South African virtual private server hosting price comparison

South African website or app owners have several virtual private server (VPS) hosting providers from which to choose, with prices starting at R49 per month.

Virtual private servers offer users dedicated server space on shared hardware with reserved central processing unit (CPU), memory, storage, and bandwidth resources.

These plans are ideal for those looking to launch a website or app for which shared hosting and dedicated server services aren’t suitable.

MyBroadband compared the pricing of VPS offerings from the following prominent South African hosting providers:

• Absolute Hosting
• Afrihost
• Axxess
• Cybersmart
• Domains.co.za
• 1-Grid

We split the packages available from these providers into three categories based on their CPU, RAM, and storage specs.

Our analysis found that Absolute Hosting offered the most affordable VPS packages across all three categories. However, its packages come with the lowest traffic allocations of the providers compared (albeit soft-capped).

The provider’s cheapest option is its Budget VPS Silver package, which features one vCPU, 1GB of RAM, 20GB of SSD storage, and 200GB of soft-capped traffic for R49 a month.

Absolute Hosting’s AMD Epyc VPS offerings weren’t always directly comparable. However, we customised the vCPU, RAM, and storage allocations to correct for this.

Domains.co.za also offers AMD Epyc VPS packages, with its cheapest featuring one vCPU, 1GB of RAM, and 25GB of storage for R159 per month.

The package features a 500GB bandwidth cap and is the third-most affordable in the entry-level category.

Domains.co.za’s VPS offerings were most expensive for the mid-range and higher-end categories at R619 and R929, respectively.

Only two of the hosting providers compared offer unlimited traffic with their VPS packages — Axxess and Cybersmart.

Cybersmart sells two packages that can be considered entry-level, namely, its Linux 1 and Linux 2 plans for R179 and R259, respectively.

The cheaper option features one vCPU, 1GB of RAM, and 20GB of storage, while the Linux 2 package provides two vCPUs, 2GB of RAM, and 50GB of storage.

Axxess’ Standard and Standard Plus plans feature similar specs to Cybersmart’s offerings, with slightly higher storage allocations.

The Standard package costs R199 monthly, and Standard Plus customers will pay R349 monthly.

1-Grid’s VPS offerings in the mid-range and higher-end categories were second-cheapest. Its Medium package features two vCPUs, 4GB of RAM, 100GB of storage, and 3TB of bandwidth for R389 per month.

The provider’s Large VPS plan ups the number of vCPUs to six, the RAM allocation to 6GB, the storage to 150GB, and the bandwidth allocation to 4TB. It costs R660 per month.

Afrihost’s VPS offerings are likely more suited to those who need a mid-range or higher-tier plan, with its entry-level Bronze package being the most expensive in its category at R360 per month.

However, the Silver, Gold, and Platinum VPS packages are competitively priced and offer the highest storage allocations of the lot.

Below is a price comparison of VPS offerings from several South African providers.