SSD Nodes
SSD Nodes is the consumer-facing brand of Strasmore, Inc., founded in 2011 by Matt Connor with an explicit mandate to make high-resource VPS accessible to small developers and bootstrapped projects. The company has operated continuously for 15 years — a meaningful track record by budget hosting standards — and has provisioned over 40,000 virtual machines across its history.
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SSD Nodes Key Specifications
Pros and Cons
Here are the pros and cons of using SSD Nodes as your hosting platform.
Positives
Industry-leading RAM-per-dollar at the budget VPS tier with 8GB RAM from $5.50 per month on triennial plans
15-year operational history as an independent bootstrapped company with no ownership changes or acquisitions
No renewal price increases confirmed by long-term customers; pricing is locked for the lifetime of the contract
14 global data center locations including Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney covering Asia-Pacific use cases
DDoS protection via Corero Smartwall and public incident history page provide more infrastructure transparency than typical budget hosts
Negatives
RAM overselling via memory ballooning is a documented structural issue confirmed across multiple LowEndTalk benchmark threads; sustained high RAM usage can trigger cache flushing
Refund policy after the first purchase returns funds as account credit only, not back to the original payment method
Support response times are inconsistent with documented cases of unresolved recurring technical issues across multiple tickets
Custom OS installs are restricted and VNC console access requires opening a support ticket rather than being available instantly from the dashboard
Snapshots cannot be exported or downloaded locally; they can only be used to restore the VPS within the SSD Nodes platform
Interesting facts
Discover the unique features that make SSD Nodes stand out
SSD Nodes was founded in 2011 by Matt Connor and has provisioned over 40,000 virtual machines across 15 years of continuous operation as Strasmore Inc based in Tustin California
The company developed its own proprietary hypervisor called Vippy to eliminate third-party virtualization licensing costs and pass the savings to customers
All physical infrastructure runs on Hivelocity hardware across 14 global locations including Singapore Tokyo and Sydney with SOC 2 Type II ISO 27001 and PCI-DSS certifications
Entry pricing of $5.50 per month is only achievable on 3-year prepaid triennial plans; monthly pricing is significantly higher
IPv4 addresses now cost approximately $18 per year extra as a separate charge; IPv6 is included free with all plans
The business model is deliberately lean: SSD Nodes developed its own proprietary virtualization layer called "Vippy" to avoid third-party hypervisor licensing costs, partnered with Hivelocity (a US colocation provider with 40+ data centers globally) for physical infrastructure, and maintains network peering agreements with 30+ network partners including Tier-1 carriers like Hurricane Electric, GTT, Telia, Cogent, and CenturyLink. This structure allows the company to offer specs — particularly RAM — that appear implausible at the price point.
The team is small but experienced, with public LinkedIn profiles for key engineering and marketing staff. Support is staffed by a team of Client Success Engineers across multiple time zones.
Services Offered
| Service | Entry Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standard KVM VPS (Small) | ~$5.50/month (triennial) | 8GB RAM, 160GB SSD, 2 vCPU, 4TB transfer |
| Standard KVM VPS (Medium–16xLarge) | Up to ~$23/month | Up to 96GB RAM, 1.92TB NVMe, 48TB transfer |
| Performance VPS (NVMe tier) | Separate pricing | Higher I/O, NVMe-only storage |
| OpenClaw VPS | Listed | Alternative virtualization product |
| Gaming VPS | Listed | Optimized OS images for game servers |
| Business VPS | Listed | Priority support tier |
| Nested Virtualization VPS | Add-on (4xLarge+) | Run Docker, VMs inside VPS |
| REST API Add-on | $2/month | Programmatic control over server fleet |
| Snapshots | Paid add-on | Stored close to main disk for fast recovery |
| SSL Certificates | Available | Sold separately |
| Domain Registration | Available | Via client panel |
Note: SSD Nodes does NOT sell dedicated servers by policy ("managing dedicated servers would distract us from our VPS goal" — confirmed in their FAQ).
Technical Specifications
Standard VPS Plans (representative):
| Plan | RAM | Storage | vCPU | Transfer | ~Price/month (3yr) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 8GB | 160GB SSD | 2x Intel Silver | 4TB | $5.50 |
| Medium | 16GB | 320GB SSD | 4x Intel Silver | 8TB | $9.42 |
| 2X-Large | 32GB | 480GB SSD | 8x Intel Silver | 16TB | $11.08 |
| 4X-Large | 48GB | 720GB NVMe | 12x Intel Silver | 24TB | $16.42 |
| 8X-Large | 64GB | 1.2TB NVMe | 12x Intel Silver | 32TB | $18.00 |
| 16X-Large | 96GB | 1.92TB NVMe | 12x Intel Silver | 48TB | $23.00 |
Hardware: 4th Gen Intel Xeon Silver/Gold, RAID 10, WD Gold/Micron 9300/Intel Optane NVMe, Samsung/Micron/SK Hynix DDR-4 ECC RAM up to 2TB per host node.
Network: Dedicated 10 Gbps ports, 300+ Points of Presence, redundant fiber, DDoS protection via Corero Smartwall (confirmed on VPS API page).
Uptime SLA
SSD Nodes markets a 100% uptime SLA (noted on Trustpilot listing). The VPS API page separately mentions "99.9% uptime promise." The discrepancy between these two figures appears on the site itself — verify exact SLA terms in the legal/ToS documents before relying on either number for SLA enforcement.
The site maintains a public Incidents History page at https://www.ssdnodes.com/incidents-history/
Certifications & Compliance
Data center infrastructure (via Hivelocity) carries: SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001:2013, ISO 9001:2015, PCI-DSS NIST 800-53, HIPAA-compliant, GDPR, Carbon Trust Standard.
Payment Methods
Billing cycles: monthly, annual, and triennial (3-year). Best pricing only available on triennial plans. Monthly plans are confirmed "still 75% lower than most competitors" per the company's FAQ.
No renewal price hike: SSD Nodes explicitly states and community users confirm that the price you pay is the price for life. No intro-rate/renewal-rate gap.
Multi-server discount: Up to 25% off for customers running multiple servers simultaneously.
IPv4 pricing note: SSD Nodes now charges separately for dedicated IPv4 addresses (~$18/year per address based on LowEndTalk community reports). IPv6 is included free.
Community Reviews & Ratings
| Platform | Score | Review Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trustpilot | Not published as aggregate | 247 reviews | Mix of strong positives and a few serious complaints |
| G2 | 4.1/5 | 50 reviews | G2 "High Performer VPS Summer 2024" badge earned |
| HostAdvice | 4.3/5 | 68 reviews | "Best Hosting" award from HostAdvice |
| Reddit / LowEndTalk | Mixed | Numerous threads | Consistent praise for value; consistent warnings about RAM overselling |
Common positive themes: exceptional price-to-RAM ratio, solid uptime for light-to-medium workloads, transparent no-surprise renewal pricing, helpful support for non-trivial issues, long-term customer loyalty (many users 3–6+ years).
Common complaint themes: RAM overselling via memory ballooning (users report actual available RAM is less than advertised), support response times described as "sometimes late," network performance variance between locations, refund policy: after the first order, refunds go to account credit only (not back to original payment method).
SSD Nodes's Features
Money-Back Guarantee
Hourly Payments
Monthly Payments
Yearly Payments
Domain Purchase
REST API
DDOS Protection
Crypto Accepted
Affiliate Program
Load Balancers
WordPress Hosting
VPS Hosting
Cloud Hosting
Shared Hosting
Website Builder
Email Hosting
SSL Certificate(Free)
Backup Services
CDN Services
Unlimited Hosting
Object Storage
Kubernetes
WooCommerce Hosting
Dedicated Server
Reseller Hosting
Malware Scanner
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
Mobile App
Free Site Migration
NVMe SSD Storage
1-Click WordPress Install
WAF Included
E-commerce Hosting
Managed WordPress
Payment method
