Featured Provider Frequently Asked Questions

Your subscription and provider account

What is included in my subscription?

• Your subscription comes with one or two trials per quarter for VPS/Cloud Server plans up to $60 or $120/month.
• A Featured (Plus) Provider subscription does not imply good or bad results in performance trials. It does guarantee inclusion in the Best VPS rankings, in the Screener and in comparison pages for each trial that is run.
• As part of your subscription, you get 2 free Private Trials per month. Don't hesitate to use them, they are great tools to tune the performance of your servers and get better grades in trials. You can buy more if needed with a 20% discount. Start a new private trial at this page.
• You also get a 20% rebate on Cloud Reports. They can be very helpful for your marketing efforts. You can build them freely, payment is only required when you're ready to publish and distribute them to the world.

Where can I find my account statistics?

• On your private dashboard, you will find various statistics about your account such as number of referrals (referral statistics).

Can I add multiple users to my account?

• Yes, any number of users can be attached to your provider account at VPSBenchmarks, just sign up from the sign-up page, send VPSBenchmarks an email to confirm that you did and VPSBenchmarks will link your account. You will then have access to the provider dashboard. All users linked to the provider are listed at this page.

How are my plans prices reported?

• VPS prices reported on the website are always on-demand monthly prices without any further commitment and before any promotion and VAT. The cost of an IPv4 address is added if not included in the VPS price by default.

Promotion tools

How can I promote my VPS plans?

• If you have short term promotions, you can add them from the promotions page.
• If you have a longer term coupon based on a code or a special link, send VPSBenchmarks an email with the details and VPSBenchmarks will add it to the coupons page.
• If you want one of your plans to appear in the Cheap VPS feed (Cheap VPS feed), just ask VPSBenchmarks and if the plan qualifies, it will happen.
• VPSBenchmarks can also run preview trials free of charge when you release new VPS products or new locations (preview trials section).

How do Announcements work?

• You can write "Announcements" at the announcements page. Announcements have great visibility because there is a banner that shows up at the top of every VPSBenchmarks page with a link to the announcement. The bar for publishing an announcement is fairly high: they are not ads and they must include news that will be interesting to VPSBenchmarks visitors. For example a new service, new data center, new prices... Think press release when writing those announcements, write them in the 3rd person. For more information read the guidelines at the guidelines page.
  VPSBenchmarks does reject a lot of announcement submissions so don't feel offended if yours is not accepted at the first draft.
  VPSBenchmarks can help you write those announcements when there is substantial news about the provider but they will most likely be more accurate and informational if you write them yourself.

What are Best VPS awards?

• When your VPS perform so well that it reaches one of the top 3 positions of a Best VPS ranking, it wins an award. You can find all your awards at the awards page. They are available as images that you can include on your marketing documents should you want to.

Your profile

How can I update my provider profile?

• You can (and should) write a provider introduction at the edit profile page. This introduction will show up at the top of your public provider page. It's very important to let visitors know who you are and what you stand for.
• You can update your logo from the logo upload section.
• You can upload an ad banner that will be displayed at the top of your public provider page from the banner upload page

About VPSBenchmarks performance trials

How are VPS plans selected for trials?

• VPSBenchmarks prefers to alternate trials for small and large plans. If the first one is small, the next one should be large. Overall the prices of all tested VPS should be evenly distributed between 0 and $120 (or $60). VPSBenchmarks's aim is to report on the most representative sample of the provider products both in terms of plans and locations.
• To facilitate comparisons, plans tested publicly at vpsbenchmarks.com must have at least 2GB RAM and 20GB of storage per CPU core. One exception: plans with 1 core, 1 GB RAM and minimum 20GB storage. If you don't offer plans with this RAM:vCPU ratio, VPSBenchmarks will select the plans with the chosen number of cores and the closest possible ratio.

How can the servers used in trials be provisioned?

• VPSBenchmarks buys the servers like a regular customer would to ensure fairness. The servers are never provisioned by the provider specifically for the performance trials.
• VPSBenchmarks requires either a promo code provided by the provider or account credits to buy the servers.

How long do trials last?

• VPSBenchmarks typically only needs each VPS for a couple of days and cancels it as soon as the trial finishes. Feel free to destroy them at that point. VPSBenchmarks needs it for a bit longer for this first trial since VPSBenchmarks will also use it now to review the control panel and take screenshots.

Are trials automated?

• There is no human intervention during a VPS trial: setup, benchmarks and grades calculation are entirely automated. The grades reflect the performance of the VPS relative to all other VPS tested at VPSBenchmarks during the preceding 12 months. 50% of trials get below average grades and another 50% get above average grades.

What are the rules for VPS used in trials?

• Do not optimize the VPS used in trials specifically for VPSBenchmarks, do not interfere with those servers before or during the trials, do not stop them or restart them. They should be the same as the VPS sold to your regular customers.

How do you ensure trial results are honest?

• With greater performance comes greater scrutiny: if your server gets exceptional results in a public trial, VPSBenchmarks might conduct random private trials on the same plan after the public trial is run to verify the results. The same promo code or accounts credits will be used to buy the server used in a random private trial. If they are not working or sufficient, VPSBenchmarks will let you know and the next public trial will be delayed until the situation is resolved. If the random private trial results don't confirm the public trial results, VPSBenchmarks will talk to you to figure out what happened. In the worst case scenario, the public trial will be made private and will be excluded from Screener and Best VPS rankings. This is an unpleasant process, but making sure all trial results are honest and reproducible benefits everyone in the end.

Can I request a re-test?

• No, there is never any re-test for any trial for any reason, the results are what they are, they can't be changed.

Referrals

How many referrals can I expect?

The volume of referrals you will receive from vpsbenchmarks.com will be proportional to 2 main factors:

1. The performance/price ratio of your servers. The better the performance, the more likely your servers will show up at the top of Best VPS rankings (Best VPS rankings).
2. The size of your presence at VPSBenchmarks: that's the number of plans and trials included on the website, the more there are the more often visitors will run into the provider, be it in Best VPS rankings, in the Screener, in comparison pages or others.

The number of monthly referrals varies wildly between providers: from the low double digits for a new provider with a single trial and low performance to the high triple digits for a provider with several VPS plans in top positions in Best VPS rankings.