Saaskly

VPS & Hosting

Cloud servers compared on what a real server costs per month (the instance, backups and a public IP, then the egress bill), where the data sits and who owns the company, whether the one-click images stay maintained, and the services a small team uses: managed databases, Kubernetes, object storage, an API and Terraform.

11 platforms reviewed·How we test

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1TOP PICK
VultrFeaturedThe cloud we run Saaskly on: the cheapest credible cloud compute in the field, 33 locations including London and Manchester, the widest range of instances from a $5 shared VM to bare metal and GPUs, a free Kubernetes control plane, a read-only-by-default MCP server, and two things to know before you sign: it is a US company contracting from Florida, and its Trustpilot record is the worst here.
4.4/ 5
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2
HetznerThe German family company that sets the price floor for European cloud: 2 vCPU, 4 GB and 80 GB with 20 TB of transfer for €19.99 a month, backups at 20%, overage at €1 a terabyte, ISO 27001 and BSI C5, and the trade-offs of no UK data centre, no managed databases or Kubernetes, identity checks at signup and a cloud line that has been on limited availability since June.
4.2/ 5
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3
UpCloudThe Finnish founder-led cloud that sells sovereignty and simplicity together: a London data centre plus eight EU sites, zero-cost data transfer under a fair-use policy, backups at 10% for a daily plan, managed databases and Kubernetes, a 99.999% SLA with a 50x payback, and a Trustpilot record clustered around automated account suspensions.
4.0/ 5
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4
DigitalOceanThe developer cloud with the best documentation in the business and the best Trustpilot score of the big names: a London Droplet from $4, the reference server at $24 with weekly backups taking it to $28.80, pooled egress at a cent a gigabyte, managed databases, Kubernetes with a free control plane, App Platform, a three-tier marketplace, and a US Delaware company on the contract.
3.9/ 5
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5
OVHcloudEurope's largest cloud company and the cheapest server on this page: a 4 vCore, 8 GB, 75 GB VPS with unlimited traffic, daily backups and the IPv4 included for £6.29 a month, a London data centre and seven in the EU, SecNumCloud-qualified sovereign lines and a direct claim of protection from the CLOUD Act, and the reasons it is not higher: billing and cancellation friction in 8,466 reviews, monthly-only VPS billing, and a Public Cloud line that unbundles IPv4 and storage from October 2026.
3.8/ 5
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6
IONOS CloudGermany's largest hosting group, contracting UK cloud customers through IONOS Cloud UK Ltd, with London and Worcester data centres, BSI C5 and ISO 27001, "100% independent from US and Chinese jurisdictions", a 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 120 GB Cloud Cube for £9.36 a month, an official MCP server, and the same billing reputation as the rest of the IONOS group.
3.6/ 5
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7
KrystalThe UK's largest independent host, a B Corp, with a cloud (Katapult, renamed Krystal Cloud in April 2026) in London, Amsterdam and New York, per-second billing in pounds, UK engineers on the phone, a Trustpilot 4.9 on 2,412 reviews, and the honest limits: £10 for the smallest server, £2 a month for the IPv4, no managed databases or Kubernetes, base OS images only, and a DPA that allows processing outside the UK.
3.5/ 5
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8
Linode (Akamai Connected Cloud)The 2003-era VPS pioneer, owned by Akamai since 2022: a $5 Nanode and a $24 reference Linode in London and six EU cities, flat $5 backups, the cheapest egress overage of the US providers, managed databases and LKE, a Swiss contracting entity under US law, no GBP, no official MCP server, and a Trustpilot of about 2.5 with 2025 outages and account suspensions in the one-star column.
3.3/ 5
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9
ScalewayIliad's cloud, "Europe's sovereign cloud and AI provider": cheap compute by the hour in Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw, free instance egress, ISO 27001 and HDS, a stated freedom from the CLOUD Act, and the reasons a UK small business will hesitate: no UK data centre, no pounds, a disk and a public IP that are sold separately and turn a €28.79 instance into a €42.89 server, a 99% SLA on shared instances, and a Trustpilot of 1.6.
3.2/ 5
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10
Amazon EC2The platform every other one imitates, priced by the component: a t4g.medium in London is $27.45 a month before the $7.42 disk, the $3.65 public IPv4 and the $4.24 snapshot that make it a $42.76 server, then egress at $0.09 a gigabyte after the first hundred, support from $29 a month, a 99.99% regional SLA, a separate EU Sovereign Cloud since January 2026, and a Trustpilot of 1.3 for AWS as a whole.
3.0/ 5
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11
Amazon LightsailAmazon's VPS: fixed bundles from $5 a month in London and five EU regions, a reference server at $24 with the snapshot taking it to $28, egress at $0.09 a gigabyte beyond the bundle, USD only, AWS support terms, and the one-click blueprints that Broadcom stopped updating on 20 May 2026 and withdrew on 10 June 2026, which is the migration project we have already done for clients.
2.7/ 5
Full review

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Comparison

Best VPS and Cloud Hosting for UK Business in 2026: Vultr Wins, Hetzner Sets the Price, and the One-Click Images That Stopped Being Maintained

We compared eleven cloud providers on what a real server costs per month once backups, a public IP and the egress bill are counted, on where the data sits and who owns the company, and on whether the one-click images you deploy will still be maintained next year. Vultr wins on price, range and reach; Hetzner is the European price benchmark; UpCloud and DigitalOcean are the London options. We explain what "sovereignty" means and does not mean for a US-owned cloud, why OVHcloud's £6.29 server is not higher, and why Amazon Lightsail is last after Broadcom withdrew its Bitnami images with three weeks' notice.