SolidSeoVPS Review: A Decent VPS for SEO

Here is my post for the SolidSEOvps review. Plus checkout some good SEO VPS tips & tools down the bottom.

Feb 27th Update: SolidSEOVPS have just upgraded their packages and servers to XEON  CPU’s. Along with this they are offering US servers alongside their existing German ones. These now include the cost of Windows server 2008 R2.

See my full review of both the US and EU versions here

The guys at SolidSEOVPS kindly set me up a test account of their new service after reading my original review, which I used for 30 days. I found the performance noticeably snappier than my current VPS when navigating around and the same programs ran well. This was on the German server. Based on this experience my recommendation still stands and I would recommend using them if you are looking for an SEO VPS setup to get started with.

I’ve just spent the last few days looking into getting a VPS. I have been running Scrapebox a lot and plan on buying some other software that would need to run 24/7.

My PC is powerful enough to run a few of these programs in the background, but I don’t like leaving it on all the time. I also find I get distracted very easily while trying to work, so the less going on on my desktop the better.

Having a VPS with loads of bandwidth working 24/7 was the way forward, especially as I am going to start using automated software. Plus VPS’s are pretty cheap now.

After some forum searching and trying to dig through all the usual affiliate nonsense, the main choices I was presented with were:

• PowerUp Hosting
• Solid SEO VPS
• Berman Hosting

These three actively say they are happy to have SEO software running providing proxies are used. I read a few cases where standard providers suspended VPS accounts when spam notices arrived.

There were a lot of others that I looked at and I even put a feeler out on Webhostingtalk but didn’t really get much help. Most of the offers were for Linux boxes which are no good for what I needed and the Windows ones were just too expensive.

From My Shortlist

PowerUp Hosting have a very good reputation and come across as a quality operation, although there was some noise about changing of server locations effecting quality of service. I am not sure of any truth in this and I know people who use them and advocate their services 100%.

However PowerUp are the most expensive SEO VPS I looked at. It is also hosted in the US. You are looking at £19 – £35 for either of the suitable entry level set-ups.

Take a look at their plans

As I am UK based it made sense to try and find a suitable European service to reduce ping and lag.

Berman Hosting are very cheap, but they just had too many mixed reviews about service stability. It was either faultless or catastrophic. After worked in telecoms for so long this kind of user feedback rings alarm bells. Plus there is talk of certain Scrapebox software licenses being stolen. This is definately no good.

Bermanhosting are cloning people’s machines and emulating licenses essentially distributing cracked copies, see videos like this http://www.youtube.com/xxxxx

So the license that was running on that machine was stolen.

To wipe the cracked license you can download and run this tool, then reboot the VPS and then submit the transfer for your license and this will eliminate the problem.

I am not sure how much truth is in this but I’ve seen it mentioned a few times now. Plus if Scrapebox don’t want their licenses being transferred there, then it could be problematic. You’ll have to research this yourself if you decided to pursue the Berman Hosting route.

SolidSEOvps Was My Choice

In the end I decided with Solid SEO VPS. They are a no frills operation using data centres in Germany. They are priced the same as Berman but give a 1GB connection as standard instead.

Check out the SolidSEOvps packages here

Although I am going to upgrade or get another one running, I went for the basic version initially top test the service out. The specs are plenty for the level I am currently operating at.

• 1 x 3.4GHZ i7 CPU
• 1GB RAM
• 75GB HD
• Unlimited bandwidth
• 1GB Connection
• Price: £11 a month 🙂

I ordered the service at 8:29PM and I was live and logged in by 9:23PM. That is pretty good service!

I did some quick tests after it was up and running. Please note, these tests are with an actual purchased hosting account and NOT a demo account.

Firstly the hardware:

Then connection. This is testing a data centre in Ealing, London and Frankfurt, where the server is hosted.

I did get faster results from within Germany, but felt it pointless to post due to real term use:

As you can see, the connection between the server and myself is actually excellent. Obviously so many more factors are in play- most of the work the VPS does will be elsewhere around the world, making all these stats meaningless.

But its good to know if a good connection exists, SolidSEOvps can take advantage of it.

The VPS is actually very impressive for the price. The RAM may be a little sluggish but the CPU and HD are pretty zippy. If you look its actually using the hex core i7 Extreme CPU. This was the top of the range desktop CPU costing £1000 a year or two ago!

So far it has only run Scrapebox but it does that fine with over 62% of its resources still free. Seeing as the OS takes most of that it’s not bad at all.

Update: Ultimate Demon is now installed. Installation was smooth with no licensing issues. So far have just been updating sites and it works fine. More to follow on threads usage and performance later.

The system performance will probably not match PowerUp from what I can tell, but it’s almost half the price. It’s certainly not half as powerful. Perhaps a 10-20% drop at most looking at other NovaBench scores, plus you are getting the 1GB connection which works well. There is very low ping, about 20ms from London. This means the actions are all snappy when working on the directly VPS.

Stability and Support

So far no crashes and has been up 24/7. You also have the control to reboot the machine, which some providers do not offer the user and has to be done via ticket instead.

As for the support, it’s fast. I opened a ticket to query RAM usage and got a response within 10 minutes. Ticket closed within the hour. Nice.

So their service gets a big initial thumbs up from me. I’ll post some updates when I get some more software like Ultimate Demon running on it.

Useful Tips for ANY VPS

Finally a couple of things worth installing on your VPS if you decide to get one:

Novabench – Test your system and make sure it meets the specs you requested

Memory Cleaner – Very handy free tool to clear the RAM cache. Sits quietly in the background. Resources, especially RAM are limited in a VPS so maximise it to keep things optimal.

Microsoft Security Essentials – Lightweight anti-virus to keep out the nasties. Highly recommended.

Proxies – Get yourself some shared or private proxies so you don’t get your IP or server banned! I use buyproxies.org. They are not the fastest, but they do work well and tend not to get banned by Google.

Well, that’s about it. I hope this SolidSEOvps review is helpful to you and helps to make a decision.

While I am now an affiliate for this service and Powerup, the review is 100% honest. If the service was shit then I would tell you, cancel this one and move to another.

Check out the SolidSEOvps packages here