About Database Mart

Database Mart has been renting American servers since 2005 — virtual machines, bare-metal dedicated boxes and, more recently, GPU servers for machine learning — and a discount code is worth having on something billed every month for years.

What is on offer

Three tiers, and the difference between them is what you are sharing. A virtual private server carves out its own CPU, memory and disk on a shared physical machine, with full administrator access; it is the cheap end and it suits a small site, a bot or a development box. A dedicated server is the whole physical machine, bought when performance must not depend on anyone else's workload. GPU servers add NVIDIA cards with dedicated video memory for training and inference. Around that sit domains, SSL certificates, pre-installed images and optional managed services.

Where the servers are, and why that matters

The data centres are in the United States. For a UK audience this is the first thing to check rather than the last, because physical distance shows up as latency on every request, and a British audience served from an American data centre feels it. There is also the data question: where personal data is stored has legal consequences under UK data protection rules, so a US-hosted database of UK customers is a decision to take deliberately, with advice. For a machine doing background work — model training, batch jobs, a bot — location matters far less.

Managed or unmanaged, honestly

An unmanaged server is a bare operating system and a root password. You are responsible for security updates, the firewall, backups, and getting it back when something breaks at two in the morning. That is entirely reasonable if you know what you are doing and a serious liability if you do not — an unpatched server on a public address is found by scanners within hours. If you would rather not, either buy the managed option or use a platform where somebody else handles the operating system. Check what backups are actually included, and test a restore before you need one.

Billing, commitment and using your code

Headline prices are usually monthly and often assume a longer commitment; look at what a single month costs and what the renewal rate is after any introductory period, because a low first-term price that triples on renewal is common across hosting. Setup fees, extra IP addresses and bandwidth beyond the included allowance are separate lines. Enter your code during checkout and confirm it appears on the invoice preview rather than assuming it registered, and diary the renewal date.