ConoHa (GMO)

What ConoHa VPS actually is

ConoHa VPS is the virtual-server arm of ConoHa byGMO, a hosting brand run by GMO Internet, Inc. — part of GMO Internet Group, Japan's largest hosting company and a listed, profitable internet conglomerate that has been in the business since 1999. The ConoHa brand itself has been active since 2013, and the service passed 750,000 registered accounts across the ConoHa lineup, per GMO's own March 2025 plan-renewal announcement. If you want a VPS whose parent will still exist in a decade, this is one of the safer bets in the Asia-Pacific market.

The product is an SSD VPS priced in yen, built on an OpenStack-derived platform (GMO describes the current generation, Ver 3.0, as exposing an OpenStack-compatible public API). Plans run from a 512 MB memory / 1 core / 30 GB SSD entry tier up to a 128 GB memory / 40 core / 100 GB SSD tier — a range that GMO refreshed in March 2025 by bumping every plan at 8 GB and above to 1.5x the memory at no extra cost (the old 8 GB plan became 12 GB, 16 GB became 24 GB, and so on) and adding the 128 GB tier. Windows Server variants are sold as a separate product line (ConoHa for Windows Server), and there is a game-server brand and an AI image-generation SaaS in the same family.

The platform is aimed squarely at the Japanese market, and it shows — the control panel, support portal and most documentation are Japanese-first, with English material patchy. That is the single biggest friction point for international buyers, and we will come back to it.

Pricing: what you really pay

ConoHa's pricing has two modes, and the difference matters. "Matome-Toku" is a long-term discount contract where the discount deepens with commitment (1, 3, 6, 12, 24, or 36 months), and "time billing" is genuine hourly pay-as-you-go with a monthly cap. All plans have no initial cost and no data-transfer charges at all — transfer is flat-rate and unlimited, which is unusual and, for bandwidth-heavy workloads, worth real money.

Current Matome-Toku monthly prices (tax included) on the official pricing page: the 512 MB plan at ¥460/month, 1 GB / 2 cores at ¥763, 2 GB / 3 cores at ¥1,259 after renewal (¥1,007 first term), 4 GB / 4 cores at ¥2,189 after renewal, 12 GB / 6 cores at ¥4,389, 24 GB / 8 cores at ¥9,746, 48 GB / 12 cores at ¥22,099, 96 GB / 24 cores at ¥44,198, and the 128 GB / 40-core flagship at ¥58,927. Campaign discounts are constant — the current one advertises up to 65% off the first payment — and the GMO press release notes third-month-contract rates as low as ¥1,851/month for the 12 GB plan on a 36-month term. A third-party price index puts the legacy 512 MB tier as low as ¥296/month on a one-month contract.

The important accounting detail: the headline Matome-Toku price is often the first-term price, with a higher renewal figure listed beside it (the 2 GB plan renews at ¥1,259 rather than ¥1,007). Budget at the renewal number. Also note the 512 MB plan is artificially hobbled — no auto-backup option, no scaling up or down, and on legacy generations it was Tokyo-only — so in practice the 1 GB plan at ¥763/month is the real entry point for anything serious. Optional services are priced individually: automatic backup at ¥363/month per server (up to three generations), object storage at ¥545 per 100 GB, load balancer at ¥1,100/month, extra IPv4 addresses at ¥424/month. AlphaSSL certificates are free with Matome-Toku contracts of three months or longer.

Everything is billed in yen, including overseas usage — there is no USD or EUR invoicing. For European buyers that means FX risk in both directions and a credit card that handles JPY.

Performance & infrastructure

We have no measured benchmark numbers for ConoHa — it is not in our dated 2026 test set (our measured results live on the /benchmarks page) — so everything here is from published specifications rather than our own runs. What the specs say: SSD storage on all plans, 1 Gbps best-effort networking, private VLAN networking at 1 Gbps between instances, and scale-up/scale-down without data migration on the 1 GB and larger plans. The memory-per-yen story is decent in the mid tiers: 12 GB of RAM at ¥4,389/month renewal is not something every regional competitor matches.

The reliability story is stronger than the price story. Every plan carries a 99.99% monthly uptime SLA — with service-credit compensation if it is missed, claimable via a paper application form (more on that below) — and automatic failover to another host is standard when a physical machine dies. Data centers are GMO's own Japanese facilities: fire, disaster and power-outage hardening rated for intensity-6 seismic events, staffed monitoring 24/7/365. DDoS countermeasure systems are deployed at the platform level, and per-instance security (firewall port rules, SSH keys, two-factor control-panel login) is available standard.

Developer tooling is a genuine strength. There is an OpenStack-compatible public API, a Terraform provider, an s3cmd-compatible S3 API for the object-storage product, startup scripts for automated provisioning, and even a remote MCP server so an AI agent can drive server creation and configuration changes. OS templates cover Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, Arch Linux, FreeBSD and more (10+ OS choices), with application templates for WordPress (KUSANAGI), Django, Node.js, GitLab, Ruby on Rails and similar. IPv6 is included — 17 IPv6 addresses per VPS on Ver 3.0, one configured initially.

Where it falls short

The language barrier is real. The control panel, the SLA claim process, and the bulk of the documentation are in Japanese. The official docs site is thorough but Japanese-first, and support operates on Japanese business assumptions. If your team does not read Japanese, expect friction on anything beyond routine operations — and expect the SLA credit process (email or FAX a PDF form by the end of the following month) to feel like a different era of hosting.

Geographic reach has also narrowed. The legacy ConoHa VPS offered overseas regions in Singapore and the US (San Jose), but San Jose closed to new signups and GMO's current support FAQ states plainly that ConoHa uses Japanese data centers. Treat this as a Japan-and-neighbors play; the old "Singapore region" marketing claims you will still find floating around are historical. Within Japan, Tokyo is the primary region and Osaka the secondary one.

The remaining gaps are the usual VPS caveats dressed in Japanese: backups are a paid add-on rather than included (¥363/month), the 512 MB plan is too constrained to grow into, pricing is yen-only, and there is no GPU in the standard VPS line — GPU servers (NVIDIA H100 and L4 instances, billed with no initial cost) are a separate product with separate pricing. Managed operations exist only via the corporate-only ConoHa VPS Managed Pack (run with Beyond Inc., from ¥43,780/month per server) — there is no self-serve managed tier for small teams.

Who should pick this

Our pick for two audiences. First, anyone running production workloads whose users are in Japan or East Asia: the domestic data centers, ¥-denominated flat-rate transfer, 99.99% SLA and GMO's balance sheet make this one of the most predictable options in the region. The unlimited free transfer alone changes the math for media, download and API-heavy services that would pay metered egress elsewhere.

Second, Japanese-speaking teams and individuals who want a small-to-medium VPS with strong automation: the API/Terraform/startup-script stack, plan changes without data migration, and template library cover the self-hosting workflow well. In our /category/vps-providers comparison, ConoHa is the default Japan-presence answer alongside the global clouds' Tokyo regions.

We would steer elsewhere teams that need English-first support, USD billing, or low latency to Europe or the Americas. And if you need a managed experience, price the Managed Pack honestly — it is corporate-priced, not a $10/month cPanel add-on.

Key takeaways

• VPS brand of GMO Internet Group (Japan's largest hosting company); ConoHa has been active since 2013 and passed 750,000 registered accounts across the ConoHa lineup.
• Entry plan ¥460/month (1 core, 512 MB, 30 GB SSD); realistic entry is the 1 GB plan at ¥763/month — the 512 MB tier lacks backups and scaling.
• 99.99% monthly uptime SLA with service credits, automatic host failover standard, unlimited free data transfer on every plan.
• OpenStack-compatible API, Terraform provider, S3-compatible object storage, IPv6 (17 addresses), and 10+ OS templates; NVIDIA H100/L4 GPU servers sold as a separate line.
• Japanese-first product: yen-only billing, Japanese-first docs and support, Japan data centers (legacy Singapore/US regions closed or wound down) — weak fit outside East Asia.
• Auto-backups (¥363/month) and managed operations (corporate-only Managed Pack) are paid extras, not included.

Sources

• https://internet.gmo/en/news/article/22
• https://vps.conoha.jp/pricing/
• https://vps.conoha.jp/
• https://vps.conoha.jp/gpu/
• https://www.conoha.jp/sla/
• https://support.conoha.jp/vps/faq/vps-q/overview-q/
• https://doc.conoha.jp/products/vps-v3/network-v3/ipv6-v3
• https://doc.conoha.jp/reference/s3cmd/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20210507172851/https:/support.conoha.jp/vps/faq/region-q/
• https://whtop.com/directory/category/vps/pageno/125
• https://grokipedia.com/page/VPS_providers_in_Japan