Having your own VPS for many services is quite beneficial. There are no limits on the number of clients, and you can provide a specific service to all your relatives, friends, and acquaintances. And you can pay 160-300 rubles a month for it.
There are downsides, such as server administration and a lack of geographic diversity.
For over a year now, there have been payment issues with foreign services in Russia. But there are Russian companies that provide foreign servers and allow you to pay with a Russian card.
I registered with a dozen providers, and made it to purchasing a VPS with five of them. After testing, only three remained.
Let me warn you right away:
None of the listed VPS providers paid me anything. And I have no agreements with them. All expenses came from my own money.
There are no referral links in the text. The links lead to plans in European DCs.
I want more people to have a personal server that they can share with their acquaintances.
Selection criteria:
No phone number or passport number required for registration and payment (yes, some ask for it).
No overpricing. 150-300 RUB per month for one VPS with an IPv4 address. VPS for 80 rubles no longer exist; the days of freebie subnets from OVH are over.
The VPS must have a normal processor clock speed, not 400MHz.
The option to pay for the server for just one month. And no exorbitant fees for doing so.
Payment by a card issued in the RF.
Server stability.
A European DC.
I connected all servers to a Zabbix server located in a European DC and monitored agent availability.
Not all purchased VPSs passed this phase:
But all the servers listed here maintained network availability during the test (12-20 days).
I also tested the speed using speedtest. The script was run on the server to a public server in Moscow.
And with iperf3. The server part was on the server, the client part on my laptop via my home provider (Moscow, 100 Mbit/s) over a cable. For all servers, both tests performed as promised, and one was even better.
And, of course, I deployed WireGuard on each server and connected them to my router for a week. None of the servers had any restrictions, and they handled the task perfectly.
Timeweb Cloud
https://timeweb.cloud/vds-vps?location=eu
No phone number needed. For the full name, just a first name was enough.
Locations: Poland 188 ₽/month, Netherlands 250 ₽/month.
Server creation in 1 minute.
Sber acquiring without fees.
Proprietary control panel. It even has a dark theme.
Has a Cloud firewall.
At the time of ordering, only Poland was available among European DCs; the others were marked "Sold out." The Netherlands was added later.
There is a mobile app. You can do everything with the server that you can in the web version. There's even a console, but the keyboard doesn't activate for me on that tab.
You can upload your SSH public key for access when creating a server.
There are snapshots. More precisely, only one snapshot is stored for 7 days. But it's free.
There are auto-backups; one copy for a 15 GB disk costs 90 ₽/month.
A Zabbix agent is installed, connected to Timeweb's Zabbix server in the RF. Adding your own server is no problem. When I turned off the agent, no one came running to demand I turn it back on.
UPD 12.02.2024:
They raised the price to 555 RUB/month for servers outside the RF.
I continue to use them when I need a server in the RF for testing. It's a cloud with hourly billing. I have 150 RUB left there, and I've been using it all this time. ?
Ordered it for a couple of hours, tested it, deleted it, and was charged 3.5 rubles. Very convenient, one of the reasons I love cloud providers.
UPD 26.04.2023:
They might issue an IP from a Russian subnet. You can write to support; someone wrote that they had their server changed.
You can wait until the subnet is no longer listed as Russian in GeoIP services.
Some foreign services have blocks on their subnets. There's an example of elastic.co returning a 403.
IPv6 is supported and works.
Server specs in Poland:
CPU 1x3 GHz. But /proc/cpuinfo shows 2.2GHz.
RAM 1GB
Disk 15Gb NVME
100 Mbit/s channel. No information about traffic limits.
Virtualization QEMU/KVM
Test results for the server in Poland:
iperf3, Moscow - Server
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 102 MBytes 85.2 Mbits/sec 20 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.07 sec 98.6 MBytes 82.2 Mbits/sec receiver
Speedtest, Server - Moscow
root@test-1:~# ./speedtest -s 1907 -p no Speedtest by Ookla Server: MTS - Moscow (id: 1907) ISP: Artnet Sp. z o.o. Idle Latency: 66.59 ms (jitter: 0.30ms, low: 66.51ms, high: 67.13ms) Download: 101.68 Mbps (data used: 178.1 MB) 321.76 ms (jitter: 76.04ms, low: 68.12ms, high: 949.82ms) Upload: 97.23 Mbps (data used: 100.6 MB) 102.63 ms (jitter: 24.96ms, low: 66.71ms, high: 134.92ms) Packet Loss: 0.0% Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/73457488-c789-4531-a042-2fa07c631a95
WeaselCloud
https://my.weasel.cloud/store/standard-vps-netherlands
No phone number needed. For the full name, just a first name was enough.
Locations: Netherlands
160 ₽/month250 ₽/month.Server creation in 2 minutes.
Acquiring via Qiwi (2%), YooMoney (0.5%). Crypto is available: 160 RUB = 4.12 USDT.
Proprietary control panel. You can't name or rename the VM.
Servers in NL are not always available. I only managed to buy one on my second try.
UPD 12.02.2024:
I have moved all my servers from this provider to other places. It has gotten worse over the last six months:
Servers in the Netherlands had either large short-term packet losses or stable 10-20% losses. Tracing showed that the problem was not with the backbone, but specifically with the DC's network.
After the review was published, they responded to my ticket (they had been ignoring it before). Then they replied about the same losses, saying the problem was not on their end and they were waiting for it to be fixed. When the losses reappeared, they continued to ignore me.
Their pros are the price and the availability of VPS. They've also added more locations, and in the US, for example, you get an IP address that can access Gemini (Bard).
At the moment, I do not recommend getting a VPS there. It can be considered as a backup or temporary option.
UPD 26.04.2023:
They raised the price on all VPSs. The minimum VPS was 160 ₽/month, now it's 250 ₽/month.
IPv6 is supported. But I didn't have it in my account initially, and it wasn't configured on the server. Some people see it in their account, but you have to configure it manually in Ubuntu.
They don't respond to tickets. They responded to me. But several people wrote that they are being ignored. Apparently, the service is meant to be without support.
There is no status page where you can find out about problems. There is also no documentation on how to set up IPv6, for example.
On 21-22.04.2023, there were network losses of up to 85% on a router in the DC. The comments here about losses are about this very problem.
The disk has a speed limit. Tests are available here in the comments.
They might issue an IP from a Russian subnet.
Server specs:
CPU 1x2.2 GHz
RAM 1GB
Disk 20Gb SSD
100 Mbit/s channel. Unlimited traffic.
Virtualization QEMU/KVM
iperf3, Moscow - server
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 111 MBytes 93.3 Mbits/sec 4 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.06 sec 108 MBytes 90.3 Mbits/sec receiver
Speedtest, Server - Moscow
root@weaselcloud-N:~# ./speedtest -s 1907 -p no Speedtest by Ookla Server: MTS - Moscow (id: 1907) ISP: Baykov Ilya Sergeevich Idle Latency: 49.17 ms (jitter: 0.32ms, low: 48.97ms, high: 49.50ms) Download: 2563.90 Mbps (data used: 4.5 GB) 66.88 ms (jitter: 18.91ms, low: 47.02ms, high: 417.77ms) Upload: 2148.11 Mbps (data used: 3.2 GB) 51.00 ms (jitter: 0.78ms, low: 49.40ms, high: 72.01ms) Packet Loss: 0.0% Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/d565f995-a4ca-4b6c-9700-6ae13f6eff11
After such results, I ran iperf3 between this server and a Zabbix server located in another country:
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.44 GBytes 1.24 Gbits/sec 660 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.04 sec 1.44 GBytes 1.23 Gbits/sec receiver
The results are truly Wow, especially with the promised 100 Mbit/s.
I'd like to see test results for a home provider with more than 100 Mbit/s. But I don't have one. If you do, write me a PM, and we'll test it.
Home provider 500 Mbit/s from the Moscow region
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 576 MBytes 483 Mbits/sec 5 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.04 sec 575 MBytes 480 Mbits/sec receiver
Skystark
https://skystark.net/vps#!/tab/536514885-1
No phone number or full name needed. You are required to specify a city and street during payment.
Locations: Netherlands 2.99€. Converted to rubles at payment, 268.23 ₽/month as of 6.04.2023.
Server creation in 2 minutes.
Paymaster acquiring.
BILLmanager control panel (new version).
UPD 12.02.2024:
The changes here are amusing. At some point, their cheapest VPSs started being sold only for 3 months at a time, and now you have to pay for six months. I still don't think this is the best tactic, due to the possibility of an IP ban, but I haven't heard about IP addresses belonging to private individuals being banned for a long time.
Second, if you're not satisfied with the service, you just leave for another place after a couple of weeks, but here you become tied down. But let me remind you that I had no problems with this VPS provider.
The company is clearly showing that many people have come to them for cheap servers, and they don't really want that. Therefore, it's better not to go to them for these purposes.
UPD 26.04.2023:
IPv6 is available. It can be enabled in the control panel. It configures itself on the server; only a reboot is needed.
Server specs:
CPU 1x2.45 GHz (AMD EPYC 7763)
RAM 1GB
Disk 15Gb NVME
100 Mbit/s channel. 32TB of traffic per month.
Virtualization QEMU/KVM
Speedtest, Server - Moscow
root@test-5:~# ./speedtest -s 1907 -p no Speedtest by Ookla Server: MTS - Moscow (id: 1907) ISP: Serverius Holding B.V. Idle Latency: 42.57 ms (jitter: 0.13ms, low: 42.41ms, high: 42.64ms) Download: 98.16 Mbps (data used: 129.3 MB) 41.78 ms (jitter: 0.38ms, low: 41.15ms, high: 48.31ms) Upload: 204.35 Mbps (data used: 298.5 MB) 41.11 ms (jitter: 2.89ms, low: 40.90ms, high: 329.63ms) Packet Loss: 0.0% Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/a4709f84-4b74-4445-95a8-8dc21d973233
iperf3 msk - server
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 111 MBytes 93.3 Mbits/sec 3 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.05 sec 109 MBytes 91.0 Mbits/sec receiver
Which DC location to choose?
Here I'll describe my observations. Some social networks check GeoIP and apply restrictions to your session corresponding to the country you are coming from. Restrictions include music rights and invisible tags assigned to posts by the social network itself.
Countries where I noticed these restrictions:
Finland
Countries where I did not observe restrictions from social networks:
Poland
Netherlands
Germany
For those abroad who need access to Russian services, all these companies provide servers in Russia.
Timeweb has a "Foreign card" payment method; a server in Novosibirsk and St. Petersburg costs the same 188 RUB.
Skystark has payment via PayPal, but the cheapest server in Moscow is 8 euros.
Regarding foreign cards, Weasel said that their payment gateway accepts foreign cards, but not with a 100% success rate. They are in the process of switching to Stripe. A server in Moscow costs the same 160 RUB.
These three pleasantly surprised me with their problem-free nature and convenience. It's very cool that small companies in the RF provide such quality services for a nice price.
UPD 26.04.2023:
Regarding openai.com, analog.com, nxp.com, and other services that block access by GeoIP. You need to understand two things:
You might get an IP from a Russian subnet that was recently moved to Europe. Here you can write to support or wait for the country to change in GeoIP services.
Some provider subnets might be banned on these resources "manually," even despite their European location.
Personally, I can access these resources through all three servers.
I publish educational materials that don't quite make a full article on my Telegram channel.