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A budget KVM VPS host whose entire pitch is China-optimised routing: CN2 GIA from $40.99/year, plain Los Angeles NVMe from $19.49/year — and all three discount codes recur, so renewals cost the same as the first term.

Rating
3.4 3.4 out of 5
Starting price $19.49 per year (Los Angeles SSD0 NVMe on the promo page; the same plan code is $25.99/year on the standard page); on the China-optimised lines CKVM1 is $55.99/year and CSSD0 is $40.99/year
Free trial No
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Pros

  • $19.49/year buys 768 MB of RAM, 10 GB of NVMe and 500 GB of transfer with a 1 Gbps port and a /64 IPv6 block — hard to fault at this price
  • The China-optimised line reaches $40.99/year on CSSD0, and few hosts this cheap name CN2 GIA explicitly on the price list
  • All three promo codes recur (25% Los Angeles, 10% Japan, 10% Bulgaria) rather than being a first-year teaser, and are valid on annual and multi-year plans — so the real Los Angeles entry price is the listed price times 0.75
  • Los Angeles, Japan and Bulgaria sit on one account, so you can pick a location by latency; every plan is KVM-isolated with full root and instant provisioning
  • Nothing in the terms bans Docker or containers, and KVM with full root lets you install your own stack; Windows runs from the 2 GB tier up if you supply the licence
  • Some plans can be upgraded to a 100 mbps port or have RAM and transfer doubled by opening a ticket, so the cheap tiers are not a dead end
  • The vendor publishes speed-test files for both the Los Angeles and the CN2 GIA networks, so you can measure the route yourself before paying instead of trusting a label
  • Shared hosting starts at $1.99/month with a free domain on annual terms, so a single site does not require a VPS

Cons

  • The terms exclude promotional orders bought with a discount code from refunds — and a discount code is the cheapest way to buy here, so budget that payment as non-refundable
  • The refund window carries three different numbers on the vendor's own pages: 3 days in the ToS, 30 days in the banner on that same page and on the shared-hosting page, and '3 Day Money Back Guarantee' on the homepage — plan on the harshest one
  • Even inside 3 days, refunds are first order only, the reason is judged by management, abusive accounts are excluded and $0.50 to $1 is deducted; the VPS pages add that a request can be refused once you have used 20% or more of your monthly bandwidth
  • Backups are on you: the ToS Backups section says there are no weekly backups, that customers should not rely on the vendor, and that the vendor is not liable for data loss — while the shared-hosting page advertises automatic weekly backups
  • Mixed billing periods make comparison hard: annual, quarterly and monthly share one price list, CKVM2 to CKVM3 nearly triples the effective annual cost, and the homepage card prices match none of the 11 product pages
  • One limitation of the China-optimised route appears only in the vendor's knowledgebase: the GIA is one-way, optimised to Chinese home broadband, and not optimised from servers inside China — verify it with the published speed-test files first

Score breakdown

Features 3.5
Ease of use 3.0
Value for money 4.0
Support 3.0

Pricing

SSD0 (Los Angeles NVMe, not China-optimised)

$19.49 per year (promo-page price, requires the 25% code XY604XMHXK)

  • 1 vCPU core, 768 MB RAM, 10 GB NVMe, 500 GB monthly transfer on a 1 Gbps port, one IPv4 plus a /64 IPv6 block
  • The cheapest plan the company sells; same host, same virtualisation, just no optimised return route
  • The same SSD0 code is $25.99/year with 512 MB of RAM on the standard page, so the two pages do not agree on the specification; SSD1, SSD2 and ASSD0–ASSD2 come out at exactly 75% of their standard price

CKVM1 (China-optimised CN2 GIA, HDD)

$55.99 per year

  • 1 vCPU core, 756 MB RAM, 35 GB HDD, 500 GB monthly transfer on a 50 mbps port
  • The cheapest entry to the China-optimised line and the baseline for what the GIA premium actually buys
  • The series switches to quarterly billing at CKVM3 ($80.99/quarter) and monthly at CKVM4 — three billing periods in one table

CSSD0 (China-optimised CN2 GIA, NVMe)

$40.99 per year

  • 1 vCPU core, 768 MB RAM, 10 GB NVMe, 250 GB monthly transfer on a 30 mbps port
  • $15/year cheaper than the equivalent CKVM plan, at the cost of half the transfer and a slower port
  • Same billing break as CKVM: quarterly from CSSD3, monthly from CSSD4

Starter shared hosting (cPanel)

$1.99 per month

  • Single domain, unlimited SSD space, unmetered bandwidth, 10 MySQL databases
  • Shared hosting is advertised with a 30-day money-back guarantee while VPS plans get 3 days
  • The page promises automatic weekly backups of the whole account, which the ToS Backups section denies

Recurring discount codes (published on the promo page)

— recurring, annual and multi-year terms only

  • Los Angeles 25%: XY604XMHXK; Japan 10%: WWP2OEG8IM; Bulgaria 10%: QQKF3H319D
  • The vendor states plainly that 'Discount Coupons are valid on annual and multi-year plans'
  • The catch is in the ToS: promotional orders bought with a discount code are excluded from refunds

Who it is for

  • Budget-first buyers who want a root-access KVM box for under $25/year — take the plain Los Angeles line with the recurring 25% code
  • Users who specifically need an optimised China return route and are willing to verify it with the vendor's own speed-test files first
  • Hobbyists and personal projects that want an annual bargain, do not need managed backups and will keep their own off-site copies
  • Buyers who need a Windows VPS and already own a licence (2 GB tiers and up), or who want to start small and pay to upgrade the port and RAM later
  • Anyone choosing between Los Angeles, Japan and Bulgaria by latency without paying for three separate accounts
  • Annual payers who want the renewal locked to the same price — all three codes recur rather than discounting only the first term
  • Anyone who wants a box that can run Docker and a custom stack — the terms do not ban containers and KVM gives full root
  • Someone who only needs to host one site: shared hosting from $1.99/month with a free domain on annual terms

Alternatives

InterServer

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Starting price: $2.50 first month, then $7/month

Best for: Anyone who has been burned by a renewal invoice and now compares the post-discount rate first: $7/month against SiteGround's $17.99, about $220 saved over three years

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VPS.org

Root-access cloud VPS from $2.50/month, billed hourly with a monthly cap — 11 plans from 512 MB to 96 GB, and upgrades keep your data and IP.

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Starting price: $2.50 per month, billed hourly and capped at 672 hours

Best for: Developers who want root access and are willing to run their own server

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Vultr

Hourly cloud compute and per-GPU hourly GPU rental — from $2.50/month for 1 vCPU and 0.5 GB of RAM, with the first tier that has usable memory at $6, up to 192 vCPU and an NVIDIA A16 at $0.471 per GPU per hour.

4.2 4.2 out of 5
Starting price: $2.50 per month; each plan is listed with both an hourly and a monthly price

Best for: Work that needs GPU compute for a few hours rather than a permanent GPU server — per-GPU hourly billing keeps an experiment at a few dollars

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