I have accumulated Virtual Private Servers at Digital Ocean, Linode, and Vultr, as I tend to launch a new VPS for new projects and keep old VPSs running with the version of Linux that it was when I launched it. While I'm happy with the service with all those providers, **at a certain point it becomes more cost effective to switch to leasing a dedicated server and running VPSs yourself.**
To be clear, you do tend to get what you pay for when it comes to web hosting, so by saving money with a dedicated server you are giving up some conveniences. That includes support, outsourcing the VM management, and backups. I do not recommend a dedicated server if you do not have expertise running a hypervisor or if you do not have the experience with backing up virtual machines (offsite) and restoring them on other hardware. You also must be comfortable with a longer recovery time if there is a hardware disaster as it is more work and takes longer to set up a new dedicated machine and restore to it.
I launched a low cost dedicated server and paid [VPSBenchmarks](https://www.vpsbenchmarks.com/) to run the exact same performance tests on it as they do with VPS providers they track and used it to compare the performance you get for the money spent running a dedicated server compared to a cloud VPS. With the data that you can see in the below table, I'm able to make some general recommendations for when it is worth making that change.
The dedicated server that I purchased was a $23 setup fee and $23 a month for an older 3rd generation Ivy Bridge Intel Xeon E3-1245v2 - 3.4 GHz/3.8 GHz (2012) with 4 cores, 8 threads, 32 GB of ram, and two 480 GB SSD drives in a RAID 1 configuration. It is so cheap because it is 6 to 10 years old, but it still is a capable machine.
In the following table I have normalized all of the benchmark data to be relative performance to the Digital Ocean server to make it easier to compare, but have posted the raw numbers in a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/webhosting/comments/xy2fju/comment/ireyx7v/). If it says 150% then it is 50% better then the Digital Ocean machine, and if it says 200% then it is twice as fast or can do double the work.
| Provider | Digital Ocean | Linode | Vultr | Vultr | Vultr | Vultr | OVH |
|:-------------|--------------:|-------:|-----------------:|--------:|--------:|-----------------:|----------:|
| Name | Premium Intel | Shared | High Performance | Regular | Regular | High Performance | Dedicated
| Price | $28 | $40 | $24 | $40 | $80 | $96 | $23
| Cores | 2 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 6 | **8** | 8
| RAM (GB) | 4 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 16 | 16 | **32**
| Storage (GB) | 80 | 160 | 100 | 160 | 320 | 350 | **480**
| Memory Speed | 100% | 100% | 137% | 148% | 265% | 307% | **424%**
| IO Speed | 100% | 90% | 21% | 209% | 260% | **283%** | 258%
| CPU Speed | 100% | 240% | 343% | 230% | 328% | **430%** | 325%
| Web Runs | 100% | 150% | 133% | 233% | 333% | **400%** | 300%
| Tasks | 100% | 127% | 118% | 299% | 381% | **522%** | 195%
If you are using the server to host a website, then the last two rows are what is the most important to look at.
Web Runs is how many simultaneous requests you can handle at a time to host a Rails app that VPS Benchmark uses. The Digital Ocean server can handle 30 simultaneous requests at a time without error, but anything beyond that and some requests will fail. The dedicated server can handle 3x that, or 90 simultaneous requests. About 57% of the web runs can be predicted based on how many cores there are and about 43% of the prediction is based on how much RAM is available.
Tasks is how many high CPU utilization tasks per hour can be processed by the machine in a particular VPS Benchmark test. It is predictable by the number of cores available. Note that the OVH dedicated server only gets about half as many tasks done per hour as the number of cores would suggest is possible, which I attribute to the age of the processor.
My recommendation is that if the total amount of cores you are running across all your VPSs is 4 or less, then it is worth paying the premium to stick with your VPS provider. However, once you are spending more than $50/month for your VPSs and are using more than 4 total cores or 8 total GB of RAM then it is worthwhile considering switching to a dedicated server.
The main basis of that recommendation is that the VPS providers are overcharging for their larger instances. They should bake a discount on the price when you go above 4 cores. I would recommend that they give a 50% discount per core above 4 cores. For example, the 4 vCPU plan at Vultr for a High Performance VPS is $48 (or $12 per core) which is fair and worth the money, but the 8 core is overpriced at $96, I think it would be worth the money at $72 ($12 a core for the first 4 and $6 a core for the remaining 4 cores). At a bigger extreme, the 4 vCPU plan at Vultr for a General Purpose Optimized Cloud Compute VPS is probably fairly priced at $120, but the 32 core price should be discounted from $960 down to $540. If you needed 32 cores, I'd recommend the VPS at the price point of $540, but not $960, at that point you should go with a dedicated server.
I'm a new customer of OVH so it is too soon for me to determine if I would recommend them or not. The dedicated server I am leasing is from their Kimsufi brand which is now part of the OVH Eco server lineup. Kimsufi is their oldest servers, they also have So You Start servers that are newer than Kimsufi but still older than their primary lineup of servers. From a value perspective, if you need more than 8 cores, it makes more sense to consider Hetzner as the provider since they provide newer processors at low price points. At Hetzner for 38 euros a month you can get 12 cores and 64 GB of RAM, which I guestimate would score around 250 on the Web Run benchmark, and 30,800 on the Tasks benchmark. For 93 euros you get 24 cores and 128 GB of RAM, which I guestimate would score around 435 Web Runs and 53,000 Tasks. And for 213 euros you can get 64 cores and 256 GB of RAM which I would guestimate could score almost 700 Web Runs and 84,000 Tasks. Take those estimates with a grain of salt, they could be off by a wide margin.
In closing, I do think you get what you pay for when it comes to web hosting. Digital Ocean, Linode, and Vultr probably excel in the management of their systems, whereas lower cost providers are filling a market niche for people that are less worried about things like cooling and fire prevention. With that said, I'm looking forward to saving some money on my personal projects that are currently running all over the place and consolidating it to my own dedicated server that I don't need to worry about CPU stealing and can always migrate to faster hardware when my needs grow.
