Nov 7, 2022 3 min read devOps

aaPanel performance test on DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Hetzner

I have been using aaPanel for over a year on Oracle cloud. I have also used DigitalOcean droplet for over 8 years and have experience with Vultr and Hetzner. Last few months, I have been publishing different posts about aaPanel installing, reviewing, ghost installation, etc. I was thinking, Why not test aaPanel in different cloud providers? So, in this post, I would love to share my recent experiment with aaPanel performance on DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Hetzner.

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All opinions in this post are from my observational study and are not influenced by any providers.

Objective

To find out which provider's entry-level VPS (virtual private server) is good for optimum aaPanel performance.

Methodology

3 brand new entry-level VPS was created and aaPanel was installed on DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Hetzner one by one. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS was used as an Operating system across all of the VPS. aaPanel was installed using the command prompt. aaPanel installation script gives us the total installation time required. After installation, some software was installed (see the list below). The time required for all installations was recorded using a stopwatch. After installing all the software, each VPS was observed for 30 minutes. Performance data were obtained from the provider's usage graphs and aaPanel's built-in server monitoring graphs. Then it was manually calculated. VPS provider inclusion criteria were personal choice and ease of use.

Results:

To install aaPanel, DigitalOcean VPS took 2 minutes and others took 1 minute. The time to install the software was 64, 44, and 41 minutes for DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Hetzner respectively. During software installation, all of the VPS used 100% CPU while during idle time DigitalOcean used 7% of CPU. On the other hand, Vultr, and Hetzner used 14% of the CPU.

Time required during installation

Provider	aaPanel Install time	Software Install time
DigitalOcean	2 mins	64 mins
Vultr	1 min	44 mins
Hetzner	1 min	41 mins

CPU usage comparison

Provider	Max CPU load during installation	Avg CPU load during Idle
DigitalOcean	100%	7%
Vultr	100%	14%
Hetzner	100%	14%

Entry-level VPS: resources comparison

provider	CPU	RAM	SSD	Bandwidth	Location	Price
DigitalOcean	1 CPU	1 GB	25 GB	1 TB	Germany	$6
Vultr	1 vCPU	1 GB	25 GB	1 TB	Germany	$5
Hetzner	1 vCPU	2 GB	20 GB	20 TB	Germany	$4.51

Among the 3 providers, Vultr is lacking metrics in server monitoring.

Discussion

As an entry-level VPS, Hetzner seems to be a better choice in terms of price vs resource calculation. Hetzner and Vultr both seem to be more performant than DigitalOcean where Hetzner is slightly ahead of the race.

When installing software, aaPanel compile and build (other than CentOS 7) from the source within the server for the best performance and it will take time. In my case, I have used Ubuntu 22.04 LTS intentionally which will give a compilation guarantee. So, the time to take install software is a good indicator of measuring performance, in my opinion.

All the provider's control panels and user experience are somewhat the same but Hetzner has a very clearcut interface.

Including more VPS providers, using more deterministic factors, and performing statistical tests would definitely improve the findings.

My Opinion

For hobby projects and personal blogs (e.g ghost) hosting, any of the prover's VPS will be more than enough where aaPanel will be performing optimally. For production and high volume usage, use at least 4 GB RAM and 2 vCPUs.