Take it easy, sit back and relax
I started getting into VPS in 2016 and have purchased all kinds of providers and products, experiencing a wide variety of routes. I finally had time recently to write a blog post to share some of the lessons I've learned after all this tinkering, and hopefully help others avoid common pitfalls.
This blog post mainly introduces, from a subjective perspective, some VPS providers/routes that I think are pretty good. The links do not contain any affiliate tracking, so feel free to click them. Since these are subjective opinions, there will inevitably be some bias or mistakes, and discussion is welcome.
First, one thing needs to be made clear: in terms of fast/stable/cheap, any VPS can only satisfy two of the three. Even if a VPS provider manages to satisfy all three at once, it would probably get crushed by competitors and go out of business. So "cost performance" is always relative, and spending more is never wrong.
The quality of any route is closely related to your local environment. For example, if your ISP is different, or the testing time is different, the results you get will vary. So if others can get 500Mbps while you can only get 5Mbps, you may need to investigate the cause on your own local side.
Beware of fire, theft, and affman. If you see an IDC being promoted by review sites everywhere, you might want to check what commission rate that IDC is offering. For example, BandwagonHost, which has been very popular in recent years, was basically hyped up by affman. That said, BandwagonHost's overselling techniques are indeed very strong, and overall it is quite stable. Some unethical affman (won't name names) simply push whichever provider gives the highest commission. Heh.
At present, the more popular VPS locations mainly include Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, North America (LAX, SJO), Russia, Singapore, Europe, and so on. Next, I will give some subjective evaluations of these locations and recommend some providers/routes.
Hong Kong is probably the most popular VPS location for Chinese users, bar none, thanks to its excellent location and open environment. Large-bandwidth VPS in Hong Kong have also become increasingly common over the past two years, from earlier providers like New World SV and LeaseWeb to the growing number of PCCW, HKT, WTT, HKBN, and of course CN2.
新立讯SV : Direct connection on all three major networks. I bought one before when I was in the US, but since I wasn't in China I didn't test it. Supposedly the bandwidth to mainland China is fairly limited, and once attacked it immediately reroutes through the US. The main seller is RFCHost, with prices starting at $7.99, and it's usually out of stock. (I'd like to recommend RFCHost here; strong background, strong technical capability.)
LeaseWeb : Large bandwidth, direct connection on all three major networks. Haven't used it myself; reputation is average. OneProvider has been selling it continuously, and the price is very affordable (as low as 5 bucks), but the IPs are basically all blocked. RFCHost's HK2 also seems to be on the LW route, at $20 monthly.
PCCW : Here this refers to PCCW-Global, which is actually the same company as HKT. PCCW-Global mainly provides IDC bandwidth, while HKT mainly focuses on business and residential broadband. Unless otherwise stated, all mentions of PCCW below refer to PCCW-Global. PCCW is considered one of the more stable routes from mainland China to Hong Kong, and also one of the few large-bandwidth routes that ordinary users can still afford, offering relatively good value. As far as I know, the earlier IDC doing Hong Kong PCCW was probably GigsGigsCloud; later, 搬瓦工 Hong Kong also connected to PCCW, but the value is not great ($9.99 for 100G traffic); later, DGCHost also brought its own PCCW route online. Personally, I recommend GigsGigsCloud, as it strikes a fairly balanced point between price and stability. 搬瓦工, on the other hand, is more expensive, and offers much less traffic compared with GigsGigsCloud. DGCHost is an IDC that people have a love-hate relationship with: run by one man, low-priced, and therefore often hit by DDoS; the owner is fairly casual and has a bad temper. Overall, the PCCW route is quite good. The main concerns are overselling by the provider and whether it will get DDoSed.
HKT、WTT、HKBN : These three are relatively expensive, basically costing dozens to a hundred dollars per month, with generous traffic allocations (possibly unlimited), making them very suitable for airport use. In addition, most of their IPs are dynamic, which helps avoid blocking. All three are Hong Kong carriers, and my personal ranking is HKT>WTT=HKBN. Whether in overall strength or route stability, HKT is unquestionably first, while WTT and HKBN lag somewhat behind. It is said that HKBN's international bandwidth is not very sufficient, and WTT is prone to QOS, so if you have the budget, go with HKT. Sellers include Pumpcloud, on9host, and so on. Many new providers have appeared recently, but since I'm not wealthy I haven't followed them closely. If you want a low-cost way to experience these routes, go buy the extremely popular NAT machines. Providers selling NAT machines mainly include HostHongKong、轻云、50VZ、HKHoster、Uovz、NatHosts, etc. Among them, HostHongKong uses the HGC route, which gets QOSed to mainland China, but obfuscation can get around it.
HK CN2 : CN2 stands for China Telecom Next Generation Carrier Network, abbreviated as CNCN and further shortened to CN2. It is a higher-priority route within China Telecom. So if your local ISP is China Telecom, you may want to choose CN2. One thing needs to be made clear: CN2 is indeed very expensive, and you can Google the specific pricing yourself. Most Hong Kong CN2 offerings are probably based on small pipes in Sha Tin, with high prices and low value (tens of yuan for a 1M port and tens of GB of traffic), making them suitable for hosting websites. So if you want to choose a CN2 route, look for Alibaba Cloud International! A 30M port, 1T traffic package, and $9—where else can you find that besides Alibaba Cloud International?! Only a giant like Alibaba can sustain that kind of loss. (Note: it must be the international site. As for how to register and verify, please Google it yourself.)
Taiwan's routes mainly include Hinet, Asia Pacific, GCE, TWM, and so on. Hinet routinely blows up during peak evening hours; Asia Pacific is overall pretty good; if you haven't used GCE before, you can bind a credit card and get a $300 quota to play with for a year; I don't know much about TWM and the others.
Of the ones currently on sale, I recommend only one: 云高, which uses the Asia Pacific route, offers native IPs, and has acceptable pricing. But it seems to have stopped sales recently, and reportedly will relaunch in June with a completely new look.
South Korea mainly has two routes, SK and KT. Prices are high, and neither is especially stable (they can blow up during peak evening hours).
The main providers include KDataCenter, Netdedi, 蘑菇主机, Ucloudbiz, and so on. I recommend KDataCenter and Ucloudbiz; overselling is not severe. Personally, I'm not especially interested in South Korea, because latency to the US is about the same as from mainland China (for visiting GitHub and so on), while the connection from mainland China to South Korea is itself unstable.
Japan is probably my favorite region. A good route to eastern China only takes 30–40ms, while to the US West Coast it only takes 110ms. So whether you're accessing local Japanese resources or US resources, it is an optimal choice. However, there has never really been a particularly stable route between Japan and China.
Japanese VPS are mainly provided by local Japanese IDC. Because Japanese law is relatively strict regarding hosting management, many Japanese hosting providers require buyers to complete identity verification.
Japan mainly has five kinds of routes:
NTT线路 : Probably the worst route, routinely overloaded (see Vultr), with a low entry barrier. No recommendation.
KDDI 线路: Since Linode stopped selling the JP1 region to the public, it has gradually become stable, and is considered one of the more stable routes to Japan at present. But basically no IDC is still selling KDDI routes, so there's no need to consider it.
IIJ线路 : Since last year, China Telecom has been blowing up during peak evening hours, while China Unicom has remained fairly stable. Recommended providers mainly include tsukaeru, 樱花Sakura, and IDCF. Unfortunately, all three require identity verification, and IDCF's verification is basically impossible to pass. The first two should be bidirectional IIJ, while IDCF uses BBTEC for return routing in some regions, so even if latency blows up during peak hours, speeds are still quite good. If you want to buy the above VPS, I suggest looking for a purchasing agent.
BBTEC线路 : Also known as the SoftBank route, it is probably currently the most stable route between China and Japan (excluding CN2). At present, the most common example is that Alibaba Cloud Japan uses bidirectional BBTEC to mainland China; secondly, Internap data centers sometimes use BBTEC. Alibaba Cloud Japan is relatively expensive, and the main purchasing methods are Alibaba Cloud Japan (best value), Alibaba Cloud International (no traffic package), and Cat.net (easy to buy). Among them, Alibaba Cloud Japan requires Japanese identity, making verification difficult. There are many domestic providers selling Internap, such as StarryDNS, HostKVM, 海星云, 景文互联, and so on, though bandwidth generally does not seem especially abundant. The reason I say Internap sometimes uses BBTEC is because it switches dynamically; it may use BBTEC today and KDDI tomorrow.
CN2线路 : I really haven't heard of many providers selling Japan CN2 routes, other than Capital Online. But Capital Online's Japan CN2 is said to be half-route CN2 and also very easy to overload, so there's no need to consider it.
North America used to mainly use the 163 route; later there was the higher-priority GT CN2 route, and later the even higher-priority GIA CN2 route. I've always wanted to find a North American route where speed ramps up very quickly, but perhaps limited by my local environment, I've never been able to find one.
We won't talk about the 163 route. Aside from blowing up during peak evening hours, it also seems not very stable at other times either.
The most prominent GT CN2 route is the C3 (Zenlayer) data center. Its performance is actually pretty average, but at least it's usable. Here I'd especially recommend RFCHost's LAX1 node, which is in the Zenlayer data center, but uses GIA CN2 on the return path.
GIA CN2 is probably the best North American route we can buy. Since this year, more and more providers have joined this route war. The earliest one doing GIA CN2 was Lizcat (now closed), then DGCHost, then Anchang (RFCHost's LAX2 node is in Anchang's data center), then GigsGigsCloud, then Hostdare (hosted in the Yunlei data center). In addition, many other providers' GIA CN2 offerings are hosted within DGCHost, so they are all more or less the same. Among them, Anchang is the most stable (relative to DGCHost and GigsGigsCloud); when the latter two blow up, Anchang still remains rock solid. I haven't bought Hostdare, so I won't comment on it.
Russia became popular mainly because people discovered that Vladivostok and Khabarovsk are very close to northern China and have relatively low latency to Japan (as low as 20ms), making them fairly ideal transit points.
I'm in southern China, so I haven't bought any, but the providers I recommend are RFCHost and ZeptoVM.
I've always felt Singapore is rather unnecessary. Its route quality to mainland China is average, and latency to the US is even higher than from mainland China. So, not recommended.
No demand, no familiarity, no comment.
Most people in the hosting圈 are active in Telegram groups. Here I'd like to recommend a few higher-quality groups/channels whose members are generally very helpful. However, I suggest paying attention to how you ask questions and your attitude when asking in these groups.
Affyun.com Route Discussion A group founded by Earphone-kun, very active. Affyun mainly has two websites: ServerCat, which contains some high-quality reviews worth recording; and Ping.cat, a route monitoring site with route monitoring for most IDC, making it very suitable for checking before purchase.
Affyun - Daily Push of New offers Earphone-kun posts some currently popular providers' offers to this channel, with frequent updates. Each offer includes a test IP and a relatively objective evaluation.
91yun Discount Express A channel affiliated with 91yun that recommends some providers and offers, though updates have not been very frequent this year. Actually, 91yun also has a group that's suitable for casual chatting. It's best not to ask questions before people recognize you, or you may get a one-way ticket.
Leonn's Blog A channel run by Leonn Blog, sharing various information including VPS. Recommended to follow.
I finished writing this in a hurry, and I feel many parts were not explained very clearly, mainly because there are simply too many related resources. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.