If youâÃÂÃÂre searching for a forever-free VPS, I have some bad news: you arenâÃÂÃÂt going to find one that isnâÃÂÃÂt a scam
**IâÃÂÃÂve done hours of research on the best deals for VPS and IâÃÂÃÂve run into many of these âÃÂÃÂfree VPS hosts.âÃÂàEach and every one turned out to be completely fake
Now, hereâÃÂÃÂs the good news:
**I found some high-quality VPS hosting services that offer free trials But some free trials are better than others. Some hosts like to make cancellation a real headache, or severely limit your capabilities until you take out your wallet
To find out which trials are worth your time, I signed up to as many as I could and tested them thoroughly, cutting it down to the top five
**All of t** **he following hosts let you freely try a powerful VPS solution without risk
Short on time? These are the best web hosts with free VPS trials in September 2022:
KamateraâÃÂà30-day free access to a Cloud VPS with $100 credit and some nice extras Scala HostingâÃÂà30-day guarantee for low-priced managed VPS with a great control panel 1&1 IONOSâÃÂàCheap unmanaged VPS you can try risk-free for 30 days
Click here for two more options | Comparison table | FAQ
== What We Look For in the Best Free VPS Hosting Services ==
Easy cancellationâÃÂàSome hosts like to entice you into a free trial, only to make the cancellation process as difficult as possible. I chose hosts that let you cancel your account easily. Long trial lengthâÃÂàA short trial isnâÃÂÃÂt going to give you enough time to properly evaluate a hostâÃÂÃÂs services. ThatâÃÂÃÂs why most of the free trials on this list are at least 30 days long. FlexibilityâÃÂàA VPS is highly customizable and your needs can be highly individual. The VPS trials on this list allow you to try out multiple configurations and features without imposing too many limits. Fast server setupâÃÂàWasting the first few days of your trial waiting for the server to be set up and made available isnâÃÂÃÂt fun. Hosts which can provide a quick set up of your server earned some extra brownie points
Kamatera offers a powerful Cloud VPS hosting solution, where rather than hosting your site on a single physical server, you have access to a cluster of cloud servers across the world. This comes with many benefits, including the ability to scale your resources instantly
With such highly customizable servers, I was worried that KamateraâÃÂÃÂs free trial may be tightly-controlled, but that wasnâÃÂÃÂt the case
**The 30-day free trial is generous giving you access to a single Cloud VPS with $100 credit for the month. Even after the trial, the prices are very affordable
As long as you stay under this $100 limit, you can scale your resources as you please, and even add or remove optional features such as firewalls, load balancers, and so on. A word of warning though âÃÂÃÂ
**if you do end up accidentally going over the $100 credit, you will be charged for the excess But as long as you donâÃÂÃÂt go too crazy, you should be able to get a real taste of the powerful Cloud VPS Kamatera offers without paying a dime
Great performanceâÃÂàKamateraâÃÂÃÂs Cloud VPS use powerful Intel Xeon Platinum processors, providing your site with impressive speeds. Designated account managerâÃÂàDuring the length of the trial, youâÃÂÃÂll get access to a designated account manager who will answer any questions you may have about KamateraâÃÂÃÂs service. You even get technical advice about the ideal VPS configuration for your needs. Fast server setupâÃÂàUpon signing up, your server will be set up and available within a minute. 24/7 technical supportâÃÂàThe free trial includes access to KamateraâÃÂÃÂs technical support team, which is available through phone, email, and tickets
Read more about KamateraâÃÂÃÂs features in our expert review
Length of free trial |30 days|
Data center locations |New York, Texas, California, Toronto, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Hong Kong, Petach Tikva, Rosh Haayin, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem|
Beginner-friendly? |No|
Starting price for cheapest VPS plan |$4.00|
Resources |Fully customizable, up to 72 vCPUs, 512GB RAM, 4000GB SSD storage, 5000GB bandwidth per month|
**Scala Hosting offers a budget managed Linux VPS plan at just $39.95** ** a month âÃÂàmaking it one of the cheapest options for managed VPS While it doesnâÃÂÃÂt offer a free trial, thereâÃÂÃÂs a 30-day money-back guarantee where you can try the service risk-free. **free domain name**is included with some hosting plans from **Scala Hosting**
The management of your VPS brings with it the usual perks. A support team will set up your VPS, take care of any installations, optimize its performance, update it with the latest patches, perform daily remote backups, monitor its uptime, and scan for malware. All of this means that you can fully focus on testing Scala HostingâÃÂÃÂs service during the trial period. Just keep in mind that
**the managed plans only use CentOS 8 as the operating system **Scala Hosting also has a proprietary control panel called SPanel although you do have the choice of paying for the popular cPanel if you wish. However, SPanel is a great alternative. It makes VPS management a breeze and you can have unlimited accounts without incurring an extra cost. All in all, Scala Hosting may be worth looking at if you are searching for cheap beginner-friendly VPS
Scalable resourcesâÃÂàYou can scale your resources up or down at any time. However, this does require a reboot of your server. Self-managed VPSâÃÂàThereâÃÂÃÂs also the option of unmanaged VPS. This is a little bit cheaper than the managed plans, costing $10 for the cheapest option. While you lose all the benefits of managed VPS, you do gain root access, allowing for a lot more customizability. SShield securityâÃÂàIf you choose the free SPanel, you also get SShield security for free. This is an AI solution that monitors your server, blocking web attacks and notifying you of any vulnerabilities. Unlimited website migrationâÃÂàWith managed VPS, Scala Hosting will migrate an unlimited amount of websites to its hosting service
Read more about Scala HostingâÃÂÃÂs features in our expert review
Length of free trial |30 days (money-back guarantee)|
Data center locations |Dallas and Sofia (Bulgaria)|
Beginner-friendly? |Yes, if you choose the managed plan|
Starting price for cheapest VPS plan |$39.95|
Resources |Fully customizable, up to 1-24 vCPUs, 2GB-128GB RAM, 20GB-2000GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth|
== 3. 1&1 IONOS âÃÂà30-Day Guarantee For Cheap Unmanaged VPS ==
**If youâÃÂÃÂre looking for one of the cheapest self-managed solutions on the market, 1&1 IONOS offers VPS plans starting at just $2.00 Even with such a small entry-fee, youâÃÂÃÂll still benefit from a 30-day money-back guarantee
While 1&1 IONOS is certainly a budget solution, it still offered good performance and uptime in our tests. In addition, youâÃÂÃÂll get some nice premium features: you can create temporary snapshots of your VPS at any time, and
**all customers are assigned a dedicated personal adviser to help answer any queries**
That said, it can be hard to get in touch with your adviser at times, and they wonâÃÂÃÂt help you manage your server. To get the most value out of 1&1 IONOS, youâÃÂÃÂll need to know how to configure, optimize, and maintain a VPS server
**free domain name**is included with some hosting plans from **1&1 IONOS**
Unlimited trafficâÃÂàAll 1&1 IONOSâÃÂàservers allow for unlimited traffic âÃÂàyouâÃÂÃÂll never reach a cap or have to pay overage fees. Secure cloud backupsâÃÂàFor an added fee, you can purchase cloud backup storage with integrated malware protection and robust encryption. You can take full or incremental backups. Premium support availableâÃÂàYou can call IONOS support for help with advanced tasks, such as installing or troubleshooting server software. YouâÃÂÃÂll have to pay a fee for this service. Manage your VPS on-the-goâÃÂà1&1 IONOS is one of the few VPS hosts with a responsive and functional mobile app. You can manage your servers, monitor performance, pay invoices, and more
Learn more about 1&1 IONOS in our comprehensive review
Rather than providing web hosting services on its own servers, Cloudways instead acts as a management service for some of the biggest cloud hosts, such as Google Cloud and Amazon AWS
**You then benefit from the top performance of these hosting companies without needing to know how to configure a virtual server yourself**
Despite being a third-party, you can purchase a variety of hosting plans from multiple vendors directly through Cloudways. YouâÃÂÃÂll never need to actually work with the company providing the infrastructure âÃÂàand you can use the user-friendly Cloudways platform to manage your server instances
Cloudways does offer a 3-day free trial âÃÂàitâÃÂÃÂs
*very* short, but no credit card is required to sign-up. Outside of the trial, prices can be comparable to Scala Hosting, but this depends on the infrastructure provider you choose. Choosing DigitalOcean, Linode, or Vultr will cost you less, whereas Google Cloud or Amazon AWS will cost you more
Easy WordPress installationâÃÂàCloudways has software that can automatically install multiple instances of WordPress for you on a single server. From there, youâÃÂÃÂll get CloudwaysâÃÂàpre-optimized hosting stack for top WordPress performance. Dedicated staging environmentâÃÂàYou can launch a dedicated staging area to test site changes and new plugins without affecting your live site. Once youâÃÂÃÂre ready, you can push these changes to the live site with a single click. Premium CDNâÃÂàAll Cloudways plans benefit from the premium Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, which significantly increases the performance of your site across the globe. This includes image and mobile optimization as well as an additional layer of security. Guaranteed response times from supportâÃÂàCloudways Standard support guarantees a response within 12 hours to a support ticket, or 3 hours for a high-priority ticket. If Cloudways doesnâÃÂÃÂt meet these promises, youâÃÂÃÂll be entitled to service credits
For more information, read our Cloudways review
== 5. GreenGeeks âÃÂà30 Days to Try Beginner-Friendly Managed VPS With Great Support ==
**GreenGeeks is by far the most expensive VPS provider on this list âÃÂàbut in return, youâÃÂÃÂll get great managed service and technical support Thankfully, **you can try GreenGeeks out with a 30-day money-back guarantee** before you
All GreenGeeks VPSs are optimized and secured for you, and include ongoing maintenance. Also included is a cPanel Solo license so you can start setting up sites immediately
**GreenGeeksâÃÂàtechnical support truly stands out While they wonâÃÂÃÂt touch custom software or your siteâÃÂÃÂs code, theyâÃÂÃÂll do their best to help you with all the basics âÃÂàeven going so far as performing technical tasks for you. My colleagues have had GreenGeeks support install WordPress, configure optimization plugins, and more. This can be *incredibly* helpful for a beginner to VPS
Softaculous includedâÃÂàThe free cPanel license includes the useful Softaculous app installer. This lets you install over 350 applications, each with a single click. Proactive 24/7 monitoringâÃÂàAs part of its managed service, GreenGeeks will monitor your server for issues. If an issue is detected, the support team will automatically jump in to solve it. RAID-10 SSDâÃÂàGreenGeeksâÃÂàSSD storage is kept in a highly redundant RAID-10 array. With this configuration, your data will be mirrored across multiple drives to prevent loss. Free dedicated IPâÃÂàEvery GreenGeeks VPS plan comes with a free dedicated IP. All IPs are blacklist-checked beforehand to ensure youâÃÂÃÂre given a clean address
To read about our tests of GreenGeeksâÃÂàsupport, check out our detailed review
== Finding the Best VPS Trial for You ==
So, which free VPS trial is best for you? It depends on your needs
**If youâÃÂÃÂre a developer who needs fully customizable servers that can be scaled up or down on short notice, IâÃÂÃÂd advise you to try Kamatera It offers a flexible 30-day trial with $100 free credit
On the other hand, if youâÃÂÃÂd like to try an affordable managed VPS, go with Scala Hosting. You can use the proprietary SPanel control to spin up a virtual instance. If the service is not satisfactory, you can request a full refund within 30 days
**If youâÃÂÃÂre looking for the cheapest option for unmanaged VPS check out 1&1 IONOS. YouâÃÂÃÂll get 30 days to try it out, and if it meets your expectations, youâÃÂÃÂll pay less than you would with many other alternatives
Still unsure? You can check out the table below for a side-by-side comparison
Trial Length Good for Beginners? Standout Feature Starting Price After Trial
Kamatera |30 days||No, Cloud VPS is completely unmanaged||Fully-customizable Cloud VPS with great performance4.00|
Scala Hosting |30 days||Yes, if you choose a managed plan||Fully-managed VPS at budget prices39.95|
1&1 IONOS |30 days||No, VPS is completely unmanaged||Cheapest option for unmanaged VPS2.00|
Cloudways |3 days||Yes, Cloud VPS are fully managed||VPS management for the biggest cloud platforms10.00|
GreenGeeks |30 days||Yes, VPS are fully managed||Beginner-friendly managed VPS with helpful technical support39.95|
== FAQ ==
What is the best VPS service?The best VPS service for you depends on your particular needs. Are you a beginner to VPS? In that case, IâÃÂÃÂd recommend Scala Hosting or Cloudways âÃÂàboth offer managed service with good support. However, if youâÃÂÃÂre a developer, Kamatera would be a better fit due to its customizability.How can I get a free VPS without a credit card?Cloudways lets you sign up for its 3-day trial without a credit card. That said, you wonâÃÂÃÂt be able to find a host that offers âÃÂÃÂforever-freeâÃÂàVPS hosting that isnâÃÂÃÂt a scam, or limited to the point that itâÃÂÃÂs almost. Many of the options I cover above are affordable to those on a tight budget, and also offer free trials and guarantees.Why is VPS so expensive?VPS is a more sophisticated technology than shared hosting, offering greater levels of control and performance. This leads to an increase in price. However, VPSs donâÃÂÃÂt have to be expensive âÃÂà1&1 IONOS offers VPS instances at very low prices. Or, if youâÃÂÃÂd prefer cheaper shared hosting,
**check out our list of the top web hosts in 2022** for some alternatives.How is VPS hosting better than shared hosting?VPS allows for a lot more customization and flexibility. You can scale your resources to your exact needs and install whichever OS and software best suits your needs. VPS is also generally more secure and reliable, as youâÃÂÃÂre kept isolated from other users of the same server
That said, shared hosting is much easier for those new to web hosting. If you fit that description, I strongly recommend checking out **our guide to hosting a website in 2022