No, this is not a paid review. Yes, I will be dropping affiliate links. To quote NickyCakes (via Twitter), “I always chuckle when I get accused of using affiliate links on an affiliate marketing blog.” Nonetheless, this is my honest review. Like it or not.

I opened a VPS hosting account with Jaguar PC about six months ago. Although their dirt cheap prices had me skeptical about the quality of service, I decided to give it a shot anyway (yes I realize that sounds like a scammy review site review comment). I needed a home for some new phpbay sites.

I was referred to Jaguar by a friend who told me they were the best host I would find at such a cheap price, even though his account had been terminated for some shady shenanigans. Because of this, if you’re looking for a new host to facilitate your unethical ebony hat business practices, I regret to inform you that Jaguar PC may not be your best option.

Not for Noobs

Although the sign up/payment/setup process was relatively easy, they don’t hold your hand and walk you through it. No colorful advertisements, no hard upsells, no laymen step by step tutorials, no GoDaddy.

I purchased the cheapest Linux VPS package with Fantastico ($2/mo) plus 5 additional IPs which runs me about 28 bucks a month. Right now, if you sign up for the same fully managed package using coupon code VPS10YEARS, it includes the following:

• Root Access
• Unlimited Domains
• 320mb Guaranteed Ram
• 25gb Disk Space
• Choice of cPanel, Interworx, DirectAdmin, Plesk
• Some other crap I can’t remember

Extra IPs are $1 a piece (billed annually) and come in blocks of five. There are plenty of other add-ons available as well.

Support

I was expecting support to suck ass because of the affordability of this host. They do not offer phone support, but they are pretty freakin’ quick when it comes to responding to tickets, and they seem to know what they’re doing. Most issues are resolved in 1-2 tickets (in my experience).

Customer Service

Fine and dandy. When an attorney from a rather large company contacted my host about one of my infringing sites, Jaguar PC was kind enough to contact me and let me know about the situation FIRST, before going and deleting my shit. I’ve had experiences with other hosts where they will not only fold like little bitches and delete my entire site and its associated databases, but they will also delete every single other site on the account. Since Jaguar PC was courteous about it and disclosed everything to me without revealing any of my personal info to the attorney in question, I went ahead and moved the site to a different host (overseas) to alleviate them of any further headaches. This extension of courtesy is one of the main reasons I decided to write this review in the first place.

Why You Need a VPS

If you’re still using shared hosting, consider that a problem. If you don’t want to spend the money on a dedicated server, VPS is the way to go.

The problem with shared hosting is that you are sharing an IP address with a bunch of random sites. If there are a ton of shitty spammy sites on the same IP as yours (which is very likely since you’re on a shared host), it is my belief as well as that of several other SEOs (first and last time I ever refer to myself as one) that Google penalizes all the sites on the IP it knows is notorious for bullshit. I’ve had legitimate sites that just couldn’t rank no matter what I did on shared hosting accounts that leaped to the front of the SERPs after moving them to a dedicated IP (or at least an IP I controlled with few sites on it).

Now that I think about it, this site (offwhitehat) is on an old shitty GoDaddy shared hosting account. There are probably tons of worthless sites on this IP. I just don’t really care all that much about it to bother moving it. Maybe one day.

Well, there you have it. That’s my review. I’m outta this nerd fest.


EDIT: I should also mention that in the six months I’ve been with Jaguar PC, I haven’t experienced any downtime whatsoever. Granted I don’t check my sites every 10 seconds, but there have been no major outages that I know of (or minor, for that matter).