{"id":1658,"date":"2013-08-21T22:53:08","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T22:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/?p=1658"},"modified":"2013-08-22T10:48:58","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T10:48:58","slug":"review-webkeepers-vps-hosting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/review-webkeepers-vps-hosting\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Webkeepers VPS Hosting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've been using Webkeepers<\/a> since around June 2009, to host 3 or 4 sites on a VPS. While I have a couple other dedicated servers with other hosting providers, I needed a custom setup for these sites and felt that a separate VPS was the way to go.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Cost<\/h3>\n

The price is right. In fact, they are the absolute lowest price I could find on the web. I'm paying about $15\/month for a 512MB \/ 250GB VPS.<\/p>\n

512MB is a bit on the low side, but they have plans with higher memory which are still very affordable. 512 MB was more than enough for my needs at the time.<\/p>\n

Currently though, they're running a crazy promotion. I just picked up another 4GB VPS for $18\/month!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Service<\/h3>\n

They're not RackSpace. Don't think you're getting superior value on a high-reliability server. Occasionally, their entire network goes down, even their own website and control panel. That being said, it does not happen often (once every couple months) and when it does, it's only for a minute or two.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Support<\/h3>\n

Support is there, but it's not available by phone or email. In fact, they even list their phone number as: Phone: +1 (0) 0.<\/p>\n

The support model behind Webkeepers is this: you should have experience managing a server<\/em>. They even mentioned in their documentation that this service is for experienced server administrators. I did have an issue not being able to SSH in to my server at one point. I contacted support and they responded within about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, all websites hosted on the server were down for that 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Summary<\/h3>\n

Webkeepers is an excellent value and provides reliability that's strong enough for a non-business-critical website. If your site can afford occasional, very short periods of downtime, then you have found the right provider. The price is just too good to ignore.<\/p>\n

If your website requires 100% uptime, don't give it another thought.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tips<\/h3>\n

One of the bigger selling points of Webkeepers is their extremely low cost, low memory VPS plans. If you think you can get away with a 512 MB VPS like I did, here are a few tips to really help "stretch" that memory:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Use Supervisor<\/a>. The only issue I've had with my 512MB VPS is Apache consuming too much RAM and freezing. However, with Supervisor running in the background, it's able to detect when Apache has halted and restart it.
    \n\t\t <\/li>\n
  2. Use Pingdom<\/a>. For some reason, Supervisor doesn't always want to be the hero and restart that Apache server for us. Pingdom will come to the rescue in that situation, by sending us an alert (by SMS or email) that our website is not responding. Pingdom does have a free plan that will allow you to monitor a single website.
    \n\t\t <\/li>\n
  3. Download an SSH mobile app. Pingdom is meaningless if you can't log into your server when a site goes down. Having an SSH app available on your smartphone is a lifesaver when you get that alert from Pingdom. I personally use SSH Term Pro<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If you need a low-cost VPS for a starter website, Webkeepers is as cheap as it gets. Know exactly what you’re getting into before signing up though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amp_status":""},"categories":[255],"tags":[256,257],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1658"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1667,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions\/1667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}