[Pacific Spirit]

2018 was a wonderful hosting year, a lot happened, there are many stories to be told and we will look back. With a number of new hosting companies in 2018, including HostLease that has been reopened with a new owner. New sponsors were also added to Post4VPS and a number that had disappeared. VPS-Hosting.ca the old VPS 3 and 6 were theirs, also Rocketrix had suddenly disappeared, with the last being GalaxyHostPlus in the beginning with the end of VPS 7. April 9, 2018 ABC-Hosters came into the spotlight with a great VPS . And in December went VPSLices.

Welcome to the annual overview of 2019, a year with a beautiful moment, and a year with annoying moments, but a year that will stay with us anyway. To start on March 15 with gloomy news with the passing of Charley Whitening, active in Formula 1 for years but in recent years as race leader, @deanhills was also signed up as the new giveaway manager, @Manal also went crazy with his VPS, he changed his Disk Space from 100GB to 300GB HDD. Of course, HostLease did not leave behind the Sponsor of VPS 15 either, HostLease had given a new VPS 16 a year later. @Manal was forced to switch its hosting service because the contract agreement with HostLease had not gone well. But knowing @Manal, we had no worries, in fact, he had grown quickly towards this switch in his company and can call himself very successful, because not long after that he also came up with new VPS 4, which was stimulated to the VPS industry once again. Also this VPS from Shadowhosting.net was a big one with a thick 300GB Disk Space HDD. After a failure of a few days, VPS 15 and 16 was back again, eventually the disk space was upgraded from 20GB to 40GB, on July 24th ABC-Hosters also came back with their VPS 3, on the same day VPS 17 came back. Hostlease was also included, this VPS was a completely different VPS than its predecessors, it also became massively used mainly for game servers, of course they were happy with this. Unfortunately, there was a report that due to Dutch legislation that ID card had to be given to the providers, of course HostLease did not agree with this and ultimately won the case law. Also came VPS18 and at the back where everyone looked strange about the specs, only they found the disk space low. VPS18-2 was also added later. @Manal saw that HostLease was working hard on improving their VPSes, Shadowhosting of course has special power and one of the best service! So they drilled 10GB of RAM into their VPS and were ultimately the winner with the best specs. Of course Hostlease wanted to compete again, that's why the new VPS 16 with 200GB SSD, and 12GB RAM beat @ Manal's VPS'es but after a year hostlease had to give in to @Manal from Shadowhosting with their fantastic UPHOLD, finally Hostdoc came back in picture but unfortunately with sad news, they had to close their doors due to an unknown case but we were very pleased with them.

Welcome to the annual overview of 2020 had gigantic annoying moments but also a few beautiful moments. On March 13 the Corona virus entered the world worldwide. Many companies were hit with this, unfortunately 2020 was a very disappointing year, Post4VPS was also hit hard by the Corona it seemed. Many VPS providers had pulled themselves out of the race, which was very annoying. HostDoc, ShadowHosting, ABC-Hosters, HostLease, Bladenode and SSDBlaze. All these companies no longer had a vision of the future at Post4VPS, so many sponsors had disappeared. Fortunately, there were also 3 new VPS providers to keep Post4VPS alive. Racknerd, ReadyDedis and limitlesshost. Cubedata and Bladenode were not that easy to get rid of, because a lot of sponsors had left, these new providers / current providers had free rein in Post4VPS, this was of course excellent news for Post4VPS. It was also discussed that cPanel adapted their revenue model, so that many providers switched to DirectAdmin to reduce costs. There were also a lot less free hosting providers, I have made a list here with the reliable hosting providers where you can claim free hosting and who their provider is or whether they have their own servers.

List FREE HOSTING.
- Blade node - 99% Trusted and verified. DirectAdmin
- HostPoco - 96% Trusted and verified. cPanel
- LNB Hosting - 98% Trusted and verified. DirectAdmin
- 000webhost - 75% Trusted but not verified. (Custom Panel)

Anything else? Reply so I can edit it.

[xdude]

01. Bladenode Shared Hosting is a beta testing project rather than a free hosting service. @phoenixwolf hasn't mentioned anything about it would be turned into free service. I have used it and I can say it's great. Enough resources and faster servers. I wish he would let us use at least a couple of add-on domains since it provides enough resources for that.

02. LNB Hosting service is also great. I haven't had a problem with it yet. It provides plenty of resources for a free account and can upgrade to a bigger account by being active in the forum. Now they have allowed using free domains so the service even got better.

03. HostPoco offers cPanel free shared hosting which is great since these days it's really rare. Unfortunately, it's pretty much useless for most of us since it offers only 200MB Space and 200MB Bandwidth. I can live with 200MB space but 200MB bandwidth is just ridiculous. It's simply not good enough to run a WordPress website.

04. 000webhost is a service I tried to use years ago. These guys are a bit shady. A subsidiary of Hostinger, they have white-labeled the service with many different names. Early days they ran a fake referral service offering 5$ for each free registration. They have put so many restrictions on the free service it's simply impossible to run a WordPress without getting into trouble. They would do everything to drive newbie users crazy so some would upgrade to paid accounts. Also, their IP addresses are blacklisted in so many places. Now I haven't tried them for about 2 years so maybe, a big maybe, they have changed for to better.

[fChk]

@Pacific Spirit

Why is VirMach name is conspicuously absent in your OP ?!!..

[deanhills]

@Pacific Spirit

Why is VirMach name is conspicuously absent in your OP ?!!..

Thanks for noticing this @fChk.  In all of my years at post4vps, Virmach has been the one quality constant in my life. My Virmach VPS has had constant up time from the beginning of time.  I've had VPS 9 (Phoenix) from 2018 to 2019.  And then when the Virmach VPSs were upgraded to KVM I changed to VPS 9 (Dallas).  I'm as happy with my VPS 9 Dallas as I've been with my VPS 9 Phoenix.  The only shortcoming with VPS 9 of course is the lack of a panel and quality of technical support can be improved. For me its greatest attribute is a reliability of existence and performance.  

Looks like VPS 14 has passed VPS 9 as post4vps's greatest star performer, particularly after the last upgrade.  Am curious to hear from @LightDestory how VPS 14 is performing speed wise.  I'd really like to thank @phoenixwolf for his support.  Right from the beginning of getting to know him with VPS 6, he's always been there for post4vps consistently with great quality support.  VPS 6 regrettably has been withdrawn, because it wasn't being used.  Our bad.  But am very happy VPS 14 has a very worthy VPS Holder.  

We should also not forget to pay homage to @cubedata as VPS 8 is one of our star VPSs as well.  @cubedataas been supporting post4vps for a long while now and we are grateful for his hands on assistance when needed.  Regrettably VPS 15 has not worked so far but cubedata tried his best with free panels, panel names I've never heard off before, but still interesting to learn to use.  Thank you also to  @Lampardho became a sponsor last year with VPS 13.  One of our quality VPSs.  We're indebted to Lampard for his interest and support of the Forum.  

We've also heard a lot from  @Pacific Spiritho started this discussion.  It was sad when VPS 16, 17 and 18 were withdrawn, but understandable in the current down times.  Thank you for your support of these VPSs during 2018 to 2020.

I wish to thank all of our members for their quality posts as well.  I'm thinking in particular of @Mashiro, who was a Technical Consultant for a long while, and whose assistance with technical questions, and also technical discussions have always been awesome.  For me, when @Mashiro is not around, it always feels as though there is something very missing.  I got to know him at freevps.us, and since then he has been one of the greatest sources of learning about all aspects of VPS, hardware and software.  What I particularly appreciate about him, is the brilliant way he writes his posts so every one can understand the content.  His communication with non-geeks is five star with writing in a language and with lots of additional details so that his message can be perfectly understood.  

We also have @fChk who has been contributing loads of quality technical articles and is a credit to our Forum.  I feel honored for someone of his obvious advanced technical level to take interest in our Forum.  @tbelldesigncolso joined a few months ago, and his quality posts make it worth it to check in at the Forum. So has @fitkoh.  Our thanks to @fitkoh for helping to test VPS 15 as well as contributing some awesome posts to the Forum. @xdudeas been a consistent star member since the beginning of time at post4vps.com, long before I registered.  His posts about SEO have always been educational and meaningful. I felt really bad when both he and @Honey, who has also been with post4vps.com for many years, lost VPS 5.  Unfortunately @Manal could no longer justify VPS 5 Plan any longer.  I wish to thank Manal for his quality participation in the Forum.  Not sure what has happened with @rudra.  But he also made some quality contributions to the post4vps community during the time of review. @tryp4vpsas also been at post4vps from the beginning of time. He is one of our quality VPS Holders and has been a VPS 9 Chicago holder ever since I joined post4vps.

I don't think there are many members with the capability of contributing 18 quality posts in one day.   @sohamb03id just that during February 2021, right on the last day of the month.  Think this was the first time I've ever seen something happening at post4vps so it's certainly history in the making.  Of course sohamb03 has also worked on updating our Benchmark test and has been a quality contributor for a long while now.  

We also have to pay homage to staff members such as @perry and @TrK who have been instrumental in creating plenty of the foundation documentation of the Forum.  They are semi-retired at the moment, but still take an active interest in the Forum by visiting regularly and chatting to us.  Even when they're not posting.  @Decent12lso visits the Forum from time to time.  So does @arsalahmed786.

Thank you too to all of our other VPS Holders who have been supporting the community almost from the beginning of time, such as @tiwil, @sagher, @Rehan, @Littlemaster, @sAmI, @hamed.  And every one not mentioned as well.  

Most of all thank you to @Dynamo for continuing post4vps during very difficult times. In his super calm, down to earth and always very diplomatic, kind and courteous way with every one.  

My wish for future VPSs would be dedicated VPS games servers.  Quite a number of our members have special requirements for running games, and would be great if we could find a games server sponsor who want to support post4vps and take an active interest in the Forum.

I also have a wish for more quality members to join the Forum.  With a demand for quality VPSs.  Which is the foundation of the post4vps Forum.  And why it has been created.  To provide quality VPSs to a community who is in need of the VPSs and to create a community who can support one another and teach one another in the use of the VPSs.

[LightDestory]

I agree with @fChk. Virmach was my previous VPS sponsor... and it was amazing. I have never got any downtime except for the KVM upgrade. Another amazing point is that virmach took a 1-2TB of DDoS attack without retiring their VPS sponsorship. They are an amazing company, they are just a bit slow on response time on support ticket... but they are competent.

My current VPS's sponsor, @phoenixwolf offering me a superior experience with support. I can't say anything about performance because... the VPSes I used/m using are on pair for general workload. Of course on heavy workloads the 4vCore are doing their magic

[tryp4vps]

What an amazing annual overview from @Pacific Spirit. And so does @deanhills. Wow it seems Dean can remember almost all members with their post history here.

Back to the list of free hosting from OP, I do have a 000webhost account but unfortunately, I cannot do much with their free hosting and so it is pretty useless for me.

[fChk]

Thanks for noticing this @fChk.  In all of my years at post4vps, Virmach has been the one quality constant in my life. My Virmach VPS has had constant up time from the beginning of time.  I've had VPS 9 (Phoenix) from 2018 to 2019.  And then when the Virmach VPSs were upgraded to KVM I changed to VPS 9 (Dallas).  I'm as happy with my VPS 9 Dallas as I've been with my VPS 9 Phoenix.  The only shortcoming with VPS 9 of course is the lack of a panel and quality of technical support can be improved. For me its greatest attribute is a reliability of existence and performance.  

I'm not aware of the exact time VirMach sponsorship kicked in but to my mind that was the most significant event Post4VPS ever had, and I'm not saying this to minimize the importance of the other sponsorships. Just think about it, to have 7 sponsored VPSs with as big specs as those of VPS-9 from a reliable well-known VPS service provider must have been a game changer as far as Post4VPS appeal is concerned. It's certainly what brought me here in the first place!..

The existence of VirMach sponsored-VPSs had -without a doubt- set the high-BAR for the other sponsors willing to join the party and we did see 2 sponsors trying to compete with it -and with each others- and even did, at some point, out-perform it... but that didn't last all that long.. as we all saw!

Anyway, all the above should explain my astonishment when I noticed the absence of any mention of VirMach in the OP's long narrative!.. hence why I'm trying to set the record straight here.

Looks like VPS 14 has passed VPS 9 as post4vps's greatest star performer, particularly after the last upgrade.  

Indeed, VPS-14 does take the proverbial 'cake' nowadays and I hope for a long time to come.. Its 4 vCPU units ranks it far ahead of the lot even before the storage upgrade from an HDD backend to an NVMe-based SSD, with a capacity of 200GB!!.. Kudos to @phoenixwolf -for sure- for that investment in the community.