I'm using mine primarily as a redundant backup host. So, for that usage, they're perfectly reliable and functional.
However, the machine is absolutely slow. It usually takes a few seconds before SSH brings me to a shell prompt. Web apps I have running on it (basically just Gitea and Vikunja at the moment) can take upwards of 10 seconds to render pages, and it's just me using it. If you just want a storage host, they're fine. Running your website off it? I would probably not recommend.
Reliability, I have not had any issues so far, but I'm hardly a power user. My own personal anecdote is that my backups get validated monthly and, so far, have not had any issues.
I would probably agree that these machines alone would not suffice to make a good Dropbox alternative if what you're storing there isn't backed up elsewhere. I would recommend supplementing with off-site backups to B2 at the very least.
They won't let you sign up from a VPN. That's annoying but it doesn't affect me. Maybe they're trying to prevent Russian bots from signing up or something. Fine.
But after I gave them a valid credit card and billing address, they still won't take my money. Here's their support response:
"Your IP address does not match with the location you have provided.
In order to accept your order your IP address must match the actual location from where you are placing the order."
Ohh kaay. I'm traveling at the moment in a different US state from my billing address. I'm not in Mongolia. And even when I'm at my billing address, my main ISP is Starlink, whose primary ground stations for me are also in a different state than I'm in. So I routinely see banner ads on websites for stores that are 500 miles away.
It's par for the course for non-technical companies to assume that IP geolocation is in any way accurate. But a cloud VPS company should know better.
