Spotting a good VPS deal

A friend of mine asked me if he had found a good VPS offer. This made me think if there are any indicators on which you can quickly decide to take or discard a VPS offer. Choosing a VPS is not as difficult as choosing a real (dedicated or colocated) server because a VPS is often cheaper per month and has a cheaper setup cost. This means that a bad VPS is not very expensive to replace. When I checked my own VPS servers and reviewed the offer of my friend I managed to compile the following VPS checklist. These VPS tips can help you decide on an offer:

• Amount of resources available. Of course, there is a correlation between the price of a VPS and the performance. The following guideline should be sufficient in deciding if a VPS offer is a good deal:
• 15 dollar/euro VPS: at least 256 MB ram and 15GB disk space.
• 30 dollar/euro VPS: at least 1GB RAM, 50GB harddisk and 500GB bandwidth.
• Price of a VPS. Most virtual private servers are available ranging from 5-150 dollars/euro. When you consider renting a 100+ dollar VPS it is often cheaper to hire a dedicated server. On a dedicated server you have no other people claiming your resources so you can get a better performance.
• Setup fees. A high setup fee can prevent you from switching to another VPS. A good VPS offer means the setup fee is between zero and 15 dollars.
• Available extras. Are there automatic and free backups? Is there a limit of VPS machines on a physical server (too many impact your own performance)? Can you easily reinstall or reset the VPS without extra costs?
• Company reputation or lifetime. I find this is not very important because I have found some startup companies with little reputation providing excellent service. Other providers manage to improve their performance quickly by adding another physical server or by switching to another datacenter.