Every website requires a web host. There are lots of web hosting options available, the most common are shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting. However, VPS hosting is one of the more popular choices. This is because VPS hosting offers a dedicated server’s private resource allocation with the cost-saving benefits of shared hosting.
When you choose VPS hosting, you have the option of selecting a managed or unmanaged plan. With a managed hosting plan, the parent host takes care of all server maintenance. By contrast, unmanaged hosting requires that you take responsibility for your site’s security, performance, maintenance, and any updates to the server, operating system, or applications.
If you choose to go with managed VPS hosting, then the quality of your website’s performance is entirely in the hands of your host provider. Therefore, you want to make sure you choose a quality web hosting company.
GreenGeeks VPS hosting is fully managed, but is it any good? Our review seeks to discover just that. Read on to find out whether GreenGeeks is the right managed VPS hosting option for you.
Who is GreenGeeks?
GreenGeeks began in 2008 by Trey Gardner with the goal of providing eco-friendly hosting.
For every amperage of energy that GreenGeeks uses from the grid, they replace three times that number in the form of renewable energy through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. Additionally, they have designed every aspect of their hosting platform to be as energy-efficient as possible.
What are the Features of GreenGeeks’ Managed VPS Hosting Plans?
One way to determine whether a hosting company is a right choice for you is to look at the features they offer in their plans. Ideally, you want enough features to justify the cost of the plan. The features that GreenGeeks offers with its managed VPS hosting plans are as follows:
- Free SSL
- Free domain
- Free Softaculous license for web app scripts
- Free website migration
- Free application compatibility
- 24/7 proactive monitoring
- Intuitive cPanel GUI portal
- Dedicated IP address
- Linux-based operating system
- 10 TB of bandwidth
What sets GreenGeeks apart from other providers is that they guarantee that these plan features can be supplied to your site in less than a minute. Additionally, GreenGeeks offers plans of between 2 and 8 GB of RAM and SSD storage space that ranges from 50 to 160 GB. Also, their CPU cores start at 4vCPU and can be upgraded to 6vCPU.
How Well Does GreenGeeks Managed VPS Perform?
A key factor in the speed of your website is its proximity to a data center. GreenGeeks has five data centers in the U.S., Amsterdam, and Canada. This means that users in these areas can expect to experience faster load times. However, this also means that people in Asia, Africa, South America, and Oceania will have slightly slower speeds. Fortunately, GreenGeeks has a solution for these users. They employ a CDN that enables fast loading speeds for users who aren’t near GreenGeeks’ servers.
GreenGeeks boasts a web page load time of 454 ms. This is nearly twice as good as the industry standard of 890 ms. In addition to the CDN they employ and users’ ability to be close to their servers, GreenGeeks attributes this speed to their use of SSD arrays, MariaDB, LiteSpeed, and their proprietary caching technology.
Furthermore, GreenGeeks guarantees an uptime of 99.99%. According to pingdom.com, GreenGeeks not only maintains an uptime of 99.99% but for 11 months, starting in September 2018, Pingdom recorded an uptime of 100% for GreenGeeks.
A big part of managed VPS is customer service. GreenGeeks offers 24/7/365 customer service. Additionally, reviews of their customer support have stated that the staff is “well trained” and “polite.” The reviews also mention that the service is “responsive, quick, and efficient.”
This leads us to conclude that GreenGeeks provides reliable performance for a user’s website.
How Much Does GreenGeeks’ Managed VPS Cost?
GreenGeeks provides managed VPS hosting packages at the following prices:
- $39.95/month— 2 GB RAM, 10 TB bandwidth, 50 GB storage and 4 CPU cores
- $59.95/month— 4 GB RAM, 10 TB bandwidth, 75 GB storage and 4 CPU cores
- $109.95/month— 8 GB RAM, 10 TB bandwidth, 150 GB storage and 6 CPU cores
Should You Use GreenGeeks’ Managed VPS Hosting?
GreenGeeks has an eco-friendly mission, an abundance of features, fast page loading speeds, 100% uptime, and exceptional customer service. Therefore, we cannot find any reason for users not to choose GreenGeeks for their managed VPS hosting needs.