Hostwinds rarely appears in "best VPS" lists. But among users who value customer support, it has a loyal following. I've used their Seattle node for over a year. Here's my review.
What Hostwinds Does Well
Customer support is genuinely good. Live chat available 24/7. I've contacted them about 5 times. Average response under 2 minutes. Real people who know what they're doing.
Nightly backups included. Most VPS providers charge extra for backups. Hostwinds includes them for free. They keep 7 daily backups and 4 weekly backups. This saved me once when I accidentally deleted a config file.
DDoS protection included. Basic protection (up to 10 Gbps) comes standard. Not as good as OVH but better than nothing.
Server monitoring. They monitor your server every minute. If it goes down, they check and can restart it. Included free.
Choice of Linux distros. Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky. All major ones available.
Where Hostwinds Falls Short
Price isn't competitive at the low end. Their cheapest plan starts at $4.99 for 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB SSD, 1 TB transfer. Compare with Hetzner CPX11 at €4.51 ($4.90) for 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB NVMe, 20 TB traffic. Hostwinds gives you half the specs.
Disk speed is average. SATA SSD, not NVMe. Sequential reads around 250 MB/s. Hetzner hits 1 GB/s+.
Limited data centers. Only Seattle, Dallas, and Amsterdam. No Asia or Australia locations.
Control panel is basic. Works but feels dated. No one-click app installs like DigitalOcean.
Performance Benchmarks
I tested the $4.99 plan (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB SSD) in Seattle running Ubuntu 24.04.
UnixBench single-core: around 850. Good enough for small sites but not for CPU-heavy tasks. Disk I/O ~250 MB/s sequential read. Uptime over 12 months: 99.95% – one brief maintenance downtime.
The included backups and monitoring are genuinely useful. I've used VPS from 10+ providers and very few include these for free.
Plans and Pricing (2026)
| Plan | vCPU | RAM | Storage | Traffic | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | 1 | 1 GB | 30 GB SSD | 1 TB | $4.99 | Small blog, learning |
| Standard | 2 | 2 GB | 50 GB SSD | 2 TB | $8.99 | WordPress, small business |
| Advanced | 4 | 4 GB | 100 GB SSD | 4 TB | $14.99 | Medium traffic sites |
All plans include free nightly backups, DDoS protection, and server monitoring.
Who Should Use Hostwinds?
People who value support. If you're not a Linux expert and want someone to help when things break, Hostwinds is worth the premium.
Small business sites. The included backups and monitoring give peace of mind. Worth paying a bit extra for.
Users who want simplicity. They have one-click installs for cPanel, Softaculous, and some CMSs. Not as many as DigitalOcean but enough.
People hosting in the US or Europe. Their Seattle and Dallas locations are solid. Amsterdam works well for European users.
Who Should Skip Hostwinds?
Budget users. Hetzner gives you better hardware for less money. If you just want the cheapest VPS, look elsewhere.
Users needing Asia locations. No data centers in Asia. Go with Vultr or Linode.
CPU-heavy workloads. Game servers, video transcoding. Get dedicated CPU from Hetzner or OVH.
Final Verdict
Hostwinds isn't the best value VPS. But value isn't everything. The free backups and monitoring are genuinely useful. The support is actually good. For a small business site where uptime matters, those features are worth paying for.
If you just need cheap compute, go with Hetzner. If you want a provider that has your back when things go wrong, Hostwinds is a solid choice.
Score: 7.5/10
- Support: 9/10
- Features: 8/10 (free backups!)
- Price/performance: 5/10
- Reliability: 8/10