# VPS vs Dedicated — When to Switch (Same Crypto Checkout) | NulNet

> CPU steal, ECC RAM, NVMe queues, IPMI. VPS tops out at $33.50; dedicated Shield sits at $30.80 annual-eff. One crypto invoice for both. No ID at signup.

Source: https://nulnet.com/guides/vps-vs-dedicated/

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# VPS vs Dedicated — When to Switch (Same Crypto Checkout)

![NulNet VPS vs dedicated - same crypto checkout](https://nulnet.com/img/theme-dedicated.png) CPU steal, ECC RAM, NVMe queues, IPMI. VPS tops out at $33.50; dedicated Shield sits at $30.80 annual-eff. One crypto invoice for both.

Published 2026-08-30 · Updated 2026-09-08 · NulNet Editorial

**Short answer** CPU steal, ECC RAM, NVMe queues, IPMI. VPS tops out at $33.50; dedicated Shield sits at $30.80 annual-eff. One crypto invoice for both.

Xeon E-2388G → 2× AMD EPYC 9474F ECC DDR4/DDR5 NVMe RAID 0/1/5/10 IPMI on all 1–25 Gbps unmetered 16 coins + XMR

## Plan ledger

| Plan | CPU | RAM | NVMe | RAID | Port | IPMI | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shield | 8c / 16t | 32 GB DDR4 ECC | 2 x 500 GB NVMe RAID 0/1 | 0/1 | 1 Gbps | IPMI + DDoS | $38.50 list · $30.80/mo annual |
| Vault | 16c / 32t | 64 GB DDR4 ECC-R | 2 x 1 TB NVMe RAID 0/1 | 0/1 | 1 Gbps | IPMI + DDoS | $68.50 list · $54.80/mo annual |
| Bastion | 32c / 64t | 128 GB DDR4 ECC-R | 2 x 2 TB NVMe RAID 0/1 | 0/1 | 10 Gbps | IPMI + DDoS | $108.50 list · $86.80/mo annual |
| Fortress | 32c / 64t | 256 GB DDR5 ECC-R | 4 x 2 TB NVMe RAID 0/1/5/10 | 0/1/5/10 | 10 Gbps | IPMI + DDoS | $173.50 list · $138.80/mo annual |
| Citadel | 96c / 192t dual | 512 GB DDR5 ECC-R | 4 x 2 TB NVMe Gen4 RAID 0/1/5/10 | 0/1/5/10 | 25 Gbps | L3/L7 scrubber | $298.50 list · $238.80/mo annual | Full ledger: [all dedicated SKUs](https://nulnet.com/dedicated/).

NulNet: VPS from $3/mo and dedicated from $30.80/mo annual. The map spans twenty-one locations — Reykjavik (Iceland) and Zurich (Switzerland) among them, plus Singapore, Dubai, Cape Town and fourteen others. Signup is email plus a 12-character password, or token-only. No KYC. Checkout is crypto-only across BTC, XMR, ETH, BNB, SOL, LTC, TRX, XRP, DOGE, DASH, ADA, GRAM (TON), and USDT (TRC-20/ERC-20/BEP-20/SPL). No payload or guest traffic logs; connection metadata ≤24h. DDoS included. One SKN company, one crypto checkout. Deploy at https://nulnet.com/deploy/.

## The short version

Stay on a VPS while the workload fits a slice of a shared EPYC or Xeon host: web apps, a WireGuard endpoint, a pruned chain node, CI, a game instance. Move to metal when one of four things is true — a whole socket is needed, storage queues are the product, the kernel itself gets replaced, or out-of-band console access matters. Both classes bill through the same crypto invoice, so this is hardware math, not a payment-rail decision.

VPS from $3* (fund $50+), storage 1–5 TB NVMe from $24/mo annual-eff, dedicated with IPMI from $30.80/mo. Crypto invoice, no KYC.

[Launch now](https://nulnet.com/deploy/?kind=dedicated&plan=shield&period=12/)

## Four numbers that decide it

CPU steal first: persistently above a few percent, a neighbour is eating your clock. Second, resident memory against plan RAM — once you swap to NVMe, the disk is the bottleneck. Third, sustained write bandwidth, which databases and chainstate punish first on shared queues. Fourth, IPMI and RAID choice, which no VPS plan offers; every dedicated tier here ships IPMI, ECC and RAID 0/1 by default.

## Where the price lines cross

On NulNet the VPS catalog tops out at Sentinel, 12 vCPU / 32 GB, at $33.50/mo list ($26.80 annual-eff). Cheapest metal is Shield — Xeon E-2388G, 8c/16t, 32 GB ECC, 2×500 GB NVMe — at $38.50 list, $30.80 annual-eff. Between those numbers the trade is isolation versus slices, and metal adds 1 Gbps unmetered plus IPMI hand-over. Scaling horizontally with many small boxes? Stay virtual.

## What a VPS still does better

Full root on KVM covers nested virtualization, Docker, custom ISOs and raw sockets on every plan, so Tor relays, mail stacks and VPN boxes never need metal. Rebuilds are a panel click, a fresh box images about a minute after an invoice credits, and CPU/RAM resize live. Upgrade for exclusivity, not for features the hypervisor already gives you.

## Checkout and provisioning facts

The flow is identical for both classes: plan and term, email or token, a 12-character password, then a live-rate invoice in any of sixteen coins. VPS provisioning starts about a minute after the watcher credits the transfer; dedicated lands 2–4 hours later after racking and IPMI hand-over. Invoice addresses are single-use. If the sizing call is close, the [no-KYC dedicated lineup](https://nulnet.com/guides/best-no-kyc-dedicated-servers/) lists every spec next to its list price.

Can I start on a VPS and move to dedicated later? Yes, though the move is a redeploy, not an upgrade: copy data, cut DNS over, keep the old box for a rollback window. No in-place path exists to exclusive metal.

Which class provisions faster? VPS, by hours — about a minute after the invoice credits. Dedicated needs 2–4 hours for racking and IPMI hand-over first.

Can I pay for a dedicated server with crypto? Yes. Both classes draw on the same sixteen-coin checkout — XMR, BTC and the four USDT networks included — and the invoice math is tier-independent.

Do I lose DDoS filtering when I move to metal? No. L3/L4 filtering runs on dedicated tiers too, and Citadel adds an L3/L7 scrubber. You gain IPMI, so a wedged box is reimaged out-of-band.

## Related guides

- [Dedicated servers — full ledger](https://nulnet.com/dedicated/)
- [Best no-KYC dedicated servers](https://nulnet.com/best-no-kyc-dedicated-servers/)
- [Cheapest no-KYC dedicated](https://nulnet.com/cheapest-no-kyc-dedicated/)
- [Monero bare metal server](https://nulnet.com/bare-metal-monero/)
- [Buy dedicated with crypto](https://nulnet.com/buy-dedicated-server-with-crypto/)
- [Offshore dedicated server](https://nulnet.com/offshore-dedicated-server/)
- [No-KYC dedicated worldwide](https://nulnet.com/no-kyc-dedicated-worldwide/)
- [VPS vs dedicated: when to switch](https://nulnet.com/compare/vps-vs-dedicated-bare-metal/)

## Checkout facts

- **Price** VPS from $3/mo. Dedicated from $30.80/mo.
- **Identity** No KYC. Token-only (no email) or email plus a 12-character password. No passport, phone, or card.
- **Payment** Sixteen ways to settle, none of them a card: XMR and BTC lead, ETH, SOL, LTC, BNB and TRX follow, then XRP, DOGE, DASH and ADA, GRAM (TON) for Telegram-adjacent rails, and USDT on four networks — TRC-20, ERC-20, BEP-20, SPL. Live-rate invoice.
- **Logs** No payload / no guest traffic logs. Billing and panel actions retained. Connection metadata ≤24h.
- **Platform** KVM on ECC and local NVMe. DDoS filtering included. Facilities in 21 cities across four continents — the locations table lists each one's tier, uplink and governing law. Need Iceland or Switzerland plus no KYC? Those two carry a published premium (+20% / +35%); every other flag stays at base list. Pay BTC, USDT, XMR, BNB, XRP, GRAM (TON) or 10 more. Open deploy to pick a plan.

## Ready to launch?

Build the box — VPS, storage or bare metal — create the password, pay the invoice that follows.

[Launch now](https://nulnet.com/deploy/?kind=dedicated&plan=shield&period=12/)[Storage](https://nulnet.com/storage/)