ScalaHosting Review: VPS With Top 2% Fastest CPUs, OpenLiteSpeed On SPanel, And ~60% Less vs. Cloudways/SiteGround

If you’re using Cloudways, Hostinger’s VPS, or SiteGround’s cloud hosting— make sure you’re not getting screwed.

You’re probably paying 60% more than building a VPS at Scala while upgrading from high CPU usage or 503 errors (due to limits on disk I/O, CPU steal, or Cloudways’ poor performance from extra overhead and inefficient stack). Which is why they have so many complaints about 100% CPU usage, throttling, or suspensions. Instead of a VPS with dedicated resources, you’re getting similar limits as shared hosting, then hit with expensive scaling costs and performance add-ons.

 

1. AMD EPYC 9474F CPUs

ScalaHosting’s new AMD EPYC 9474F CPUs have slightly higher 4.1 GHz clock speeds than 3.8 GHz Vultr High Frequency and the highest multithread rating of all hosts in the spreadsheets whose CPU model can be identified (they list it on their website and is also listed on PassMark). Multithread performance is good for high concurrency (simultaneous users) and dynamic sites.

 

2. ~60% Less Than Cloudways And SiteGround

On Cloudways, a 3 vCPU + 8GB RAM Vultr High Frequency server is $118/mo. You get a lot of storage, but a waste of money if you don’t need it since you can’t scale resources individually.

Cloudways has lots of complaints about 100% CPU usage, so if you wanted a CPU Optimized server with 4 vCPUs + 8GB RAM, it’s actually $141/mo. Add the cost of add-ons like $4/mo per site for malware scans via Imunify360 and $5/mo per site for a restricted Cloudflare Enterprise.

On SiteGround cloud, a 4 CPU core + 8GB RAM server is $100/mo and adding just 1GB RAM costs a whopping $10/month. You’ll pay ~$4/mo for malware scans, $14.99/mo for their CDN (which is inferior to Cloudflare), $30/site migrations, and $5/mo if you want premium backups.

Hostinger’s VPS is so cheap because of low CPU limits and is unmanaged. Plus, scam reports!

MechanicWeb’s VPS includes cPanel Solo and OpenLiteSpeed, but not a security solution, so you’ll need Imunify360. KnownHost’s VPS doesn’t include cPanel/OpenLiteSpeed/Imunify360, so you’ll need 2-3 extra licenses. And neither VPS lets you scale cores, RAM, storage individually.

ScalaHosting’s Build #2 VPS has 4 cores/8GB RAM and is $40.45/mo or $35.95/mo when you reduce the storage to 50GB with a $81.95/mo renewal after 1 or 3 years (I used this plan as an example to compare it to SiteGround’s smallest server size). You can add or remove resources individually for $3 per CPU core and $1 per 1GB RAM. There is usually no need to buy add-ons between SPanel, OpenLiteSpeed, free migrations, free malware scans, and LiteSpeed Cache.

 

3. No VPS limits Like Hostinger/SiteGround

Entry Cloud and VPS plans have no limits other than the resources you select.

SiteGround’s cloud hosting shares disk I/O and is known for 503 errors. They don’t actually specify what the I/O limit is, but when you hit it, blames bots, plugins, heartbeat, and your site.

Hostinger’s VPS CPU steal limits are why their KVM 8 plan (with 8 vCPU cores + 32GB RAM) can’t even handle an Alma install with nothing else installed on the server. Which is why it’s so cheap.

What happens when you exceed limits?

SiteGround suspends your account until you upgrade (or monthly limits are reset), Hostinger will throttle you, and both have an alarming amount of complaints about deletion or data loss. ScalaHosting sends you an email asking you to upgrade but doesn’t pull the other shenanigans.

 

4. Lightweight SPanel With OpenLiteSpeed

SPanel is similar to cPanel, except it:

Their YouTube playlist has a lot of tutorials or request a demo.

 

5. OpenLiteSpeed vs. LiteSpeed Enterprise

OpenLiteSpeed is free, LiteSpeed Enterprise costs money.

So if you’re wondering why “LiteSpeed Web Server” is on the checkout page, it’s LiteSpeed Enterprise. This does have advantages (like a more powerful cache engine), but OLS is still significantly better than Apache with less resource usage and you can still use LSC and QUIC.

You can switch to OpenLiteSpeed in the Web Server Manager.

Add the code to your .htaccess file, then restart the server in SPanel (Server Management → Restart Server). This is required to manually clear the cache, otherwise you’ll get 404 errors.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^/index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

 

6. Cons: Renewals, Documentation, A Few Downtime Reports

Their documentation can be generic and is more like a blog written for SEO. Leave the documentation for details about ScalaHosting, not educate me on definitions and benefits.

Wish they had more affordable monthly pricing. VPS plans have a shared hosting pricing model with cheaper intro prices for 1 or 3 years, then higher renewals that jump about 200%.

They have 1 downtime report on TrustPilot from a DDoS attack and a downtime report in 2014.

 

7. Entry Cloud As An Upgrade From Shared Hosting

If you need to upgrade from something like SiteGround GoGeek (or any shared hosting), Entry Cloud is a small VPS with 2 cores + 2GB RAM (still dedicated with no limits and OpenLiteSpeed) for $13.45/month. Which is actually a better value than their Build VPS plans if you do the math.

Make sure you monitor CPU/RAM usage in SPanel to see where you fall. But with dedicated resources and efficient CPUs/SPanel, usage should be lower than shared hosting on cPanel.

 

8. Set Up Your VPS In 7 Steps

Step 1: Choose your plan, data center, and customize your resources at checkout. Leave “LiteSpeed Web Server” as no to use OpenLiteSpeed or Nginx. This is covered by a 30-day money back guarantee (full refund) and an anytime money back guarantee (partial refund).

Once signed up, you’ll get an email with your nameservers, server IP, and SPanel link.

Step 2: In SPanel, Create a new account and add your domain/login details. If you’re taking them up on free migrations, open a ticket and provide them with your old host’s login details.

In addition to setting custom limits and disabling certain features, you also have the option to add users to SPanel with limited access (i.e. they only have access to databases or emails only).

Step 3: Whitelist your IP in CSF firewall. If you switched to OpenLiteSpeed, that page has your IP.

Go to Server Management → Firewall → paste your IP address.

Step 4: Find nameservers in Server Information and change them in your domain registrar.

Step 5: Head to Manage Account → Actions → Manage. Here you can use the WordPress Manager, install Let’s Encrypt SSL, view resource usage, and perform similar actions as cPanel.

If needed, configure PHP settings in PHP Manager → PHP INI Editor.

Step 6: Request Redis from Scala Hosting’s support (or use Memcached which is installed automatically by default). Once they confirm Redis is installed, install the LiteSpeed Cache plugin. Go to Cache → Object → Object Cache → On. Select Redis and use port 6379. If you have multiple sites using Redis, each one should have a unique Redis Database ID (0, 1, 2, etc).

When you’re done, purge object cache and ensure it’s working.

Step 7: Use my LiteSpeed Cache tutorial to configure everything else, including QUIC.cloud’s standard plan or Cloudflare with full page caching (e.g. through the Super Page Cache plugin).

Finally, test your TTFB in KeyCDN or SpeedVitals, then your hosting performance in the WordPress Hosting Benchmark Tool plugin. Always run multiple (3-5) tests to ensure accurate results. This ensures resources are cached and also served from your CDN’s closest data center.

Bonus tip: connect to your server via SSH using port 6543 (default for their VPS plans).

 

9. 13 Server Locations

Find these on their data center page.

Or at checkout:

 

10. Shared Plans Also Got A Boost

Their shared plans use the new CPUs, now use LiteSpeed, and got a bump in CPU usage.

4.1 GHz on shared hosting is damn good. But they’re definitely more known for their VPS and Entry Cloud plans. I would really stay clear of shared hosting all together if your budget allows.

Support

ScalaHosting’s support isn’t as good as Rocket.net’s, but it’s still good. They’ve been able to fix every question and problem I’ve had so far. But that’s something you gotta experience yourself.

Cheers,
Tom