About Vultr
Vultr is a VPS provider which offers KVM VPSes in 14 locations, all with pure SSDs and 10Gbit connections. They also allow hourly-billing and custom ISOs. On top of this, they use only Intel E3 and E5 CPUs and will allow you to use the full core, so they are perfect for running game servers, etc.
They have 8 locations in the US (Seattle, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, New Jersey), 4 locations in Europe (England/UK, France, Germany, Netherlands) and 2 locations in Asia/Pacific (Japan, Australia).
A huge advantage Vultr has over Digital Ocean, and other competitors is they allow custom ISOs, so you can install Windows (you will need to integrate VirtIO drivers however, so see my guide here on how to do that).
Note: Vultr currently has a $20 free credit offer which you can see here
Speed Tests
Here are some speed tests from a server in each location (US, Europe and Asia). Each server is the lowest plan Vultr offer (was $5/month, now $2.50/month) and running Debian 7 (x64)
New York, USA speedtest
Speedtest to New York, America
Paris, France speedtest
Speedtest to Paris, France
Tokyo, Japan speedtest
Speedtest to Fussa, Japan
FreeVPS Benchmarks
Here are some benchmarks using the FreeVPS bench.sh script. Each server is the lowest plan Vultr offer (was $5/month, now $2.50/month for 512MB) and running Debian 7 (x64)
New York, USA benchmark
CPU model : Virtual CPU e7da7129d3ee
Number of cores : 1
CPU frequency : 2399.996 MHz
Total amount of ram : 748 MB
Total amount of swap : 0 MB
System uptime : 16 min,
Download speed from CacheFly: 83.4MB/s
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 5.94MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 6.66MB/s
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 2.04MB/s
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 3.01MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 31.2MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 1.40MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 5.11MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 4.62MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 31.6MB/s
I/O speed : 417 MB/s
France benchmark
CPU model : Virtual CPU e7da7129d3ee
Number of cores : 1
CPU frequency : 2399.996 MHz
Total amount of ram : 748 MB
Total amount of swap : 0 MB
System uptime : 32 min,
Download speed from CacheFly: 20.9MB/s
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 1.86MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 3.02MB/s
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 1.20MB/s
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 12.9MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 3.73MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 1.39MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 2.48MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 2.28MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 3.86MB/s
I/O speed : 440 MB/s
Japan benchmark
CPU model : Virtual CPU e7da7129d3ee
Number of cores : 1
CPU frequency : 2399.996 MHz
Total amount of ram : 748 MB
Total amount of swap : 0 MB
System uptime : 35 min,
Download speed from CacheFly: 229MB/s
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 1.79MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 2.46MB/s
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 100MB/s
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 993KB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 3.08MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 4.52MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 3.52MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 3.29MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 2.14MB/s
I/O speed : 197 MB/s
Support
I have never needed support from Vultr so I can’t comment on this, but plenty of people are happy with them.
Conclusion
Vultr is a great host, with plenty of features, an amazing choice of locations, and the performance is great. If you want to run something that’s CPU intensive (virtual desktop, game server, etc.) or Windows, then this is a great option.
