HostingBuff is written by Keishin — someone who has been self-hosting game servers since 2008 and has spent real money with most of the providers reviewed here. This page explains exactly who pays us, how much, and — most importantly — why that never decides which tools we recommend.

01 // The Short Version

When you click a partner link on this site and sign up, we earn a commission. You pay the same price either way — nothing is added for you. Every guide and review on HostingBuff is free to read, forever, because of this.

We don't take payment to review something positively. We don't accept sponsored guides. Every provider reviewed on this site has been used as a paying customer at some point by Keishin, the author — either currently, or at some point over the last 18 years of self-hosting game servers.

02 // Who We Partner With

Every partner below is a provider Keishin has personally used with real money. Affiliate links appear only where there's genuine first-hand experience to back the recommendation. Commissions disclosed:

  • Hostinger — KVM VPS line (KVM 1 through KVM 8) for self-managed game servers. €11.50–€47.98 per signup. Active account for self-managed Linux work.
  • Physgun — managed game server hosting with a Rust specialty. 30% off first purchase via our link. Currently running an active Rust server with them — the most hands-on provider on the site.
  • ZAP-Hosting — official CFX/FiveM partner. 20% permanent discount via voucher Keishin-a-8710. Used for FiveM/RedM roleplay deployments.
  • Nitrado — managed game server hosting, especially strong for console crossplay games like ARK. Commission varies by plan. Past customer for ARK.
  • Shockbyte — budget Minecraft and multi-game host. Commission per signup. Past customer for Minecraft.
  • Apex Hosting — established premium managed Minecraft host (since 2013), specialist for CurseForge / Feed the Beast modpacks. Commission per signup. Past customer for modded Minecraft hosting.
  • GTXGaming — UK-based specialist for Source engine games (CS2, TF2, Garry's Mod). Commission per signup. Past customer for Source engine servers.

We also link to free, open-source tools (Pterodactyl, LinuxGSM, Pelican, WindowsGSM) and paid tools from third parties (AMP by CubeCoders, WISP) — we get nothing from those links. They're there because they're the right answer.

03 // How We Pick Recommendations

Every recommendation on this site is based on three things:

  1. Does it actually work? If we spin up the exact configuration we're recommending and it lags, crashes, or falls over under real player load, it doesn't get recommended. Period.
  2. Is the spec honest? Rust does not run well on 4 GB of RAM, no matter how cheap the plan is. We match hardware to the game's real-world needs, not to the plan that pays us the most.
  3. Is there a better free alternative? If a free open-source tool beats a paid one for your use case, we say so. Pterodactyl and LinuxGSM are free — we link to them constantly even though we earn nothing from it.

04 // Who Writes These Reviews

Reviews on HostingBuff are written by Keishin, who has been self-hosting dedicated game servers since 2008 — before most of today's major hosting providers existed. Over 18 years, Keishin has run servers for Rust, Minecraft, ARK, CS2, TF2, FiveM, RedM, Valheim and more, across 10+ different hosting providers from budget shared panels to self-managed Linux VPS.

Providers personally used with real money over the years include: Shockbyte, ZAP-Hosting, GTXGaming, Hostinger, Nitrado, Physgun, Nodecraft, AleForge, PingPerfect, Host Havoc, Apex Hosting, and several others. Full spectrum — budget to premium, managed to self-hosted, Windows to Linux, casual to competitive.

Reviews on this site are honest personal-experience write-ups, supplemented by current community sentiment from Reddit and Trustpilot and by official documentation. They are not first-party benchmark lab reports. We don't publish latency numbers or uptime percentages we didn't measure — but we do share genuine impressions from running real servers on real hardware, on real weekends, for real players.

Where we have or have had an active account with a provider, that's explicitly noted in the "Our Experience" block at the top of each review.

05 // Why Honest Reviews Make More Money

The short version: if we recommend an 8 GB VPS for a Rust server that really needs 16 GB, that player will rage-quit the server in a week, blame the host, and never trust us again. Bad recommendations burn readers, readers stop coming back, and commissions dry up.

Accurate, honest recommendations bring back repeat readers who upgrade their plans, try more games, and tell their friends. That pays more over five years than any short-term trick ever will.

06 // What Disclosure Looks Like on the Site

  • Every affiliate link has rel="sponsored" on it, per Google's webmaster guidelines.
  • Every recommendation box is clearly labeled as a recommendation — not hidden inside prose.
  • When we compare hosts, paid partners and non-partners are in the same table on equal terms.

07 // FTC / Legal Notes

HostingBuff complies with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (16 CFR Part 255), the UK ASA CAP Code on affiliate content, and the EU Digital Services Act transparency rules for commercial communications.

We are an independent publisher, not employed by Hostinger, Nitrado, CubeCoders, Pterodactyl, or any hosting or panel vendor.

08 // Questions?

Email contact@hostingbuff.com if you want to know anything about a specific recommendation, a partnership, or how we tested a particular tool. We'll answer honestly.

TL;DR

We earn commissions from a handful of hosting partners (listed in Section 02 above). We pick recommendations based on what actually works for the specific game, not on which partner pays the most. If a free open-source tool beats a paid one for your use case, we say so and link to it anyway. The site stays free because this model works.