Replace your company's physical server with a Windows VPS
The tower in the cupboard fails on a Friday evening: here is what a Windows VPS in France replaces, and what it does not.
Starting at €13/mo
Introduction
There is a tower in a cupboard, under the stairs or in the archive room. It hums, it is five or seven years old, nobody remembers the Administrator password, and the contractor who installed it has moved on. Replacing that machine with a Windows VPS means moving its contents to a server that lives in a French datacenter, which your colleagues reach over RDP, from the office or from home.
At By-Hoster the configuration that matches this use is Windows - Plus at €13/month incl. VAT: 8 vCores, 16 GB of RAM, 200 GB of SSD and 500 Mbps. It is delivered in 10 minutes with its dedicated IPv4 address and Administrator account. Our published sizing rule is 4 GB for light single-user work, and 8 GB as soon as business software joins in: a company server almost always goes past that line.
Then there is what we do not do, and saying it beats discovering it later: the Microsoft licence is not supplied, and neither is the migration. By-Hoster delivers a bare machine with its operating system; moving your data, reinstalling the software and configuring it remain yours or your IT provider's job. The server runs in our single DC-FR_NA(01) datacenter in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, operated directly by the association's technical team.
What replaces the tower, and what does not
The machine: Windows - Plus at €13/month
8 vCores, 16 GB of RAM, 200 GB of SSD, 500 Mbps, NVMe storage, dedicated IPv4, Anti-DDoS, snapshots, a fallback VNC console and full administrator access. Delivered in 10 minutes, no commitment, 48-hour money-back guarantee, human 24/7 support by ticket, Discord and phone.
What does not carry over
A VPS has no physical ports: no USB key or licence dongle, no tape drive, no network scanner or local printer attached to the server. Those devices stay at the office and have to be rethought before the switch, not after it.
2 administrative RDP sessions
Windows Server allows 2 concurrent administrative RDP sessions. Beyond that, opening application RDP access to more colleagues requires Microsoft RDS CAL licences that you buy yourself: we neither supply nor resell them.
Snapshots, and nothing else on the backup side
Trigger a snapshot from the client area before a risky operation, and roll back if needed. To be clear: only snapshots are included. There is no automatic off-site backup of your files, and your archiving policy stays your own.
The situations that trigger the move
The drive that dies on a Friday evening
On an office tower, a drive failure on a Friday evening costs a weekend and sometimes more. On a VPS the hardware is no longer your problem: the infrastructure is run by our technical team and you only manage what is on the server.
Theft, fire, water damage
A server sitting in a company room shares the fate of that room. Moving the machine into a French datacenter takes that physical risk out of the office. Still keep a copy of your data elsewhere: snapshots live on the same infrastructure.
The colleague who cannot work from home
As long as software and files live on the office tower, remote work means improvising. With a server online, everyone opens the same Windows session from the office, from home or from a second site, with nothing to resynchronise at night.
The server nobody has the password for
Inherited machine, contractor gone, no documentation: the most common scenario of all. Starting again from a clean system, whose Administrator account you hold and which you can reinstall yourself from the client area, puts you back in control.
Business software shared by several people
Accounting, sales management, payroll: the application and its database stay in one place and everyone connects over RDP instead of copying folders around. Vendor licences (Sage, EBP, Cegid, Ciel and others) remain yours, as does their installation.
No more hardware refresh every five years
Start on Windows - Plus at €13/month and move to Max (32 GB, €26) or Titan (64 GB, €49.99) as usage grows. No capital to write off, no replacement cycle to plan, and annual billing takes 10% off.
Frequently asked questions
In many small companies, yes: an office server mostly shares files, runs business software and sometimes holds the local network directory. All three install on a Windows VPS with full administrator access. What changes: everything now travels over your Internet connection and over RDP, tuned up to 60 FPS. What does not follow is the physical hardware plugged into the old machine.
Everything physically plugged in to the old tower. A VPS has no USB port: a licence dongle, an external drive, a tape unit have no equivalent. A network scanner or a local printer that dropped its files into a shared folder on the server has to be rethought. Printer redirection does exist in the RDP client, but making it work depends on your hardware and is down to you or your IT provider.
Four configurations, monthly prices incl. VAT: Core at €8 (4 vCores, 8 GB, 50 GB SSD), Plus at €13 (8 vCores, 16 GB, 200 GB), Max at €26 (16 vCores, 32 GB, 500 GB) and Titan at €49.99 (24 vCores, 64 GB, 800 GB, 1000 Mbps). Annual billing takes 10% off. The price covers the machine, the network and the support; it includes neither the Microsoft licence, nor RDS CALs, nor SQL Server, nor your business software licences.
No. By-Hoster installs the system you pick at checkout — Windows Server 2025, Windows Server 2022 or Windows 11, at no extra cost on the server price — but does not supply or resell any Microsoft licence. Getting straight with the vendor is on you. Same logic for SQL Server: Express is free but capped at 10 GB per database, 1 socket or 4 cores and 1.4 GB of RAM for the engine; Standard and Enterprise are paid editions.
Windows Server allows 2 concurrent administrative RDP sessions. That is enough for two people to work, or for a contractor to step in while you are connected. To open application RDP access to a whole team, Microsoft requires RDS CAL licences that you buy yourself: we do not supply them. Budget the matching RAM too, since every open session takes its share — that is the main argument for the 16 GB of the Plus plan.
No, and it is worth settling before you order. We deliver a machine with its operating system installed, its IP and its Administrator credentials, in 10 minutes. Moving the files, reinstalling the software, restoring the databases and configuring everything are down to you or your IT provider. Our 24/7 support answers on the machine — operating system, network, RDP access, snapshots, reinstallation — not on your applications.
Technically a Windows Server VPS can host an Active Directory domain controller: you have full administrator access and the role installs exactly as on a physical machine. But the installation and configuration are yours, and joining remote workstations to that domain over the Internet requires a VPN tunnel you set up on your side. A directory deeply wired into the office network is the case where a provider's help pays off most.
Our rule of thumb: 4 GB of RAM for light use — RDP and office work, a single user — then 8 GB as soon as business software is added, SQL Server Express or several concurrent users. A company server stacks exactly that: files, an application and sessions open all day. Windows - Plus and its 16 GB leave the useful headroom. For a larger team or several heavy applications, aim at Max (32 GB) or Titan (64 GB).
That is the honest trade-off of moving out: the server is no longer in your walls, so everything depends on your Internet access. A decent fibre line is plenty, since RDP access is tuned up to 60 FPS. Still plan a fallback — a mobile hotspot often does the job — and keep in mind that an outage at the office does not affect the server itself: it stays reachable from any other connection.
In our single DC-FR_NA(01) datacenter in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France, operated directly by the association's technical team. Virtualisation runs on KVM with Proxmox. Your data stays under French jurisdiction, within the GDPR framework, with no transfer outside the European Union. By-Hoster is a French non-profit association (RNA W162005815, SIRET 92395660100010) founded in 2023. We claim no sector certification, and we would rather say so than let it be assumed.
No, Windows Server 2019 can no longer be installed here. Three systems are offered at checkout, at no extra cost: Windows Server 2025 (mainstream support until 13 November 2029, security until 14 November 2034), Windows Server 2022 (mainstream until 13 October 2026, security until 14 October 2031) and Windows 11, which is a client operating system: keep it for a workstation, not for a multi-user service. The choice can be changed later through a reinstall from the client area.