Review of VPS Hosting Provider: Negative0

I was trying to find a new place to host my website after my previous host failed to handle my website because of the server load my multi-moduled Drupal site was putting in. My old VPS was throwing a time out every five minutes and it was becoming virtually impossible to continue working with them. I was looking for somebody to sponsor my website for a short period of time till I find myself economically settled to pay for my hosting. I put up a request at freewebhostingtalk.com and that’s where I met Benjamin Leavitt from Negative0 Information Services Incorporated, a Canada based Web Hosting Company who agreed to sponsor my website for a period of one year. He offered me a VPS with 1GB RAM (2 GB SWAP), 1 core (2.6GHz), 25GB HDD on a 100 Mbps port.

Negative0 was in the developing face when he offered to help me. After that, they launched their company officially on March 15 with a host of interesting VPS plans.

About the Plans:

At present, Negative0 is offering three pre-made VPS and a VPS builder for its customers. These VPS servers along with the pricing are available on the Negative0 home page.  The VPS builder allows customers to build a VPS of their needed configuration from a base plan by adding resources as they like. Also, any number of resources can be added to any pre-existing plans. This makes the VPS plans at Negative0 extremely flexible.

Performance:

The servers are really powerful and stable. I stopped receiving timeouts once and for all. The server could handle anything I put on it. I expanded my website to include many modules and functionalities. Now, I run my main server and an http cache proxy (varnish) both on the same VPS and is stable as ever. According to pingdom, my website is faster than 91% of all tested websites-thanks to fast servers from Negative0. The results of benchmark test from serverbear and sample files for speed test are available here.

Features:

The servers from Negaitve0 are delivered in their most basic form. This, according to Benjamin Leavitt is to ensure maximum flexibility to the customers. However, there are options to customize every order, and Benjamin says he can deliver the server the way the customers want. There are weekly and monthly free automated snapshot backups of servers. These snapshots are not off site, but among alternate servers on the same network.

Control Panel:

Negative0 uses WHMCS control panel for registration, billing, support, and for basic server management. At present, the management actions available include reboot, shut down, hard reboot, hard shut down and boot VPS. According to Benjamin, features such as performance graph, usage statistics, control on snapshots, auto installing scripts etc are coming up soon.

Customer Support:

Customer support is through support ticket trough the WHMCS control panel, email ([email protected]) or phone (1-855-640-6340). The response is fast and adequate. My previous support ticket was responded to in less than 6 hours, which was good enough for me. In fact, it is the quality customer support from Negative0 that distinguishes it from any other web hosting I have ever worked with in the past. It appears that Benjamin Leavitt has a way of knowing the needs of his customers. Negative0 offers personal care to its customers and that is what I liked the most about them.

Negative0 is the hosting service for you if what you are looking for is stable servers, flexible plans and personalized care.