When you need better performance than shared hosting but don’t want to deal with higher cost/complexities of a VPS (and maybe you want to ditch cPanel), that’s when I would look at Scala Hosting – specifically the Entry Cloud plan or VPS Builds which support OpenLiteSpeed.
VPS plans can scale CPU/RAM while Entry Cloud has fixed resources (2 CPU cores + 2 GB RAM) and only scales storage. Both use 4 GHz processors, NVMe SSDs, and don’t restrict disk I/O or inodes. Both also use dedicated resources, making them more powerful than something like SiteGround’s GoGeek plan which is still shared hosting. Compared to Cloudways, CPU cores + RAM cost less on a VPS, SPanel is lightweight (Cloudways is not), and you’ll get OpenLiteSpeed.
Compared to MechanicWeb, KnownHost, and NameHero’s VPS, these cost more especially when factoring in cPanel, LiteSpeed, and Imunify360 licenses. Scala gives you more CPU/RAM for less with free SPanel, OpenLiteSpeed, and SShield. Scala uses 4 GHz CPUs from Intel Xeon Gold 6444Y + 2600 MHz RAM and MechanicWeb uses 5.7 GHz AMD Ryzen CPUs + 5600 MT/s RAM.
SPanel is Scala Hosting’s biggest differentiator and the most innovated custom control panel I’ve used: feature-rich but lightweight and not much harder to learn than cPanel. You can watch their SPanel YouTube series, request a demo, and give feedback/suggestions which I appreciate.
Chris and Vlad are genuinely good people and their team does free migrations. If you check their TrustPilot reviews, people often move from SiteGround/Hostinger and other shared hosts.
- Spreadsheets: mostly green
- WP Hosting Benchmark score: 7.8/10
- Stack: 4 GHz CPUs, NVMe SSDs, LiteSpeed, Redis
- Resource limits: no software restrictions
- SPanel: saves money on VPS licenses
- Add-ons: build and customize your VPS
- Server locations: 13 (US, EU, Asia)
- Cons: shared hosting, support, documentation
- Walkthrough: How to set up your VPS (11 steps)
- Entry Cloud: a balance between shared and VPS
1. Spreadsheets: Mostly Green
View in Google Sheets for a better experience. See the managed VPS spreadsheet when comparing their VPS plans and the cloud hosting spreadsheet when comparing Entry Cloud.
2. WP Hosting Benchmark Score: 7.8/10
The WordPress Hosting Benchmark Tool Plugin is better at measuring hosting performance than tools like PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. Instead of testing TTFB which has several factors, it performs hosting-specific tests like CPU, memory, database, and object cache tests.
After setting up the demo site (scalavpstest.com) on their VPS Build #1 plan, then configuring LiteSpeed Cache (including Redis and QUIC.cloud CDN), I was able to get a total score of 7.8/10. Anton (the developer of the plugin) shared tips for improving scores if you want to dig deeper.
3. 4 GHz CPUs, NVMe SSDs, LiteSpeed
Scala recently switched to Intel Xeon Gold 6444Y processors.
At 4 GHz, these have some of the highest frequencies in both the VPS and managed cloud spreadsheets, including the Intel Skylake processors used on Vultr High Frequency via Cloudways where clock speeds reach 3.8 GHz. Performance has everything to do with CPUs.
Both LiteSpeed’s server and PHP processing are faster than Apache, and the LiteSpeed Cache plugin is miles ahead of most cache plugins. LiteSpeed is also more CPU and memory efficient.
Scala also uses SDS (software defined storage) where each file is stored in chunks of 1MB on 3 different NVMe drives, so when you read/write data, it happens 3x faster than read/writing to a single NVMe drive. This gives them an advantage to most self-managed public cloud providers.
4. Resource Limits: No Software Restrictions
Entry Cloud (and VPS plans) don’t have limits on inodes, disk I/O, CPU usage.
Resources are used efficiently between LiteSpeed servers (more efficient than Apache), SPanel (uses less resources than cPanel), and no software restrictions (unlike shared plans).
5. SPanel: Saves Money On VPS Licenses
Licenses can be the most expensive part of a VPS, especially after cPanel’s price increase. There’s usually no need to buy licenses between their SPanel, SShield, and OpenLiteSpeed.
- LiteSpeed Enterprise – while it has benefits over OpenLiteSpeed (like a more powerful cache engine), both let you use the LiteSpeed Cache plugin, QUIC.cloud CDN, etc. If you’re OK using OpenLiteSpeed, you don’t need to purchase a license. This can usually save $10/mo if you were to buy the cheapest Site Owner license.
- cPanel accounts – many VPS plans come with 1 cPanel account, but additional accounts cost around $18/mo. SPanel lets you create unlimited accounts for free.
- Imunify360 – replaced by SShield which saves about $10/mo on an Imunify360 license for a single cPanel user. SShield blocks 99.998% of attacks with real-time malware scans. You get a firewall, outbound spam protection, mod_security, and blacklist monitoring (which includes contacting the blacklist to get it unblocked).
- Softaculous – SPanel has a 1-click installer (some hosts charge about $1.50/mo).
What I Think About SPanel
I usually have a gripe about custom panels (bugs, too limited, or missing features are the big ones). I can’t say the same about SPanel; they’ve clearly spent lots of time/money on it with a constant feedback loop at features.spanel.io (EVERY custom control panel should have this). Things are easy to find (great since I test many hosts), but still robust with no missing features I could see. It could just be my favorite custom hosting control panel… they even built spanel.io.
This YouTube playlist has 31 tutorials on SPanel, or here are a couple others:
6. Add-Ons: Build And Customize Your VPS
I like how you can scale CPU cores, RAM, and storage separately, as opposed to having predetermined amounts like other hosts do. Adding more resources is pretty cheap too.
- Extra 1 CPU core: $7/mo
- Extra 2GB RAM: $4/mo
- Extra 10GB SSD storage: $2/mo
7. Server Locations: 13 (US, EU, Asia)
Their data center page says:
Our customer can choose from our native infrastructure in Dallas-US, New York-US, Sofia-EU… or from the integrated AWS data centers in Ohio, Virginia, Oregon (US), Montreal (Canada), London (UK), Paris (France), Frankfurt (Germany), Ireland, Singapore, Mumbai (India), Tokyo (Japan), Seoul (South Korea) and Sydney (Australia).
8. Cons: Shared Hosting, Support, Documentation
- No LiteSpeed/Nginx support on shared hosting – if you go to their WordPress Hosting page and click “COMPARE ALL PLAN FEATURES,” you’ll see a comparison table. It shows shared plans don’t support OpenLiteSpeed, LiteSpeed Enterprise, or Nginx. Sorry, but if you’re not letting me use either of these, I’m already gone.
- Support – can be slow to respond and there’s a lack of onboarding. The main thing I needed them for was installing Redis, but for important tasks like moving sites, try to get a knowledgeable agent or consider having a developer on standby.
- Documentation – some articles in the knowledge base are generic and not very helpful. One critical review explained how their docs only show you how to use their services, but not integrate with third-parties (domains/emails for example).
9. Walkthrough: How To Set Up Your VPS (11 Steps)
Step 1: Choose your VPS plan, data center, and customize resources at checkout. Leave “LiteSpeed Web Server” as no to use OpenLiteSpeed (free) or select a LiteSpeed Web Server license (view license differences). You get the discounted price for 1 or 3 years backed by a 30-day money back guarantee (full refund) and an anytime money back guarantee (partial refund).
Step 2: Once signed up, you’ll get an email with your nameservers, server IP, and SPanel link.
Step 3: 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 4: Select Web Server Manager and switch to OpenLiteSpeed.
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>Step 5: Whitelist your IP in CSF firewall. When you switch to OLS, that page includes your IP.
Go to Server Management → Firewall → paste your IP address.
Step 6: Find nameservers in Server Information and change them in your domain registrar.
Step 7: Install WordPress/SSL by going to Manage Account → Actions → Manage. You’ll be taken to the main dashboard where you can install WordPress via SWordPress Manager, Let’s Encrypt SSL, view resource usage, and perform similar actions as cPanel. Here’s a screenshot:
Step 8: Often not needed, but you can configure PHP settings in PHP Manager → PHP INI Editor.
Step 9: 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 configuring these, purge the object cache.
Step 10: Use my LiteSpeed Cache tutorial to configure everything else, including QUIC.cloud’s CDN. After setting up QUIC.cloud, be sure to switch from QUIC.cloud’s free plan to standard plan ($.02 – $.08/GB) to ensure you’re using all 82+ PoPs with DDoS protection. Also make sure to use QUIC’s DNS for better geographic routing. Takes more time than WP Rocket, but worth it.
Please reach out to me if you need help configuring LiteSpeed Cache + QUIC.cloud CDN, especially if you’re struggling with scores in testing tools.
Step 11: 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 closests data center.
Bonus tip: connect to your server vis SSH using port 6543 (default for their VPS plans).
10. Entry Cloud: A Balance Between Shared And VPS
Entry Cloud is a step up from shared hosting with similar performance/specs as a VPS (dedicated resources, 4 GHz CPU, upgradable NVMe storage, less resource limits). But like shared hosting, CPU cores + RAM aren’t scalable. Compared to something like SiteGround’s GoGeek plan, you get dedicated cores + RAM, 2.5x NVMe storage, LiteSpeed Enterprise, no CPU second or inode restrictions, and free malware scans. TLDR: if you’re paying $15-$20/month for a shared plan, Entry Cloud should give you significantly better performance and has less limits.
Quick Specs/Numbers Of Entry Cloud
- 2 CPU cores + 2GB RAM.
- 50GB upgradable NVMe storage.
- Dedicated resources (not shared).
- Same 4 GHz CPUs used on VPS plans.
- No restrictions on inodes or disk I/O (like a VPS).
- LiteSpeed Enterprise for 1 site (must request from support).
- Price is $14.95/month (3 year signup) or $19.95/month (1 year signup).
- Resources are usually enough for thousands of daily visitors on 1 brochure site.
Entry Cloud is listed in the cloud hosting spreadsheet, but you may want to view the shared hosting spreadsheet to compare it against plans from SiteGround, Bluehost, etc.
Scala Hosting In Facebook Groups
Very hard to get unbiased feedback on smaller hosts these days because of SiteGround’s , Reddit’s biased friends of /r/webhosting, and review sites (TrustPilot, Facebook reviews, GMB) are usually solicited. Anyway, here’s what I found on Scala.
107/111 people gave Scala’s VPS plan 5 stars on TrustPilot. Much more positive than the VPS reviews at Hostinger, FastComet, InMotion, and other hosts. Many of these were solicited by “Dimitar.” Not all of them are, but I suggest reading through them before buying. The other 4 reviews were complaints on dedicated IPs, docs, same performance when downgrading their VPS, and how upgrading to their VPS (from Scala’s shared hosting) resulted in a better service.
Hope this helped! Lmk if you have questions about configuring things for better scores/TTFB.
Give them a try: scalahosting.com
Cheers,
Tom
