Location matters more than specs under $10

I have run OVHcloud for three years. To be honest, the data is brutal.

• 1GB RAM in London to EU user: 12ms latency, 0.3% packet loss
• 2GB RAM in US-East to EU user: 112ms latency, 1.2% packet loss
• 1GB RAM wins on every benchmark that involves a human waiting

Under $10 you are buying milliseconds, not megabytes. As said, users abandon at 100ms. Your 4GB plan in the wrong continent is a vanity metric.

Bullet list for the accountants:

• Bandwidth is cheaper than RAM
• Latency is physics
• Physics does not negotiate

Dry humor: my best-performing plan is 512MB in London. It outsells the 4GB Sydney plan 7:1. The specs are embarrassing. The ping is honest.

And here is the thing right and I have been running these tiny boxes for years and years and the RAM never mattered and the CPU never mattered and what mattered was always the pipe and the distance and the routing and I had this one box in some random DC in the middle of nowhere and it had 8GB RAM and a four core something and the users complained and complained and the ping was 180ms and then I moved the exact same stack to a 1GB box in London and the complaints stopped and the users stayed and the churn dropped and it was the same software and the same config and the only thing that changed was the fiber length and the peering and the upstream blend and people think they need specs and they think they need cores and they need none of it they need the packets to arrive before the user opens another tab and this is the truth that the industry hides because RAM sells and cores sell and la

Right then, proper confession time. Hostinger's "premium" 2GB plan in our US-West location? Absolute ghost town. Moved the same template to Manchester, halved the RAM, doubled the price. Sold out in a week.

Cheers lads, the specs lie. The ping don't.

Bro server down since 2 hours not RAM problem location problem same DC my other box fine Important thing: ping from EU to EU 15ms ping to US 140ms since 3 years I learn this hard way no money for big spec money for close server

Simple is better.

A packet walks into a bar. The bartender says "we have a seat right here." That is local hosting.