
Huge Update: FEB 27th – stats now include latest US servers and the killer new Xeon range currently being sold. Some shock benchmark results – don’t buy a VPS before reading. Seriously.
A few months back I wrote an article on my search for a VPS for some blackhat SEO link building activity I intended to test out . These include tools such as Ultimate Demon and GSA Search Engine Ranker.
At the time I decided to try SoildSEOVPS. I was suitably impressed with their service – everything from the rapid setup times to snappy feel of the VPS was impressive, especially for the money, which worked out at around £11 for the 1GB ram 1 CPU core service.
It was the perfect entry level setup for someone who was new to owning a VPS and didn’t want big overheads.
After a contented few months use with no downtime or software licence issues, I needed more power, so decided to regrade my old VPS with one of their new “Highline” packages which have just launched.
Extremely Fast Support and Setup
As per usual, once I submitted a ticket to support, I had a response within 10 minutes and once I decided to upgrade to the newer server setup, I was up and running within the hour. A quick look at the tickets show it took 48 minutes to deliver the new Highline setup.
It is worth noting this all happened on new years day!
New Highline VPS Specs
Here are the new specs that SolidSeoVPS offer:
Plus some new real bad boy plans…
Not quite ready for these yet but nice to know they exist!
Visit SolidSeoVPS for latest prices
Standing Up To Scrutiny
My new package has doubled up its resources to feature:
- 2 x CPU cores @ 3.5GHZ
- 2GB of Ram
- 150GB storage
- 1GBPS Bandwidth
- £21.10 ($34.95) a month
These new Highline VPS now are incredibly high speced. They feature the Xeon E51650 chips and EEC Ram which is a real game changer compared to their older machines.
Fully Updated Benchmarks
Here are the initial Novabench tests I ran on each machine. This gives us a ballpark benchmark as to performance.
First the German server:
Then the US server:
The EU server although the same spec appears to have the edge on the US one. Interestingly, both servers now beat the PowerUp equivalent (scored 446) product by a substantial amount.
CPU Benchmark
Here is the PassMark rating on the CPU for the EU version:
Here is the PassMark rating on the CPU for the US version:
Again, the EU server seems to have a distinct edge. Both are faster than the PowerUp Hyper-V Plus which scored 1001.2.
The EU version boasts an extra 20% CPU grunt. This is no mean feat over PowerUp!
Hardrive Benchmark
Here are the Hard Disk Read/Write Scores from the industry standard Crystal Disk Mark:
EU
US
Not much in this time although for the smaller size write file (which GSA Search Engine Ranker does a lot of) the EU one is better. Both beat the PowerUp one now. Although PowerUp always had the slower read/write speeds.
What The F*$K Does That All Mean?!
Don’t worry, these numbers are just a rough guide and really with a VPS it is about how snappy the server feels when working on it. By having higher benchmark scores, you can see how well all your resource hungry link building & software will perform.
For what is considered a “budget” VPS this scores are now incredible. SolidSeoVPS have really tipped the VPS stakes in their favor with this new range.
Loading, installing and working with programs is noticeably faster.
Bandwidth and Connectivity
Here is the OOKLA Speedtest I ran upon setup with a local server for the EU VPS:
Like the tests I ran last time, the connectivity is still top notch, although real world, this doesn’t really mean much as the server sits in a data centre so its going to have bundles of bandwidth available, however its good to see the potential is there if the connection should allow it.
A more useful test will be to look at available bandwidth and ping between the country that you plan to access the VPS in. Here are the results when using a data centre in London, which is close to my location of work. You can see the ping is a very reasonable 31ms during the day, which is nice and low and allows snappy interaction with the VPS.
Here is the OOKLA Speedtest I ran upon setup with a local server for the US VPS:
And then again from the UK:
As you can see there is plenty of bandwidth available and the VPS, no matter where in the world will be able to take advantage of this.
With a VPS designed for SEO link building software, we rarely need more than a 100Mbps connection, so these numbers are icing on the cake really.
Putting The VPS Under Load
I have both VPS running 200 threads on GSA Search Engine Ranker + GSA Capture Breaker with 20 private proxies and it uses around 80%/99% of the CPU when going full blast. The machine has been stable for over one week.
I have also run GSA on a 100 threads and Scrapebox scraping site lists simultaneously around 60 links a second and this uses about 70% CPU.
The RAM in both cases still has loads left, in many cases around 1GB spare depending what else is running.
Conclusion
This new range from the Solid crew really blast the competition out of the water. I am sorry PowerUp, but the crown has been taken…For now at least.
For $34 you are getting a lot of bang for your buck. Another no-brainer.
Click here to view the latest range of services from SolidSEOVPS
Nick,
Great article, I had just purchased the Geek level when I ran across your blog. A bit of peace of mind and spending some time this week trying to pick a VPS. It looks like we are both on the same track SEO wise. I am just now getting involved in the real SEO… GSA Search Engine Ranker, GScraper etc. I needed to really dominate SEO for my wife’s local business and make the commitment to truly rank for the affiliate programs I want.
Thanks again,
Loved the Spain article on your beginnings.
Hi Ron, Thanks for stopping by. Glad you got it – I love these guys. I upgraded from their Dual core to a Quad a few weeks back. Its now just like having 2 high power desktops. I run GSA plus scrapebox and other software at the same time and it barely touches the sides…
Good luck with your wife’s website – careful not to use GSA SER directly on her site though! 🙂
See you around. Nick
Hey Nick, just a small criticism that might help you with getting your list going which, until you get this site flying solo, will be your lifeblood and help you out in all kinds of ways.
If you’re using Aweber they have a squeeze page creator that you can slap right over your current subscription box. The one you have actually looks broken and flashing that up will get you many more subs to your list. If you’re not using Aweber there are a billion videos on YouTube on how to make your own with free software. Otherwise great site. I just started building one that is similar. If you want any more honest and objective criticisms with some possible solutions, I’d be glad to help.
Just a heads up, hope it helps.
Brian