Smeltworks is a small US hosting operation. We rent virtual machines and host sites and applications on our own servers: current-generation AMD Threadripper, DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 NVMe, on fiber with Starlink backup and battery and generator power. Monthly pricing, no contracts, and when something goes wrong you email the person who runs the machines.
Three ways to use the hardware. Every option includes nightly backups, monitoring and support by email from the operator. Billed monthly; pay annually and get two months free.
More cores, more disk, a specific OS. Say what you need and we'll quote it, usually the same day.
Every VM: root access, your choice of Linux distribution, NVMe storage, nightly backups kept off the host, monitoring. No bandwidth overage charges. Prices in USD.
Add-ons: private GitLab and container registry $10/month · extra domains $3/month each · bulk storage on request. Services: migrations from another provider and "run it for us" retainers are quoted per job.
Run your app on two or three machines at once. It stays fast when traffic spikes, deploys with no downtime, and there's no single point of failure, for 1.5× the single-machine price rather than 3×.
How the pricing works: on three machines your app runs as three smaller replicas that share the work, with enough headroom that any two can carry all of it. That is 1.5× the hardware of a single instance, so it costs 1.5×. Two machines cost 2×. A mirrored VM is a full copy on each machine, so it costs 2× per extra machine. No "HA surcharge", no egress billing. Any plan can be replicated; ask if yours isn't listed.
Same rates as the plans, itemised. Volume discount from 4 vCPU. Three machines cost 1.5× for a load-balanced app, 3× for a mirrored VM. Everything includes nightly backups, monitoring and support.
What you get here against what a typical cloud VPS or a budget VPS gives you for similar money.
| Smeltworks | Typical cloud VPS | Budget VPS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Threadripper workstation cores | Shared server cores, mixed generations | Shared, often older |
| Oversubscription | None. Your vCPUs and RAM are reserved | Common on standard tiers | Heavy |
| Storage | PCIe 5.0 NVMe | SSD or NVMe, varies | SSD |
| Backups | Nightly, included, restore-tested | Paid add-on, typically 20% | Usually none |
| Support | The operator, usually same day | Ticket queue | Ticket queue or forum |
| High availability | Load-balanced 3-node apps at 1.5×; mirrored VMs | Build it yourself | Not offered |
| Public exposure | None. Everything sits behind our edge | Public IP on every VM | Public IP on every VM |
| Contract | Monthly, cancel any time | Monthly | Often annual for the low price |
Every plan runs on the same servers. We buy current hardware and keep spare capacity on every host, so a VM performs the same on a busy day as on the day you got it.
Workstation-class processors with high clocks and large caches, not the shared server cores budget hosts run on.
Current-generation memory. Your allocation is reserved for your VM, not shared with a neighbour.
PCIe 5.0 drives. Databases and builds run on the fastest consumer-available flash there is.
The primary connection is fiber with Starlink as an automatic backup. Battery backup covers short power outages without a blip; generators cover the long ones.
VM storage and backups are encrypted at rest. Each customer's VM sits on its own isolated network. Nothing on our network listens on a public IP, and administration happens over an encrypted private network with SSH keys only.
Every VM is backed up nightly to separate storage and we test restores. Hardware and links are monitored around the clock and we get paged.
We're moving the whole operation to solar power. The panels and battery storage are ordered. Once they're installed, the servers will run on solar during the day and on stored solar at night, with the grid and the generators kept only as backup.
It cuts our running costs, which keeps prices where they are, and it means a grid outage doesn't even register: the servers are already running off the batteries.
Smeltworks is a small operation. We own the servers, we don't resell anyone else's, and the person who reads [email protected] is the person who manages the hardware. We run our own products on the same setup.
A VM is a server you administer: you get root and it's yours to run. Hosting means we run the software for you: deploys, updates, database, backups, monitoring. If you don't want to think about the server, pick hosting. If you do, pick a VM.
For an application it means running on two or three machines at once behind our load balancer: more capacity for traffic spikes, deploys that roll through with no downtime, and no single point of failure. The replicas are sized so that any two can carry the full load, which is why three machines cost 1.5× a single instance rather than 3×. A VM can't be split, so a replicated VM is a full mirror on a second machine with automatic failover, and costs a full copy per machine.
You get one address. Behind it, an app runs as replicas spread across the machines you chose, each carrying a share of the traffic, and deploys roll through one replica at a time so nothing goes offline. A VM is mirrored to a second machine with automatic failover. Bring your own database or anything else: what runs inside is up to you, and a database you run yourself should be sized like a VM (a full copy per machine), not like a load-balanced app.
We set VMs up by hand. Most are ready the same day you email, and you'll get login details and a short note on how it's configured.
We don't sell an SLA with credits. What we do is make sure every part of the setup has a backup: two internet connections, battery and generator power, and monitoring that pages us. No single failure should take a VM down, and the multi-machine plans have no single point of failure at all.
Your VM's disk and its backups are encrypted at rest, and every connection we use to manage the hardware is encrypted and key-authenticated. Your VM is on its own isolated network, so other customers can't see it. We don't look inside your VM except for the reasons listed in our terms, and we tell you when we have.
Monthly by invoice, or annually with two months free. Cancel any time and we'll help you get your data out.
Tell us what you want and what you'll run on it. Most VMs are ready the same day. Prefer email? [email protected].