All products 
VPS in Chicago: the network hub of the Midwest
Chicago is the historic crossroads of the American internet. Backbones between the East Coast and the West pass through the city, along with the main routes into Canada. The heart of the local network is 350 East Cermak, a former printing plant turned into one of the densest interconnection points in the US, home to hundreds of carriers. Large data-centre campuses have grown up around it in the suburbs, above all in Elk Grove Village. The city also hosts internet exchanges, including Equinix Internet Exchange and AMS-IX Chicago.
Who needs a server in Chicago
- Projects for the Midwest and the Great Lakes. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota: for users in these states Chicago is closer than either coast.
- Services for the US and Canada at once. Toronto is about 10–15 ms from Chicago, New York roughly 18–22 ms. If your Canadian audience matters, compare with the plans on the VPS in Toronto page.
- Trading systems on futures markets. Chicago has long been the centre of futures and options trading, and some of the fastest links in the world run between Chicago and New York. For an ordinary trading bot this means good connectivity to brokers at both ends; server requirements are in the VPS for Forex selection.
- Game servers for the eastern half of the US: latency to New York, Toronto and Dallas stays within a few dozen milliseconds.
- A backup location for a project whose main server is on the East Coast: a different region and a different power grid, yet only about 20 ms from New York, so database replication and file copies run fast.
Chicago, New York or Dallas
General market conditions and the choice of coast are covered on the VPS in the USA page. Among the central cities, Chicago and Dallas have different strengths. Dallas covers the whole country and the South, including Mexico, more evenly. Chicago is better connected to the Northeast and Canada and slightly closer to Europe: from Frankfurt and Amsterdam it is usually about 100–110 ms, from London a little less. Compared with New York you add about 20 ms for European users, but latency for users in the middle of the country is lower.
For remote desktop work or voice calls from Europe, Chicago is far away, like the rest of America. Pick this server when your users or partners are in North America. Before paying, test the ping to the host's test IP or looking glass: the route from your network to Chicago can differ by tens of milliseconds between providers.
Where a "Chicago" server actually sits
Much of the metro area's data-centre capacity is not in the city itself but in the north-western and western suburbs: Elk Grove Village, Franklin Park, Northlake, Aurora. Latency to downtown is 1–2 ms, which does not matter for most workloads. Check other things instead:
- whether the description names a specific data centre; on cheap plans "Chicago" sometimes means the Midwest region, and the server turns out to be in another state;
- whether basic DDoS protection is included; for a game server or a public API it matters more than extra resources;
- what the monthly traffic allowance is and whether the port is shared with neighbours;
- whether an IPv4 address is included in the price and IPv6 is available.
The cold climate lets data halls be cooled with outside air for most of the year, so large campuses are popular here, and plan prices are average for the US: more expensive than Texas, cheaper than Manhattan.
A note on time: Chicago runs on US Central Time, six to seven hours behind Central Europe. If the host's support only works local business hours, a ticket filed during their night will be answered in your afternoon or evening, so plan migrations and upgrades with some slack.
Illinois law and payment
Illinois has one of the strictest biometric privacy laws in the US, BIPA. If a service collects fingerprints, face images or voiceprints from state residents, it needs written consent and a published retention policy, and courts award substantial damages for violations. An ordinary website is not affected, but for face or voice recognition systems it is worth sorting out in advance. Hosts handle copyright complaints under the federal DMCA. If you process data of EU residents, GDPR still applies to you as the project owner, so check that the host offers a data processing agreement.
Chicago plans are most often paid by card or PayPal; many hosts also accept cryptocurrency as a payment method, and companies can get an invoice. The payment methods for each plan are shown in the "Payment" column of the table above.