had hijacked the administrative core and customer data and Ihor wasn't operational for quite a few weeks (if you know better, please let me know), but finally they somehow recovered. Probably I could even have got some compensation but I thought that they had had more than enough trouble and didn't ask for it but simply continued to use my "restored" Ihor VPS. Have been a happy sailor again ever since and they look stable now.
Which ones? The pings? Those are in milli-seconds. I'll adapt my compiler script to put "[ms]" there.
The processor/memory and disk numbers are MB/s.
Sorry.
hmm, no ms for ping is the one which everyone more likely can guess. I rather meant the 'IO' part... which could be IO as such or some bw rate? same for ProcMem - whatever that is supposed to be ;-)
"Proc/Mem" is benchmarking the "system core" and I intentionally combine processor and memory because pretty much any kind of server needs good memory (incl. caches!), good string and array processing and moving/copying around as well as good basic integer operations plus increasingly often good crypto performance. Of course no synthetic benchmark can reflect all server software out there but it can - and does - do much better than the usual openssl based crypto based performance numbers. The basic message is: if the Proc/Mem performance is good then your typical server applications (in particular dynamic web applications) will run fast.
The unit is MB/s (as in "you can en/decrypt, move, copy, walk, process X MB/s").
"Along the way" those numbers also provide pretty good hints re steal, overbooking or, at the other end, truly dedicated cores. Example: The relation between single and multi core performance is a good indicator; on truly dedicated vCores on a non-oversold node the ratio is nearly ideal while on some cheap storage boxes all say 2 vCores offer basically not more performance than a single vCore. Also have a look at the spread; up to about plus or minus 10 % are normal, but when you see high spreads, say max 35% higher than avg you are running on a bad node (oversold, lots of swapping, etc). Similar for connectivity.
thanks. and no worries, not here to argue about anything. just wasn't clear about the unit.
I'm not worried. Your questions were evidently legitimate plus I have no problem explaining how my benchmark works and what the data mean and how to read them.
Yes, it was investor/ceo conflict with both sides gone berserk and ugly towards clients too. You (and me) was lucky to keep VPS/money, but I have several clients who lost it, so I moved them in emergency to warm shelters (play with BF-idling since 2017 and always adore backups, so I was prepared). So it is far from "forget and forgive" case for me, I still keep VPS on my affiliate bonuses, but never will bring my money to Ihor again. You can call them "recovered", it's your right, we are free country
But there are plenty decent Russian providers with English support and proper offers.
Ugly feeling, I understand.
Well, tell us about them, possibly with a short objective characterization! Or, in case you don't want to do that publicly, kindly tell me via PM. I'm absolutely willing to benchmark and review a few more.
Well, I think you will get a lot of benchs/rv
All have EN versions (so I suppose support also)
All tried hosters was good for me (but not all was LET-grade).
https://ruvds.com/en-eur - tried
https://gcorelabs.com/ - will try
https://foxcloud.net/ - tried
https://www.ipserver.su/en/ - tried
https://fastvps.hosting/ - tried
https://vscale.io/en/ - tried
https://flops.ru/en/ - tried
https://beget.com/en - tried
https://itldc.com/en/
https://hostvds.com/
VDSina's offer was the best for under $1/m (2₽/d), still has it
I have https://vdsina.ru/ too, good cheap NVMe VPS, but they are Russian only, so was not included in previous post.
Any DMCA-free provider ?
@raynor
First, thanks for the list.
is not russian but a british operation.
seems to start at $3.38 and has only 1 DC in Russia (vs. 7 in Europe and the USA).
is not a russian company but an estonian one.
cheapest is $3.08
starts at $3.38
Russian but I failed to find a VPS product.
Bulgarian or american company, not russian.
A model different from most and looking attractive (also in terms of $$) but if I'm not mistaken only half-operational since a year or more.
Note that I insist in "russian hosting" being really russian and not "non-russian company offering stuff in russian DC" for a reason: if any part, be it the company, the head-quarters, the DC is non-russian then you might as well just host in e.g. the UK, the USA or other 14-eyes and/or baltic countries or ukraine.
Well, at least we tried
You can use Russian meta-searchers (with aff links),
I hope you will find cheap and quality offers:
https://poiskvps.ru/
https://vds.menu/
Sir
May I ask where to find $1/month deal? Just tried all sections on their website and it seems that even the cheapest one "Epic servers" is showing 6.93 Ruble / day , totaling around 208 Ruble / month, about 2.9 usd.
Thanks.
Do you know whether any of these support Bitcoin or Alipay? I can't unfortunately check as unlike WHMCS they do not expose the billing options before checkout.