1 Introduction

This page is my personal little ”recommendation corner,” where I record things I've used for a while and found quite good: some have improved my happiness in life, some have solved practical problems, and others are just little surprises that made me think, ”Wow, I didn't know it could be done like this.”

This is not some ”best on the web” review, nor is it one of those ”you must buy these ten things” recommendation lists—I won't recommend products I haven't used or don't like, and if there are exceptions, I will definitely make a special note.

Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you click through and even place an order, that would of course be wonderful (laughs); but if you're just passing by or completely uninterested, that's totally fine too.

This is more like a list written for ”future me” and ”you who might have similar needs.” If you find it useful, that would be great :).

2 RackNerd VPS

1 Overview

RackNerd is a VPS service provider from the United States that has won the favor of many tech enthusiasts in recent years for its cost-effectiveness. Its product line covers traditional KVM VPS, Windows VPS, dedicated servers, etc., with a positioning leaning towards ”cheap and practical,” making it especially suitable for users with limited budgets who still have certain requirements for availability.

Compared to some cloud providers that easily cost tens of dollars a month, RackNerd's advantages are very clear: affordable prices, frequent promotions, and relatively generous resource allocations. The cheapest annual packages are kept between $10 and $30 all year round, so you don't have to wait for Black Friday or Double 11 to ”snag a deal.” Although the service is positioned at the lower end, it performs decently in actual use and is fully capable of deploying personal blogs, image hosting, Telegram Bots, reverse proxies, and even running lightweight AI applications.

It should be noted that RackNerd's network routes are not focused on ”optimization,” and their performance for access from mainland China is relatively average. Taking my personal China Telecom network as an example, the latency to the Chicago data center is stable at around 220ms, while Los Angeles is slightly better, roughly in the 150~200ms range. Although this latency cannot be used for services with extremely high real-time requirements, it is more than enough as a background task processing node or a service node behind Cloudflare CDN (publishing a website directly using the VPS IP address is not slow either, though I don't recommend it).

Of course, network environments vary greatly by region, so it is recommended to test the network speed and latency using the official test IP or Looking Glass before placing an order to avoid any pitfalls. But then again, if you plan to put your service behind Cloudflare's CDN, the route differences actually don't matter that much.

2 About RackNerd's Refund, Cancellation, and Service Change Policies

If you plan to purchase VPS services from RackNerd, it is very necessary to understand their terms of service, especially the policies regarding refunds and cancellations. RackNerd is a cost-oriented VPS provider, and its policies are relatively strict, which is also considered ”industry practice” for services in this price range.

2.1 Refund Policy

By default, RackNerd officiallydoes not offer automatic refunds. The reason is also very straightforward: their service allocates resources immediately after the user pays, which may have already incurred real costs behind the scenes (such as IP allocation, freezing of computing resources, etc.). This means that if you regret it after buying, you will not get an automatic refund; you must proactively contact customer service to explain the situation. Whether a refund is ultimately granted will be handled by RackNerd at its discretion on a case-by-case basis.

In addition, if you top up your account in advance to create an account balance (i.e., Account Credit), these prepayments are usually alsonot eligible for withdrawal or refund, and can only be used for future purchases or renewals.

Suggestion: Once you find it is not suitable for you (e.g., poor routing, mismatched use case),the earlier you contact customer service to communicate, the better. The longer you delay, the harder it is to get a refund, especially after the first few hours of activation.

2.2 Canceling Service

If you only plan tonot renew a certain VPS service, RackNerd requires you tosubmit a cancellation request through the user portal at least 5 days before the service expires. After cancellation, the relevant server will be shut down immediately and data will be cleared, so making backups in advance is crucial.

If you purchased a special contract-based service (such as an annual promotional package), cancellation may also involve an ”early termination fee”—cancellations for this type of service are usually ”individually evaluated,” and there is no guarantee of a refund or termination.

Reminder: RackNerd will not automatically stop the service just because you ”do not renew.” If you do not manually cancel, bills may still be generated (especially if PayPal automatic renewal is linked).

2.3 Downgrading Service

If you originally bought a higher-configuration package and later found that the resources were underutilized and wanted to downgrade, RackNerd's rule is:submit a downgrade request at least 5 days before renewal, and process it through the ticket system. Whether the downgrade is successful mainly depends on whether the target package is still on sale and whether resource migration is supported. Note that downgrades usually do not result in refunds; future bills will simply be charged according to the new configuration.

Overall, RackNerd's terms of service are more ”rigid” compared to mainstream major providers, but this is normal for ultra-low-cost VPS. While enjoying low-priced resources, you also need to bear a certain cost of ”inflexibility.”

Suggestion: Confirm your use case and needs before placing an order. If you are just trying it out or testing the waters, you can choose a short billing cycle or the lowest configuration version to test first, avoiding subsequent disputes.

2.4 About Renewal

It is worth mentioning that when renewing RackNerd's VPS packages,usually does not increase, which is quite generous in the VPS market. Once you place an order successfully, you can renew it at the original price for a long time, commonly known in the industry as a ”heirloom package.” Compared to the tactics of some domestic major providers where the first year is cheap, the second year doubles, and the third year doubles again, this ”price lock” strategy is more suitable for long-term use.

In addition, its bandwidth and traffic quotas are also quite generous, especially relative to its price, making the cost-effectiveness indeed very high. During promotional events like Black Friday and Double 11, RackNerd usually launches a batch of highly attractive limited-edition VPS packages with low prices and solid configurations. Although the quantity is limited, many people try to grab them, but overall they are not too difficult to get.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with my experience using RackNerd. Although it is not a top-tier brand, its reputation in the community has been steadily rising over the past two years, making it an emerging provider worth paying attention to. If you are planning to get a cheap and practical VPS, you might as well add it to your shortlist.

3 About the VPS Management Panel: SolusVM

Most VPS provided by RackNerd come with the SolusVM control panel, which is a relatively traditional but still stable and reliable virtual machine management panel:

Through this panel, users can easily complete common VPS operation and maintenance tasks, such as:

• Restarting, shutting down, and starting the VPS
• Reinstalling the operating system (supporting multiple Linux distributions, commonly Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS)
• Viewing system resource usage (CPU, RAM, traffic, etc.)
• Modifying the hostname and setting the root password
• Manage SSH Keys (some features depend on the host provider's configuration)

Although the UI style is relatively outdated, it wins on intuitive features, fast response, and stable operation, with no steep learning curve for technical novices.

Overall, SolusVM is a ”good enough” VPS management panel. Although it is not as flashy as some emerging panels (such as Proxmox, VirtFusion), it is very suitable for managing small VPS instances on RackNerd, and its features basically cover all daily operations.

4 Important Reminder on Choosing RackNerd VPS Data Center Locations

For users in mainland China, the geographical location of the VPS affects the ”direct connection” access speed and experience, especially whennot using CDN accelerationor requiringlow-latency needs such as direct remote SSH, setting up proxy services, or self-hosting blogs, making the choice of data center particularly critical.

It is recommended to prioritize data centers located in the US West (US West Coast) region, which include:

• Los Angeles: The most common choice, with return routing mostly being CN2 GT or CTG (Telecom Backbone), friendly to China Telecom and China Unicom users, with latency roughly in the 140~200ms range;
• San Jose: Geographically closer to mainland China, with some routes even faster than Los Angeles, but fewer providers and more expensive nodes;
• Seattle: Offered by a few providers, usually less popular, but theoretically also features lower latency.

These cities typically offer betterreturn network quality to China, especially if the provider is connected to CN2 GIA (premium network) or has optimized return routing, the experience will be even better.

In short, if you care about the ”direct connection” access experience, you might as well make the data center location one of the top priorities in your VPS purchasing decision:Los Angeles and San Jose remain the ”conservative yet practical” golden options. Even if you don't pursue extreme speed, choosing a good data center can at least prevent you from being troubled by high latency and unstable routes.

Of course, the above suggestions mainly apply to users who care about the direct connection access experience to VPS from mainland China. If your service itself is planned to be behind Cloudflare CDN or a similar transit acceleration solution, then ”direct connection” latency is not as critical. In this case, the choice of data center location is relatively much freer: for example, Chicago, as a core node in the central United States, not only balances origin-pull access to both the East and West Coasts of the US, but also performs well for origin-pull from Europe, making it suitable as a ”globally friendly” origin server choice.

RackNerd also has quite a few other data centers:

However, for cheap annual promotional models, the choices are very limited.

5 About Technical Support: Traditional but Reliable

RackNerd's technical support is mainly provided through the Ticket System on the official website backend. It does not support “modern” support methods such as live chat, direct email, phone, or Telegram groups. All issues require you to submit a ticket in the client area, which is RackNerd's consistent style:Simple, traditional, yet stable and reliable。

In terms of actual experience,ticket response times usually fluctuate between 1 to 6 hours, with higher processing efficiency during weekday daytime (based on US West Coast time), sometimes receiving a reply within 15 minutes; while at night or on weekends, response times may be longer. However, judging from user feedback and my own experience, RackNerd's ticket handling attitude is quite good,without perfunctory excuses, and issues are resolved quite thoroughly, falling into the “low-profile but dependable” category.

It should be noted that,RackNerd's technical support only handles basic issues directly related to its services(such as boot failures, OS reinstallation failures, network connection issues, etc.). If you encounter software-level or in-system configuration issues, such as Docker failing to start, Nginx misconfiguration, or locking yourself out with iptables, you basically need to solve it yourself—tickets will usually politely tell you “out of support scope.”

Friendly Reminder: If you are a novice or not good at troubleshooting, RackNerd's “self-service + ticket” model might feel inconvenient. It is recommended to acquire some basic VPS operation and maintenance knowledge, or seek self-help solutions in communities and search engines.

Overall, although RackNerd does not have live customer service, their ticket systemcan still be rated 7 to 8 out of 10 in terms of reliability and response quality. For users who are used to tinkering with VPS, it is completely sufficient.

Note 1:RackNerd Official Knowledge Base

Note 2:Technical Support

6 Classic Plan Recommendations

6.1 Overview

Although the annual VPS plans currently displayed on the RackNerd official website seem to be only a few, giving the impression of limited choices, such as the current 2025 New Year promotional models:

但实际上，它多年来在黑五、独立日、劳动节等节日活动中推出的经典优惠机型，很多依然可以正常购买——只不过这些”隐藏套餐”并不会在官网首页或产品目录中公开列出，如果你手上保留了当年的购买链接，大多数时候仍然可以下单成功。

因此，我收集了一些当前仍然有效的 RackNerd 优惠套餐清单，既包含官网可见的主力套餐，也涵盖那些虽然已经”下架”但仍然可买的部分型号，供大家参考，算是一份备用的采购清单，有需要时可以少走弯路、直接开买。

注：部分优惠机型可能暂时缺货，但会在黑五／大促期间补货，建议关注 LET 或官网。

2.6.2 高配

2.6.2.1 高配1-882

RackNerd 2024年黑五前后出的VPS，这个VPS主要的优势就是硬盘、内存都比较大(我目前使用的主力机型)，官网推广链接：Racknerd_High-Spec 1_882。

可以使用脚本SuperBench进行测试：

wget -qO- --no-check-certificate https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oooldking/script/master/superbench.sh | bash

The result is as follows:

2.6.2.2 高配2-906

RackNerd 2025年新年推出的VPS，性价比来说比我的882差不多，不过少了0.5G内存，却多了5BG的磁盘空间和每月500G的流量，现在来说相比926性价比已经不高了，官网推广链接：Racknerd_高配2_906。

2.6.2.3 高配3-907

2025年新年促销的最高配，性能倒是杠杠的，就是价格偏贵，性价比低了些！官网推广链接：Racknerd_高配3_907。

2.6.2.4 高配4-920

RackNerd 2025年双11优惠活动，总体而言和我现在用的882性价比差不多：多了一个vCPU核心，少了500兆内存，SSD空间少了20GB，更适合需要性能的场景，不过相比926性价比就不算高了。官网推广链接：Racknerd_高配4_920。

2.6.2.5 高配5-926(推荐)

RackNerd 2025年黑五优惠活动，性价比超高，比907划算多了，比我的882的CPU和内存都高了好多，只是多了5美金/年，难道逼我明年882到期之后换成这个？？预算充足的话强烈推荐，官网推广链接：Racknerd_高配5_926。

2.6.2.6 高配6-927

RackNerd 2025年黑五优惠活动，价格有点贵，比926多了1个vCPU核心、2GB内存和50G的磁盘空间，贵了将近18美金的年付价格，感觉性价比不算高，大家自己判断吧，官网推广链接：Racknerd_高配6_927。

2.6.3 中配

2.6.3.1 中配1-914

RackNerd 2025年5月优惠活动，难得一见的中配良心机型，年费30刀以下无敌的存在！我现在用的价值39.88美金的882也不过只比914多1G内存、40G磁盘空间以及每月多3500G带宽而已，其实一般人使用都感觉不出什么区别，所以914称得上目前的中配王者了。官网推广链接：Racknerd_中配1_914。

2.6.3.2 中配2-918

这款也是RackNerd 2025年双11优惠活动，年付只需要17.66刀，2核vCPU和2G内存都不算低了。唯一有一点不足，就是磁盘空间只有35G，显得不伦不类的，我感觉少了点，如果要用来搭建博客和跑一些docker，日常运维需要做好磁盘空间管理，官网推广链接：Racknerd_中配2_918。

2.6.3.3 中配3-919

RackNerd 2025年双11优惠活动，性价比高，和914不相上下，就是内存少了500兆以及SSD硬盘少了5G，但是也便宜3刀，这个就看大家如何选择了。官网推广链接：Racknerd_中配3_919。

2.6.3.4 中配4-924

RackNerd 2025年黑五优惠活动，比918多0.5GB内存和10G磁盘空间，价格只多1美金/年，性价比挺高的，大家自行考量，官网推广链接：Racknerd_中配4_924。

2.6.3.5 中配5-925(推荐)

RackNerd 2025年黑五优惠活动，比919贵 3美金/年，配置和流量略高了一点，总体性价比很高，关键CPU和内存都和我的高配882差不多了，就是硬盘少35G(否则我都归类到高配里了)，但是一般来说65G的空间也完全足够了，关键年付比882少了10美金，让我有点不平衡了。官网推广链接：Racknerd_中配5_925。

2.6.4 低配

2.6.4.1 低配1-879

2024年黑五促销活动，不如903，官网推广链接：Racknerd_Low-spec1_879。

注：这个机型我也购买了，主要来做一些应用的测试，同时也兼职做跳板机(开放了443和SSH端口)，只是又吃了下手太快的亏，没注意到903，价格差不多却多了4G磁盘空间和500G流量，哎～，虽然也用不上，但是心里却很不爽～，测试结果如下：

2.6.4.2 低配2-903

2025年新年促销活动，在879的基础上稍微增加0.3美元的预算即可多了4G存储，500G流量/每月，明显更划算，官网推广链接：Racknerd_低配2_903。

2.6.4.3 低配3-917(推荐)

这款也是RackNerd 2025年双11优惠活动，其他和879，903都差不多，就是每月流量较多，有3T。用来做自建科学或者魔法节点，或者做现有科学或魔法节点的落地都很合适，比879和903的性价比高，是目前的跳板机、科学机首选，官网推广链接：Racknerd_低配3_917。

3 寄语

目前就是这些，今后我会尽量保持新出的优惠机型的更新，希望大家都能找到属于自己的心仪VPS。