For those seeking budget-friendly VPS hosting services, Contabo and OVHcloud are among the cheapest options.
If you are looking for a good budget-friendly VPS, you need to read this hosting comparison.
While you can indeed find other VPS service providers with similar features, their subscription rates are significantly higher. Between Contabo vs OVH, the former is overall a better choice.
Let us dive deeper into the details so that you can find the right VPS service for your website.
Overview
Contabo has created its place because of the high server resources and the cheapest hosting plans. OVHcloud works great with European users.
Here is a brief overview of Contabo and OVHcloud that helps you get the background information on both these hosting providers.
Contabo – Overview
Contabo is a German VPS hosting provider that promises to deliver German quality with global availability. They are especially known for their affordable costs, and even their cheapest plans offer amazing features.
Contabo also has a good track record in terms of its transparent pricing, which makes them particularly reliable.
OVHcloud – Overview
In case you or most of the expected visitors of your website are located in Europe, OVHcloud is a great choice. With most of its data centers located in Europe, OVHcloud delivers seamless performance all over the continent.
OVHcloud has been around for more than two decades and has held its position as the largest European VPS provider since 2011.
Pros And Cons
Like any other company, both OVHcloud and Contabo have their share of pros and cons. You should consider all the important factors because it affects your hosting environment.
Contabo
Pros of Contabo
- Affordable prices
- Feature-rich hosting plans
- 8 data centers across 3 continents
- Choice of operating system
- NVMe storage for fast performance
- Scalable and flexible hosting plans
Cons of Contabo
- Backup is not available for free
- No live chat support and service is available for a few hours
- No domain name registration without buying hosting
- Outdated and complex user interface
OVHcloud
Pros of OVH
- Feature-rich hosting
- Unmetered and unlimited monthly traffic
- Free DDoS protection
- Data centers around Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific region
- Good for businesses with a limited budget
- High-speed global connections
Cons of OVH
- Delayed customer support responses
- Speed & performance slower in America
- Complicated user interface
- Extra charges for features and addons
- Slow server provisioning
- Getting a refund after cancellation is difficult
Contabo Vs OVHcloud Comparison
As you have now seen, both of these VPS hosting providers have various pros and cons. Let us now compare Contabo and OVHcloud on different aspects and see how they fare. This will give you a more in-depth idea of both services and help you make an informed decision.
Ease Of Use
Contabo – Ease Of Use
As pointed out previously, Contabo isn’t very beginner-friendly. This is because it is an unmanaged service, which means you won’t get a lot of assistance from the VPS provider. While this gives you more freedom and allows you to customize your server as per your needs, it also means that you’ll have to handle all the responsibilities.
However, this doesn’t mean you can’t get the job done with Contabo – it’ll just be difficult if you are a beginner and not very tech-savvy. For professionals like server managers and developers, this is the perfect hosting solution due to its advanced and hassle-free nature.
The VPS services include advanced tools and features that professionals can use to build the best websites and applications. As long as beginner-friendliness isn’t a major concern for you, Contabo is perfect.
For instance, the main account dashboard looks outdated and hard to work with, but it does have the necessary quick access options.
All the key features are listed on the left side of the screen. You can also install a Webmin control panel for free.
OVHcloud – Ease Of Use
Beginners might have some trouble working with OVHcloud too. From the very outset, i.e., purchasing a hosting plan, the process is unnecessarily complicated. You will have to go through multiple options and might find the checkout page to be a little confusing. The VPS service lags in user-friendliness.
To manage your web space and account, you need to use the Cloud Management Panel from OVHcloud. Working on this panel is hard, especially on a smaller screen.
For instance, instead of expanding a page directly, it will reload it to deliver the expanded version. Browsing through the menus can be frustrating too, as it often opens up blank pages.
Best Features
Contabo – Features
Contabo offers several great features that help ensure a convenient experience. The best features of this VPS service include:
- Customized storage: You can choose between a large SSD drive for more storage space and superfast NVMe storage for amazing speed.
- Fast server provisioning: Contabo delivers very fast VPS provisioning, taking 20 minutes on average.
- Unlimited traffic: This VPS provider offers 32 TB of outgoing traffic and unlimited incoming traffic with every VPS.
These features help ensure seamless and cost-effective hosting solutions.
OVHcloud – Features
This VPS provider offers several notable features too:
- CMS integration: OVHcloud has particularly optimized its servers for hosting websites based on popular CMS solutions like WordPress, Prestashop, Joomla, etc.
- Multiple websites in a single plan:You can host five websites on the personal plan, ten on the professional plan, and as many as you want on the performance plan.
- Free backup: OVHcloud is one of the rare VPS hosting providers that offer free backup and restoration.
Like Contabo, OVHcloud offers unlimited inbound traffic as well.
Performance
Contabo – Performance
While Contabo doesn’t deliver the absolute best performance in the industry, it’s still quite impressive considering the price. The VPS provider delivers almost flawless uptime, and it’ll be a rare possibility that your server goes offline.
Hence, you can stay assured that Contabo is extremely reliable. The speed varies from one part of the world to another. Here’s a quick look at the speeds recorded at different locations:
- Dallas:36ms
- Seattle: 103ms
- London:189ms
- Tel-Aviv: 338ms
- Hong Kong: 384ms
As you can see, Contabo offers excellent speed at all these five locations.
OVHcloud – Performance
This VPS provider boasts amazing loading speeds, with the web pages taking 0.9 seconds to load on average. This is very good, considering Google recommends keeping website loading speeds under three seconds. However, OVHcloud falls behind Contabo when it comes to reliability and uptime.
In the past, they failed to meet the minimum acceptable uptime score of 99.9% and had an uptime of 99.37% instead. Although they now offer 99.96% uptime, their track record in this aspect is slightly worrying.
Security
Contabo – Security
You cannot enjoy a full stack of security solutions on Contabo as the servers are unmanaged. However, the security features offered by Contabo are still quite comprehensive.
- SSL certificate is offered as a paid addon.
- All hosting plans have DDoS protection by default.
- In case of heavy and frequent DDoS attacks on your server, Contabo will automatically terminate your services.
- Datacenter security is flawless, with round-the-clock security service, CCTV coverage, live webcams, alarm system, magnetic card access, etc. Smoke detectors, water detectors, heat exchangers, and fire alarms protect the data centers against elements.
Overall, Contabo is quite reliable against casual security threats.
OVHcloud – Security
OVHcloud is quite secure as well, offering various security features like:
- You will get a free SSL certificate for your website.
- The VPS provider offers free DDoS protection with the hosting plans.
- Various tools to secure your server effectively.
Customer Support
Contabo – Support
A major disappointment about Contabo’s customer support is that it lacks live chat, the most preferred support medium for most users. Support is available through call and email, but between 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. CEST.
While accessing support through email is slow and can take quite a while, calling would be expensive as Contabo is a Germany-based company and international calls cost extra charges.
OVHcloud – Support
Unfortunately, OVHcloud’s support isn’t any better either. The chat and email support are only available between 9 am to 6 pm GMT. Here support is available in four tiers – standard, premium, business, and enterprise.
The standard support, which is available for free with all the plans, is rather self-service in nature. If you are looking for advanced levels of support, you have to pay extra charges.
Pricing
Contabo VPS Pricing
OVHcloud VPS Pricing
Both Contabo and OVHcloud are cost-effective, with cheap plans. You can save a lot of money by opting for longer billing terms, as those plans are discounted. However, if you are not sure if you will continue using the VPS provider’s services for long, try the monthly plans first.
- Contabo: The plans range from $8.49 to $40.49 per month, with no location fee in the US.
- OVHcloud: The yearly plans range between $6 per month to $34 per month, with an 8% discount on the first subscription.
Final Verdict: Contabo Vs OVH
While both Contabo and OVHcloud are great, Contabo is a slightly better overall choice, especially for those seeking servers outside Europe. Here’s a brief guide to help you choose:
Use Contabo if:
- You need hosting for gaming servers like Minecraft.
- You plan to use the server for a Forex Trading business.
- Requires a generous amount of space and other specs while sticking to a tight budget.
Use OVHcloud if:
- You are looking for a gaming server for Minecraft.
- You need to run a Forex VPS.
- You are capable of running your sites, systems, and servers.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Is Contabo a good VPS?
Contabo is among the best VPS hosting services, especially for those seeking a budget-friendly option.
Is Contabo a KVM?
Yes, Contabo uses KVM, integrating it directly into the Linux OS and converting the Linux kernel into a hypervisor.
Is OVHcloud VPS good?
While Contabo is a better overall choice, OVHcloud is still great. This is particularly evident from their position as the largest European cloud-hosting provider and the third-largest in the world.
If you want to add anything to these reviews, you can mention it in the comments section.
If i asking to you personally.. which one will you choose ?!.. im ovh customers. Sometimes my vps running very slow even avarage load just bellow my processor.. i running 2 server, for web application and cms hosting and i have plan to move somewhere.. do think move to contabo is a good decision?..
Hi Deo 🙂
To answer your question, if your apps are running slow on OVH, it is more likely that you will experience the same slow performance in Contabo.
So, in your case, Contabo is not the ideal option for you. However, in order to better advise you, can you specify how many apps you’re running, for business or personal purposes? Amount of traffic?
Server 1 im running 6 php web applications (CI & php7.3) and server 2 im using for host 18 wordpress website..
Both specs is 8 proc, 16gb mem, 640gb storage and also mariadb, cpanel, litespeed, cloudlinux, imunify360
Sometimes i feels delays when opening the web (5-10s) but avarage load on server arround 4-6
Its ok ?.. or i just have bad configuration or its network or vps spec ?
I mean.. with all my needed is a good chooice to move to centabo or i will have the sama result ?.. and better keep stay on ovh ?..
Contabo won’t be able to handle all your apps at once. It will definitely be throttled.
While you are in OVH, you need to do the following:
If after trying all the above actions you’re still getting slow performance, then it’s time to migrate to either Cloudways or Vultr. This will increase your monthly hosting expenses significantly, but it is worth it if you are running multiple business/profitable sites.
If I was in your shoes, I’d go for Cloudways, you can create as many servers as you want, per site or stack multiple sites in one server and see the performance you’re getting (you only pay for the resources you use). And ultimately, you can scale your resources easily. This site is hosted on Cloudways, I can tell you their support is much better than OVH, I had my fair share with them as well 🙂
But please note that the above-suggested providers don’t have integrated email hosting, so you’ll need to use a third-party email provider.
Thank you very much.. your explanation is very clear and also you give me a biggest shot in my head 😀
now i know what i most to do..
Thank you ❤️
You are very much welcome Deo 🙂
Happy to know that this was helpful to you ^^