Most people talk about DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Hetzner. Hostwinds rarely comes up. But after using them for a year, I think they deserve more attention.
Hostwinds has been around since 2010. They're not the cheapest, not the fastest, but they do some things really well.
What Hostwinds Does Well
Customer support is actually good. Live chat available 24/7. I've contacted them maybe 5 times. Average response time under 2 minutes. Real people who know what they're talking about.
Nightly backups included. Most VPS providers charge extra for backups. Hostwinds includes them for free. They keep 7 daily backups and 4 weekly backups. Saved me once when I messed up a config.
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 the major ones.
Where Hostwinds Falls Short
Price isn't competitive at the low end. Their cheapest plan starts at $4.99 for 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM, 30GB SSD, 1TB transfer. Compare with Hetzner CPX11 at €4.51 ($4.90) for 2 vCPU, 2GB RAM, 40GB NVMe, 20TB transfer. Hostwinds gives you half the specs.
Disk speed is average. SATA SSD, not NVMe. Sequential reads around 250MB/s. Hetzner hits 1GB/s+.
No data centers outside North America and Europe. They have Seattle, Dallas, Amsterdam. That's it. No Asia, no Australia.
Control panel is basic. Works but feels dated. No one-click app installs like DigitalOcean.
Real-World Performance
I tested the $4.99 plan in Seattle.
UnixBench single-core score: around 850. Good enough for small sites but not for CPU-heavy tasks. Uptime over 6 months was 99.95%. No major outages.
The included backups and monitoring are genuinely useful. I've used VPS from 10+ providers and very few include these for free.
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.
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 Europe.
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