How the tiers differ, and how to judge a host
No scores out of ten and no rivals named. Just the axes that decide which kind of hosting you need, and the six questions that tell you what any provider is selling.
Compared on what actually matters
Not on storage numbers. On isolation, access, and what happens when things get busy.
| Axis | SharedSoon | CloudAvailable now | VPSSoon | DedicatedSoon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you share | CPU and memory with other sites | A resource pool, allocated dynamically | Nothing — a guaranteed slice | Nothing — the whole machine |
| System access | Control panel only | Control panel only | Full root | Full root |
| Behaviour under a spike | Slows, and can hit a limit | Absorbs it from the pool | Fixed ceiling — resize to change it | Fixed ceiling — add hardware |
| Who patches it | Us, always | Us, always | You, or us if managed | You, or us if managed |
| Scaling | Upgrade the plan | Elastic within the tier | Resize, prorated | Provision another machine |
| Best when | Traffic is modest and predictable | Downtime costs money | The app needs system control | Load is heavy and constant |
Managed and unmanaged is a separate axis from all of this. See managed hosting.
Six questions worth asking before you pay
Ask us these too. A provider that cannot answer all six in one reply has told you something.
- 1
What is the renewal rate for this exact plan?
The introductory price is promotional. The renewal rate is what you pay from then on, and it is the number that decides the comparison.
- 2
What does it cost to restore a backup?
A backup you must pay to use is an insurance policy with an excess, sold at the worst possible moment.
- 3
Is migration included, and who does it?
'Free migration tool' and 'we migrate it for you' are very different products with the same label.
- 4
What happens when I hit a resource limit?
Ask specifically: throttled, suspended, or billed. All three exist in this industry and only one is survivable mid-campaign.
- 5
Can I get my files and database out?
Ask before you need it. The answer tells you how the relationship ends, which tells you how it will be conducted.
- 6
Is support a person, and is it included at my tier?
Priority queues mean there is a slow queue. Find out which one you bought.
Since we told you to ask
It would be poor form to publish that list and not answer it ourselves.
- Renewal rate
Published next to the introductory rate on every plan, before checkout.
- Backup restores
Free. Any daily restore point, and we do it for you.
- Migration
Free, and we do it: staged first, DNS only when you approve.
- Resource limits
Shown in your control panel, so you see headroom rather than discover a ceiling.
- Getting your data out
Your files and database are yours. Ask and you get them.
- Support
One queue, one team, every plan. There is no priority tier to buy.
Before you buy
The things people actually ask us, answered plainly.
Why does this page not compare Serverlys to named competitors?
Because we would be choosing the criteria and grading ourselves, which is advertising rather than comparison. It would also mean publishing claims about other companies' current pricing and features that we cannot verify and that go out of date quickly. The questions further down this page let you compare anyone, including us, on facts you can check yourself.
Is more expensive hosting faster?
Not reliably. Beyond a certain point the bottleneck moves to your site — oversized images, uncached database queries, too much JavaScript — and no amount of extra CPU fixes that. Measure where the time actually goes before you buy a bigger plan.
How do I know when I have outgrown my plan?
Response times climbing at your daily traffic peak, resource limits you have started checking, or the point where an hour of downtime costs more than a year of the upgrade. That last one is the real test — the others are symptoms.
A plan that still makes sense in year two
Free migration, free SSL and daily backups on every plan, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
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