South African virtual private server price comparison

South Africans looking for a virtual private server (VPS) they can use to develop and release an app, or for their online business, have various cost-effective options from which to choose.

MyBroadband compared VPS pricing from Absolute Hosting, Afrihost, Cybersmart, Domains.co.za, and 1-Grid, and found that Absolute Hosting and Cybersmart are the cheapest across the board.

Absolute Hosting’s entry-level VPS package features two vCPU cores, 1GB of RAM, 20GB of SSD storage, and 500GB of monthly traffic for R100 a month.

The next-cheapest option is available from Domains.co.za for R149 a month and includes one vCPU core, 1GB of memory, 25GB of SSD storage, and a similar bandwidth allocation to Absolute Hosting’s package.

One of the standout providers across all categories is Cybersmart, which offers unlimited traffic regardless of the tier selected. Its entry-level package features one vCPU core, 1GB of RAM, and 20GB of HDD storage for R149 per month.

The most expensive entry-level package comes from Afrihost and includes one vCPU core, 2GB of RAM, 100GB of HDD storage, and 4TB of monthly traffic for R360 a month.

Regarding mid-range VPS packages, all of the options listed feature two vCPU cores and at least 2GB of RAM.

Again, the cheapest option in the category is available from Absolute Hosting for R200 a month. It features 50GB of SSD storage, 2GB of RAM, and 1TB of monthly traffic.

Cybersmart’s pricing isn’t far off at R259. However, the 50GB storage allocation uses hard disks instead of solid-state drives.

Afrihost is the most expensive in this category at R560 per month. However, it offers slightly better specs with 4GB of RAM, 200GB of HDD storage, and 6TB of monthly traffic.

The higher-end packages compared include higher vCPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth allocations.

Absolute Hosting’s four vCPU package offers 3GB of RAM, 100GB of SSD storage, and a monthly traffic allocation of 1.5TB for R303 a month.

Cybersmart sells a VPS package that features four vCPU cores, 4GB of memory, 100GB of HDD storage, and unlimited monthly traffic for R399 — R96 more per month than Absolute Hosting’s product.

1-Grid and Domains.co.za offer similarly priced packages in this category. However, 1-Grid’s vCPU core allocation is lower at three. To make up for this, it features 6GB of RAM — 2GB more than Domains.co.za.

The packages are both priced at R569 a month, but 1-Grid’s product offers slightly more storage and double the monthly traffic allocation of Domains.co.za.

Afrihost is once again the most expensive provider, costing R860 per month. However, it features higher specs than the rest.

The package includes four vCPU cores, 8GB of memory, 500GB of HDD storage, and a monthly traffic allocation of 10TB.

A price comparison across three tiers of VPS hosting options for the five providers is provided in the table below.

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South African virtual private server price comparison