RAKsmart is a company that provides services such as servers, websites, hosting, virtual machines, and cloud servers. They have established multiple data centers in California and the core area of Silicon Valley.

I first learned about RAKsmart about a year ago when I saw on V2ex that new users could get vouchers for free registration. I tried it out for about 3 months and found that the network was quite stable. However, I haven't been paying much attention to RAKsmart lately because it seems like they mainly focus on server rental and their VPS doesn't offer the best value for money. But recently, they have been running promotions on their official website, so it's quite cost-effective to get one during the promotion period. So I ended up buying another one.

Pricing

Currently, they only offer VPS in Hong Kong and the United States. Since the Hong Kong VPS is not included in the promotion, I'll ignore it. Here are a few price charts.

The lowest configuration for the SAN VPS series is 512MB memory for $3.98/month. With the 35% off promotion, it's around $2.58/month.

The SSD VPS can be configured with a minimum of 256MB memory, with a price of $3.98/month. With the 35% off promotion, it's around $2.58/month.

Simple Test

The US data center is located on the West Coast, which is still acceptable for mainland China. Below are screenshots of local ping and route tracing. The ping from Sichuan Telecom is stable at around 200ms, with direct connection to the US West Coast.

Conclusion

It has been a while since I last used RAKsmart, and I recently purchased another one during the promotion. I'm not sure if its stability is the same as before, so I recommend paying on a monthly basis. Welcome to share your opinions if you plan to use it for a long time. By the way, buying VPS can really become addictive.

Raksmart promotion link, US VPS discount code: 20170101bigsale35, renewal is also 35% off, and they have Chinese customer service.