VirMach
Established in 2014, VirMach has since been focusing its resources on providing low-cost yet high-quality VPS hosting solutions aimed at all kinds of websites, virtual projects and businesses. Besides this, VirMach provides a whole variety of web hosting types and features from basic shared hosting packages to dedicated servers for the most demanding among customers.
The company is headquartered in Los Angeles (the US) and from there it operates cloud-based data centers spread across eleven different locations, all of which are conveniently indicated on the map featured on VirMach’s main website. These include nine positions in the US (Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, San Jose, Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle, Buffalo and Piscataway), one in Germany (Frankfurt) and the last one in the Netherlands (Amsterdam).
- Want to try VirMach? Check out the website here
VirMach’s main website looks pretty up-to-date (which is far from surprising since the company has been around for 7 years only), although it doesn’t try to provide enough information about itself, forcing us to test our digital detective skills. Oddly, there is no “About” section nor an official blog, which is something we are accustomed to have, at least one of those.
In the same fashion, VirMach’s social network accounts are either non-existent or treated as if they do not exist. There is a Twitter account, created in 2017, but it shows no signs of life since 2018 (and there were three of four posts to begin with). The same goes for their YouTube account, which was created in 2018 and has released four videos since. All in all, there is evidently a room for improvement in this area.
Plans and pricing
If there is something that sets apart VirMach from a number of its competitors, that is the pricing of its VPS hosting solutions. Whether you want a Linux VPS or a Windows one, you will get it for a song, and that goes for their premium packages. Their simplest hosting plan (cryptically labeled as “SSD512”) starts at mere $2.50 per month and offers: 512MB of memory, one CPU vCORE, 15GB of disk space, 1TB / 1Gbps bandwidth, Anti-DDoS, RAID 10 SSD, and IPv4, but it excludes an ability to choose Windows as your operating system (which is available with all upper plans).
Apart from this, VirMach provides shared hosting, reseller and dedicated server solution, and all of them can be purchased via all major credit/debit cards, PayPal, Alipay (for customers from China) and Bitcoin.
As for a money-back guarantee, the only information we were able to dig out about it was in VirMach’s knowledgebase and a few lines in their “Terms and Conditions'' section. Apparently, to get a refund, one must cancel its package within 7 days of purchase and specifically ask for it.
Ease of use
With most of VirMach’s hosting packages you’ll be getting automatic backups and mirroring, so you won’t have to worry about the safety of your data. Weekly backups for the entire VM (up to 100GB) are included in “OpenVZ” and “KVM” line of packages and are available in eight out of nine server locations, all of which are marked on the corresponding map. However, if a problem with disks and RIS mirroring does occur, the copy of your data will be stored and made available for the cost of $10.
To begin your journey with VirMach, you’ll have to opt for a plan, and since there are quite a few for selection (if you don’t have something in mind already) this may take a while. Offered option to compare all plans is a great one (click on “Compare Plans”), for it offers a detailed overview for each of the packages, and if you are a new to all this, there are “User-friendly” (and jargon-free) hosting services offering an amazing set of features for newcomers.
After you pick out the most fitting plan, you'll be prompted to decide what you want to do with a domain name. So, if you happen to choose an unnamed beginner-friendly shared hosting plan that goes for $5 per month and commit for a whole year, domain registration goes without charge and is yours forever. Otherwise you’ll get it for a reasonable price of $12.95 for a year. The next stage involves choosing a billing cycle (monthly, quarterly or annual one). Before checking out and making payment, you’ll be required to fill out a form with your personal information (nothing unusual here), enter a password and select a method of payment.
Since instant setup is one of VirMach’s major selling points, your account should be activated in no time, just as your newly-created website. As shared hosting packages come with industry-standard cPanel (and with one-click installs), so creating content and managing your website should be no problem. With VPS and reseller packages you’ll get access to several control panels: cPanel, WHM and SolusVM, so it’s up to you to decide.
Speed and experience
After several attempts to test the speed of VirMach’s main website, we failed miserably due to so-called “analysis error” which was the first time ever that we were faced with a website GTmetrix couldn’t approach. As a response, we requested assistance from another popular speed testing tool (thanks, web.dev) in cyberspace and (finally) got our results which were better than we expected, given the circumstances. Most of the core metrics were about or a little above the average, which was concluded with a final result of 89 (out of 100), and a promise of decent speed performance.
As for uptime, since UptimeRobot didn’t leave us high and dry (unlike our other tool), we managed to monitor uptime of VirMach’s main website for a whole month, and considering they promised 100% of it, that was exactly what we expected. Regrettably, that wasn’t exactly what we got, since the total of 17 minutes of downtime was recorded (four separate instances of it). Nevertheless, 99.95% of uptime is still up to the industry’s standard and we are always happy to receive some free credit on our account.
Support
If there is an issue with your website (or you simply want to ask a question or two), the first help option you’ll surely notice is a button on the landing page named “Chat”. However, you’ll soon find out that it is not a live chat, but an opportunity to submit a support ticket and wait for a reply (yes, we were a bit disenchanted). There, you’ll be subtly “advised” to check their knowledgebase for answers before asking their technical team for help. As an alternative, there is a telephone number for those who prefer more personal interactions.
VirMach’s knowledgebase seems rather standard in every sense and features a total of 83 articles (at this moment). You can browse them by using special categories or by typing in the search box, and articles themselves are quite exhaustive, often with illustrative images or videos.
When it comes to public perception of VirMach’s customer support in general, there seems to be a polarity between particularly pleased customers and those who are almost as black as thunder (mainly on Trustpilot), and it has been hard to find a middle ground among their reviews. Perhaps we are giving it too much thought, yet since this is not often seen, you should give a bit of it yourself before making a definitive decision.
The competition
VirMach and Simply Hosting & Servers are both established web hosting providers with a myriad of hosting solutions, powerful and reliable performance, worldwide network of data centers and an international market in mind. That being said, there are differences in types of hosting they provide as well as in the location of their data centers. VirMach offers more server locations in the US, while Simply Hosting has more servers in Europe, so the choice might boil down to that.
HostGator is one of those remarkable hosts that can supply you with everything VirMach can, and throw in a few bells and whistles to stack the odds in its favor. What is more, all of HostGator’s hosting packages include an ample 45-day money-back guarantee, while with VirMach it is valid for seven days and isn’t included with all packages.
In terms of price, Bluehost is much friendlier towards the budget than VirMach, but when it comes to features, there is no clear winner. Nonetheless, with all the support options it provides, Bluehost might be a better choice for newcomers and websites with less traffic.
When it comes to user-friendliness, Easyspace has earned more points with us than VirMach, which (although it does offer some user-friendly hosting options) seems like a better choice for users with some experience in this trade. Customer support you’ll get with Easyspace includes live chat (that should be available at all times) which is a great option to have at the start of your journey through the World Wide Web.
Final verdict
VirMach is a competent host that offers a wide array of hosting options, features and hosting-related services with a special emphasis on VPS packages. They are available in different operating systems and are popularly priced. However, if you go with them and change your mind along the way, be sure to do it within seven days, since that is the length of their money-back guarantee. For a more generous option (or at least the standard 30-day money-back guarantee provided by the majority of the companies), you’ll have to choose hosts such as HostGator, Bluehost and Hostinger.
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