I was recently offered credit on Hostman for an honest review. I love tinkering with hosting providers and jumped on the opportunity. Hostman is a hosting provider offering virtual private servers with great selection of features that make it stand out from the crowd. As with most things, it's all about what features you need and how much you can afford. Hostman has many amazing features at a great price point that you should consider if you're looking for a VPS.

Check out this list of features to see what Hostman can do for you.

They don't do a monthly fee for the servers. Everything is priced per hour or per GB in the case of backups. How it works is you add money to your account and they use that to pay for what you use. I love this setup because your never locked into a plan that may not be what you need. It can be a cheap way to test out software or server configurations. It's also great for those who have their server needs change frequently.

Let's talk about the main feature of Hostman: servers. You can quickly setup a server with Ubuntu, Debian, or CentOS with a few version options for each. You'll need to select what region you want based on your needs and availability. There are many plan options that all come with NVMe storage ranging from $0.01 / hour to $0.10 / hour. They also show how much it would cost to run for a month, $4-$75 / month. You have the option for backups which cost $0.07 / GB. A nice feature is the ability to upload a public SSH key here or select a previously uploaded key to use for the server. There's a spot to enter a cloud-init script which I have not messed around with yet. The last options to configure are the server name and project. 

If you want to quickly test or setup some software, you can use one of their 25 prebuilt images. I tested Nextcloud and Firefly III and they worked great with very little effort on my part. All I needed to do was configure the firewall rules which is incredibly easy with their firewall configuration. I'll talk more about that in a later section. If you're software isn't in their images, you have the option to upload an image or use a url to an image.

The option to create a database server with just a few clicks is a great feature to have. You can segment your database to a private network that only your servers have access to. I get into private networks a bit later. They have MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, and MongoDB ready to go at the push of a button. You just need to select your plan and supply the database name and user password. The prices are reasonable and range from $0.01 / hour to $0.79 / hour or $9 / month to $576 / month. Once you have the server up, you can mange the databases and users through your dashboard. It makes a complicated setup incredibly easy.

As far as credentials, you can use the root account or public keys. You can get the root password or change it from your dashboard. I wasn’t fond of how the root password gets changed. You select the option to change it then it changes it to an auto generated one. I’d rather have to option to enter my own. Most servers should have root disabled so it shouldn’t really be an issue. Being able to upload your SSH key once to your dashboard and having it available for all servers is a rather nice feature. It worked great for my testing and am very happy with it.

You can create different firewall rule sets, then assign them to whichever servers need them. This is a great feature so you only need to change the rule in one place. You have the option to assign multiple rule sets to a server for more fine grained control. If you’re using one of the images, you’ll need to create a rule set to make it accessible to the public. I really like this feature for the ease of use and functionality.

When creating the load balancer you can select the region and plan you need. The plans are $0.01 / hour ($5 / month) for 1 node or $0.02 / hour ($12 / month) for 2 nodes. After that you can assign which servers you want to add to it. You have the option to configure simple rules or go the advanced route and set exactly how you want it to behave. This is a quick way to get something setup without having to do all the heavy lifting yourself.

For all of the servers, you can give it a private network to limit accessibility and increase security. This is great for databases and load balancing. You're able to pick which private IPv4 addressing scheme you want.

Hostman has many great features for you to consider at a great price point. The ability to only pay for the hours you need it is great and cost effective. The simplicity of getting servers with preinstalled software, databases, and load balancer makes this a great VPS solution. The added bonus of SSH key management and firewall rule management is just a great addition to their selection of servers. I would recommend Hostman if you're in the market for a VPS or looking for a new provider.

If you’d like to give Hostman a try and sign up with my link, https://hostman.com/r/ju69858, you’ll recieve $50 in credit after you add $10 to your account.