FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Answers about billing, upgrades, payment methods, and more.
Yes, for VPS, Minecraft, FiveM and WordPress — upgrades and downgrades are managed directly from the customer portal, no support ticket required. For PayPal and Stripe, upgrades take effect as soon as the prorated difference is charged. For Interac e-Transfer or crypto, you'll get payment instructions, and the upgrade applies once that payment is received. Downgrades are scheduled for your next renewal date, with no charge now, regardless of payment method. VPS disks can't be shrunk, so VPS plans only support upgrading (including SSD to NVMe, disk size permitting) — never downgrading. Email plan changes aren't self-service yet — contact us and we'll take care of it.
Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and FreeBSD — with multiple recent versions of each available at checkout. We don't provide Windows Server licenses or installation media — if you need Windows Server, you'll need to supply your own licensed ISO, and we can discuss a custom install as a one-off request.
Yes, cPanel/WHM can be installed on your VPS. A license will need to be purchased by you directly — we do not resell cPanel/WHM licenses.
We accept PayPal, Stripe (credit & debit card), Interac e-Transfer, and cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, USDC) — all available directly at checkout. Your card details are handled entirely by PayPal or Stripe and never touch our servers.
No setup fees, ever. You only pay the monthly plan price.
Absolutely. Our Managed and Priority plans work on any server at any provider — all we need is SSH access.
Automated backups are included with managed plans. VPS plans also get automatic backups at no extra cost — every VM gets a full scheduled backup (not a live snapshot) roughly every 2 days, with the 2 most recent kept. Need more retention? You can add extra backups (4 or 7 total) anytime from your service page, and restoring any kept backup yourself is self-service too. Game servers (Minecraft and FiveM), WordPress and email hosting are also backed up automatically every night at the host level, with the last 5 days kept — restores for those are done by our team, so contact us with the service and the date you need. This is a best-effort safety net, not a guaranteed SLA, so we still recommend your own backups for anything critical.
Each standard VPS plan includes a monthly bandwidth allowance (Custom VPS plans aren't subject to this). If you go over it, your server's network speed is automatically capped to 100 Mbps until the start of the next calendar month, or until you upgrade to a plan with a higher allowance — there's no extra charge for going over, and we email you when it happens (and again once full speed is restored).
Every plan is protected automatically — there's nothing to configure. Mitigation activates the moment attack traffic is detected and can absorb up to 10 Gbps. If an attack goes beyond that, the targeted IP is temporarily null-routed (traffic dropped upstream) to protect the rest of the network — standard industry practice, not unique to us — and normal traffic resumes once the attack stops.
Once a service is provisioned and active, payments are non-refundable except for SLA credits or genuine billing errors — see our refund policy for details. Cancelling a service takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
When you upgrade, you pay only for the remaining days in your current billing period at the price difference between the old and new plan — via card/PayPal for Stripe/PayPal, or a one-time Interac e-Transfer or crypto payment if that's your payment method. On your next renewal you'll be billed the full new plan amount.
For Minecraft, FiveM and WordPress, yes — downgrades are scheduled to take effect on your next renewal date, no charge or credit applies now, and WordPress downgrades require that your current disk usage fits within the new plan's storage quota.
No — VPS plans are upgrade-only. Disk storage on a virtual machine cannot be reduced, so downgrades are not supported. You can upgrade to a larger plan at any time.
Yes. Applying new CPU and RAM allocations to a VPS requires a server reboot. The portal will show you this warning before you confirm, and the reboot typically takes under 60 seconds.
Yes. Log in to the portal, open your service page, and click "Cancel downgrade" in the Change Plan card (on the Billing tab for VPS, Minecraft, FiveM and WordPress) before the renewal date. Your plan stays at the current tier with no change. Paying by Interac or crypto? Cancel the downgrade before you pay that renewal — once the renewal is paid, it can no longer be cancelled.
No. Downgrades do not generate refunds or credits for the remaining time on your current plan. The lower price simply takes effect on your next renewal date.
Yes, self-serve from the portal at any time. You choose a fresh OS from the same list offered at checkout and confirm by typing your server's hostname. This permanently erases all data on the server — it cannot be undone.
Yes, as long as the NVMe plan's disk is the same size or larger than your current plan. Your disk is migrated live to NVMe storage as part of the upgrade, which takes a few minutes of downtime depending on disk size. NVMe plans cannot be downgraded back to SSD.
Yes to both. Every VPS includes a browser-based console in the portal for full screen access even if the network is down or SSH is misconfigured — no separate software needed. You also get Start, Stop, Reboot and Reset buttons on your service page for full self-service power control, no support ticket required.
Reboot and graceful Shutdown ask your OS to close down safely first, and are always safe to use. Reset and Stop are equivalent to pulling the power cord — use them only if your server is unresponsive, since they can cause data loss on anything that wasn't already saved to disk.
Yes — we welcome customers from the United States, Europe, and worldwide. Our Montreal datacenter offers great latency for the US (especially the northeast) and solid performance globally; use our network test page to check latency from your location before ordering. All plans are billed in Canadian dollars (CAD), which is typically weaker than the US dollar or euro, so customers paying in those currencies often end up paying less than the sticker price suggests.
Our plans support a wide range of legitimate use cases, but IRC traffic (inbound and outbound) is prohibited on all services — on VPS plans this is also enforced by firewall by default — the only exception is IRC over an IPv6 address from a third-party tunnel broker service (e.g. Hurricane Electric's tunnelbroker.net) rather than one allocated by NordServ. This is due to IRC's long history of abuse (botnets, spam relays). We also prohibit anything illegal, spam/mail relaying, and denial-of-service activity. Questions about a specific use case? Contact us before ordering.
Yes — our custom VPS builder lets you pick your own cores (1–16), RAM (up to 128GB), and disk (up to 1TB), priced instantly from your exact specs. You'll find it on the SSD VPS page or the NVMe VPS page — each locks the builder to that page's storage type — and checkout works the same way as any fixed plan, with PayPal, Stripe, Interac e-Transfer, or crypto.
Yes — from your service page in the customer portal, WordPress plans can add extra disk storage for $1 CAD/GB/month, and Email plans can add extra mailboxes for $1 CAD/mailbox/month. Both apply immediately; the new price starts on your next billing cycle.
Nothing more is charged, and your service keeps working normally until the end of the period you've already paid for — the portal shows it as Active until that date. On that date it's deleted along with its data, so download anything you want to keep first. Until then you can undo the cancellation yourself with the Keep my service button on the service page, whether you cancelled in the portal or with your payment provider. Details are in the Billing guide.
Our firewall may have blocked the IP address you connect from, for example after too many failed logins. The Why can't I connect? card on the Overview tab of your Minecraft, FiveM, WordPress, or Email service checks any public IP address against that service's server and tells you whether it's blocked — and, for a temporary block, until when. What each answer means is explained in the guide for your service: Minecraft, FiveM, WordPress, or Email.