Is there a setup fee?

On some plans, yes, and we would rather you read it here than find it at checkout. Four plans carry one: Starter Budget VPS $3.00, Essential Budget VPS $2.00, Starter SSD VPS $2.00 and Starter NVMe VPS $1.00. It is charged once on the first invoice, never again. Every other plan has no setup fee at all. The table above shows the first-month total and the ongoing monthly price side by side.

What do I actually get for $4.95 a month?

Starter Budget VPS: 1 CPU core, 1 GB of DDR3 memory, 15 GB of HDD storage, a 1 Gbps port and one dedicated IPv4 address, on KVM virtualization with full root access. First month is $7.95 including the one-time $3.00 setup fee, then $4.95 a month after that.

Is the storage on the cheapest plan SSD?

No. The Classic VPS range uses HDD storage, which is a large part of why it is the cheapest range we sell. If you need SSD, the SSD VPS range starts at $8.95 and NVMe starts at $9.95. We would rather you buy the right one than be disappointed by the cheapest.

Is a cheap plan restricted in what I can run?

No. Root access, the dedicated IPv4 address and outbound Port 25 are identical on the $4.95 plan and the $49.95 one. What you pay for is CPU, memory, storage type and network port speed — not permissions. There is no control panel forced on you and nothing disabled at our end.

What is a cheap VPS actually good for?

A small website or blog, a personal VPN endpoint, a Telegram or Discord bot, a cron job that has to run somewhere, a staging environment, or learning server administration without committing to a real bill. What it is not good for is anything memory-hungry — a database under load, a control panel, or Windows Server, which needs 2 GB minimum.

Can I upgrade later without rebuilding?

Yes. You can move up through the tiers from Starter to Enterprise from the client area as a project grows, without rebuilding the server or losing your data.

Are the servers oversold?

The plans use KVM virtualization, which allocates memory to your instance rather than sharing a pool the way container-based virtualization does. Cheap does not have to mean contended, and this is the specific place where a lot of budget hosting goes wrong.

Can I pay with cryptocurrency?

Yes. Bitcoin, USDT and Ethereum are accepted alongside PayPal and card, and crypto orders deploy automatically once the payment clears — usually about 60 seconds, with no manual approval step.

What if it is not fast enough?

First VPS orders are covered by a 7-day money-back guarantee, so a cheap plan is a genuinely low-risk way to find out whether the specification is enough for what you had in mind.

Where can I put the server?

Any of 56 countries, spread across Europe, Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East, the Americas and Africa. The location is chosen during checkout. Worth knowing on a page about price: it does not cost the same in every country, because datacenter costs differ, and the figure for the country you pick is shown before you pay.

Cheap VPS Hosting · 56 Countries

Cheap VPS hosting, with the setup fee written down.

Plans start at $4.95 a month with full root access, a dedicated IPv4 address and KVM virtualization. Four of them also carry a one-time setup fee — so instead of hiding it, the table below shows what the first month costs and what every month after it costs.

First-month total shown
Root on every plan
KVM, not oversold
7-day money back

See the Real Cost All 21 Plans

Cheapest plan

$4.95/mo

First month $7.95 including a one-time $3.00 setup fee

1 core, 1 GB RAM, 15 GB HDD
1 dedicated IPv4 address
Full root, no forced control panel
Deployed in about 60 seconds

Plans under $20: 10
Cheapest plan: $4.95
With a setup fee: 10
Countries: 56

What the First Month Actually Costs

Every plan we sell under $20 a month, cheapest first, with the one-time setup fee included where there is one. No plan on this list costs more than the number shown.

VPS plans under $20 per month with first-month and ongoing cost
Plan	Range	Specification	Setup fee	First month	Every month after
Starter Budget VPS	Classic VPS	1 Core · 1 GB DDR3 RAM 15 GB HDD Storage	$3.00 once	$7.95	$4.95
Essential Budget VPS	Classic VPS	1 Core · 2 GB DDR3 RAM 20 GB HDD Storage	$2.00 once	$9.95	$7.95
Starter SSD VPS	SSD VPS	1 Core · 2 GB DDR3 RAM 15 GB Enterprise SSD	$2.00 once	$10.95	$8.95
Starter NVMe VPS	NVMe VPS	1 Core · 2 GB DDR4 RAM 20 GB Enterprise NVMe SSD	$1.00 once	$10.95	$9.95
Business Budget VPS	Classic VPS	2 Cores · 4 GB DDR3 RAM 30 GB HDD Storage	None	$13.95	$13.95
Business SSD VPS	SSD VPS	2 Cores · 4 GB DDR3 RAM 30 GB Enterprise SSD	None	$14.95	$14.95
Business NVMe VPS	NVMe VPS	2 Cores · 4 GB DDR4 RAM 40 GB Enterprise NVMe SSD	None	$15.95	$15.95
Starter Cloud VPS	Cloud VPS	2 Cores · 4 GB DDR4 RAM 35 GB Enterprise SSD Storage	None	$16.95	$16.95
Professional Budget VPS	Classic VPS	3 Cores · 6 GB DDR3 RAM 40 GB HDD Storage	None	$19.95	$19.95
Professional SSD VPS	SSD VPS	3 Cores · 6 GB DDR3 RAM 40 GB Enterprise SSD	None	$19.95	$19.95

Setup fees are charged once, on the first invoice only. Prices are in USD and billed monthly. Every figure here is generated directly from the same data that drives the pricing page, so the two cannot disagree.

What “Cheap” Does and Does Not Mean Here

The cheapest VPS at VPS For Life is Starter Budget VPS: 1 CPU core, 1 GB of memory, 15 GB of HDD storage and one dedicated IPv4 address for $4.95 a month, with a one-time $3.00 setup fee. It runs on KVM virtualization with full root access, and the permissions on it are identical to those on the most expensive plan we sell. Price differences across the range come from CPU, memory, storage type and port speed — never from what you are allowed to do.

What makes it cheap: HDD rather than NVMe storage, a 1 Gbps port rather than 10 Gbps, and modest CPU and memory.
What is not reduced: root access, the dedicated IPv4 address, open Port 25, choice of 56 countries, and the 7-day money-back guarantee.
Virtualization: KVM — memory is allocated to your instance, not shared from a pool.
Operating systems: Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux. Windows Server needs 2 GB or more, so not on the entry plan.
Billing: monthly, in USD, by Bitcoin, USDT, Ethereum, PayPal or card.

Buy the Cheapest Plan When…

And the cases where spending a few dollars more will save you a refund request.

A small site, a bot or a cron job

Workloads that sit idle most of the time and need somewhere reliable to live. 1 GB is genuinely enough.

A personal VPN endpoint

WireGuard barely touches the CPU. What matters is the dedicated IPv4 and the country, both of which you get on the entry plan.

You are learning

Real root on a real machine, for less than a coffee a month, with a 7-day guarantee if it turns out not to be for you.

You need a second address in another country

A cheap box in a different location is often the whole requirement. Location costs the same on every plan.

You need disk speed

Classic VPS is HDD. A database or a busy site will feel it — the SSD range from $8.95 or NVMe from $9.95 is the honest answer.

You want Windows Server

Windows needs 2 GB of memory or more, so the $4.95 plan cannot run it. See Windows VPS.

You are sending email at volume

Port 25 is open on every plan, but a mail queue wants memory and faster storage. Start at Email Marketing VPS.

You want someone to manage it

Every plan is unmanaged, including this one. We run the hardware and the network; the operating system is yours.

Cheap VPS Questions

$4.95 a month, and you already know the setup fee.

Full root access, a dedicated IPv4 address, KVM virtualization and your choice of 56 countries — deployed in about 60 seconds, with a 7-day money-back guarantee on first orders.

See All 21 Plans Ask a Question First