PiVPS Review: Low-Cost VPS Hosting at PiVPS.com

Besides the tacky 8-bit logo; self-proclaimed “best VPS hosting provider company in USA” at PiVPS.com had a few significant flaws under closer inspection.

Read my PiVPS review of 2024 to know what you are singing up for..!

PiVPS Review

First consider these PiVPS cons (summed up review);

  • Unmanaged VPS hosting, you need to manage the server by yourself.
  • Support is slow (no 24h live support) & no way to contact them by phone.
  • Better quality, cheaper self-managed VPS servers are available.

PiVPS Alternatives;

  • Cloudways Platform — Easy deployment of fully managed & cheap servers.
  • Vultr — Better & cheaper self-managed servers in 15 locations.

PiVPS Comparison;

Let’s compare what you can get for a measly $5/month with both PiVPS and Vultr Linux VPS (note; Vultr also has a $2.5/m plan).

  • PiVPS $5 VPS — 1 Core, 1GB RAM, 15GB SSD, 1TB -1Gbps Bandwidth
  • Vultr $5 VPS — 1 Core, 1GB RAM, 25GB SSD, 1TB -10Gbps Bandwidth

PiVPS Review;

Seems that the most attractive feature with them, is the low-cost and not that much else. And it’s likely the reason some may bet on a less known provider. But as I have demonstrated, the price point is not as competitive as it may seem.

Personally I have a problem trusting on a company that has no phone number you can call in case of emergency, and hides behind support tickets.

Apparently company operations have launched under their domain name PiVPS.com in 2016. The domain is registered in Delaware, US.. but the actual website is hosted in Germany. Also terms and conditions state that they are governed by Canadian law. So it’s hard to guess where the company is actually headquartered.

Another thing is that despite a 99.99% uptime guarantee stated on the front page, there is actually no guarantee in their terms. This claim is misleading.

You will not be compensated for downtime in any way.

Furthermore their VPS services seem very trimmed down, for example there is no option for automatic server backups. Expect only the basics from PiVPS.

So that’s that — or read more on their website.

And here’s what the backend looks like;

PiVPS Backend

Any questions about cheap VPS hosting?
Or about this PiVPS review? Please, let me know!

And btw; for your information some of these reviews & posts contain affiliate links. This means that without additional cost to you some of the links may support the operations of the blog and it’s author. My most sincere thanks! Tim.

23 thoughts on “PiVPS Review: Low-Cost VPS Hosting at PiVPS.com”

  1. They are so bad. They terminated my account without consent AFTER a few days of paying for a new month. I asked for a refund and they told me no, absolutely disgusting customer service too.

    Reply
  2. Is too very bad VPS service.. I apply for a North American VPS IP with Locatin, But they gave me a German VPS location. DNS server USA……. Is too bad

    Reply
  3. Any ideas for acceptable / good enough alternative VPS for forex with servers in London and NY ?

    Im using Beeks VPS and performance is very lame for the price I pay. Service is also not caring with your problems, it seems you are talking with a wall… Have to meove from Beeks but need lower price as I need several different VPSs to host my MT4 infrasctucture. Thanks

    Reply
    • If you are looking for cheap “licensed” windows servers, I’m afraid you’ll probably have to deal with the dodgy providers. Better use a quality, but low-cost VPS with your own custom ISO if you want the cheapest possible Windows Server.

      Vultr is amongst the cheapest & best, IMHO.

      Vultr Upload ISO

      $5.00/mo is the lowest you can go.

      Reply
  4. I have purchased many vps, from many different providers. And pivps is by far the worst company I’ve ever purchased from. The first 2 months went fine. However on the third month. I was 1 day late on paying, they gave me a network suspension. Which is fine. However when I made a payment they didn’t remove that suspension, and my vps has now been offline for 3 days because of that suspension. Even though it’s paid for? I put in tickets. Never got an answer, now that payment is in dispute with paypal. And I will be switching back the vultr. Vultr is good, cheap, reliable and they have great customer service.

    Reply
    • Thanks Barbara for sharing your experience.

      This is exactly the kind of scenario I would be most afraid of with them. Not being able to contact them immediately and get immediate action to problems and issues, is a strong indicator of poor, error-prone service.

      Reply
  5. Tim thanks for your answer. I seeking VPS for less than 20 USD per month for 1GB to 2GB RAM with servers in NY and London (it can be different companies for London and for NY)

    I will definitely explore Vultr. But can you detail a bit more of what you mean with, “low-cost VPS with your own custom ISO” is this the vultr solution or another one ?

    Reply
    • Because of expensive Windows Server licensing you are mostly just pushing down the price of the infrastructure, not the software.

      And therefore it’s harder to find a reliable VPS.

      Vultr provides ready licensed deployment of “Microsoft Windows Server 2012” instances, this is $16/month for the license on top of regular server pricing.

      So if you want to go lower than that, your best solution is likely to use your own copy of Windows Server. Create a custom ISO file and deploy a VPS with it.

      Tim

      Reply
  6. Im with PIVPS. When my screen go black with my trade charts – it says Disconnected Server after 15min. My friends use the same service and their Pc screen will be black but still say Connected. I asked support whats happening. They say use RDP connection cause this is VNC console. RDP connection is more stable than VNC. I dont understand what to do now.

    Reply
    • RDP is short for “Remote Desktop Protocol”. Similar to VNC, it’s a protocol for controlling a remote VPS graphically.

      And while, VNC is an open protocol with several connection clients (RealVNC, UltraVNC, TurboVNC, TightVNC, etc.) — RDP is owned by Microsoft.

      You would need to obtain the “Microsoft Remote Desktop” software for Windows to connect to your VPS via RDP.

      Reply
  7. Very bad service; had 2 VPS with them for frox trading; could not connect for a couple of hours last sunday at market opening, could not restart my VPS, could not even access client area.
    Their customer service came back to me the next day telling me everything was ok by now. Asked them to cancel and refund the coming month that I had paid and which didn’t even start, they closed the ticket without even any reply.
    If you are searching for reliability, chose another service.

    Reply
  8. Worst customer service ever. They charged my paypal twice in the same month and just sent me another invoice for payment and cut off my vps. I put a dispute. Will be moving to another service

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  9. They are scammers I paid for vps they gave me an expired one I tried to contact support but they don’t reply on my issue yet when I made an under payment they managed to reply very fast.
    They are scammers.

    Reply
  10. This is the worst service I’ve ever had from any company. I’m not exaggerating.

    I needed two servers to run blockchain nodes for a blockchain-based video game. From the very first day, the instance was down more often than up and very difficult to communicate with. When I contacted help, at first they pretended it wasn’t happening and then finally told me that the CPU was always hitting 100%. I upgraded the node two sizes and bought my second node at the higher size. The first node was still having exactly the same performance issues.

    Just to check, I used a different service with the weakest available instance they had and it’s working fine on there with MAX 3% CPU. My first node with PI NEVER WORKED, ever, losing me days of revenue for my project and I must’ve communicated back and forth with their “help” over 40 times. At no time did anyone admit anything was wrong or do a single thing to provide meaningful help.

    They refused to refund me even though I didn’t get a single day of uptime with their service.

    Reply
  11. MAJOR WARNING: We have had a top-spec server with PIVPS / Pi Net for over 2 years. After nearly 3 weeks without their tech support even replying to an urgent request to restart a server or reply at all we finally got a reply today. It seems they have been held to ransom following a virus attack. I think anyone with a site or VPS there which is ‘off air’ can safely assume that it is gone for ever. It is hard to comprehend this level of incompetence from a provider. The service we had with them was not at the budget end either, we could have gone to almost any of the majors for less. More fool us.

    Reply

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