Moving from reseller to VPS—regrets and wins

Wanted to share my three-month journey after moving from Vultr reseller (cPanel) to Leaseweb VPS (KVM, 2GB RAM, Debian 12).

Wins first:
- Sent ticket yesterday about slow WP admin, realized I could just install Redis myself! No waiting.
- Made test order with new plugin licensing, spun up staging in 10 minutes.
- Cost dropped from $35/month to $12/month for similar resources.

Regrets (oh so many):
- Spent first week locked out of SSH after disabling password auth without adding key properly. Had to use VNC console like animal.
- Exim configuration took 4 days. Four. Days. SPF/DKIM/DMARC still not right, emails landing in spam.
- Backup strategy nonexistent first month. Had snapshot-only, snapshot corrupted during node migration.

Current status: Functional but fragile. Still learning. Would do again, but with checklist.

Anyone else made this jump? What rescued you in month 2-3? Cheers!

Guys, what margins you getting on that $12 VPS vs reseller? Any leads on control panels? https://www.virtualizor.com

I looked at moving clients but recieved pushback on thier cPanel familiarity. The cost savings tempting but support burden shifts to you.

How many hours per week you spending now vs before?

Your route via Leaseweb likely adds reputation problem, not just ms.

PING leaseweb.com: 34.2ms avg
PING vultr.com: 12.1ms avg
PING gmail-smtp-in: 18.4ms via Leaseweb, 11.7ms via Vultr

Route via Leaseweb adds 12ms but worse: their /24 on some blacklists. Check mxtoolbox. Short-term: route outbound via Mailgun or similar. Long-term: dedicated IP warming.

Traceroute to MX shows 7 hops vs 4 previously. Each adds variability.