The questions everyone asks

// How much RAM do I need for my website?

Rules of thumb from real sysadmin threads: a cached WordPress site runs on 2–4GB; 10–100k monthly visitors want 8GB; add headroom for a database. Live market check: the median 8GB-RAM offer in our tracker costs $25/mo, and 16GB runs $65/mo. The Finder computes your exact target.

// Dedicated vs VPS — which one for me?

Steady heavy load, full isolation, or compliance → dedicated. Spiky/small workloads → VPS. The live price gap today: cheapest live-listed dedicated is $20/mo (2× Xeon 5150) vs cheapest VPS $0/mo.

// How much RAM for a Minecraft server?

The community formula: 2GB ≈ 10 vanilla players; +1GB per 5 extra players; +1GB per 10 plugins; 50+ mods wants 8–10GB. Pick "Game server → Minecraft" in the Finder and the target updates live.

// Is unmetered bandwidth really unlimited?

No — fair-use policies apply everywhere. Honest math beats marketing: we track 879 unmetered offers and 675 with an explicit 10TB+ cap. An explicit big cap is often the more honest deal; port speed matters more than the word "unlimited".

// Does server location matter?

Physics sets the floor: EU↔US is tens of milliseconds, always. Live counts: Europe — 971 live offers from $0/mo · North America — 870 live offers from $1/mo · Asia — 380 live offers from $3/mo.

// Is this CPU too old?

Depends on the job — and the price. Our live median Value Rank by silicon era: 2010–2014: 44 (313 offers) · 2015–2018: 48 (312 offers) · 2019–2021: 57 (330 offers) · 2022–2026: 56 (373 offers). A 2015 Xeon is fine for learning; it is the wrong buy for game hosting. Every table shows the launch year — that is the whole point of this site.

// Do I need ECC RAM?

Stateless web: optional. Databases or your only copy of anything: yes — silent bit-flips are rare but unrecoverable. We track 426 ECC offers, dedicated ECC starts at $20/mo in stock — ECC lives on server-grade boxes, so compare within that class, not against desktop chips. Filter by ECC in one click.

// NVMe or HDD?

Databases/CI → NVMe, not negotiable. Media libraries and backups → HDD wins on $/TB. Live numbers: median $165.8/TB/mo on NVMe vs $16.0/TB/mo on HDD.

// How many cores do I need — or is clock speed what matters?

Game servers → single-thread speed and the newest generation you can afford. Databases, CI, rendering → cores. That is why our tables show cores AND boost clock AND generation — sort by what your workload actually uses.

// How many players or visitors will $X/month get me?

The inverse lookup, live: at $10 the strongest box is 6 vCPU · generic (shared) (101 cg-index) · at $25 the strongest box is Xeon E3-1270 v6 (237 cg-index) · at $50 the strongest box is Ryzen 7 5800H (592 cg-index) · at $100 the strongest box is 2× Xeon E5-2696 v3 (1,343 cg-index). Bonus: 158 dedicated offers carry an iGPU/QuickSync-class chip — free hardware transcoding for Plex.