If you were in the market for a VPS, what would make you pay a large and dramatic premium over typical pricing in this field?

I'd be very interested to know this. There are some guys doing high-end stuff in VPSes, and also Amazon EC2 and your other cloud vendors are, relatively speaking, expensive. However, in general, the overall trend in VPS hosting is to do it as cheaply as possible.

If you approach something on the cheap side, you often end up with cheap results.

You can go to Home Depot and pick up a cheap paint and paint your house, and 3 years later be back at home depot picking up NEW paint for your house. Or you can spend a few extra dollars and get a paint that lasts 5 years, or 7 years.

I personally believe the same rings true in the web hosting industry. You can go cheap, be placed on cheap hardware, or be squashed between a few hundred other customers all fighting for a piece of the CPU and memory, OR you can pay a slightly higher price, and not have to deal with problematic servers, or hugely oversold servers.

VPS is no different. You can go with a host that has 20-30 Containers on a single machine, or you can spend extra money and go with a host that puts 8 containers on the same type of machine.

You'll ALWAYS need to do your research as there are hosts (just like any industry) that will charge more just because the market allows it. In almost any business however, I often return to the old adage of "you get what you paid for".

Also, check with the VPS vendors and see what extra things they're offering - maybe they're offering backups, management, migration services or other things that others are not offering.

Hi William, welcome to the forums.

Hardware specifications (RAM especially)
Quality of the network and setup
Management / support

But that's just me.

Thanks for the feedback. So here's a question your posts raised in my mind. How do you communicate high-quality infrastructure in terms of servers, and so forth, to end users?

Short videos could help - both describing your infrastructure and providing testimontials from clients who benefit from your model - talking about how your solution benefitted their business. It's all about creating a perception of value. One of my favorite phrases is, "customizing solutions for businesses, just like yours." - taken from the book of Jeffrey Gitomer.

I consider people to be a large part of the infrastructure you sign-up for as a client. If the communication you have with either sales or technical people lack professionalism or quality of knowledge, it would raise a flag. On the other hand, if you feel like there is a team of highly qualified people behind the company, then it would certainly make me feel at ease. People, in short, make the difference in the quality of service you receive (for me at least).

If I had the funds, I'd probably only pay this "large and dramatic premium" if I had a complex website and paid someone to webmaster all of it.

If I were in the market for a managed VPS, then I can't think of a situation where I'd pay a substantial premium to the general market price.

Just my .

You get what you pay for. You pay for cheap hosting, expect low quality hosting. Pay more and get better quality service.

Pending I was not hosting myself It would depend, but I can pretty much answer it that everything and I mean everything would have to be amazing.

All spec's needed, all support I may ever need, any extra's that come along with it, etc.

I see premium as earned.

If I want something and the company provides that, then I would pay the premium for it to the extent I think that something is worth.

Most high-end VPS tries to create an unique selling point.

So if A and B sells the same thing and A is cheaper, I go for A.
But if B has something, say off-site backup and I needed that, I go for B paying higher.

I would always go for the ones that would yield benefits in the long run and would never compromise on the quality of the service that one renders even if its tad bit expensive..

Support and performance for sure.

This is the answer I prefer most. Prospects buy from reps and businesses they know, like and trust. That's an earned attribute. In order to for prospects to know, like and trust you, you need to touch as many of their senses as possble. There are plenty of providers successfully selling the same products and services you do - at higher prices. Why? Perception of value. As Artashes said, you absolutely need to be professional and knowledgeable.

Yep, me too. Both are very important.