Start a VPS Hosting Business: Costs and Break-Even

If you want to start a VPS hosting business on rented dedicated servers, start with a spreadsheet, not a logo. Your costs are mostly fixed: a host, a block of IPv4 addresses, a panel licence and a billing licence. Your revenue is a count of small monthly plans. Below: the stack and its licences, the IP problem, a worked P&L with every sum shown, the duties you take on, and when reselling whole servers is the better first step.

What you are actually building

A VPS business has four layers: the host (a rented dedicated server), the hypervisor that splits it into virtual machines, usually KVM, the customer panel where customers reboot, reinstall and open a console, and billing, which takes payment, suspends non-payers and creates the VPS when an order is paid. NexonHost supplies the host and the network. The other three are software you choose, install and keep updated.

Hypervisor, panel and billing: the stack and its licences

Proxmox VE is on the Operating System menu at checkout (versions 7, 8 and 9), so a host arrives with it installed. It has no licence fee; subscriptions for its enterprise repository are optional and priced per CPU socket. Proxmox host sizing covers RAM, ZFS and subscription tiers. Proxmox gives you the hypervisor and an admin interface, not a customer panel or billing.

VPS panels such as Virtualizor and SolusVM are built for selling: they manage KVM nodes, give each customer a login, and connect to billing systems. You install them on a plain Linux image from the OS menu. WHMCS is the usual billing system in this market. VMware ESXi is also on the menu, but Broadcom licenses it per physical core, a poor fit for slicing a host into cheap plans; ESXi licensing has the rules.

Licence prices from each vendor's own pricing page, as of 2 November 2026:

Product	Plan	Price
Proxmox VE	Software	No licence fee
Virtualizor	Premium, unlimited VPS, one node	$9 a month
Virtualizor	Professional, unlimited VPS, one node	$18 a month
SolusVM	Management Node with Virtualization, unlimited VPS	$10 a month
WHMCS self-hosted	Plus, up to 250 active clients	$34.95 a month
WHMCS fully managed	Starter, up to 25 active clients	$9.99 a month

Panels are licensed per node; WHMCS by active clients.

The IP problem

Every VPS you sell needs a public IPv4 address. Each NexonHost dedicated server includes one IPv4, which your hypervisor uses. The store then offers (as of 2 November 2026, EUR excluding VAT):

Option	Addresses	Cost
Extra IPs	+1 to +5	€3 each a month
Rented /24	256	€250 a month + €100 setup
Your own /24	256	€100 setup
Your own /24 + ASN	256	€200 a month + €100 setup

Nothing sits between six addresses (one plus five) and 256. Five extra IPs means five VPS, on a host that holds far more. A rented /24 is €250 ÷ 256 ≈ €0.98 per address a month, but only if you fill it; a few addresses go to the network, gateway and broadcast, depending on how the block is routed.

Holding your own space moves the cost to the registry. The RIPE NCC's charging schemes set a €1,000 sign-up fee per new LIR account and an annual fee of €1,800 in 2026 (RIPE-848) and €1,894 in 2027 (RIPE-867). That is €1,894 ÷ 12 ≈ €158 a month from 2027, before you have any addresses; getting a /24 means the RIPE waiting list or the transfer market. Bring your own IP covers that route. Whether NexonHost will announce a block you hold is a question for sales, not something to assume.

A worked P&L on one EPYC host

An example, not a promise. The host is the AMD EPYC 9254 build: 24 cores and 48 threads, 128 GB of DDR5, 2× 1 TB NVMe in RAID 1, a 1 Gbps port, €449 a month. The plan we sell is 2 vCPU, 4 GB of RAM and 30 GB of disk.

Assumptions (ours, change them): CPU overcommitted at 2 vCPU per thread; RAM not overcommitted; 10% of RAM kept for Proxmox, ZFS and the host, the same rule the virtualization servers planner uses; WHMCS runs on a server you already have.

How many fit:

RAM: 128 − (10% × 128) = 115.2 GB; 115.2 ÷ 4 = 28.8, so 28 VPS.
CPU: 48 threads × 2 = 96 vCPU; 96 ÷ 2 = 48 VPS.
Disk: 28 × 30 GB = 840 GB of the roughly 1 TB the mirror gives, leaving about 160 GB for the host, templates and growth.

RAM decides: 28 VPS. Twenty-eight needs a /24, because six addresses do not cover it.

Monthly costs, with USD licences converted at the ECB reference rate of 30 October 2026 ($1.1172 per euro):

Line	Monthly	Per VPS (÷ 28)
EPYC 9254 host	€449.00	€16.04
Rented /24	€250.00	€8.93
Backup storage, 1 TB	€5.00	€0.18
Virtualizor Premium ($9)	€8.06	€0.29
WHMCS Plus ($34.95)	€31.28	€1.12
Total	€743.34	€26.55

Plus €100 once for the /24 setup. Licences: 9 ÷ 1.1172 = €8.06; 34.95 ÷ 1.1172 = €31.28.

Break-even is total cost ÷ sell price, against the 28 that fit:

Sell price a month	VPS to break even	Fits on one host?
€15	743.34 ÷ 15 = 49.6, so 50	No
€20	743.34 ÷ 20 = 37.2, so 38	No
€25	743.34 ÷ 25 = 29.7, so 30	No
€30	743.34 ÷ 30 = 24.8, so 25	Yes, 3 spare

At €30 and a full host, profit is 28 × €30 − €743.34 = €96.66 a month, before your own time, payment fees, tax or a single empty slot. The cost of the host alone is €16.04 per plan, so you cannot win on price against a provider selling the same size directly; NexonHost's own NEX2 (2 vCPU, 4 GB, 60 GB SSD) is €18 a month.

A cheaper host changes the sums, not the shape. The 20-core Xeon E5-2630 v4 (€129) also has 128 GB, so it fits the same 28, but needs a bigger disk: 6× 1 TB SSD, +€60. Total €483.34, or €17.26 per VPS; at €20, 483.34 ÷ 20 = 24.2, so 25 to break even. It provisions in minutes, on older cores and SATA SSDs.

The /24 is the expensive line at this scale: €8.93 of every plan. Ask sales whether a /24 can serve more than one of your servers before you plan a second host, because a block shared across hosts is what brings that line down. Without a /24, five extra IPs (€15) serve five VPS: €449 + €15 + €5 = €469 before licences, over €90 a plan.

Also: the 28 VPS share one 1 Gbps port, 1,000 ÷ 28 ≈ 36 Mbps each if all are busy (2 Gbps is €160 instead of €80), and the build takes about two weeks, so order host two early.

The duties you take on

Abuse handling. Under RIPE policy (RIPE-705), every directly allocated block and every AS number needs an abuse-c contact, with an abuse-mailbox the RIPE NCC validates at least annually. With a rented /24 the registry record usually names the provider, so complaints about your customers go to its abuse contact; ask the provider how it passes them on and how fast it expects you to act. With your own block, the mailbox is yours. Either way, someone must read it daily and act on spam, phishing and scanning.

KYC and fraud. Cheap VPS attract stolen cards. Decide what you check before a VPS goes live.

DDoS on customers. Every NexonHost server includes 100 Gbps of Layer 3/4 protection; HTTP-layer filtering needs the 10 Tbps tier (€4,499 a month) or a website proxy, and one attacked VPS still shares the host's port. DDoS protected servers lists the tiers.

Backups. A RAID mirror is not a backup. Snapshot VPS to off-server storage: backup storage is €5 a TB a month, and 840 GB fits in the 1 TB tier above.

Support hours. NexonHost's 24/7 tickets cover your server, not your customers. Who answers at 03:00 on a Sunday?

Reselling whole servers instead

The dedicated server reseller program sells whole dedicated servers through an API, at prices agreed for your account. It does not sell VPS. Each server comes with its own IPv4, so the IP problem disappears, and there is no hypervisor, panel licence or noisy neighbour to manage. Your margin is your price minus the agreed price.

It is the better start if customers want root on their own machine, or you cannot yet fill a 128 GB host with small plans. You still carry abuse, fraud checks and support.

Don't do this if

You plan to compete on price. At €16.04 per plan for the host alone, the cheapest providers win. Sell a niche: a language, a region, managed setups, an application stack.
You cannot fill a host. Ten customers on a 28-slot host lose money at every price in the table.
Nobody will read the abuse mailbox. An ignored complaint can cost you the addresses, and then every customer at once.

Where to start

To start a VPS hosting business on NexonHost hardware, pick a build on virtualization servers or dedicated servers: Proxmox VE preinstalled, 100 Gbps of Layer 4 DDoS protection included, the EPYC 9254 from €449 a month. Start on a one-month term, rebuild the P&L above with your own plan sizes and price, and ask sales about the /24 before you sign up your tenth customer. Prices as of 2 November 2026, EUR excluding VAT; check the product page for current figures.