We sell Flowtriq at $9.99/node/month, so this post directly describes our product's market positioning. The competitive pricing data comes from published vendor pricing pages.
The budget hosting DDoS problem
If you run a hosting operation with 5-20 servers, your margins are tight. Your customers pay $20-80/month per server. A DDoS attack against any one customer can affect all customers on the same server or network segment. You need detection, but the economics of traditional DDoS detection pricing do not work at your scale.
Consider the current options:
| Solution | Monthly Cost | What It Covers |
|---|---|---|
| FastNetMon Advanced (10G) | $115/mo + $85 activation + server | 1 instance, 10 Gbps, 1 ticket/mo support |
| FastNetMon + LiveView (1 user) | $185/mo + server | Above + web dashboard for 1 user |
| Wanguard (Sensor + Filter) | ~$133/mo ($1,590/yr) | 1 sensor, 1 filter, web console included |
| FastNetMon Community | $0 software + $60-150/mo server | Basic threshold detection, CLI only, no support |
| Flowtriq (5 nodes) | $49.95/mo | 5 nodes, dashboard, unlimited users, support |
Sources: FastNetMon pricing, Wanguard store.
For a 5-server hosting operation, FastNetMon Advanced plus a single LiveView user costs $185/month plus server infrastructure. That is potentially more than the margin on several customer servers combined. Wanguard is more competitive at ~$133/month but requires self-hosted infrastructure and does not include priority support.
What budget hosting providers actually need
You do not need enterprise features. You need the basics done well:
- Detection that works per-server, not just per-network. When customer A gets attacked, you need to know it is customer A's IP, not just "traffic is high on the network." Per-node detection gives you this visibility.
- Automated mitigation that does not blackhole the target. RTBH takes the customer offline. FlowSpec-based mitigation or local firewall rules can block the attack traffic while keeping the customer reachable.
- A dashboard you can show customers. When a customer opens a ticket asking "why was my server slow?", you need an answer better than "we saw high traffic." A dashboard with attack timelines, vector classification, and volume data turns a complaint into a satisfied customer.
- Incident documentation. Even small hosting providers get asked for SLA credit justification. Attack logs and PCAP data support these requests.
- Support without ticket caps. Small operations do not have in-house DDoS specialists. When you need help, you need help. A limit of 1-3 tickets per month does not work when you are seeing your first multi-vector attack.
The per-node pricing advantage
Per-node pricing aligns the cost of DDoS detection with the infrastructure being protected. You pay for what you deploy, and the cost grows linearly with your server count:
| Servers | Flowtriq Monthly | Flowtriq Annual | Cost Per Server |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | $29.97 | $287.64 | $9.99 |
| 5 | $49.95 | $479.40 | $9.99 |
| 10 | $99.90 | $958.80 | $9.99 |
| 20 | $199.80 | $1,917.60 | $9.99 |
At $9.99/node, a 10-server hosting operation pays $99.90/month for detection, mitigation, dashboard with unlimited users, PCAP forensics, API access, and unlimited support. The annual plan drops this to $7.99/node ($79.90/month for 10 nodes).
DDoS protection as a value-add
Budget hosting providers typically compete on price. DDoS protection lets you compete on value instead. Customers who have been DDoS-ed (and in gaming and e-commerce, that is most of them) will pay $5-15/month more for a hosting plan that includes detection and mitigation.
If you charge customers $10/month for a "DDoS Protected" plan upgrade and your detection cost is $9.99/node, the protection pays for itself with a single customer per server on the upgraded plan. Every additional customer on that server is margin.
What to avoid
- Free tools as a long-term strategy. FastNetMon Community Edition is a valid starting point, but it requires a dedicated server, CLI expertise, no dashboard, no support, and threshold-only detection. The hidden costs of running it in production often exceed commercial alternatives. (See our open source TCO analysis.)
- Bandwidth-tier lock-in. If your hosting operation grows from 5 Gbps to 12 Gbps, bandwidth-tier licensing forces a tier jump from $115 to $220/month. Per-node pricing grows linearly with server count, which is more predictable.
- Per-user dashboard fees. If you have 2-3 people who need to see the dashboard (even read-only), per-user fees compound quickly. FastNetMon LiveView at $70/user/month for 3 users is $210/month just for the dashboard. (See our dashboard pricing analysis.)
Real DDoS detection at hosting-friendly pricing
$9.99/node/month. Sub-second detection, attack classification, automated mitigation, web dashboard, unlimited users, unlimited support. No activation fees, no bandwidth tiers, no per-user charges. 14-day free trial.
Start Free Trial →Frequently asked questions
How can budget hosting providers afford DDoS protection?
What DDoS protection does a small hosting provider need?
The bottom line
Budget hosting providers do not have a DDoS problem that is different from enterprise providers. They have the same attacks, the same customer expectations, and the same operational requirements. They just have different margins. Per-node pricing closes the gap between what budget hosting providers need and what they can afford, without compromising on detection quality, dashboard access, or support availability.