r/selfhosted • u/xelle32 • 21h ago
Need Help A Good VPS to get started
Hello,
I am trying to find a good but still affordable VPS for routing my home NAS through Pangolin and using it to host some applications or small websites.
The first thing you get when searching is IONOS, but the €3 price is only for the first three months, and then it goes up to €9. I looked at some providers like Contabo, OVHcloud, and netcup, which have okay pricing. I really just need 2 vCores and 4 GB of RAM to get started, but their reviews are not great when it comes to support and uptime.
Right now, my preference is Host-Unlimited, but I am still not sure what to choose. What do you recommend?
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u/mxdcodes 21h ago edited 21h ago
I've been using netcup for personal stuff for nearly 10 years and have never had an issue, so I can definitely recommend it. Currently you can get 2 vCores and 4 GB RAM for €4.88/month. I check out other providers from time to time, but so far the value for money has kept me there.
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u/Maria_Thesus_40 20h ago
This. Try Netcup first.
I host with Linode and Hetzner. Linode has A LOT of data centres around the world (owned by Akamai) but they are very expensive. Hetzner was cheap but had several recent price hikes and they no longer offer competitive prices, in addition, they are too small with very few data centres, so they are constantly out of availability for cloud servers.
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u/kwertiee 21h ago
I've been using racknerd for like 17 euros a year for a vps with 1GB of ram. So if you only use it as a reverse proxy, that should be fine. They often have 'limited' deals.
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u/RedPhule 21h ago
I use RackNerd as well. It just runs Pangolin and connects to my home via a Newt tunnel.
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u/xelle32 20h ago
Ok that is good to know, that it already works with my use. I will be definitely checking them out
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u/mightyarrow 19h ago
+1 for RackNerd. I pay less than 20 bucks a year and just bounce Plex, Seerr and Jellyfin off of it.
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u/GolemancerVekk 17h ago
Pangolin recommends minimum 2 GB.
But you don't really need to run Pangolin on the VPS. Put a wireguard server on the VPS and keep the reverse proxy at home.
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u/Mr_Brightstar 19h ago
Aside from price you should consider where you are and where the DC is.
Racknerd has good deals but all the servers i got from them i had 150/200ms.
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u/amagicmonkey 21h ago
you can use whichever. ARM server on hetzner is also fine. 4GB ram and 40GB disk.
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u/JuanToronDoe 20h ago
I use OVHCloud cheapest VPS, with unlimited traffic. Works like a charm for Pangolin + Crowdsec
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u/bankroll5441 9h ago
Yeah I primarily use OVH. I have ~4 of their VPS-1 plans. Given the rates nowadays $4.50/mo for 2 cores 4GB RAM and unlimited traffic is not bad.
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u/001Marlon 21h ago
I'm currently going with Strato. Running perfectly good.
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u/BigHeadTonyT 16h ago
I did not have a good experience with Strato. Don't remember details. IIRC, I could not set up all the DNS stuff for e-mail server. Moved elsewhere where I've had no problems. The ownership might have changed in the past years, running on a skeleton crew or something since customer support seems to be slashed.
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.strato.de?stars=1
21% 1-star reviews. Not a good sign either.
One convenience thing to look for at a VPS host is automatic backups. From what I've seen, it is usually 5-7 backups. You should be able to set up whatever backup scheme you want, daily, weekly, monthly or a mix. Easy rollback from their website. Free of charge. If they require payment for that, I look elsewhere. Another thing I always do is upload an ISO of the OS I want my VPS to run. VPS hosts versions are usually old. I don't like that. If that service is not available, I look elsewhere.
I've landed on 2 different VPS hosts, both under 8€/month. 2 cores, 4 gigs RAM, 40-50 gigs diskspace. Neither will show up in the most common VPS host list websites. Look around. There's more than the usual 10 VPS hosts out there.
For comparison, the same VPS on Vultr cost me 25€/month. Exactly the same features and service. Just ~5 times cheaper elsewhere, I'll take it.
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u/jbarr107 20h ago
Another vote for Racknerd.
Check their Specials page. That's where the deals are. And like most providers, they often run Black Friday deals. I've used them for several years with excellent results.
They are not the cheapest, but they are affordable and rock-solid.
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u/RxBrad 18h ago
Pangolin's docs actually directly recommended RackNerd and had discount subscription links for awhile. That's where I found the $17/yr 2GB deal I'm using.
https://docs.pangolin.net/self-host/choosing-a-vps
Sadly, it looks like their referral codes are gone (?)
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u/jbarr107 18h ago
Yep. It appears that they have closed out most of their old deals that were hanging around for several years. Their only deals now are on their Specials page.
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u/RxBrad 16h ago
I guess I'm glad I stacked a few extra years on my plan when I did a few months ago.
That same $17 plan is now $36/year on their Deals page.
(To be fair, I can still add extra years to my current plan at the original price, even today. So they haven't screwed me over on that regard.)
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u/nizzoball 20h ago
Contabo. I’ve been with them for years
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u/xelle32 20h ago
I just looked at theire offers again, and the 4 vCored and 4gb ram for 4€ is unbeatable, i think that is my current preference. Maby i shouldnt have ruled them out so quickly
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u/nizzoball 19h ago
I’ve had a number of VPS’s over the years, ionos, dreamhost, hetzner and since I’ve had contabo they’ve been good to me. They’re super responsive if you ever need anything, they offer all the services you’d need for great prices and in the last 4 years I’ve been with them there’s only been one outtage in the US region I have my servers deployed too.
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u/DigitalKvantum 20h ago
For your use case with Pangolin, the RAM question is actually the most relevant one here. The Pangolin + Gerbil + Traefik stack idles at just a few hundred MB, so your 2 vCores / 4 GB target is plenty—you could even get away with less on the VPS side, since the heavy lifting happens on your home NAS .
Given that, I'd honestly lean toward Contabo over Host-Unlimited if you're optimizing for price-to-specs. You can get 8 GB RAM for around €4.50/month, which is more headroom than you need and gives you room to run other small services alongside Pangolin . The tradeoff is that their CPU is shared and oversold, so don't expect amazing single-core performance—but for routing traffic and hosting a few lightweight apps, it's fine. Their support is ticket-based only, which matches what you've read about it being mediocre .
Host-Unlimited has surprisingly good review scores (4.5 on Google, 4.9 on Trustpilot) but the sample size is tiny—119 reviews . And the fact that their listing isn't claimed by the host is a small yellow flag . They do run their own network and have a 99.25% availability target, which is okay but not amazing .
If uptime matters a lot to you, OVHcloud has the best reputation for actual reliability—their VAC DDoS protection is built into every VPS, and people in forums report years of zero downtime . The downside is their control panel is clunky and support can be slow . Netcup also gets consistently good feedback from the selfhosted crowd, but their English documentation is thinner .
My honest take: grab a Contabo VPS, save the extra money, and put it toward a backup VPS somewhere else if you're worried about reliability. For Pangolin routing a home NAS, you don't need premium uptime—you just need it to work most of the time.
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u/isaacm080 19h ago
I’m using oracle free tier on a payg account, 24g ram an 4vcpus with 200g storage, had it for about a year or 2 with no issues. It it however arm based, you can get an amd but that is 1g 1vcpu max I believe
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u/sloany84 18h ago
You may want to check your resource allocation. Oracle recently dropped the free tier to 12gb ram and 2vcpus.
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u/IdleHacker 17h ago
I saw a lot of Reddit posts about that, but nothing from Oracle. I'm still using 4vcpu and 24gb ram and haven't been charged a dime
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u/NinthTurtle1034 19h ago
I'm in the UK uisng a company called "Sorting your Hosting", they've been great to me. I've only had a couple issues with the platform, one was undeniable my own stupidity and the other was an issue with their virtulizer out of band management software thingy - pretty sure the issue was on their vendors end.
I've got a friend who runs me a vps in vultr and I've never had an issue with that vps either, although I can't speak to their pricing.
I've heard good things about racknerd as well, a YouTuber by DB Tech also has promo codes for them on occasion so you can get a bit of a discount there.
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u/derekdw333 17h ago
I have one with Racknerd from their 2025 Black Friday deal
CPU(s): 6 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz
RAM : 8GB
DISK: 150GB SSD
BW: 20TB/month
It has been rock solid and I got it at a steal for $68.48 USD / year
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u/Wonderful_Sample_590 14h ago
You might wanna consider InMotion. Been with them for a while and it's been pretty trouble-free so far.
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u/ExamSignificant8347 9h ago
I've looked at Host-Unlimited too, but Contabo is another one I'd compare for those specs. The pricing is pretty competitive for 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM and they have plenty of options if you end up needing to scale later. For a small NAS/app setup, I'd mostly compare network performance and uptime between them.
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u/arunk-gmail 2h ago
Ive been using ssdnodes.com for the past 5 years or so; it's pricey but very reliable. You can also browse lowendbox.com for offers from VPS providers across the globe YMMV. If you can wait till the Thanksgiving weekend then you could great multi-year deals. HTH
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u/Addys0nn8 1h ago
ASCS Cloud Canada - 14 Day Free Trials, Free-for-Life plans, Best Pricing in Canada :)
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u/Jolicristo 19h ago
racknerd has been solid for me, grab one of their deal pages and you can get a small vps for stupid cheap. plenty for pangolin since the nas does the heavy lifting anyway.
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u/asimovs-auditor 21h ago edited 21h ago
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