Firstly, these guys have a very superb reputation throughout the SEO community and are generally constantly being recommended on internet marketing blogs and forums. Additionally have a good working relationship with key players in the SEO software arena, such as GSA.

All this makes for a very good sign when it's time to pick a reliable SEO VPS provider.

Once i made my decision to purchase my first VPS last year, I actually had short-listed PowerUp Hosting, but instead went for another provider. That was purely due to price alone. I was just reviewing this type of software and didn't really need any unessential overheads until I could realize that there was any financial gain on hand from this activity.

Whenever you add up proxies, software along with a VPS, you are looking for quite a bit of capital as an outlay. I probably spent of almost a $1000.

Since then, I have ranked two new sites alongside some YouTube videos utilizing these tools and also seen a return on my investment. This makes me the more interested in what else is out there…

Things to Consider In A VPS

When choosing a new VPS for your SEO activities, you are going to be looking out for the following things:

Distance from the Server – Typically, the further you are, the longer the reaction times. Using VPS within the Tier 1 Network will negate this distance, unless your internet connection is poor.Quality of Connection – The higher quality the connection, the shorter the reaction times and the snappier feel plus the ease it can run multiple threads.

Quality of Equipment – Using the latest technology, like on any PC offers you better performance and capability to run programs quickly and with more threads.

Bandwidth speed – Probably the least key issue for link building as any server needs to have decent enough bandwidth. The hardware will bottleneck the operation speeds way before the bandwidth will. ..Only when you are using your Grandpa’s 56K dial up.

Operating System – Make sure that it runs Windows 2008 – No linux. All SEO software is powered by a windows box. “R2? Makes it a bit like Windows 7.

Do They Mind You Spam Building links? – If the answer is no then you're good to go! Some hosting companies able to take offence and shut you down…You May Need Private Proxies – No hosting firm, SEO friendly or not will let you use without proxies. So stop become a cheapskate and buy some proxies.

All of these factors combine together to provide you with an overall usability overall your machine.

The reality is regardless how good your created is, the poorer the available connection and further you are away from the server, the less snappy its operation will begin to feel. Because of the fact that the ping, or time it takes for commands to jump back and forth is increased, making a lag time.

Recently, a well powered VPS with minimal ping should feel just like you are working on a local desktop.

PowerUp Hosting Windows VPS Review

OK, down to business…These guys are a US outfit with their servers operating out of LA. Unlike many providers they actually own their own equipment so have total control over many. This is a refreshing change as many providers are actually just resellers, often just opting for the most cheapest set ups to sell on at the biggest margins.

After having a primary speak with one of the friendly System Admin guys, the VPS was functioning perfectly almost immediately. When I asked the average set-up time, I was told probably a few minutes to a few hours based on the queues – but for me it was ready a matter of minutes literally.

This always a good sign. The last hosting I ordered took almost 12 hours to provision plus the service reflected that later on down the line.

For this windows vps I went for the Hyper-V Plus standard as its the same spec as my SolidSeoVPS so I are able to do a like for like comparison.

Dual Core2GB DDR3 RAM70GB Hardrive

1Gbps Connection $54.99 a monthA Quick Overview As always, the moment I log in, I run a Novabench test which shows me my actual VPS specs, and several basic, high-level benchmarks.

You can see this machine is running on server grade CPU’s – Intel Xeon’s. Nice.

In direct comparison with the new SolidSeoVPS range, the RAM speed is now 30% slower and of course the CPU is now equal. This could have a significant impact overall.

The hard disk drive write speed is now significantly slower- there is a 50MB/s difference.

I then fired up the OOKLA speedtest and choose the server offering the least ping, i.e. the closest. It was during peak hours for the US and it still gave some seriously healthy bandwidth overheads. Now before getting too excited, just a test between two servers almost sitting on top of each other!

In reality, except if you live near LA, the speed will start to decrease and the ping increases the further you are. However, the fact is that the juice is there if you're able to take it.

This result is now 20% slower than that along the EU SolidSeoVPS which came in at 1267 and 10% slower than the US one at 1124.

I was shocked to see such a difference the newer RAM that the Solid machines use.

When discussing with PowerUp, they informed me that they always store an overhead of 40% free on each server. This is ensuring each VPS every time perform at optimum speeds.

In reality, with any PC system real or virtual, the bottleneck is the harddrive – unless you have some SSD’s in Quad RAID that is, which we don’t. So lets check out the Crystal Mark scores. These measure the rates in which the system can read and write to the harddisk.

These speeds are great for an 7200rpm hard drive but you can see how the system will be gimped by the older technology. The argument for equipping SSD drives to your VPS continues to be stronger now the prices are more accessible to the typical user.

Backlink creation software, such as GSA SER is incredibly heavy on the Hard drive with constant reading/writing taking place. Meaning that the drives become fragmented relatively quickly which then begins to slow down performance. Fortunately PowerUp are fully knowledgeable with this which is the reason they swap out and swap out the disk drives annually.

For now, the cost price and increased storage capacity overrides the speed of SSD for a lot of users, but I think we will see this change over the next few months.

PowerUp Hosting Worldwide Connectivity

Next I really wanted compare the connection speeds between different parts of the world. The PowerUp Hosting data centre remain on a Tier 1 Network which means they may be very effective at some serious data transfer rates.

As you would intend to see, ping adds to the further we get from the data centre in LA and the bandwidth becomes more restricted.

The impressive part of all these results is the shear upload capacity the PowerUp Tier 1 Network has at its disposal. Regardless if pushing data all the way to Amsterdam, it hits over 100Mpbs during peak hours without raising a heartbeat.

The most crucial thing to remember is that these figures are only a for a general indication. The time of day and data centre will effect these numbers so no test will be the same. The factor that overrides all of these issues is the quality of the the internet you use to access the server.

Also you will need to remember that if you are backlink creation or scraping, your VPS will be operating behind proxies and pushing and receiving data from servers situated worldwide. The above figures will reflect how quickly it can do this as well as how snappy and responsive the machine will feel when you hook up with it remotely.

What Does All This Mean?

You may be thinking what the hell are all these results and why should I care…I just want to build some links you crazy Englishman! Well, which means that, the better performing your VPS, the faster it will likely be to respond to your commands the more threads or potential links per minute it will allow you to build. Basically making the whole thing easier to work on.

I spend a minimum of an hour a day on my main VPS and start to get very annoyed when I need to wait too long for things to load up or when I get the “not responding” freezes.

Usability

I was utilizing this VPS from London, so there was a good distance for the data packets to travel. Despite of this the VPS was extremely responsive and snappy, impressively so. I am connecting using a 30Mb Fibre line.

In comparison with one of my German based VPS’, there was a slightly slower reaction time to my mouse clicks when browsing the internet using Chrome.

While this does effect usability a little, the entire load times and performance of software remained first-rate.

It’s worth noting that Internet browsing on any VPS is a terrible experience as there is no GPU (Graphics processor) so the CPU has to do all the work.

Conclusion

From chatting with PowerUp and using their Windows VPS for a while, it is clear to see these guys are really interested in what they do and are also in it for the long run. This makes a large difference.

To set it short, PowerUp Hosting Windows VPS becomes a solid performer. It’s benchmarks are high quality, they are now coming in a close second using this range of older machines.

It’s worth noting that with PowerUp, you’re getting a purpose built, server grade VPS that sits on a 1Gbps, Tier 1 Network and keeps 40% of its overheads spare.

Update: If you are seriously considering a Windows VPS from PowerUp, then I suggest you pick up one of their new SSD range which are now on special early bird offer through link below.

They're cheaper and more quickly than their standard range and outperform the older range on every test. I’ll publish the stats shortly.

windows vps review

PowerUp Hosting Windows VPS Review