Windows Server 2019 — deployed in Kampala
Windows Server 2019 VPS Hosting in Uganda
For the Ugandan application whose vendor still says 2019.
A licensed, activated Windows Server 2019 Standard instance in ug-1a, with RDP and full administrator rights from first boot. Nobody starts here by preference. They start here because a payroll package, a core banking module or an application a Kampala software house built in 2018 is certified against this platform and nothing newer. It carries the lowest Windows licence rate we charge — UGX 7,450 per vCPU per month on a four-core minimum, which is UGX 29,800 — and the 2 GB plan starts at UGX 112,000 a month.
- Windows Server 2019 Standard, licensed and pre-activated
- Our lowest Windows licence rate — UGX 7,450 per vCPU per month
- Microsoft extended support runs to January 2029
- RDP and full administrator rights on every plan
- Deployed in ug-1a, Kampala, and billed in UGX
No credit card required · Billed in UGX
Pricing
Simple plans, billed in your currency
Windows licensing included on every plan. Pay in local currency — no cards, no forex surprises. Annual billing gets you two months free.
Windows VPS – 2 GB RAM
Windows Server for web applications.
Hosted in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Lagos & Kampala
- 1 vCPU
- 2 GB RAM
- 40 GB NVMe
- 1 Gbps · unlimited local traffic
- 1 dedicated IPv4
- /64 IPv6 included
- Windows Server 2019 license included
Windows VPS – 4 GB RAM
Windows Server for production apps.
Hosted in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Lagos & Kampala
- 2 vCPU
- 4 GB RAM
- 80 GB NVMe
- 1 Gbps · unlimited local traffic
- 1 dedicated IPv4
- /64 IPv6 included
- Windows Server 2019 license included
Windows VPS – 8 GB RAM
Windows Server for high-traffic apps.
Hosted in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Lagos & Kampala
- 4 vCPU
- 8 GB RAM
- 160 GB NVMe
- 1 Gbps · unlimited local traffic
- 1 dedicated IPv4
- /64 IPv6 included
- Windows Server 2019 license included
Windows VPS – 16 GB RAM
Windows Server for enterprise apps.
Hosted in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Lagos & Kampala
- 8 vCPU
- 16 GB RAM
- 320 GB NVMe
- 1 Gbps · unlimited local traffic
- 1 dedicated IPv4
- /64 IPv6 included
- Windows Server 2019 license included
Windows VPS – 32 GB RAM
Windows Server for large-scale apps.
Hosted in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Lagos & Kampala
- 16 vCPU
- 32 GB RAM
- 640 GB NVMe
- 1 Gbps · unlimited local traffic
- 1 dedicated IPv4
- /64 IPv6 included
- Windows Server 2019 license included
Windows VPS – 64 GB RAM
Windows Server at maximum scale.
Hosted in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Lagos & Kampala
- 32 vCPU
- 64 GB RAM
- 1280 GB NVMe
- 1 Gbps · unlimited local traffic
- 1 dedicated IPv4
- /64 IPv6 included
- Windows Server 2019 license included
Prices exclude VAT. Local currency figures are indicative and settled at checkout. Need a custom configuration? Talk to Sales.
Weighing up Linux too? Compare all Linux & Windows plans on the VPS Hosting page.
Where it runs
The software cannot be upgraded. The address it lives at can
Software of this vintage was written for a local network. The thick client on each desk talks to the database in short, frequent bursts, and it was designed that way because the two of them were always going to be in the same building, on the same switch, a few metres apart. Nobody who wrote it was budgeting for distance, and a great deal of Ugandan business software still in daily use was built exactly like this. Move that database to another continent and none of the code changes, but every one of those little conversations becomes a journey — and there are thousands of them behind a screen that used to open instantly.
Uganda charges more for that journey than its neighbours do, because of where it sits rather than anything about its networks. There is no coastline here and no cable landing station, so international capacity is hauled overland before it ever reaches water: east through Malaba or Busia along roughly nine hundred to a thousand kilometres of terrestrial fibre toward the Mombasa landings, or south through Mutukula toward Dar es Salaam. A chatty application hosted in Europe pays that overland leg and then an ocean, in both directions, for every one of those bursts. Keep the client and the server on the same side of the border and the chattiness simply stops being a problem you have to solve — which matters when the code that would need solving is code nobody is allowed to touch.
The other person to keep close is the one who supports it. Ugandan line-of-business software is very often maintained by a small Kampala software house, and their support model is a person connecting to the machine and looking at it. On an instance in ug-1a they connect over RDP, see the platform they certified against, and the relationship carries on unchanged — you can let an implementation engineer in for an upgrade window, watch the work, and change the credentials when they are finished. The instance stays in your account, in Kampala, on a 1 Gbps port with unlimited local traffic behind it.
UGX 7,450
Windows Server 2019 Standard, per vCPU per month
UGX 29,800
Licence on the four-core minimum, per month
Jan 2029
Microsoft extended support for Server 2019
UGX 112,000
2 GB plan on 2019, per month, excluding VAT
Upcountry, on domestic fibre
If the people using this software sit in Mbarara, Gulu, Mbale, Jinja or Arua rather than in Kampala, they reach a Kampala instance over Ugandan infrastructure. The state backbone NITA-U runs reaches the regional centres and the border posts, and the country's fibre network has been growing by thousands of kilometres a quarter on UCC's own count. Nothing in that path leaves Uganda. Everyone is on East Africa Time as well, so a batch window agreed for 22:00 means the same hour in every branch.
Why Windows Server 2019
Why Windows Server 2019
Sometimes the right version is the one your software was certified against. Server 2019 is the mature choice for long-serving line-of-business stacks — at the lowest license price we offer.
- Our most affordable Windows Server license — every plan is $2–$16/mo less than 2022.
- Maximum compatibility with older .NET Framework and vendor apps.
- Licensed and activated under SPLA — nothing to bring or key in.
- Microsoft extended support runs to January 2029.
Windows Server 2019 images
Updated regularly
Use cases
What people run on Windows Server 2019
Legacy .NET Framework apps
Applications built and certified on the 2016/2019 era run exactly as expected.
Line-of-business & ERP
Vendor software that specifies Server 2019 in its support matrix.
Older SQL Server versions
Host SQL Server releases that pair naturally with the 2019 platform.
IIS web applications
Classic ASP.NET and IIS sites on the platform they were deployed for.
File & application servers
Dependable SMB shares and app servers for a team or branch office.
Compatibility testing
Verify your software still behaves on the version your customers run.
Licence cost and runway
What the oldest licence saves, and how long you have
Windows Server Standard is licensed per vCPU on a minimum of four cores, and 2019 carries the lowest rate we charge in shillings: UGX 7,450 per vCPU per month, so UGX 29,800 on every plan up to four vCPU and UGX 59,600 on an eight-core machine. The arithmetic is visible in the price list rather than folded into it. The Linux 2 GB plan is UGX 81,750 a month and the 2 GB Windows plan on 2019 is UGX 112,000 — the gap is the four-core licence. The Linux 8 GB plan is UGX 310,000 and the 8 GB Windows plan on 2019 is UGX 340,000, still four cores. The Linux 16 GB plan is UGX 615,000 and the 16 GB Windows plan on 2019 is UGX 675,000, now eight. Every figure moves by the licence and by nothing else.
Against 2022 Standard at UGX 9,300 per vCPU, a four-core 2019 instance runs UGX 7,400 a month lighter — UGX 88,800 over a year, and UGX 888,000 across a fleet of ten. Against 2025 Standard at UGX 11,200, the gap is UGX 15,000 a month, or UGX 180,000 a year on a single machine. That is a real number for a Ugandan business, and it is the right number to weigh against the other half of the decision, which is time. Microsoft's extended support runs to January 2029: long enough to plan a platform move properly with the vendor who supports the application, short enough that a machine deployed today should have that conversation somewhere in its budget rather than in its future.
The commercially useful part is that the licence sits inside the shilling price at all. The alternative shape is a second supplier invoicing in dollars, on a card, re-priced by your bank on the day each charge lands, and reconciled against a different document in a different currency from the hosting it runs on. What you have instead is a single shilling amount that arrives with the hosting, on the rail you already pay everything else on, and that the person approving it can check against a published price list in under a minute. Uganda's standard VAT rate is 18%, administered by URA; displayed prices exclude it and it is calculated and shown separately at checkout.
Annual, when the machine is not going anywhere
An application on this platform is by definition not being replaced this quarter, which makes it an unusually good candidate for an annual term: ten months paid for twelve, one approval, one payment and one document for the file rather than twelve small ones. On a four-core 2019 instance at UGX 112,000 a month that is two months back on a machine you were always going to keep. Bank transfer is the usual rail for it, and the invoice carries your TIN if you send it to us before the order.
What is licensed, and what stays yours
The operating system is licensed here: Windows Server 2019 Standard, supplied under a Services Provider License Agreement, billed per active instance and activated before you first connect. There is no product key to source, nothing to key in and nothing to renew. Everything above it keeps the entitlements it already has — the ERP, the accounting and payroll packages, any database engine you bring and the client access licences those products require. With administrator rights, if you hold the licence, it installs and it runs.
Displayed prices exclude VAT; Uganda's 18% is calculated at checkout. Talk to [email protected] about a fleet on one account, an annual term at ten months for twelve, or a sized SQL Server quote.
Who runs 2019 here
Ugandan software that has an opinion about the year
Every workload on this page has the same origin story. Somebody bought or built the application some years ago, it still does the job it was bought for, and the people who support it will only do so on the platform they certified against. That is a perfectly good reason to run a 2019 instance, and a poor reason to buy a newer one.
Line-of-business software from a Kampala software house
A great deal of Ugandan business software is written and maintained by small local firms, and their support matrix is whatever they last tested against. When it says Server 2019, give them Server 2019. A hosted instance behaves like the tower they originally installed it on, which keeps the support relationship intact rather than turning every future call into an argument about the platform.
SACCOs and Tier 4 microfinance
Uganda's supervisory stack is its own. The Bank of Uganda supervises Tiers 1 to 3, while the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority licenses Tier 4 — SACCOs, non-deposit-taking MFIs, community-based institutions and money lenders — under the Tier 4 Microfinance Institutions and Money Lenders Act, 2016. Core banking systems bought into that sector are long-lived by design and their vendors move slowly. Run the platform they certified, on NVMe, with a snapshot before every change window and month-end and dividend batch runs that finish when they are supposed to.
Accounting, payroll and fixed-asset packages
The finance package the team has used for nine years. The payroll module nobody wants to migrate in the same quarter as a tax change. The fixed-asset register with a thick client and a licence key taped inside a drawer. This is the most common reason a Ugandan business buys Windows hosting at all, and the least welcome moment to bundle in a platform change.
Cooperative and agri-export back offices
Membership registers, farmer payout runs, warehouse receipt records, grading and quality databases and the traceability datasets that EU-bound coffee consignments now need. Uganda is the region's largest coffee exporter, and much of the software behind that trade was specified years ago and works. The load follows the harvest and shipping calendar rather than a retail one, so size for the peak weeks and resize afterwards rather than paying for March all year.
Systems a closed project left behind
Uganda's NGO and donor sector runs a lot of software that outlived the programme that funded it. A beneficiary registry, a grant reporting application, a document store for field paperwork — built or bought under a project cycle, still needed, and now maintained by whoever is left rather than by the people who specified it. The platform it was certified on is not negotiable, because nobody is going to re-certify it. The NGO Bureau has itself reminded organisations that they must register under the Data Protection and Privacy Act, so where that data sits is a live question even when the software is not.
Older SQL Server releases
The database releases that pair naturally with the 2019 platform, still running the reporting the business actually reads. NVMe underneath, administrator rights over the service accounts, agent jobs that rebuild indexes at 02:00 and email a report at 06:00, and room to grow to 32 vCPU and 64 GB of RAM without changing supplier. SQL Server licensing stays separate from the Windows licence and is quoted per workload.
Classic ASP.NET and IIS applications
The staff portal, the intranet, the customer-facing form somebody built on the .NET Framework that has quietly earned its keep ever since. It does not need rewriting in order to be moved. Build the 2019 instance, install it, bring the database across, run both for a week, then change DNS — the platform underneath is the one it was deployed for.
Moving it
Two ways an application ends up here
From a machine that is older than the software
The common Ugandan case is not an out-of-date platform, it is an out-of-date box. The application is fine; the hardware under it was bought at the same time, has one disk that matters, and stands on the building's power and the office's router. Deploy a 2019 instance, install the application exactly as the vendor documents it, restore the database, run both in parallel with a handful of users for a week, then move everybody and leave the old machine switched off but intact for a fortnight. Nothing about the software changes, which is the point — the vendor sees the platform they certified, and the only variable you have altered is where it lives.
From something that ran out of support already
If the application is sitting on a platform Microsoft stopped issuing security updates for, 2019 is a step forward rather than a compromise, and it is usually the furthest step the vendor will sign off on. Ask them in writing which release they certify before you build anything, because that answer decides this page: if they say 2022 or 2025, buy those instead and give the machine a longer life. If they say 2019, run 2019 at the lowest rate we charge, put the saving in the same budget line as the eventual upgrade, and set a date in 2028 to have the conversation properly rather than urgently.
Moving to a newer release later is a fresh build rather than an in-place upgrade: deploy, install, copy, cut over, retire. The new instance is licensed and activated before you connect to it.
Regions
Kampala is home. The other three are a border you choose to cross.
Deploy in ug-1a and the machine is in Kampala, in the country its users are already standing in. The region is chosen per instance rather than per account, so nothing about this decision is permanent or global: a production database in Kampala, a build runner wherever is convenient, a backup target somewhere else entirely, all on the same key and the same API.
The other three are Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Lagos, on that same account, the same API and the same shilling invoice. Here is where a Ugandan buyer has to read the map differently from everyone else on it. For a business in Nairobi, ke-1a is home. For you it is abroad twice over: a copy of Ugandan personal data held there is a transfer out of Uganda that belongs in your section 19 record, and a request served from there still crosses the border at Malaba or Busia before it reaches your customer. Regional is not the same word as local, and Uganda is the market where the difference is easiest to see.
That said, the corridor is real and some businesses genuinely live on it. Trade moves between Kampala, Kisumu, Nairobi and Mombasa; the crude pipeline out of the Albertine region runs 1,443 km to Tanga on the Tanzanian coast; freight, agri-export, logistics and contracting firms bill customers in three countries. When your operation is actually in two markets, tz-1a or ke-1a stops being a distant region and becomes the second half of your own footprint. And when what you want is somewhere to put a standby, a replica or an offsite copy, another region on the same account is a configuration change rather than a second supplier to onboard.
Uganda
Kampala
~3 ms
typical, within metro · Data stays in Uganda
Kenya
Nairobi
~2 ms
typical, within metro · Data stays in Kenya
Tanzania
Dar es Salaam
~6 ms
typical, within metro · Data stays in Tanzania
Nigeria
Lagos
~4 ms
typical, within metro · Data stays in Nigeria
Uptime SLA
99.9%
- DDoS filtering is included, and so is the traffic
- Service credits applied automatically when we miss the SLA
- Measured monthly, per region, on network and power availability
Support
East Africa Time all year, and a queue that already knows Uganda
Two channels with two different jobs. A signed-in ticket arrives already carrying the account, the region and the instance, so the first reply is about the fault rather than about which machine you meant. [email protected] is the commercial door: a quotation against a purchase order, transfer details ahead of a payment run rather than during it, a billing account configured with your TIN and registered name before the first invoice, and the SLA terms and credit process in writing while you are still choosing.
Ahead of both sits status.lineserve.net. A region-wide event is published there while a reply is still being typed, and thirty seconds on it turns "the site is down" into "my instance is unreachable and the status page is clear" — a different ticket, and a far shorter one.
What that ticket should carry, in the order it is read: the region and the instance, the EAT time the behaviour started, the last thing that changed before it, the actual error text rather than a description of it, and whether it reproduces from more than one Ugandan network. That last one carries more weight here than almost anywhere. Uganda is a two-operator market, and an MTN handset, an Airtel handset and an office fibre line disagreeing about your service is a completely different fault from all three failing together — it is worth thirty seconds of your time and it can save an hour of everyone's.
Uganda runs on East Africa Time, UTC+3, and has never observed daylight saving, so a change window agreed in EAT means the same thing in January and in July. You share that clock exactly with Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and sit two hours ahead of Lagos, which matters when you are scheduling work across regions. The Ugandan commercial day generally runs 08:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday. One scheduling detail that catches people out: a Ugandan public holiday falling on a weekend stays on that date rather than moving to the Monday, so the calendar is not the same shape as some of its neighbours'.
The last part of local support is vocabulary rather than hours. The person reading your ticket knows what an operator collections callback is and why it retries, knows what the border crossing at Malaba has to do with the traceroute you are staring at, and knows why your finance office wants a TIN on the document before the first billing run. None of that has to be explained before the actual problem can be. Buy from somewhere that has never sold into Uganda and the first twenty minutes of every serious ticket go on describing the country.
Sales
[email protected]FAQ
Questions, answered
Yes. Every plan on this page includes a licensed, activated Windows Server 2019 Standard under our SPLA — the price you see is the full price, and it's the lowest Windows license price we offer.
Compatibility and cost. If your application vendor certifies against Server 2019 — common for older .NET Framework and line-of-business software — it's the safest home, and each plan costs less than the same plan on a newer version.
Microsoft's extended support for Windows Server 2019 runs to January 2029, with security updates until then. For brand-new deployments with a longer horizon, consider our Server 2022 or 2025 plans.
Yes. Connect over RDP with full administrator rights from the first boot. It's your server to configure however you like.
Yes. Plans are sized for SQL Server workloads with fast NVMe storage and generous RAM. SQL Server licensing is handled separately from the base Windows license — talk to sales for a sized quote.
Yes. Resize to a larger plan as your workload grows, with minimal downtime. You can also move to Server 2022 or 2025 on a fresh instance whenever you're ready.
Every plan supports on-demand snapshots and scheduled automated backups. Snapshot storage is billed per GB beyond your included allowance.
Two reasons, in this order. Compatibility: if your vendor certifies against Server 2019 — common for older .NET Framework applications and for Ugandan line-of-business software — it is the platform their support covers. Cost: it carries our lowest licence rate at UGX 7,450 per vCPU per month, so a four-core instance is UGX 7,400 a month below the same machine on 2022 and UGX 15,000 below it on 2025.
UGX 7,450 per vCPU per month on a minimum of four cores, which is UGX 29,800 a month on any plan up to four vCPU. Check it against the Linux list: the Linux 2 GB plan is UGX 81,750 and the 2 GB Windows plan on 2019 is UGX 112,000, and the difference is the licence, to within where a rounded shilling price list moves.
Microsoft's extended support runs to January 2029, with security updates until then. For a new deployment with a longer horizon and no compatibility constraint, 2022 or 2025 is the better starting point — both have their own pages and both run in the same Kampala region.
Yes, as a fresh build rather than an in-place upgrade: deploy the new instance, install the application, bring the data across, run both for a week, then move the users. There is nothing to migrate on the licensing side, because the new machine is licensed and activated before you connect to it.
Yes. The instance has its own public IPv4 address and full administrator rights over RDP, so an implementation engineer connects the way they would to a machine in your office — you can watch the work and change the credentials afterwards. The account, and the machine, stay yours.
In ug-1a, our Kampala region — and on a Windows machine that means the whole volume rather than only a database: the application, the shares, the exports, the local backup somebody sensible scheduled. That gives you data residency for Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act, and nothing moves out of the country without your instruction.
Yes, over domestic infrastructure rather than an international path. UCC put Uganda's national fibre optic network at 80,257 km in June 2026, and NITA-U's National Backbone Infrastructure links Kampala with regional centres and the border posts. Uganda is on East Africa Time throughout, so an overnight batch window means the same hour in every office.
Yes. Plans are sized for database workloads with NVMe storage and generous RAM, and administrator rights mean the service accounts, agent jobs and maintenance plans are yours to configure. SQL Server licensing is separate from the Windows licence — talk to [email protected] for a sized quote.
In shillings, by MTN Mobile Money, Airtel Money, bank transfer or card, licence component included and settled inside Uganda — so no part of the charge is a foreign transaction. Displayed prices exclude VAT; Uganda's standard rate is 18%, administered by URA, and it is calculated and shown separately at checkout.
Your TIN and your registered name exactly as URA holds it, plus any purchase-order reference. Send them to [email protected] before you order and they are on the invoice from the first billing run. URA brought twelve sectors inside EFRIS regardless of VAT registration, information technology and communications among them — so if you issue Ugandan invoices yourself, you already know what your own accountant is going to ask for.
Yes. vCPU, RAM and storage each resize independently up to 32 vCPU and 64 GB of RAM, with minimal downtime and the same IP address. The licence component follows the core count at UGX 7,450 per vCPU per month above the four-core minimum, so a resize changes the bill by an amount you can work out before you click it.
On-demand snapshots and scheduled backups are available on every plan, with snapshot storage billed per GB beyond the included allowance. On software of this vintage the habit worth keeping is a snapshot immediately before the vendor connects for an upgrade window, because rolling back is faster than explaining what changed.
Yes. Your data is hosted in Uganda and stays in-country, giving you data residency for Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act. It isn't moved out of Uganda without your instruction.
In our Kampala data centre (ug-1a). Your content is stored and served from Kampala, close to your users.
Pay in Uganda Shillings using MTN Mobile Money, Airtel Money, bank transfer, or card. No foreign card or forex conversion is required.
You're billed in UGX. Prices can be viewed in USD, KES, TZS, or NGN, but as a Uganda customer you pay in UGX with no forex conversion.
Deploy your Windows Server 2019 VPS in under 60 seconds
Full root, running close to your users. Pay in local currency, with no card required to start.
No credit card required · 99.9% uptime SLA · Billed in UGX
Related products
Every plan below runs in the same three regions, on the same network, billed the same way.