Overview of HostZealot

HostZealot was launched in 2009 in Bulgaria. They offer a variety of web hosting solutions, from shared hosting to VPS to dedicated servers. Not to mention a variety of related products and services.

They have since expanded enormously to offer their services around the globe. They host servers in 14 different global locations and offer support in English and Russian.

HostZealot has built a reputation as a simple and cost-effective hosting solution.

Plans and Pricing

HostZealot offers highly flexible and scalable VPS plans. With prices starting at €4.24, they are also super affordable.

You can choose from 6 basic setups for your VPS plan:

The prices listed above are for annual billing. You can also opt for semi-annual, quarterly, or monthly billing. However, annual billing is about 20% cheaper and you get a free domain for the first year ($10-15 value).

You can also choose NVMe hard drives with AMD EPYC CPU cores. However, these setups cost almost double and are only available in Amsterdam and Warsaw.

The price for Windows VPS hosting ranges from €11.46/mo to €75.79/mo.

Other paid add-ons includes:

• IP addresses: €43.31/address.
• Remote backup space: 1 GB free (on request) or between €21.66 for 10 GB and €216.56 for 200 GB.
• Managed services: €270.70/year for basic management or €530.56/year for advanced.
• LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) setup: €13.53 setup fee.
• LNMP (Linux/Nginx/MySQL/PHP) setup: €18.05 setup fee.

Unfortunately, there are no refunds or money-back guarantees for VPS hosting, although this is standard practice.

All in all, HostZealot’s pricing is very reasonable. Because many services and features are add-ons, you only pay for exactly what you need. That’s why HostZealot can offer cheaper VPS hosting than most.

It’s also possible to contact HostZealot customer support reps for a custom VPS setup using geo-diversified infrastructure or more computing resources. In this case, you’ll be charged on quote-by-quote basis.

Features

The good news is that HostZealot’s VPS hosting comes with a huge number of standard features. So, everyone from entry-level to high-end customers can enjoy the same features and capabilities.

The infrastructure that their VPS servers are built on is pretty impressive:

• KVM virtualization
• SSD Caching with XCache
• PHP, Perl, Python, Node.js
• Nginx and Apache server
• High-performance hardware with either Intel Xeon CPU + SSD hard drives or AMD EPYC Core CPUs with NVMe hard drives

They also provide a number of features that make accessing and managing your VPS easier:

• Your choice of control panel: cPanel, DirectAdmin, ISPmanager, VirtualMin, etc.
• Secure Shell (SSH) access
• .htaccess with password protection
• Phusion Passenger web app server
• One-click app installer
• Crontab access
• Raw log files access
• Subversion repository (SVN)
• Ruby Version Manager (RVM)

And, other notable features include:

• Unlimited bandwidth usage on all plans
• Unlimited email accounts
• Unlimited FTP/sFTP users
• Unlimited MySQL databases
• IPv4 and IPv6

The fact that many features come with unlimited usage means you don’t have to worry much about scaling. If you do run into caps, however, it’s easy to either upgrade or request more resources.  You can contact the HostZealot support team to upgrade your package to 8TB of storage, or more.

As a firsthand infrastructure provider, you can also request specialized setups like server clusters, colocated servers, or geo-diversified infrastructure. This can help you deliver faster and more reliable performance around the globe as well as make your systems more fault-resistant.

And, you can also always choose to upgrade to dedicated servers if you really experience significant growth.

Server Locations

HostZealot offers an excellent selection of server locations spread all over the world. In fact, there are more than 14 options spread across North America, Europe, and Asia.

The only major region not covered in Africa and South America.

The 14 server locations available to VPS customers are:

• Amsterdam, NL
• London, UK
• Moscow, RU
• Stockholm, SE
• Warsaw, PL
• Limassol, CY
• Tallinn, EE
• Ashburn, Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle, US
• Toronto, CA
• Hong Kong, HK
• Tel Aviv, IL

It costs the same to host in any server location. However, VPS servers with NVMe hard drives are only available in Amsterdam and Warsaw.

Security

Many customers use VPS because it’s more secure than standard shared hosting. That’s because VPS hosting offers better isolation from others sharing your server.

It’s also worth noting that HostZealot uses KVM virtualization for their VPS. KVM is highly secure thanks to using security-enhanced Linux (SELinux) and secure virtualization (sVirt). This is also why they can promise 99.9% uptime.

Unfortunately, HostZealot doesn’t offer too many added security features out of the gate for VPS users. That being said, they seem to be a secure host as they haven’t experienced a noticeable hacking incident.

What’s more, HostZealot actually provides you with a free SSL certificate. This is notable because most VPS hosts don’t provide this for free. You can also purchase premium SSL certificates from HostZealot with 128/256bit encryption strength.

You can also securely access your server using .htaccess with password protection or SSH (Secure Shell).

However, other than that, you’ll mostly be responsible for the security of your own VPS server.

The exception is if you add a managed VPS service to your package. In this case, HostZealot’s security team will take responsibility for parts of your VPS.

In this case, they will handle proactive monitoring as well as OS/Kernel Security updates.

Performance

Speed and reliability are key to the success of your website.

If either suffers, you’ll be left with dissatisfied users, bad search engine rankings, or lost business opportunities.

Also, VPS hosting should be faster and more reliable than typical shared hosting. After all, that’s what you pay extra for.

First of all, HostZealot’s speed is really good. Using BetterUptime, we found that the average server response time was only around 200ms. That’s really fast.

Secondly, HostZealot is also very reliable. You often get days, or even an entire week, with 100% uptime. Over a span of 12 days, we registered an uptime of 99.9487%. The average uptime for hosting today is around 99.5%.

HostZealot actually provides a 99.9% uptime guarantee. So, it looks like they are true to their word.

So, while it’s not the best, it’s better than the majority of hosts.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see we experienced 11 days and 8 hours of uninterrupted uptime:

With 14 servers to choose from across the globe, you can pick one that’s closest to your audience. The servers also run on ultra-fast SSD or NVMe hard drives.

Customer Support

HostZealot provides 24/7 support to all their customers, regardless of their hosting plan. They can be reached via live chat, email, Skype, a ticketing system, and even via call-back.

This is a huge range of options that not all hosting providers have.

Also, HostZealot is usually very highly rated by its customers. It has a 4.7 rating on Trustpilot with many reviewers praising their customer support.

You can also use the enormous knowledge base if you’re more into self-help. The articles are broken down into logical categories so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. Most of the articles are step-by-step guides or tutorials with helpful images to guide you.

The quality of HostZealot’s support services is guaranteed by their SLA. Customers even get “Response Time Credits” for each hour that they do not get a response over the maximum response time limit.

Depending on your Remote Hands/Service Level, this limit varies from 30 minutes to 24 hours. So, it’s safe to say that you should get a response within one day max, regardless of your hosting plan.

Wrap Up: Who is HostZealot VPS Hosting Best for?

HostZealot is best for those who are new to VPS hosting or who have basic requirements. They don’t offer the most advanced features or plans with huge resources.

However, they cover all the basics at a very affordable price and have a superb reputation. You can also choose from a number of operating systems, control panels, and add-on services. All-in-all, it’s a solid VPS hosting option that anyone can consider.

Hence, they seem to be ideal for individual projects and small-to-medium businesses.

Pros

• Free SSL certificate
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Affordable pricing
• Choose from 14 global server locations

Cons

• No refunds/money-back guarantee
• Not the most scalable out-of-the-box plans