I only considered the base monthly price; you can definitely get it cheap with coupons and yearly plans.

If you're looking for a bargain, I found this:

    2GB RAM, 50GB disk, 2TB bw, 2 IPv4, 100Mbps
    STEALOFADEAL (coupon) - 12 months, $40
    Chicago, IL - https://billing.chicagovps.net/cart.php?a=add&pid=160
    Buffalo, NY - https://billing.chicagovps.net/cart.php?a=add&pid=161
    Los Angeles, CA - https://billing.chicagovps.net/cart.php?a=add&pid=162
    Atlanta, GA - https://billing.chicagovps.net/cart.php?a=add&pid=163a=add&pid=163

ChicagoVPS are terrible. If you Google ChicagoVPS the suggest searches are "ChicagoVPS down" and "ChicagoVPS hacked".

There's 10 million threads on Lowendtalk bitching about ChicagoVPS. Here's one from last year. http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/7668/chicagovps-has-lost-th...

You get what you pay for.

I've sworn off cheap VPSes - most are running WHM as their control panel/billing and they're a target for DDoSes and attacks by skiddies.

I have too. I used some cheap vms for about 9 months, but after the host lost vms including backups (I had my own backups, but I still had to set everything up again), and relatively frequent outages, I switched to Digital Ocean, and couldn't be happier, and the price is pretty good. I figure I'll switch to Linode if I start having problems, but it's been great so far (knock on wood).