SSD Nodes Review – The Inexpensive VPS

Why did I write this SSD Nodes review? Well, in 2019 I got tired of shared hosting speed/downtime and decided to move to a VPS.

Since I had zero experience with running servers, I moved to Temok’s Managed Digital Ocean service, 1vCPU/1GB CentOS7. I paid $44 for 6 months.

The price was reasonable compared to other VPS providers, and their service was awesome. In the process I also learned how to manage a VPS and I am really grateful for that.

However very soon I found that my downtime problems didn’t get solved. 1 CPU/1 GB wasn’t enough – simply because the processes running on the server itself use resources.

Since I don’t use a lot of email, I ended up turning off SpamAssasin and ClamAV, which made things better, however I was still getting an “Unable to connect to database” error every few days (database server issue) and sometimes a “Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site” screen (the DNS server went offline).

After much investigation I had to accept the fact that these things would happen whenever I ran out of resources (when my CPU/RAM hit 100%) As a solution, I would need to manually restart the server each time.

If I didn’t notice, my site was down for hours, which caused a decrease in my affiliate commissions.

Finally I upgraded to 2 vCPU/2 GB RAM, which solved all my problems – my site was faster than before and I had no downtime.

However my hosting bill went up to $106 for 6 months. I wanted to decrease this cost, therefore I started to search for a different solution.

My Initial Contact With SSD Nodes

This is when I came across SSD Nodes. 2 CPU and 8 GB RAM for $49/year sounded too good to be true.

I carefully looked at the terms – I had to pay for 3 years in order to get this rate.

Since I was already supposed to pay $106 for 6 months with my current host, and with other VPS providers I would have paid $40-$80 a month, $147 for 3 years seemed to be an awesome deal in terms of price.

And I was looking for a long-term solution… I moved some of my sites 3 times and I really wasn’t looking for more migration.

14-day money back guarantee, after that they only give account credit if you decide you don’t like their services.

I reached out to their customer support team.

Hello,

I have seen your awesome prices.

My only concern is that currently I am using a managed VPS with
CentOS, it was all set up for me and troubleshooting problems is
provided.

Do you have such help available?

Regards,

Peter Nyiri

I received an answer to my ticket in 4 hours (on a weekend):

Hi Peter,

We are an unmanaged service provider, which means we don’t make any changes to customer servers, nor do we manage any of their configurations. We do not offer managed servers but we could help with basic system admin task.

Let us know if you have any questions.

—
Haris H.
Technical Support Representative
Strasmore, Inc.

So I answered:

Hi,

“We do not offer managed servers but we could help with basic system
admin task.“

Can you give more details of what you mean by this?

Would you help me set up CentOS WebPanel with Apache/NGINX/Varnish?

Would you help debug issues like if the DNS server wasn’t working?

I have been experimenting with VPS and I am looking for a final place
for my blog.

Regards,

Peter

Their answer wasn’t bad at all:

Hello Peter,

Thank you for writing in.

At this time none of the servers are managed. I can install CWP panel with the default setup if you are committing for the 3 year plan. I can also help you with the DNS.
I will not be able to help with the file/database migration or server management after the initial setup.

There are many websites in the internet that will allow you to hire server administrators for hourly or per task contract.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

—
Arun P.
Technical Support Representative
Strasmore, Inc.

In my opinion, it’s totally fair…

SSD Nodes Reviews

At this point I looked around for reviews, as I always do before I purchase something.

I knew that there are a lot of negative reviews in the hosting industry, bashing the competition is a widespread practice, but I was horrified by the stuff I read. The reviews suggested that the Strasmore/SSD Nodes was a complete scam, basically selling shared hosting quality as VPS.

The following review was posted just two weeks ago:

Digital Feces

Be sure to check the creation date(s) for positive reviews of SSD Nodes, noting the fact many were created within a day or two of one another. This service is oversold, underperforming, and poorly supported.

Please listen to the negative reviews and take your money elsewhere!!

But this one was totally the opposite:

SSD NODES is the best – I am developer for 20 years

This company is one of the best after being thru several i am here to stay. Great service and they really care. Have been in biz 20 years and host my clients with them too

Then I found another review that gave actual details on the experience – the main problem quoted was that SSNodes doesn’t allow blockchain-based scripts, even if they are not crypto mining.

Some complained about the fact that SSNodes sales offers “expiring in a few days” are fake.

Come on, even AliExpress uses this kind of marketing strategy, there’s nothing wrong with using marketing…

Decided to Dive In

Their final email said,

Hello Peter,

I will make an exception in this case and try to help you with what you have asked.

Please purchase the server and update this ticket.

I do not know how long the offers will be ran. The marketing team decides that.

—
Arun P.
Technical Support Representative
Strasmore, Inc.

I filled out one of their surveys and got $10 off my next purchase.

At this point I decided to risk $147-$10 = $137 and give it a try.

I was going to set up a domain I had just purchased with the new server and if that worked out, I was going to move FunnelXpert there.

The Purchase

Since I am a US permanent resident but I am currently in Europe, I was flagged by their fraud mechanism.

Hello Peter,

It looks like there is a large distance between your actual address and the address given here.

Can you please explain this?

I submitted the data and I got the following answer:

“Hello and thank you for reaching out to us. We have reviewed and approved your order, it is now ready for payment.

“Please continue your payment here (if you used a credit card, you will need to input the information again as our system deleted it for security): https://www.ssdnodes.com/manage/clientarea.php?action=masspay&all=true

“After your payment is received, your server(s) will be created and provisioned. Let us know if you have any questions or need any assistance with your order.”

Once I paid, my server was ready in a few minutes and I got the following automatic email:

Hi Peter Nyiri,

Your SSD Nodes server ssdnodes-xxxx has been provisioned. Congratulations!

You should take a moment to log into the SSD Nodes dashboard. If you ordered more than one server (thank you!), you’ll get a separate email for each one.

Here’s the details on your new server, ssdnodes-xxxx:

Hostname: ssdnodes-xxxx
Primary IP: Visit your dashboard, and look for the “Primary IP” row
Username: root
Root password: Visit your dashboard, and click “Show Password”

You can connect to your server using Putty (for Windows) or Terminal (for Mac/Linux). See our SSH authentication setup and security tutorial for additional information.

There are just a few other things we’d like to let you know about:

If you purchased a cPanel/WHM license with your server, please run this command to install it:

cd /home && curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest && sh latest

You can find more information in our Knowledgebase.

… and the rest

Be sure to comply with our acceptable use policy. Spam and other illegal activities are strictly prohibited: https://www.ssdnodes.com/legal/.

Also, remember that your data is your responsibility. You’re expected and required to maintain off-site backups of any and all data on your server.

We’re a growing company that depends on each and every customer, so thanks for being part of the ride. We look forward to giving you an exceptional hosting experience day in and day out. If there’s anything we can do to improve your experience, just let us know.

Thank you for helping make SSD Nodes possible!

Strasmore, Inc.
www.strasmore.com

Setting Up My VPS

I actually followed the setup tutorial they linked to in the above email and actually it was a breeze to download Putty and connect to my server through SSH. Very much like DOS operating system in the 80s.

They also had detailed instructions on how to set up CentOS WebPanel.

A few minutes later I was logging into my CWP dashbord.

Then I submitted a support ticket and they configured Apache/NGINX/Varnish for me, along with free CentOS DNS and basic firewall. This isn’t part of their regular service, they just did it for me as a favor because I asked and because I signed up for 3 years.

You would need to do this yourself or pay someone to do it for you. Which is stupid as a business practice, because they could just charge money for setups like this, but this is their choice.

Then I had to figure out how to update PHP 5.6 to 7.2, as that wasn’t part of their setup services.

First it crashed, but then I found the commands to download the required repositories in Google.

Speed Test

These are the speed metrics of a new site (unoptimized, no cache, testing location Canada) using GTMetrix:

And here is my heavy e-commerce store (WooCommerce), testing location in UK:

I am happy because the site loads really fast.

Conclusion

So far I am really happy about choosing SSD Nodes.

If you know what to do with a VPS, they are a great choice with rock bottom prices.