"Offshore RDP" and "offshore Windows VPS" are often used as if they were the same purchase. They are not, and the difference is not marketing: one is a protocol you use to reach a desktop, the other is a virtual server you control. Confusing them leads to the wrong product, the wrong licence and, occasionally, a server exposed to the internet with a password as its only defence.
This article separates the two, compares them on the things that decide the purchase — control, licensing, multi-user access, performance and location — and points at the actual offers in this catalogue for each.
The definitions, without the marketing
RDP is the Remote Desktop Protocol. It is a Microsoft protocol that carries a graphical session between a client and a Windows host, traditionally on TCP 3389, wrapped in TLS and usually authenticated with Network Level Authentication. You can run RDP against any Windows machine that has Remote Desktop enabled, including a laptop in an office.
A Windows VPS is a KVM virtual machine with a Windows Server licence, a virtual disk, a network interface and an administrator account. You reach it over RDP, but RDP is not what you bought: you bought the machine, the disk and the hypervisor-level control that comes with it.
An "RDP plan" in hosting catalogues is a pre-built Windows environment sold as a desktop service: a fixed CPU, memory, disk and traffic allocation, a licensed Windows Server edition and administrator rights inside the session. You configure very little, and you cannot reach the hypervisor.
The short version: RDP is a way in. A Windows VPS is what you are getting into. An RDP plan is a Windows environment where someone else owns the machine.
What the difference looks like in practice
| Windows VPS | RDP plan | |
|---|---|---|
| What you control | The guest OS, its disk, its OS installation and its console | The Windows session and the software inside it |
| Hypervisor access | Yes — reboot, reinstall, attach an ISO | No |
| Administrator inside Windows | Yes | Yes |
| Hardware model | Configurable vCPU, RAM, disk and traffic | Fixed per plan |
| Licence | Windows Server licence as a monthly line | Licensed edition included in the plan |
| Best for | Anything that needs the machine itself | Desktop work on a fixed environment |
The middle row is where most decisions are made. If a task needs a kernel driver, a VPN client that installs a virtual adapter, a scheduled reboot at 03:00, or a clean OS reinstall after a mistake, an RDP plan will frustrate you and a Windows VPS will not.
The Windows VPS option
Windows on a VPS is the same KVM product described in the VPS catalogue, with Windows Server 2022 selected as the operating system. That adds 25 USD per month to the configuration and is only sold from 4 vCPU, because the licence is not viable on a smaller machine.
A realistic configuration — Amsterdam, 4 vCPU, 8 GB of RAM, 120 GB of NVMe, 4 TB of traffic — prices as 14 USD base + 6 USD for the extra vCPU + 6 USD for the extra memory + 4 USD for the extra disk + 25 USD for Windows, which is 55 USD per month at the one-month term. The same machine on Linux is 30 USD, so the licence is more than half the difference between a cheap server and a Windows one, and it belongs in the comparison from the start.
What you get for it: full administrator rights, the guest console, the ability to reinstall the operating system, and a machine that behaves like a server rather than a session. You also inherit the obligations: patching, antivirus if the workload needs it, firewall rules, backups and monitoring are yours.
The RDP plans in this catalogue
The RDP catalogue sells five fixed Windows environments. Each includes administrator access over RDP on port 3389 with TLS, a licensed Windows Server edition and a monthly traffic allowance:
| Plan | CPU · RAM · Disk | Traffic | Windows | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bucharest RDP 4 | 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 120 GB | 4 TB | 2022 Standard | 28 USD |
| Amsterdam RDP 4 | 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 120 GB | 4 TB | 2022 Standard | 32 USD |
| Zurich RDP 8 | 8 vCPU · 16 GB · 240 GB | 6 TB | 2022 Standard | 44 USD |
| Miami RDP 8 | 8 vCPU · 32 GB · 480 GB | 8 TB | 2022 Standard | 62 USD |
| Singapore RDP 16 | 16 vCPU · 64 GB · 960 GB | 12 TB | 2022 Datacenter | 108 USD |
Those monthly figures are the hardware rate plus the recommended Windows Server 2022 licence; the configurator lets you pick 2019 or 2025 instead, which moves the price by a few dollars in either direction. Singapore uses the Datacenter edition, which is why its licence line is larger than the others.
All five are provisioned manually after payment review, like every other product here. None of them is delivered by an automated system the moment a payment confirms.
Connection security is not optional
An RDP service reachable from the public internet is one of the most heavily scanned endpoints on the network. Automated attempts against 3389 begin within hours of a machine appearing, and they do not stop.
The baseline that any Windows host should meet:
- Network Level Authentication. Require NLA so the session is authenticated before a desktop is allocated.
- Strong, unique credentials. A local administrator account with a short password is the whole attack surface.
- Account lockout. A policy that locks after a handful of failures turns a brute-force attempt into noise in the event log.
- An allowlist or a tunnel. Restrict 3389 to the addresses you actually connect from, or put RDP behind a VPN or an RD Gateway. Changing the port is not a security control; it only removes the noisiest scanners.
- Multi-factor authentication. Windows sign-in with a second factor, or an RDP gateway that enforces one.
- Logging and review. Failed logons (event 4625) and successful ones (4624) are the two events worth alerting on.
Zurich and Miami plan names in this catalogue are locations, not security tiers. The same rules apply in every site.
Performance: what RDP needs from the network
RDP is a latency-sensitive protocol with modest bandwidth needs. An office session — documents, a browser, a line-of-business application — typically runs at 100–200 kbit/s per user and feels comfortable below roughly 80 ms of round-trip time. Above 150 ms, typing and window dragging become noticeably laggy even though throughput is fine. Packet loss hurts more than bandwidth: a 1% loss rate produces stalls that no amount of extra CPU fixes.
Practical consequences:
- Choose the site nearest your users. The location guide explains the latency floor that distance imposes; no provider can remove it.
- Size memory before CPU. Windows itself consumes 2–4 GB, and a browser plus an office suite consumes another 2–4 GB. An 8 GB plan is a single-user machine; 16 GB is comfortable for two or three sessions.
- Disk matters at boot and at update time. 120 GB is enough for Windows and applications, but not for a large local dataset. Windows Update on a small NVMe volume is the usual reason a plan feels slow on the first day.
- Traffic allowances are generous for desktop use. A 4 TB allowance is far more than an office session consumes; video conferencing inside the session is what burns it.
Which one fits the work
| Workload | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Office applications, one user | RDP plan | Fixed environment, licence included, nothing to administer outside Windows |
| Accounting or industry software on Windows | RDP plan | The application needs Windows, not a hypervisor |
| Trading terminal near a broker | RDP plan in the matching region | Latency to the broker matters more than disk control |
| Two to five team members sharing a desktop | Larger RDP plan or Windows VPS | Memory per session is the constraint; count 4 GB per user |
| Build agent, CI runner or scheduled jobs | Windows VPS | Needs service control, reboots and a clean OS reinstall |
| Anything needing a kernel driver or VPN adapter | Windows VPS | The guest kernel is yours |
| Hosting a public website | Linux VPS | A Windows licence adds cost without adding capability |
| A machine you will rebuild monthly | Windows VPS | Reinstall is a console operation, not a support ticket |
The last row is the one people underestimate. An RDP plan is excellent value for stable desktop work and a poor fit for anything experimental, because the environment is fixed and the recovery options are limited to what the operator exposes.
Choosing a location
Both products are sold in several sites, and the choice is the same decision described in the location guide: latency for interactive use, jurisdiction for the data, and price for the budget.
- Bucharest is the cheapest RDP site at 28 USD and sits inside the EU.
- Amsterdam is a few dollars more and is usually the lowest-latency choice for Western Europe.
- Zurich carries Swiss data protection law and a larger machine for 44 USD.
- Miami is the natural choice for users in the Americas and offers the largest memory pool at this price.
- Singapore is the only Asia–Pacific site, with a 16-core, 64 GB environment for teams working across those time zones.
A desktop session in Singapore used from Berlin will work, and it will feel like a remote desktop from the other side of the planet, because that is what it is. Pick the site where the users are.
A decision rule that survives contact with reality
Buy the RDP plan when the work is "a Windows desktop, administered inside Windows, for a known number of users, in a fixed size". Buy the Windows VPS when the work is "a Windows server I operate", where operating includes reinstalling, rebooting on a schedule, installing drivers and controlling the machine below the session.
If you are unsure, start with the smaller commitment: an RDP plan is the cheaper way to find out whether a Windows environment solves the problem at all. If the answer is yes and you later need control, the Windows VPS configuration is the same catalogue, one layer down, with the licence shown as its own line.