Is There Such a Thing as Free Linux VPS Hosting?
Linux Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting is an incredibly powerful and flexible option for growing businesses and ecommerce projects. Yet, these plans often come at higher prices compared to shared hosting. You may find some providers willing to offer them for free, but is this a good idea?
Offering a top-tier web hosting service inevitably costs money – a good amount of it. Aside from hardware and software costs, the expertise to implement everything into a working system also comes into play. Because of this, a Free plan might not be so free after all.
What is Linux VPS Hosting?
Linux VPS hosting is a virtual server plan that runs the Linux Operating System (OS). This is a robust and flexible form of web hosting based on virtualization technology. This technology helps providers create isolated accounts that mimic individual servers.
VPS users get features similar to those found on dedicated servers. This similarity brings about significant benefits. While they may not match up to dedicated servers, these advantages make Linux VPS far outstrip shared hosting in many ways.
Benefits of a Linux VPS
When it comes to web servers, Linux is a much more popular choice of OS than Windows. While there are many different distributions, Linux instances generally run at lower cost, perform more efficiently, and ensure better security.
To better understand the advantages of Linux VPS, let’s examine some of them in greater depth. These hosting plans typically have:
Faster and More Reliable Performance
VPS plans all get dedicated resources such as CPU, memory, storage space, and bandwidth. The committed allocation means no wait time for other accounts on the same server – the system resources are all yours.
As soon as your site gets a request, it will immediately begin to serve the pages required. This efficiency guarantees optimized speeds, which are crucial for any website today. Potential visitors often abandon pages that take longer than 3-5 seconds to load. Your SEO success also starts with a fast website that is always available.
Better Security
The account isolation of the VPS environment means you aren’t affected by anything happening to others on the same physical hardware. It also leads to much better data integrity as compared to other options.
Many also consider Linux as a more secure OS compared to Windows. This advantage is mainly due to Linux Security Modules – a framework that allows you to implement different security improvements right in the kernel.
Increased Cost Efficiency
VPS itself is by nature highly cost-effective since you only need to pay for the resources that you need. As your online project starts to consume too much CPU or RAM – simply scale up your plan and only pay the difference.
Using Linux as your OS is also cheaper than Windows Server since many Linux distributions are free to use. On the other hand, if you opt for Windows-based VPS hosting, you will have to pay licensing fees on top of what you already pay for web hosting.
Much Better Flexibility
VPS plans generally come as a blank slate. How you configure the plan is entirely up to you. By doing so, you can trim any unnecessary overhead from your hosting and build it to run what you need.
If you’ve opted for Linux VPS, you are also free to swap your OS for any of the Linux distributions that your host supports. This versatility is an added advantage, especially if you are running a development environment.
Is There Free Linux VPS Hosting?
Yes, free Linux VPS hosting does exist.
However, not many service providers offer this option. As we mentioned earlier, it takes a lot of money to combine the necessary elements to provide web hosting. This means it is rarely viable for a web hosting company to give these plans away for nothing.
Because of this, free Linux VPS hosting comes with several caveats.
How this model works will very much depend on how the hosting provider wants to recoup their investment cost.
Possible Problems with Free VPS Hosting
Limited Resources
The more powerful and plentiful a server is – the more it costs to purchase, deploy, and build. Splitting the cost between accounts is a good way to recoup those costs and maybe even make an overhead. We can see the result in regular shared web hosting plans where service providers pack many users onto a single server.
For free Linux VPS plans, users are likely to be allocated a very limited amount of system resources. This makes your website more likely to suffer from poor or erratic performance.
Slow Performance
Limited resources aren’t the only thing that impacts website operations. You have the quality of the hardware, other infrastructure, and even optimization techniques that can easily affect your site.
Free Linux VPS hosting providers often neglect these areas, which can easily make your website suffer from slow performance.
Minimal Security
Linux VPS is inherently safe. However, to improve security, other steps are also necessary. These steps can include server and OS hardening, additional security applications, and even hardware firewalls.
These areas might get skipped in the spirit of cost-cutting.
Additionally, a common undertaking of free Linux VPS hosting providers is the inclination to force ad display on user websites. This lack of control can increase security risks to both you and your website visitors.
No Support
Most free Linux VPS plans come “as is.” Very often, the host will include no support or assurances in any form. In a technical sense, this may be fine, but what happens if an issue arises with the hosting provider?
For example, if you’ve been running a website on the free plan and the entire server crashes – how will your website be recovered? Do backups of anything even exist? In extreme cases, you might even lose access to your account and have to start from scratch.
Often Just a Trial
Even the skimpiest of free Linux VPN accounts will result in significant overhead to hosting providers. Because of that, most will give limited free access as a trial, following which you will need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Here, we often note an additional problem – these paid plans will end up costing more than you might expect elsewhere. After all, the cost of the free trial has to be recovered somehow.
ScalaHosting Linux VPS Solutions
Having gone through the details, we can see that free Linux VPS hosting might not be the best solution for serious business projects.
When choosing your premium Linux VPS, make sure to work with a reputable web hosting service provider.
ScalaHosting has long held a vision of making robust and flexible VPS plans more widely accessible. This vision has been made possible through innovative in-house technologies, such as the SPanel web hosting control panel.
All VPS plans at ScalaHosting come with a wide choice of Linux OS distributions. Managed Cloud VPS plans offer CentOS 8, while Self-Managed VPS users can choose between CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, and OpenSUSE.
Opting for SPanel is the best choice with Scala since our solution eliminates the rising control panel licensing fees. SPanel is also highly compatible with cPanel, so migrating an existing account is not an issue for our experienced technicians.
SPanel comes with highly effective real-time cybersecurity protection, courtesy of SShield. It has been noted to defend against over 99% of web attacks effectively. SShield is a complementary SPanel module and comes at no added cost.
As if that’s not enough, our expert technical staff can help you deploy and maintain your Linux VPS plan.
Conclusion
Commercial Linux hosting VPS plans will almost always trump free options from a technical standpoint. The risks posed by using free Linux VPS hosting often outweigh the potential cost savings by far.
Performance and Reliability should be watchwords when it comes to VPS hosting. Unfortunately, those never come for free…
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there any free VPS?
Yes, free VPS solutions do exist. However, it is inadvisable to use these for a variety of hidden risks. Free VPS solutions are often much less reliable and effective than their premium counterparts. Some may also hide additional security loopholes.
Why is VPS so expensive?
Dedicated resources, fewer accounts per server, and application licensing are some of the crucial factors leading to higher VPS hosting prices. To manage your budget effectively, opt to work with service providers that offer innovative technologies at cost-effective rates.
What is free VPS?
Free VPS refers to VPS hosting that comes at no monetary cost to users. In most cases, accounts such as this come with several crippling limitations. It may also be possible that the zero cost is associated with a trial period.
What is Linux VPS hosting used for?
Linux VPS hosting is suitable for many needs. These include running websites that serve high visitor volumes, mission-critical projects, ecommerce shops, or otherwise resource-heavy websites.
