Founded in March 2013, Shockbyte’s mission statement has been to offer “premium services at unbeatable prices'' and it mostly meets those lofty goals. The Australian-based company is now one of the longest-running Minecraft server hosting providers. While it’s expanded its services to other games such as Project Zomboid, ARK: Survival Evolved and -- most recently -- Palworld, Minecraft is the big one here and the one we reviewed. 

Promising 13 server locations scattered around the world, 24/7 customer support, 100% uptime, full FTP access, and support for pretty much every mod you can think of, Shockbyte sounds pretty irresistible on paper. With an eye on whether it could be one of the best Minecraft server hosting providers, here’s how we found the Shockbyte experience from setup to playing on the server. 

Plans and pricing

Shockbyte offers 12 different plans, plus a custom plan if you have specific needs. All the plans offer 24/7 customer support, 100% uptime, full FTP access, DDoS protection, and full mod support. Where plans differ is how much RAM they offer as well as the number of player slots. There’s good variety here with the option to upgrade any time as needed. To help customers know what to buy starting out, Shockbyte also has a few recommended plans for certain needs such as best for modding or the latest version.

The cheapest plan is the Dirt plan with 1GB RAM and 8 player slots at $2.50 per month. That ramps up to the Titan plan at $40 per month with 16GB of RAM and unlimited player slots with a 300 recommendation. Discounts are available for committing to quarterly, six monthly, or annual plans. 

Such a discount means the Dirt plan drops to just $22.50 for the year which works out as excellent value for teaming up with your mates on a private server. All servers use NVMe SSDs with unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Deciding which plan to buy mostly comes down to how many players you expect to play at once and RAM considerations.

Shockbyte offers a 72 hour refund policy so there’s just enough time to test things out if you’ve made a mistake with your needs. Payment is accepted via credit or debit card along with PayPal and Paymentwall methods. While signing up, you can choose to add on a preferred location, purchase a dedicated IP, and arrange server management options, all for a fee. That means the price can increase a fair bit depending on what you need with features like a dedicated IP costing $5 per month while server management costs $15 per month. While the cost can ramp up, at least it’s fairly clearly laid out so you always know what you’re paying for and why.

Ease of use

Starting out with a Minecraft server with Shockbyte is pretty speedy. Once you wrap up the purchasing process, you’re given two username/password combos. One is for the client side of things while the other is for the control panel. Access to the latter can then be shared with other users who you want to have control over things, although you’ll need to get in touch with support to get it set up.

The opening part of the control panel has you able to choose the server type you want. A near never ending choice of Bedrock or Java server types are available with recommendations highlighted. 

On the left hand side is the more complex set of options as well as the best ways to monitor your server. Chat and console are fairly self explanatory with the latter a good way of dipping in to check all is well. 

Dive into the Files section and that’s where things get a little more complicated. The Config Files section offers server settings such as if you want to set up whitelisting, change the game mode or difficulty, as well as disable or limit various settings. It’s clearly laid out with drop-down boxes allowing you to quickly change things. The responsiveness is fast with the majority of actions not requiring a server restart although Shockbyte recommends doing so once a day.

If you want to add any modpacks or plugins, the Shockbyte interface is simple to use. There are a lot of plugins to choose from while you can use full FTP access to add anything that hasn’t already been thought of. Again, adding from the plugin list is straightforward and takes moments. It’s all designed in a way that makes the process as simple as possible, even if you don’t have prior server admin experience.

For those users who do have more advanced experience, there’s an appropriately titled Advanced tab too. Here, you can set up commands, scheduled tasks, add additional ports, startup parameters and MySQL databases. It’s reasonably comprehensive stuff that means Shockbyte is fairly good at catering for both novice users that simply want the basics right up to those who know exactly what they’re doing.

Speed and experience

Shockbyte offers servers across Europe, North America, Singapore and Australia, with the latter two requiring an additional payment each month. The Minecraft server I used was based in Europe, much like myself, and I found the ping to be pretty reliable. A steady 30-35 ping meant no issues with lag and that continued while adding players to the server. 

As promised by Shockbyte, there was no downtime either with the Minecraft server always ready to go. It’s a reliable force for regular players. 

During my time playing on the server and gathering together some friends, the experience didn’t dip in quality. Daily restarts and not cramming the server with mods and plugins is sure to help here but as a general, standard Minecraft experience, it works well out of the virtual box. That’s also where the level of ease involved in adding or removing mods, as well as simply restarting the server certainly helps keep things ticking along healthily.

Support

Support is two-fold with a ticketing system and extensive tutorials. The tutorials are the true standout here. It feels like there’s a YouTube video for literally everything you could possibly need while setting up a Minecraft server. A full playlist is available or you can dip in for individual queries. Each tutorial is clearly laid out and no longer than it has to be. Whether you simply need guidance on which server type to choose from or you want to set spawns, manage whitelists, or learn how scheduled tasks can benefit you, it’s covered here with no padded out filler.

It’s a truly useful resource with things backed up by a Knowledge Base which answers many queries, followed by direct support. When I contacted support by sending off a ticket, I was impressed to get a response within an hour. The follow up, however, took a fair while longer. Cynically, paying helps. It’s possible to pay $3 to bump your ticket to the front of the queue which feels a little unsavoury but on the other hand, Shockbyte is pretty cheap elsewhere. 

Talking of payments, it’s also possible to pay $15 per month for the company to manage your server including controlling and setting up mods and plugins. With the many tutorials available, it’s hardly necessary for most people but it could be useful when starting out.

Final verdict

Shockbyte is an excellent value way to snap up a Minecraft server that isn’t much hassle to set up and maintain. Ideally suited for novices but also anyone who wants to keep costs down, you can get straight on with setting up your Minecraft server pretty quickly, right down to installing some mods or plugins without having to delve too deeply.

Where things falter is a bit, is the added costs and occasional support quibbles. A little inconsistent with speed isn’t a dealbreaker for everyone when it comes to needing assistance from support and the YouTube videos certainly help, but if you run into a major problem, feeling obliged to pay an extra $3 will grate. 

Similarly, added costs for features like a dedicated IP or server management are transparent but something to be aware of when totting up the actual price you’ll be paying.

Neither of these issues will affect everyone though and for the most part, Shockbyte works well. Its 100% uptime and speedy servers mean you and your mates will easily be able to join in at any time without any problems. It fits nicely into that ‘it just works’ mentality that everyone appreciates about technology. It also makes the process far more accessible than server management ever was in the past. 

DreamHost is a popular US web hosting provider with 400,000+ customers, managing 1.5 million+ websites, and with an impressive 25 years in the hosting business. 

What types of hosting does DreamHost offer? 

DreamHost has a wider-than-usual range of products for every level of user. (That's not just an advantage when you're shopping. Having plenty of alternative plans gives you more upgrade paths if your website grows.)

A website builder product is a very easy way to create a simple but good-looking website, while cheap shared web hosting plans are ideal for small or low-traffic sites.

Custom WordPress plans are specially optimized for speed and include useful WordPress-related site management tools and extras.

DreamCompute is a developer-friendly cloud hosting service with full root access and the ability to use DreamHost's object storage service, DreamObjects.

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting gives your site more resources, improving speeds, and is often a better choice for heavy-duty or business-critical sites.

Dedicated server hosting plans provide an entire server for your own use, for maximum speed and control.

That's a lot to explore, but keep reading and we'll break down DreamHost's key products, look at where they score, and where they don't, and identify which plans might work best for you.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is one of the most popular hosting types. It’s a simple scheme where one web server hosts multiple websites—everyone shares both the costs and the server's resources (CPU, RAM, network connection). This makes shared hosting very cheap, but speeds are lower than other types of hosting (although you can still handle thousands of visitors a month on a shared hosting plan).

Right off the bat, I like how DreamHost keeps things simple with just two shared hosting packages. 

Shared Starter, priced at a low $2.59 a month over three years (renews at $5.99), offers exceptional value thanks to 50GB fast SSD storage, free SSL, automated WordPress migrations, a free WordPress website builder, free domain with free domain privacy (a valuable privacy protection feature), unlimited bandwidth, automatic backups, and so much more. In fact, DreamHost’s feature set is more or less on par with Hostinger, which is the best-shared hosting service in our testing.

The only noticeable downside to the Shared Starter plan is that it doesn’t come with any email accounts. Well, technically it does but that will be an additional purchase. This is a surprising miss by what's otherwise a well-rounded service, especially considering that almost every single rival on the market offers free email addresses even on their most basic plans. 

Additionally, it allows you to host just a single site. Hostinger, for example, allows you to host a whopping 100 websites on its cheapest plan—and even InMotion offers a decent 2 website support.

Next is the Shared Unlimited plan, which as the name suggests, supports unlimited web space, sites and email addresses, and is priced at $3.95 per month for the first three years, $10.99 on renewal.

Overall, though, DreamHost’s shared hosting plans score high marks on affordability and pack enough features to keep most individuals and small businesses happy. Still, it’s tough to recommend it over Hostinger, our #1 shared web hosting service, as it supports 100 email addresses, has 100GB storage, can host 100 websites, and includes a free domain, SSL, backups, a free migration and more.

• Want to try DreamHost? Check out the website here

Cloud hosting

DreamHost really does stand out as a cloud hosting provider. It’s rightfully placed in my list of the best cloud hosting services because it’s one of the very few to offer true cloud benefits. These include geo-redundancy and auto-scaling, where you can automatically change your server resources through OpenStack-compatible API requests. 

Auto-scaling helps you manage infrequent spikes in your website traffic by temporarily increasing More DreamHost featuresyour resources—and allowing you to only pay for resources you actually use.

DreamHost offers its cloud service under a product it calls DreamCompute. It’s among the cheapest cloud hosting services on the market right now (almost twice as cheap as OVHcloud). You can get started at just $0.0075 per hour and enjoy access to 512MB RAM, 1 vCPU, free bandwidth, and 80 GB SSD storage. Even better, it comes with a maximum monthly price, which is $4.50 for the above-mentioned plan.

As is the story with DreamHost, even its cloud hosting plans are more geared towards individuals and small businesses. This is because it caps out at 8 vCPU and 16GB RAM, so if you’re a large business with need for tons of resources, you’ll be better off with, say, ScalaHosting that comes with custom cloud hosting plans and can go as high as 24 CPU cores, 64 GB RAM, and 2,000 GB storage.

WordPress hosting 

WordPress is a hugely popular website creator because not only is it easy to use for hosting newbies but also powerful enough to handle even the largest of business-critical sites.

DreamHost offers two tiers of plans for WordPress. The first one, WordPress Basic, is essentially its shared hosting plans, with the same features and the same price (from $2.59 a month). They're cheap, and if you're just looking to learn the WordPress basics, they should be more than enough. 

These plans come with a handful of custom WordPress features, including a WordPress installer, free automated WordPress migrations, a simple website builder to create an elegant WordPress website, and automated WordPress updates.

However, if you're aiming to build a serious WordPress site, I'd recommend DreamPress, which is DreamHost's professionally managed WordPress hosting range, capable of handling anything up to one million visitors a month. The resources here are not shared, so other users cannot affect your website’s performance—and you get a high-performance cloud server environment, which is a huge plus on the reliability and performance fronts.

The starter DreamPress plan has 30GB SSD storage, unlimited email, free SSL, and on-demand and daily backups. In addition to the custom WordPress features in the shared hosting plans, you get specialist WordPress support and 1-click staging for easier website testing. DreamHost says the plan is built for 100k monthly visitors, and it looks good value at $16.95 billed monthly on a yearly subscription.

The second tier, DreamPress Plus, is an interesting one. It costs 50% more ($24.95 a month) than the above-mentioned plan for which it doubles your storage and increases the number of phone support callbacks to 3. That’s it. It’s worth noting that earlier this plan added the powerful Jetpack Professional toolkit (backups, malware scanning, CDN, and more), which is now offered on all the three plans. While this is undoubtedly a good thing, it does bring down DreamPress Plus’s appeal quite a fair bit. 

Spending $71.95/month on the top-of-the-range DreamPress Pro gets your more resources, priority support (expedited help, advanced troubleshooting, and proactive monitoring), and lifts the suggested visits per month figure to one million. However, that's an advisory figure only, DreamHost won't cut you off if you have more.

A highlight of DreamHost is that it’s recommended by WordPress.org, the makers of WordPress. This is because DreamHost has been actively involved in the WordPress community and has contributed to WordPress’s development over the last 10 years.

Overall, DreamHost is one of the best WordPress hosting providers, offering very capable managed WordPress plans which are well worth considering if you're managing a high-traffic site. However, experienced or more technical users should check out Hostinger and InMotion Hosting's WordPress ranges, too. 

VPS hosting 

VPS (Virtual Private Servers) improves on shared hosting by providing resources that only your site can use. That's great news on the performance front, because the less time a web server has to spend dividing up its RAM and CPU time, the more time it has to just serve your site, and the faster it'll be.

DreamHost has four very simple VPS plans. 

All plans support unlimited websites, traffic, and email addresses. There's also free SSL for as many sites as you need.  

A very important highlight of DreamHost’s VPS plans is that they're all managed, which means DreamHost handles complex low-level tasks like updating the operating system for you. However, the service isn’t a fully managed one as anything to do with managing your site comes under a different DreamHost service, which will cost extra. 

Coming back to DreamHost, it offers a capable range for VPS newbies, with all the core features you need, and for a very fair price. If you have a simple goal—you're building a business-critical WordPress site and need better speeds (which are also more reliable) than shared hosting, DreamHost's VPS range could be a smart choice. 

However, more experienced users may not be as happy. For instance, the plans don’t mention the amount of CPU resources they offer. This is because the CPU scheduler is based on time instead of the percentage of utilization. Next, there just aren't many features or configuration options here, no root access, nor do you get a choice of operating system.

DreamHost doesn’t have unmanaged VPS hosting, either. So, if you’re adept enough at handling server issues, and are willing to compromise support for a lower price, you can consider Hostinger’s unmanaged VPS plans.

Also, strangely enough, while the plans say that they’re VPS, you don’t actually get a VPS server. You get a Linux container with kernel-level isolation, which, in all fairness, is still more reliable than shared hosting plans, but you don't get the sort of security benefits you would with a typical VPS server. This is because OS vulnerabilities in a Linux container can cause isolation breakouts.

If you think you might need more than DreamHost's bare-bones plans, check out my guide to the best VPS hosting providers.

Dedicated hosting 

Buy a dedicated hosting plan and you get a server just for you. This way, you can wave goodbye to sharing resources and unexpected slowdowns because someone else on your server is having a bad day. Dedicated hosting means great performance all the time.

DreamHost has significantly tweaked its dedicated hosting offerings of late, and the change is for the better. Where earlier it offered HDD storage for most of its plans and SSD only if you picked the 12-core CPU, it now offers SSD on all plans, and has completely done away with HDD storage. 

However, this also means that the starting price which was earlier $149/month has been increased to $165/month (on a yearly subscription). This gets you a 6-core/12-thread CPU, 16GB RAM, and 480GB SSD. 

You also have the option to opt for a more powerful 12-core/24-thread CPU where you can go as high as 128GB RAM and 1920GB SSD—meaning DreamHost’s dedicated hosting is large-business-friendly, which isn’t the case with its shared or cloud hosting services.

When compared to the best dedicated hosting services right now, DreamHost has one up on most providers thanks to 100% network uptime guarantee. With emergency generators, data centers around the world, redundant cooling, and constant monitoring, DreamHost is a must-have for you if you just can’t afford to have your site down.

However, services like InMotion and IONOS (this one has a pay-as-you-go pricing model) are certainly more value for money, and a better pick for the majority of users. InMotion, for instance, starts at $69.99 per month and gives you 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, a decent 4-core/8-thread processor, and a full-fledged security suite, as well as a choice of control panel. 

The cost difference is even more substantial for large businesses who need tons of resources (think 128GB and more). DreamHost doesn’t allow you to pair an SSD with a secondary high-storage HDD, which is something you get with Liquid Web. 

More DreamHost features

In addition to the above, I’d like to point out a few DreamHost offerings that caught my eye. The first one is dedicated email hosting, starting at $1.99 a month - or $1.67 a month if you go for a yearly commitment. 

This will be a top-up to your existing hosting plan and get you professional emails @yourdomainname.com, 25GB storage per mailbox (Gmail’s free offering gives you 15GB), real-time syncing across mobile and desktop, and an ad-free experience. 

Next, there’s integration with Google Workspace, which can be a value addition for teams. Here, you’ll get Google Meet voice and video conferencing, team chat, shared calendars, business email through Gmail, access to other Google products, 24/7 assistance from Google Workspace experts, and more. 

It’s worth noting that the extent of features you unlock will depend on your chosen Google Workspace plan. There are two plans: one at $7.20 per user per month and the other more feature-packed one at $14.40 per user per month.

DreamHost Pro services

DreamHost offers a slew of professional services, including custom website designing, SEO marketing, social media marketing, dedicated web software and backend management, and web development. 

Just note that these services cost a pretty penny. For instance, you’ll have to shell out $1,499 if you want DreamHost experts to create a polished, professional website tailored to your needs. Other services range anywhere between $59/month for website management to $399/month for social media marketing. 

With that said, they offer excellent bang for buck for those who’d like to get things done by a professional and skyrocket their business’s growth without wasting time with a hands-on and trial-and-error approach.

Does DreamHost have a website builder? 

If you don't have a website, and creating something with WordPress feels too much like hard work, a website builder could be the perfect solution. Most builders either come with a choice of prebuilt sites, or can create one for you from scratch. You can add elements like text, images, videos, maps or forms by dragging and dropping, then customize the content much as you would in Word or any editor.

DreamHost's website builder, which is included in all of its plans no matter the hosting type, is based on WordPress, but don't let that put you off: it's still an easier way to create a simple site. It comes with 200+ sample websites for various categories (photography, food, music, fitness, fashion and more). Next, you get a handy drag-and-drop mechanism using which you can choose from a selection of over 100 blocks, add some content of your own, and you could have a small site ready to go within a couple of hours. 

The website builder is easy to use, block-based, and might just about be enough to create a small family site, or a low-traffic blog. It even comes with real-time SEO recommendations so that you can create content that’s optimized for search engines. There are enough customization options, too, and you can tinker around with pretty much everything, whether that’s the font size or text color. 

However, the templates are basic and there aren’t any image-editing tools, either. If you want an out-and-out website builder with more than just the basics, I’d recommend choosing from one of the best website builders instead. Hostinger, for example, gives you the option to have a website created entirely by AI. 

Like DreamHost, Bluehost, too, has a WordPress website builder. It includes website templates to help you get started, and has a simple drag-and-drop page editor. But even its most basic $2.99/month plan includes contact forms, social media sharing, and other useful business tools—and the top-of-the-range product even allows you to build a web store.

Can I build a web store with DreamHost? 

DreamHost doesn't have the range of ecommerce plans we see with some providers, but it does have one capable option: a VPS-based WooCommerce range with the power to build some very powerful web stores. WooCommerce is widely considered as one of the best ecommerce platforms for WordPress.

However, it’s worth noting that although DreamHost describes this as 'WooCommerce hosting,’ it's the company's regular WordPress hosting (DreamPress) underneath, with the same prices and specs. If you skipped the WordPress section, I like DreamPress a lot—it has plenty of features and the power to handle 100k to a million visitors a month, enough to cope with some very busy web stores.

Opting for the WooCommerce plans does get you a few tiny extras. WooCommerce is preinstalled with a few themes and plugins, for instance, and DreamHost updates both WooCommerce and WordPress. Good news, but that doesn't really help you build, manage, and troubleshoot your new web store.

If you like DreamHost's WordPress hosting and you're happy to work on the WooCommerce and web store building tasks yourself, then these powerful plans are well worth considering. 

However, if you're looking for something simpler, many website builder plans include the ability to add a web store. HostGator supports a tiny three-product store with even its most basic plan, and Bluehost and GoDaddy both have capable ecommerce plans.

DreamHost Customer Support

DreamHost’s customer support has come a long way since our last review. Now, it offers free 24/7 technical support via email and live chat across all time zones from three continents: North America, South America, and Europe. Supported languages include English and Spanish.

While DreamHost does not have a call-in phone number for technical support, you do get the option to request for callbacks. However, that’s only available with higher-end DreamHost hosting packages.

To test its claims, I throwed some genuine questions at the support agents. I’m happy to report that individual support agents performed well in my tests. Plus, live chat queries had responses within minutes, tickets in under an hour or two (as claimed by the company, so that’s good too), and replies were helpful and detailed.

Furthermore, it also has an in-depth knowledge hub with tons of helpful articles and step-by-step tutorials, which you can use for general know-how and help on the fly.

A standout DreamHost offering is its exceptional 97-day money-back guarantee (for shared hosting products). This also suggests that the company has real confidence in its service, long-term. If you decide to sign up, that's plenty of time to find out how DreamHost works for you.

How fast is DreamHost? 

Uptime, the proportion of time your website is accessible to the outside world, is a key measure of any web host. A provider can have the fastest and most powerful servers around, but none of that will matter at all if your site is regularly down.

We tested DreamHost's uptime over a week, and those results were good, with our site showing 100% uptime, and an average response time of 0.342 seconds (that's the fourth fastest score in our last 15 tests). 

Next, we asked GTmetrix to access a page from our test site and calculate how long it takes to display its main content (a figure known as Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP). Most decent hosts manage somewhere between 0.55 and 0.90 seconds, and DreamHost scored a perfectly acceptable 0.732 seconds. 

Fast load speeds are good news with a single user, but what happens when a site is busy? We use k6 to unleash 20 virtual users on a site at once, and see how the server copes. DreamHost handled an average 16 requests per second, fractionally outperforming most of the competition (the average score is 10-15 requests).

To conclude, DreamHost is an extremely reliable hosting service that delivers on its promises to load both light and heavy web pages without missing a beat. Its 100% uptime guarantee, especially at its price point, is nothing short of outstanding—top dogs such as Hostinger and Bluehost offer 99.96% and 99.95%, respectively, and HostGator doesn’t guarantee uptime at all.

How easy is DreamHost to use? 

Although DreamHost doesn’t offer the industry-standard cPanel—and offers a custom-built control panel instead—it’s fairly easy to use and get started with. 

The control panel looks good, with colorful icons, and everything from your domains and websites to one-click installs and support options, as well as your account and billing info and hosting configurations, is available on the left-hand sidebar. This is when around half of that sidebar is just an ‘Add Product’ section displaying the different DreamHost plans you could subscribe to. Cheeky, yes, but it doesn’t pose any real navigation issues.

Installing WordPress is child’s play. You also get an option to pre-authorize the WordPress installation, meaning DreamHost will send you an email once WordPress is set up. I suggest opting for the pre-install option since DreamHost takes a while to install WordPress—around 20-30 minutes. This is in sharp contrast to other providers who either do it instantly or take no longer than just a few minutes.

What’s more, even creating a new email address is ridiculously simple. Just click the ‘Create New Email Address’ button, fill out your details, and that’s it. All in all, DreamHost is one of the easiest to use web hosts I’ve ever tried my hands on, meaning it’s great for beginners and the non-tech-savvy folks who’d very much like a plug-and-play solution.

Final verdict

DreamHost's lengthy down time got our review off to a bad start, but there's still a lot to like here: lots of products, WordPress solutions for personal to major business sites, fair prices, and a reassuring 97-day money-back guarantee for shared hosting customers. Worth considering. 

A2 Hosting was founded in 2001 by Bryan Muthig and got its name from Ann Arbour, Michigan, where they were founded. They started off providing shared hosting services and, between 2007 and 2012, came out with a range of VPS hosting solutions from unmanaged to managed. Then, in 2014, they launched Turbo Hosting, SwiftServer platform, and Optimised WordPress hosting, providing up to 20x faster page loading speeds. In 2015, A2 Hosting went global and added servers in the Netherlands and Singapore.

A2 Hosting prides itself on being fast and green. By having a distributed team that works remotely, they save on resources like water, electricity, and paper and they have a range of green hosting initiatives like hot/cold airflow management in their data centers and variable speeds on all cooling fans. If you decide to go with A2 Hosting, in most cases, you can migrate your site for free, and you get a money-back guarantee plus an SLA of 99.9% uptime. If you’re looking for speed and great support from a responsible host, then A2 Hosting is a great choice.

What hosting plans does A2 Hosting offer? 

A2 Hosting offers a full range of hosting products, from shared and WordPress ranges, to an easy-to-use website builder, and faster and more powerful VPS and dedicated servers. (There's no Windows hosting any more, unfortunately: A2 Hosting is Linux-only).

There are a handful of additional services, including domain registration and SSL certificates, but the company doesn't have the range of extras we see with the larger providers. Most plans include backup and email support, for instance, but there are no extended backup or hosted email packages available. 

A2 Hosting may not have a profile that matches the big names, but A2 hosting provide well resourced plans with a 20+-year track record in offering some of the best web hosting services around the world.

The company has strong environmental credentials. Its data centers are designed to use less energy, its servers use energy-efficient components, they're recycled after retirement, staff work from home to avoid commuting, and the list goes on.

A2 Hosting has won plenty of fans over the years, and the company now claims 110,000+ users. To put that in perspective, Datanyze places the company 47th in its Web Host Market Share chart, with 0.34% of the market. That's comparable with providers such as TsoHost (0.38%), HostPapa (0.36%) and Heart Internet (0.34%).

Shared hosting 

A2 hosting offers six managed and six unmanaged VPS hosting plans. First, under the managed hosting, the Takeoff 4 plan is the entry-level plan, which costs $35.99/mo and renews for $76.99/mo after 36 months. It includes 4 GB RAM, 150 GB SSD storage, and 2 TB data transfer, along with 2 cores, an SSL certificate, a cPanel control panel, and an Imunify360 Security Suite. Above this, the Takeoff 8 plan is priced at $104.99/mo, but you can get it for $49.99/ mo for the first 36 months. This plan upgrades your hosting to 8 GB of RAM, 250 GB SSD storage, and a 3 TB transfer limit, supported by 6 cores. If you want more, the Takeoff 16 comes with 16 GB RAM, 450 GB SSD storage, and 4 TB transfer capacity, all for $59.99/ mo for 36 months, after which it renews at $131.99/mo. It features 8 cores, along with an increased amount of files, folders and emails to store on your account.

A2 also offers three different managed hosting plans that are hosted on turbo servers capable of delivering up to 20X faster page loads. The entry-level Soar 8 turbo plan comes for $54.99/mo as an introductory offer for three years, after which it costs $139.99/mo. This plan offers 8 GB RAM and a 2 TB transfer limit but also enhances performance with 150 GB NVMe SSD storage. Further up the scale, the Soar 16 turbo plan currently comes at $79.99/mo and renews for $189.99/mo. This plan includes 16 GB RAM, 250 GB NVMe SSD storage, and 3 TB transfer. It is built on 6 cores and offers significant speed improvements. Finally, the most powerful managed VPS plan by A2, the Soar 32, costs $99.99/ mo and renews for $239.99/ mo after three years. It features 32 GB RAM, 500 GB NVMe SSD storage, and 4 TB transfer on 8 cores.

Similarly, there are six different unmanaged VPS hosting plans with A2. The most basic Launch 1 plan starts at $2.99/mo and renews for $8.99/ mo. This plan includes 1 GB RAM, 25 GB SSD storage, one core, and a 0.5 TB transfer limit. It’s designed for developers who require minimal resources but demand full root access for complete server control. If you want more, the Launch 2 plan, renewing at $14.99/mo and currently priced at $7.99/mo for the first year, offers a slight upgrade with 2 GB RAM, 75 GB SSD storage, 2 cores, and a 2 TB transfer limit. Like all unmanaged plans, it provides root access and a money-back guarantee. For more substantial needs, the Launch 4 plan is priced at $9.99/mo for the first year, down 58% from $23.99. It includes 4 GB RAM, 150 GB SSD storage, 4 cores, and a 3 TB transfer capacity.

Just like the managed plans, A2 also offers three separate unmanaged plans that provide turbo servers with 20x faster speed. First, the Ascent 8 plan hosted on these turbo servers features 8 GB RAM, 250 GB NVMe SSD storage, 6 cores, and a 4 TB transfer limit. It costs $29.99/mo for the first year and renews for $59.99/mo. For even more demanding needs, the Ascent 16 plan costs $99.99, but as an introductory offer, you can get it for $59.99/mo for the first year. This option includes 16 GB RAM, 350 GB NVMe SSD storage, 8 cores, and a 6 TB transfer limit hosted on the same turbo servers for optimal performance. However, if you want the best of the plans, the Ascent 32 costs $89.99/mo and renews for $139.99. You get 32 GB RAM, 450 GB NVMe SSD storage, 10 cores, and an 8 TB transfer limit. This plan is designed to handle the highest traffic and the most resource-intensive applications with ease, supported by turbo server technology.

WordPress hosting 

A2 Hosting has a section for managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting but the unmanaged WordPress hosting just links to their shared hosting plans.  Managed WordPress hosting starts from $11.99/mo (renews at $25.99/mo) and supports one website, 50GB NVMe storage, 4GB memory, and a bunch of features. If that’s not enough, you get the Jump plan, priced at $18.99/month (renews at $35.99), which supports five websites, 250GB of NVMe storage, 4GB memory, daily onsite and offsite backup, multisite management, and Jetpack Daily Backup, which provides an additional layer of protection for your WordPress sites.

Superior to this, A2 has a Fly plan at $28.99/month (renews at $51.99). This plan supports unlimited websites, unlimited NVMe storage, and 8GB of memory (RAM). Along with the features included in the Jump plan, this plan also comes with Jetpack Security Daily and Jetpack Daily Malware Scans, giving your WordPress sites the highest level of security.

At last, the top-tier Sell plan, priced at $41.99/month (renews at $61.99), is a great option for WooCommerce and eCommerce sites as it offers unlimited websites, unlimited NVMe storage, and 16GB memory. It further includes Premium Rapid SSL, Traffic Surge Protection, and WooCommerce optimized and preinstalled, which makes it an ideal choice for online stores and eCommerce businesses.

VPS hosting 

A2 Hosting's VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is faster, more reliable and configurable than its shared range, making the plans a better choice for business-critical sites.

Unmanaged plans (which means you largely run the server yourself) start at $4.99 a month over three years (then $8.99) for a tiny, 1GB RAM, 1 CPU  system. Top of the range is $74.99 a month ($139.99 on renewal) for an 8 core, 32GB system, combined with A2 Hosting's Turbo system, (LiteSpeed web server, NVMe storage, more), which the company says can get you up to 20x faster page loads.

Managed VPS plans are more expensive, with prices ranging from $39.99 to $99 a month over three years ($76.99 to $239.99 on renewal.) But they get you a lot of extra features, including full support, cPanel server management, and a free transfer. 

Highlights of A2 Hosting's VPS plans include the low starting price, the very powerful top-of-the-range systems, and the company's comprehensive Turbo speedup technologies.

But there are problems, too. No Windows hosting. The starter managed plans are expensive. Data transfer limits are lower than some at 2-4TB a month, and there's no way to add any more.

A2 Hosting could still work for experienced users who just need a cheap unmanaged SSL, or anyone looking for maximum VPS speed. But if this doesn't sound right for you, Hostwinds has 40 different VPS plans, making it very likely there's one that'll work for you. Prices start from $4.99 a month unmanaged, $8.24 unmanaged, and there's cheap Windows VPS hosting available, too.

Buy a shared or VPS hosting plan and your site shares its web server and network connection with other accounts. Choose dedicated server hosting, though, and you get a server all to yourself for maximum speed and reliability.

A2 Hosting offers eight server configurations, each available in managed (A2 Hosting runs and supports the server for you) and unmanaged (you largely support the server yourself) types.

Prices start at $105.99 a month over two years ($199 on renewal) for an unmanaged server with 16GB RAM, 2 x 1TB SSD drives and 6TB traffic.

A decent dedicated hosting provider should offer servers for all levels of user, and A2 Hosting really delivers. The top-of-the-range model has two speedy AMD CPUs, 128GB RAM, 2 x 960GB NVMe SSD drives and 15TB bandwidth, enough power for just about any task. It's far more expensive at $455.99 a month over two years, $699.99 on renewal for the unmanaged plan, but still fairly priced for what you're getting.

If you don't have the experience to run a server yourself, A2 Hosting's managed option adds full support, free site migration, a free SSL certificate and cPanel control panel for around $50 extra a month, a much better deal than some providers.

A2 Hosting's dedicated plans stand out for their hardware configurability. Not only are there eight servers to choose from, but you can tweak them individually, perhaps to add more RAM or an extra backup drive.

One issue is you're unable to choose the operating system. There's no Windows hosting, and you can't even pick your preferred Linux version (other than paying extra for a Cloud Linux license.)

Overall, this is still a capable set of dedicated hosting plans. If you're running a business site, or anything where you need the maximum performance at all times, they're likely to give you excellent results.

Also consider Hostwinds. Servers are fully managed, prices start at a low $122 billed monthly, Windows hosting is available from only $25 extra and you can add extra bandwidth for high-traffic sites. 

If value is vital, check out IONOS. Basic dedicated servers start at under $50, and we've seen systems as cheap as $33 a month with occasional special deals.

Dedicated hosting

A2 hosting offers seven managed and seven unmanaged dedicated hosting plans. Under the managed dedicated hosting, Warp 1 is the most basic plan, starting at an introductory price of $79.99/mo (renews at $249.99). This plan has an Intel Xeon E-2224 4.6GHz Turbo CPU, 16GB of DDR4 ECC RAM, dual 1TB SSD storage, and a 6TB transfer limit. The next tier includes the Warp 2 AMD and Warp 2 Intel plans, both priced at $149.99/mo. You can renew these plans for $329.99/mo once you’ve utilized the introductory plan. The Warp 2 AMD features an AMD Rome 2nd Gen EPYC 7232 3.2GHz Turbo CPU, while the Warp 2 Intel includes an Intel Xeon Silver 4210R 10-Core 2.4GHz Turbo CPU. Both configurations offer 32GB DDR4 ECC RAM and dual 1TB SSD storage, supporting up to a 10TB transfer capacity. 

To enhance performance further, A2 offers the Warp 2 Turbo AMD and Warp 2 Turbo Intel plans for $179.99/mo which can be later renewed at $379.99/mo. Both options come with 64GB DDR4 ECC RAM and dual 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD storage hosted on A2's Turbo Servers. These servers use advanced features such as NVMe storage and Turbo Cache page-level caching, which deliver faster data processing and improved connection efficiency.

For the highest level of performance, the Warp 3 Turbo AMD plan is priced at $439.99/mo and renews at $749.99. This premium option includes dual AMD Rome 2nd Gen EPYC 7232 3.2GHz Turbo CPUs, 128GB DDR4 ECC RAM, and dual 960GB NVMe U.2 SSD storage, with a generous 15TB transfer limit. 

All these managed dedicated server plans from A2 Hosting come with root-level access, a free 1TB backup drive, a free SSL certificate, and a free Imunify360 Security Suite. They are managed through the cPanel control panel, simplifying server settings and application management. 

For the unmanaged dedicated hosting plans, the entry-level Hyper 1 plan starts at just $79.99/mo (renews at $199.99/mo)and provides an Intel Xeon E-2224 4.6GHz Turbo CPU, 16GB DDR4 ECC RAM, 2X1TB SSD storage, and 6TB of bandwidth. For those seeking more processing power, the Hyper 2 plans take performance up a notch with your choice of an AMD Rome 2ndGEN EPYC 7232 3.2GHz Turbo CPU or an Intel Xeon Silver 4210R 10-Core 2.4GHz Turbo CPU. Both configurations come with 32GB DDR4 ECC RAM, 2X1TB SSD storage, and 10TB of transfer, priced at only $89.99/mo, which can be renewed after two years at a revised price of $279.99 rate.

If you need even more muscle, the Hyper 3 AMD plan doubles up on CPU power with 2X AMD Rome 2ndGEN EPYC 7232 CPUs, 64GB RAM, and 2X960GB U.2 storage for $379.99/mo, and $649.99/mo, once your introductory offer ends.

The Turbo server lineup utilizes NVMe storage for ultimate performance. The Hyper 2 Turbo plans feature a 64GB RAM, 2X1TB NVMe M.2 SSD setup for $139.99/mo initially and $329.99/mo for renewal. The range-topping Hyper 3 Turbo AMD gives you 2X EPYC CPUs, 128GB RAM, and 2X960GB NVMe storage for $399.99/mo which escalates to $699.99/mo after two years. All plans include root access, a free 1TB backup drive, and a money-back guarantee. 

Can I build a web store with A2 Hosting? 

A2 Hosting provides multiple options for building an online e-commerce store. If you want to quickly get a simple store online, A2’s integrated SiteBuilder solution includes a dedicated eCommerce plugin with the Enterprise plan. At $18.99/mo, the Enterprise plan offers unlimited pages, templates, and storage, along with a blog plugin, SSL protection, and the eCommerce plugin.

For more advanced self-hosted eCommerce solutions, A2's hosting plans support 1-click installers for popular open-source platforms like WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Magento, and OpenCart. Their Shared hosting is suitable for smaller stores, with higher tiers like the Drive ($15.99/mo) and Turbo Boost ($24.99/mo) plans to provide more server resources like higher CPU cores, faster NVMe storage, and up to 20x better performance for busier stores. The top Turbo Max plan ($29.99/mo) includes 4 CPU cores and 4GB RAM.

A2 also offers Managed WordPress and Managed WooCommerce hosting plans that are pre-configured and optimized specifically for WooCommerce stores right out of the box. These managed solutions handle performance tuning, security hardening, and other eCommerce optimizations.

For high-traffic enterprise stores requiring maximum control, horsepower, and scalability, A2's VPS and Dedicated server hosting are powerful options. These plans install any eCommerce software, full server access for customizations, and have the ability to scale up resources like CPU, RAM, and storage as needed.

Nevertheless, no matter which hosting solution you pick, A2 includes free SSL certificates, a 99.9% uptime commitment, and a 24/7 support team to keep eCommerce stores secure and running smoothly. 

Does A2 Hosting have a website builder? 

A2 offers a site-building tool that lets you quickly design and publish custom sites without needing any technical knowledge. First, its 1-Page plan costs just $2.99/mo for a simple one-page site with 10 templates and 100MB storage. However, if you need more than a simple one-pager, A2 offers three SiteBuilder packages bundled with its Startup Shared Hosting Plan.

The Basic plan, starting at just $8.99/mo, gives you 10 pages, 25 templates to choose from, 250MB storage, a blog plugin, and SSL protection. This plan is perfect for quickly designing and publishing custom sites. For more resources, you can opt for the Business plan priced at $14.99/mo, where you get 40 templates, 10 pages, 5GB storage, the blog plugin, and an SSL certificate. Also, if you want to open an ecommerce store, the Enterprise plan is tailor-made for that purpose. It includes unlimited pages, templates, and storage, plus an eCommerce plugin on top of the blog and SSL features at $18.99/mo.

How fast is A2 Hosting?

A2 Hosting has a 99.9% uptime commitment, which means you should expect your site to be available to visitors at least 99.9% of the time. That's similar to many providers, but even 0.1% downtime translates to a possible 43.83 minutes of inaccessibility a month.

To find out what a hosting provider really delivers, we use Uptime.com to check a WordPress-based test site every five minutes for 14 days.

A2 Hosting did well, with a perfect 100% uptime. (That's what we expect with a short measurement period, but it doesn't always happen. In our last 15 hosting reviews, four providers had some downtime during our two week monitoring period).

Server response times were less impressive at an average 1.53 seconds, and a very wide range of 1.1 to 3.36 seconds. Most providers have response times of half that, and a range of 0.06 or less, making them much faster and more consistent.

We test website performance by using GTmetrix to load a shared hosting test site and calculate how long it takes to load the main content of a page, a technical measure called Largest Contentful Paint (LCP.) The lower your LCP value is, the faster your page pops up onto the screen, a key factor in keeping your visitors happy.

A2 Hosting's LCP was higher than average at 1.1s, making for a slower load time. GoDaddy (667ms), Hostinger (607ms), Bluehost (603ms) and HostGator (551ms) were around half a second faster. A2 Hosting did outperform some big names, though, including IONOS (1400ms) and iPage (1600ms). 

Finally, we use k6 to see how a site performs when it has many visitors loading pages at the same time. Our A2 server averaged 11 requests per second, well behind the typical 14-16 we see from most providers, although it did beat one or two (IONOS averaged fractionally under 10 requests per seconds).

How much this matters depends on your website and audience. If it's a high traffic web store, milliseconds count; if it's a personal blog or you may not get 100 visitors a day, an extra half second on load time may not make any difference at all.

Keep in mind that we carried out these tests on a standard shared hosting product. You may see very different results from the Turbo shared hosting plans, VPS or dedicated hosting.

How easy is A2 Hosting to use? 

A2 Hosting uses top quality, industry-standard management tools across the service. 

You're able to manage your hosting account on a powerful platform called WHMCS. Our favorite auto-installer, Softaculous, is on hand to set up WordPress and 150+ other apps in barely more than a click. Meanwhile, the powerful cPanel can help create email accounts, upload and work with files, and generally manage your website and keep it running smoothly.

These are some of the best and most popular hosting tools around, and if you've used another web host, the chances are you'll already know how to manage your A2 Hosting account and website.

If you're a hosting newbie then it'll take a little longer, mostly because there are so many features to explore. Overall, though, it's not difficult, and most users are likely to master the hosting essentials in their first session.

A2 Hosting has other worthwhile usability pluses scattered around the service. Running WordPress, for instance? Most providers just give you a standard installation, but A2's 'Optimized' WordPress has its settings specially optimized for speed and security.

Put it all together and A2 Hosting is a quality provider which makes it as easy as possible to get your site online and keep it running smoothly.

What is A2 Hosting's support like? 

A2 Hosting support is available via ticket and a web knowledgebase only. There's no live chat or telephone support. Although that's disappointing, it doesn't have to be a big problem if the ticket response time is rapid.

We opened a ticket asking about the issues involved with installing WordPress on a subdomain. The results were excellent, with a helpful and detailed reply arriving only 30 minutes later.

We could probably have got even faster results with telephone or live chat, but there can still be problems with complex queries. If an agent gives you troubleshooting advice over live chat and it doesn't help, you have to go back and explain the issue again; if it's a ticket or email, typing a couple of sentences could be enough.

A comprehensive support website is important, too. If you can quickly find what you need there, you might not have to contact support at all.

A2 Hosting's web knowledgebase has a lot of articles, but they're poorly organized, and the search engine doesn't do a good job of finding the most relevant articles.

Fortunately, the site has some decent startup and other guides. These have some useful advice for beginners, and if you already know the hosting basics, the knowledgebase has some interesting and more technical articles to explore.

Final verdict

A2 Hosting doesn't quite hit the spot in every area (support website needs work, renewal prices are higher than some), but its wide range of products, custom speedup technologies and quality hosting tools earn the company a thumbs up from us. 

Whether you're looking for feature-packed shared hosting which goes beyond the usual basics, or powerful VPS or dedicated plans for a high traffic, business-critical site, A2 Hosting is a must-see. 

A2 Hosting FAQs

Founded in 1999 by Octave Claba, OVHcloud is a French web hosting company with an international presence thanks to over 400,000 servers spread across more than 43 data centers in four continents. It offers a wide variety of cloud-based solutions to over 1.6 million seemingly satisfied customers. The company is headquartered in Roubaix (France), and its data centers can be found in the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Poland, France, Singapore, and Australia. 

In December of 2010, OVHcloud was revealed to the public as a web hosting provider for WikiLeaks, making them a small part of the story that shook the world. In October of 2021, the company enhanced its public cloud portfolio with a Database as a Service (DBaaS) catalog of services with which its customers would be free of tedious tasks such as database configuration, the set-up, software, and hardware maintenance, and so forth.

• Interested in OVHcloud? Check out the website here

What types of hosting does OVHcloud offer?

As the largest provider in Europe today, OVHcloud offers a wide range of hosting products, from shared and VPS hosting to dedicated and even gaming-optimized servers for hosting. What’s more, it also offers both private and public cloud instances, bringing the benefits of cloud to small, medium, and enterprise customers.

Shared hosting

OVHcloud is one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest, provider when it comes to shared web hosting. Plans start at just $1.04 per month for the Starter Hosting tier which gets you 1 GB of disk space, free domain name for the first year, support for one website, free SSL certificate, anti-DDoS protection, and one-click WordPress installation. What's more, you also get access to OVHcloud’s Web Statistics tool for free, using which you can track page visits and engagement.

For support for more websites and CMS (Joomla!, Drupal, and Prestashop) as well as more storage and number of email accounts, consider upgrading to one of the three higher-end plans which range from $4.39/month to $13.19/month.

Interestingly, though, the shared hosting plans mentioned above do not come with CDN included; perhaps that's why they're among the cheapest plans in the industry. CDN, which reduces the loading time for your pages, will cost an extra $2.79 per month.

Dedicated server hosting

Unlike shared hosting where thousands of websites are hosted and stored on a single server, dedicated hosting allocates all the server disk space and resources to your website—no sharing resources with other websites. This results in better speeds and optimal performance.

With OVHcloud, you can spend anywhere between $50 and $4,000 on a dedicated server. The cheapest of the lot comes with the Intel Xeon E Processor, 32 GB RAM, and 1 TB SSD NVMe storage. This is an excellent package and right up there with the very best dedicated server hosting providers. 

A highlight of the service is its filtering system. You can select from a number of options under location, hardware (AMD vs Intel, core/threads, frequency, etc), price, and use cases to filter out the dedicated servers that fit your needs and budget. To put it simply, this is similar to what you get on shopping apps such as Amazon. Even better, the provider has dedicated servers for a wide variety of use cases, including Artificial Intelligence, gaming, grid computing, and so on.

However, I feel that it’s not as secure as it could be. InMotion, for example, comes packed with security features, including free SSL certificates, a custom firewall, DDoS protection, auto-updates, and heavily guarded data centers. To be fair, though, OVHcloud does come with SSL certificates and protection against DDoS attacks and DNS cache poisoning, so there’s a good amount of protection on offer.

VPS hosting

A virtual private server (VPS) divides a single physical server into multiple private server environments. Each of these “private” servers has dedicated resources (meaning better performance than what you’d get with shared hosting), but at the same time, the websites within the one large physical server are still essentially sharing resources, which keeps the cost down.

OVHcloud offers a ton of VPS server options, meaning choosing one is admittedly not as simple as, say, DreamHost or Liquid Web. At the same time, though, some users may like the availability of so many options. Where OVHcloud really sets itself apart is that all of its VPS servers are parts of its cloud environment, so you’ll benefit from auto-scaling, which will allow you to only pay for what you use. 

There are a total of eight plans to choose from, ranging from 1-16 CPU cores, 2-16 GB RAM, 20-160 GB SSD NVMe, and up to 2 Gbps unmetered bandwidth. This degree of customization allows you to choose the best plan for your unique requirements—plus, whether it’s a small business with a handful of websites or a large-scale application, there’s a plan for every use case. 

Cloud hosting

OVHcloud is hands down one of the best cloud hosting providers on the market right now. First things first, it offers two cloud products—public cloud instances and hosted private cloud. The latter is designed for large enterprises that want high-performance dedicated resources along with the benefits of the cloud. So, OVHcloud’s Public Cloud instances, which combine flexibility, guaranteed resources, and affordable prices, is where the party's at for most businesses and websites. 

OVHcloud is particularly great for niche businesses who want to be able to configure a cloud hosting plan to their liking. Where typical cloud hosts offer only a handful of plans, OVHcloud knocks it out of the park with 10+ broad filters, including storage, network, databases, data analytics, etc., all of which then have several subdivisions inside each of them, allowing you to zero in on the perfect plan for your business’s needs. 

For instance, if you want to run applications that require high-frequency computing, you can choose a plan from the ‘Compute Optimized’ section. Alternatively, if you dabble in data analysis and data science, a ‘Memory Optimized’ cloud hosting plan will be a perfect choice.

Also, if you want to steer clear of the extreme customization, OVHcloud allows you to do that too—just stick to the ‘General Purpose’ plans that provide balanced CPU/RAM resources. A highlight of OVHcloud is that no matter what plan you pick, you will get a generous $200 credit so that you can test OVHcloud’s services risk-free.

Coming to the costs, the most basic cloud hosting plan is $0.0508 per hour and gets you 8 GB of RAM, 2 vCores, and 50 GB fast NVMe storage. It’s worth noting that you can also opt for monthly billing, although that option is only available from the 7 GB RAM plan onwards. 

Is OVHcloud the cheapest cloud hosting? Nope. DreamHost at $0.0075 per hour and IONOS at $0.0056 per hour are much cheaper, meaning they are better suited for users who need the benefits of cloud i.e. auto-scaling and geo-redundancy, but don’t require the amount of power OVHcloud’s most basic plan offers.

However, OVHcloud comes with on-demand resources, meaning that your contact is non-binding—you can delete a resource at any time following which you won't be charged for it. Also, unlike other providers that may charge you for instance network traffic or API calls from Object Storage, OVHcloud offers these for free. 

Dedicated solutions for different industries

In addition to the above, where OVHcloud really stands tall is being a highly versatile and customizable hosting provider. Servers with DDoS protection and quick scaling for hosting large-scale video games? Check. Servers that facilitate remote learning and collaboration for the education industry? Check. Minecraft VPS servers—the kind you get with industry leaders such as Hostinger? Check.

Similarly, OVHcloud has a compliant and secure solution for just about every industry, whether that’s healthcare, IT, nonprofit, or the government sector. It also carries the proper attestations and certifications (HIPAA, HITECH, PCI DSS, etc) to be able to be this diverse. 

Plans and pricing

OVHcloud’s scope of cloud hosting solutions includes a public cloud, a private cloud, and a bare-metal cloud, under which you’ll find VPS, dedicated servers, managed bare metal hosting, as well as additional storage, backup, network, security, email, and big data solutions, domain name registration, and management services.  

The cloud solutions start relatively cheap with the “Personal” coming at $3.99 per month with an annual subscription. This plan can supply you with five websites, a free domain name for the first year, 100GB disk space (SSD), unlimited bandwidth, 10 email accounts (up to 1GB per account), one SQL database (up to 200 MB), support for Python (CGI), MySQL 5.6,  PHP (8.0 / 7.4 / 7.3), optimization for WordPress, anti-DDoS protection, and a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate. If you want more features and fewer restrictions on resources, you’ll have to purchase a bigger plan.

Unlike other hosts, OVHcloud doesn’t provide any free trials or money-back guarantees with its services, which means that if you decide to cancel their services, you can say goodbye to any money you’ve invested so far, including additional setup fees.

As for payment methods, with OVHcloud you can pay via credit/debit cards (Visa, MasterCard, and Maestro), PayPal, cheques, postal orders (in value of up to £250), and bank transfers.

Ease of use

OVHcloud’s official site uses a monochrome palette that plays with different shades of blue making itself quite easy on the eyes. It also utilizes a familiar page layout, provides plenty of information and features an up-to-date blog, all of which creates a user-friendly experience. The site is available in French, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, and Dutch.

Fans of social networking sites can find OVHcloud on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, where all accounts look very much alive.

After selecting a plan you want to use, you’ll be asked to pick out a pre-installed CMS from WordPress, PrestaShop, Drupal, Joomla, or to go without one. As for add-ons, you can include a CDN and extra SSL certificates (Let’s Encrypt SSL comes free of charge). After this, you can choose your domain name, where one is included for free for the first year with all OVHcloud’s plans.

If you have an account with OVHcloud, now is when you need to log in. If not, it’s time to create one, and doing so will need your full name, email address, and password. It’s also advisable to go through the “Terms of Service” before cracking on with any further steps. After this, you’ll have to pass a verification via email and surrender all the additional data (your telephone number, country, city, postcode, and language) to finish creating your account.

When all of this is done, you’ll gain access to OVHcloud’s dashboard, from which you can complete your purchase if you haven’t done so already. From here, you should be able to monitor and manage all aspects of your account, such as changing passwords, creating/restoring backups, creating/deleting databases, and so forth.

It’s worth noting that we didn’t use the word “should” because of a lack of belief in your abilities but due to the somewhat slow, painfully plain, and not too novice-friendly OVHcloud dashboard.

Unfortunately, even if you are willing to invest some cash into an intuitive industry-standard control panel, you can choose between cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, and ISPconfig3 with only some of the many OVHcloud plans. For instance, industry-leading cPanel is only available with dedicated server hosting plans that start at $56.75 per month, and this isn’t something most users who look for simple solutions will be willing to pay.

How fast is OVHcloud?

An abundance of data centers scattered across the globe typically predicts lightning-fast speeds, and this is true with OVHcloud. A GTmetrix test performed on OVHcloud’s main site shows that it took 2.9 seconds for it to fully load, whereas the recommended time is less than 3.5 seconds (and the average is 8.1). On top of this, all other web vitals (speed measuring metrics) showed a presentable performance building-up to a near-perfect A (95%) as a final GTmetrix grade.  

As for uptime, OVHcloud offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee backed by SLA across most of its VPS ranges. Now, uptime is perhaps the only major area where the service falls slightly short of the competition. Sure, 99.9% backed by SLA is nothing to sniff at, but rivals such as InMotion Hosting offer a 99.999% uptime guarantee, whereas Liquid Web and DreamHost lead the space with a whopping 100% uptime guarantee.

OVHcloud also claims that all of its data centers are designed to Tier 3+ standards, meaning that the maximum amount of downtime a site should suffer throughout a year should be less than 1.6 hours in total (or 99.982% uptime). During a two-week-long uptime test on OVHcloud’s main site (via UptimeRobot), we only recorded a single case of downtime, but that lasted for 15 minutes straight. This amounted to 99.93% of uptime, which is a bit lower than we expected but still in line with the service’s uptime guarantee.

OVHcloud customer support

Although OVHcloud claims to be completely committed to its customers, this doesn’t seem to be the case with its customer support. There are four levels of support: Standard, Premium, Business, and Enterprise support. The lowest level called “Standard Support'' consists of several self-help options including a brief FAQ section, a knowledge base, and a community forum.

The knowledgebase contains plenty of step-by-step guides (some of which contain videos and others screenshots), which is fortunate since there’s barely anything to help and encourage beginners. On the other hand, the community forum seems quite active—although we did find several months-old questions that are still left unanswered.  

It’s worth noting that “Standard Support” is the only level of support that comes with every single hosting solution without any additional charges. “Premium Support” costs $56 per month, “Business Support” starts at $300 per month, and to find what fortune you’ll have to pay to get “Enterprise Support” you’ll have to request a callback from the sales team.

Anyway, you are free to contact OVHcloud’s sales team via telephone (on weekdays from 9 AM to 5 PM) and email/ticket. However, don’t expect to get anything but basic information here. OVHcloud also claims they’re planning to launch live chat support “soon” but they’ve been claiming that forever. The lack of live chat support (even one powered by a chatbot) is disappointing. So, if you have any questions regarding the service and you’d like to reach out to them, you’ll have to send them a message and then wait for a reply.

The competition

All those looking for a cloud-based solution can find an amazing alternative to OVHcloud in a US-based host called DigitalOcean. Both hosts are geared toward developers and tech-savvy users in general, to whom they offer a nice variety of web hosting products, and the similarities stop there. OVHcloud may be much cheaper than its competitor, but with DigitalOcean you’ll get better value for money and a bit better customer support.

Another popular alternative could be Linode, a US-based host with a data center network that parallels the one of OVHcloud. However, while Linode offers a 7-day trial to new users (and a 60-day credit), you won’t get anything similar with OVHcloud.

When it comes to user-friendliness, availability of customer support, and beginner-friendly features (such as free domain registration, industry-standard control panel, and money-back guarantee), HostGator wins the day. That being said, since HostGator has data centers in the USA only, it is less convenient to users elsewhere.

While OVHcloud stays outside the beginner’s comfort zone, Bluehost strives to boost the confidence of less experienced users by offering a full list of beginner-friendly features, round-the-clock support, a one-click installer with lots of apps, a drag-and-drop website builder, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. This means that you’ll have enough time to try everything out for yourself without a need to worry about your budget.    

Final verdict

With over two decades of experience, OVHcloud does a commendable job at supplying its customers with a variety of competitively priced cloud-based necessities, including VPS, dedicated servers, bare-metal servers, hosted private cloud, public cloud, as well as hybrid solutions. 

On the downside, though, OVHcloud isn’t as geared towards beginners as we would have liked, its customer support needs a serious revamp, and the lack of a refund period means that you can’t try out the service risk-free. If you think this could be a deal killer for you, check out more beginner-friendly hosts such as Hostinger and Bluehost before parting with your money.

• Here's a list of the best web hosting services on the market

Krystal Hosting began as the brainchild of a 17 year-old Simon Blackler. While spending his summer vacation developing a fan site for an upcoming video game and learning how to build it in that process, he faced the problem of finding a suitable web hosting service. After being annoyed with a number of overpriced hosting solutions with dreadful performance on the UK market, he came up with the idea of offering an “honest, reliable, and personal” alternative. 

Krystal Hosting was then founded in 2002 and has since become one of the largest independent web hosts in the UK which is currently hosting about 200,000 websites. Today, they offer a variety of hosting solutions, from standard shared hosting to managed WordPress, cloud VPS, and reseller hosting.

• Want to try Krystal Hosting? Check out the website here

As an ethical alternative to mainstream hosting providers at the time (a lot have become much better in terms for the environment). Krystal set out with a creed consisting of nine statements, which essentially cover the mission statement, "Currently the web hosting industry is dominated by two faceless corporations, who have gobbled up the competition to create a situation that is unfair to customers and harmful to the planet. But, we're here to show that there is a different way."

Krystal is headquartered in London (the UK) from where it maintains and manages its tier 1 data centers and over 220,000 websites for more than 30,000 customers. All of their data centers are 100% powered by green renewable energy, which means that their carbon footprint is reduced to a minimum and that our planet should be better with them around.

Krystal’s official site is refreshingly modern, well-organized, user-friendly, and pretty. The same is true about its official blog, which is chock full of articles written in an interesting, informative, and somewhat witty way.

As for social networking sites, Krystal can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Plans and pricing

Krystal offers a nice variety of web hosting solutions starting with simple shared hosting and application hosting (WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Opencart, PrestaShop, and Drupal), in addition to managed WordPress and advanced solutions such as reseller, VPS, and dedicated server hosting.

If a tight budget is one of your concerns, worry not. Although Krystal is not the most budget-friendly option on the market, it offers a few reasonably priced packages that come overloaded with features and with no limitations on bandwidth, databases, e-mails, subdomains, parked domains, and email aliases. All three shared hosting packages (Amethyst, Ruby, and Sapphire) also include free SSL certificates (via LetsEncrypt), one-click installers (Softaculous and Installatron), a user-friendly website builder (with no limitation on page/site numbers), an industry-leading cPanel, 24/7 support and 99.99% uptime guarantee.

All of Krystal’s hosting solutions come with a confident 60-day money-back guarantee, except for dedicated server plans (and understandably so), while with managed WordPress plans you can get a 30-day free trial.

Available payment methods with Krystal include credit/debit cards (Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, and American Express) and PayPal.

Ease of use

New users are prompted to create an account with Krystal, which requires a form to be filled out that includes  personal information, payment details, and a password.  

Accounts are set up in an instant, as they promised. We picked Onyx. Onyx is a fully managed plan, which means there is always someone from the technical team on the watch in case you get stuck or have any questions.

Krystal’s cloud-based shared hosting plans come with the industry-standard cPanel (which is always good news), a one-click installer with a myriad of available apps (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and many more), and a drag-and-drop builder. With all these tools you’ll be able to create a compelling site without writing a single line of code.

Speed and experience

We didn't test a website that we hosted on Krystal but we did the next best thing. We tested the Krystal website itself. Undoubtedly, this will be hosted on Krystal and quite important for them. If there's any issue on this site, not much can be said for what you host on them. As for uptime, Krystal guarantees 99.99% at all times. After getting UptimeRobot to monitor their main site for two weeks without a break, we got a glimpse of what you can expect to get while hosting with Krystal, and that is exactly what they promised. During our test, not a single second of downtime was recorded whatsoever and no major oscillations in response time to boot, which paints a picture of pretty presentable performance.

Support

Seeking support on Krystal’s main site will give you a few options including opening a support ticket, starting a live chat, giving them a ring (if you are their client), or searching through the knowledgebase. The ticketing system is available round-the-clock but you can expect to get a reply every day from 6 AM till midnight. The same hours apply for the live chat, while telephone support can be reached Monday to Friday from 9 AM to 8 PM. However, if you’ve opted for one of their premium packages, emergency phone support will be available for you 24/7.

We tried the live support and the responses were lazy. We asked if they have 24/7 support to see how much effort they would put into their reply. Their answer, after a short wait, was, "You can obtain support via live chat (9am to 6:00pm), support ticket (24/7 submission - manned 6am - midnight) or phone (Monday - Friday 9am - 8pm and 24/7 emergency phone support)."

We found this a little misleading as we thought 24/7 emergency support is only covered in the more expensive plans.

So, we asked if this support is available for all plans. A Krystal employee responded, "That would be on the business packages only, as mentioned at  https://help.krystal.uk/getting-started/what-support-is-included-with-my-hosting."

This still didn't really answer our question as there was no indication as to what "business packages" are (there are no plans labelled as business plans). The page also didn't explain whether 24/7 emergency support is available for VPS plans and on the VPS pages it wasn't immediately clear either.

After some digging we worked out that 24/7 emergency support is also available for all VPS plans but only with a management add-on that costs an extra £80/mo.

We also found that chat history is not handed over between shifts for chat support. This meant that we had to explain our query again only ten minutes after we first opened the chat. 

Overall, we were underwhelmed by the support received and the help pages for what should have been a rather simple query. 

Krystal provides a knowledgebase on the official site to help you find the best self-help option. It compiles over 300 easy-to-follow how-tos divided into 18 interconnected categories. At the end of each article, users are welcomed to leave a grade with a fitting emoji (charmed, confused, or a disappointed). As for our impression, we were pretty much charmed with everything we saw there.

The competition

If you are looking for an eco-friendly host with a similar scope of cloud-based products as Krystal’s, but with data centers across four continents, SiteGround might be a good pick. The hosts are remarkably similar in terms of pricing and features, however, SiteGround has the edge with its worldwide infrastructure.

Like Krystal, GreenGeeks is a likable beginner-friendly host that cares about the environment. However, since it offers data center locations in the USA and Canada (in addition to Europe), it may be more attractive to the wider audience.

Bluehost is another budget-friendly albeit US-based alternative to all the above, yet its US-based data centers don’t offer much flexibility in terms of location (unlike with SiteGround and GreenGeeks). Additionally, after a few years of hosting with Bluehost, the price of your package will dramatically increase, which may catch you unaware. There will be no such surprises with Krystal.

Much like Bluehost, HostGator is a US-based host offering a myriad of hosting options, features, and free apps for an attractive price. Unfortunately, just like Bluehost, it provides data centers in the USA only. Nevertheless, since all of these web hosting providers offer a money-back guarantee (Krystal’s is valid for 60 days), you can check them all out without the need to worry about wasting your money.

Final verdict

Krystal’s superiority in the UK market comes from its commitment to speed, stability, and sustainability. They also have a good reputation across multiple review sites and really nice business practices. For example, they offer free hosting to UK charities and start-ups in their first year.

• We've also highlighted the best web hosting

The company with the curious name of 20i was launched in 2016 by a dynamic duo consisting of two brothers, Tim and Jonathan Brealey. Although 20i is still basically a new-born in the trade, its creators are industry veterans, having gathered extensive web hosting experience while working on their previous creations.

Their first project was Webfusion, which was the first company to offer a customized version of a control panel called Virtual Control Panel. Three years later they founded 123-Reg, which remains a market leader in domain name registration in the UK. After two decades of experience the brother's launched a hosting company that would (in their words) “break the mold” (let’s hope for the better).

20i’s head office is located in Ransom Wood, the UK, and they have two of their own datacenters, one in London and one in Dallas, Texas. Plus they have the option of using AWS and Google Cloud servers. 20i also provide a global CDN (content delivery network) with twenty-one locations across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa, but their infographics could lead you to believe there are more locations included in their network than there are. So, double check the CDN locations when making a purchasing decision.

Actual amount and location of CDN nodes

Plans and pricing

20i are best known for their reseller hosting but they also provide managed cloud hosting for AWS, and managed WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting from their own datacenters and AWS and Google Cloud servers. For reseller plans you can't choose the datacenter location but for other plans you can. 

If you create a reseller account with US login details you'll automatically be given servers in the US datacenter. If you create a reseller account with UK login details, you'll get the UK datacenter. For other plans you can choose the location but only customers from outside the UK have the option to use the USD listing price which is cheaper than the GBP listing price after currency conversion. If you use a VPN you might be able to take advantage of the USD prices (but check the T&Cs).

We asked 20i about why the pricing is different and we were told that it's because of the lower costs to run a datacenter in the US. This didn't add up though because for this plan you can choose a server location anywhere in the world. 

Even though 20i focuses on reseller hosting, its shared, WordPress and VPS packages offer a wide array of fantastic features such as free website migration, CDN, website acceleration suite and much more. All hosting plans are presented in a very detailed manner where you can  get all needed information about web hosting packages, their cloud platform, security measures, e-mail features, supported web hosting software and their promises (some of which are backed by a guarantee) within a few clicks.

We've noticed at least one inaccuracy in the specifications listed for 20i plans. For example, for managed WordPress hosting unlimited MySQL databases with a 5GB capacity are provided but in the small print it says that database size is limited to 1024 megabytes. We asked 20i about the database capacity and were told that the limit is actually based on the SSD size of the hosting plan.

After you select a plan, you’ll be provided with a few options regarding the domain name. Here, in addition to the typical options (register a new or use an old one), you can choose to feed the little master of procrastination that lives in all of us and decide to, well, decide later what to do about your domain.

In any case, the rest of the process is everything one might expect from it. You are required to provide a first round of personal data, opt for a payment frequency (monthly or annual, with the annual one getting you one month of free hosting) and go through 20i’s terms and conditions. Now it’s time for the second round of personal data and the content of a form slightly differs depending on whether you are acting as an individual or on behalf of a company.

Ease of use

20i have their own control panel (named simply My20i) that, without much subtlety, proclaims its superiority over the fan-favorite “old-school” Linux-based cPanel. Funnily enough, My20i and cPanel look like chips off the same old block, which is something even the casual eye would take a notice of.

However, we have to admit, My20i is one of the most user-friendly tailor-made control panels we have seen and the one that will make everything you need readily available at your fingertips. It is a genuine one-stop solution for managing all of your web hosting, e-mails, databases and software. In addition to this, it has to be noted that My20i is included with all hosting packages, so you won’t be driven to pay extra just to enjoy its elegant simplicity and intuitive ease of use.

As an alternative (not that you will need one), you can use 20i’s drag-and-drop website builder,  but if you haven’t opted for their “Startup”, “Premium”, “Business” or any of the reseller plans, it will come at a price.

Speed and experience

Considering that 20i utilizes worldwide CDN and their own website acceleration suite in order to improve your site speed and “make it fly”, we came with a certain set of expectations regarding the speed performance. After we performed a speed test on 20i’s main website (provided by GTmetrix), our expectations were pretty much justified.

The page fully loaded in just 1.8 seconds (the average result is 8.1) and it required 55 requests to do so (the average being 98 requests). In addition, all other vital web metrics were ahead of the curve i.e. all but one, and that is total blocking time that regrettably took 352 milliseconds, although ideally it should be less than 150. Nevertheless, GTmetrix rated the speed performance of 20i’s site with a B (86%), which is one of the better performances we have seen so far.

20i emphasizes security of their “state-of-the-art” data centers that are manned day-and-night and reinforced with high-level physical security measures that cover everything from backup power generators to advanced fire protection. However, oddly enough, they failed to say a lot about the uptime we can expect while doing business with them.

As per usual, we put the uptime of 20i’s main website to the test, so you don’t have to. After a month of steadfast monitoring (via tireless UptimeRobot), our efforts were rewarded by pretty promising results. There was no recorded downtime at all resulting in an impeccable 100% of uptime. 

Support

Although all visitors to 20i’s website have an option to reach its support staff via telephone, if you are looking for some good old customer support, you will notice that their help is primarily text-based. The first pick for most of us will be live chat, which seems available during the working hours at a minimum. Fortunately (for both parties), after testing the willingness of their helping hands, we were well pleased with all the hand-holding we got. 

If you’re not in a rush, you can get in touch with 20i’s technical team via support ticket or email. However, if you want to remain as self-sufficient as humanly possible, there are some excellent options for you as well. The principal one is their knowledgebase (titled “Support Database”) as it manages to cover all key issues and concerns in an easy-to-understand way. On the other hand, if you are more into how-to video guides, 20i’s YouTube channel features a stack of them (actually, around sixty) and those we have checked out seem really handy. 

The competition

Most newcomers looking for a well-balanced reseller hosting solution are likely to consider web hosting providers like InMotion Hosting, HostGator and A2 Hosting at some point, and not without reason.

Since you are here, you are presumably taking 20i into consideration. And if you pick them out, you are right to expect a full list of features (many of which are unlimited), lightning speed and powerful performance in general, together with a standard 30-day money-back guarantee. However, if this should be your first close encounter with reseller web hosting, InMotion Hosting is most likely your safest bet. Their packages present a great value for money at a pocket-friendly price of $26.59 (with 20i it is about $49.50) per month, with cPanel, WHM and WHMCS  included together with an overgenerous 90-day money-back guarantee that will give you quite a bit of time to try them out before making any definitive decision.

Although HostGator is not as reseller-focused as 20i, its reseller plans can grab anyone’s attention, particularly in terms of features. For a really reasonable price HostGator will put no limitations on the number of domains, subdomains, email accounts, MySQL databases and FTP accounts. However, if you want an unlimited hosting in its true form, you’ll have to go with 20i for they will throw in an unlimited number of websites, unlimited storage space (100% SSD), unlimited bandwidth and unlimited Wildcard SSL certificates.

Bluehost is another popular alternative for those on the lookout for a novice-friendly hosting provider that has something to meet most needs. However, while Bluehost offers no reseller packages (which are 20i’s specialty), 20i doesn’t provide an option for demanding users in need of dedicated servers (and Bluehost does). This is one of those differences that can serve as a decisive point for certain types of users.

In terms of features, GreenGeeks is comparable with InMotion Hosting, but one feature that sets them apart from all the hosts above is (not hard to guess considering the name of the company is highly suggestive) their dedication to eco-friendly hosting. If we add that they guarantee 99.98% of uptime, provide 24/7 live support chat and all at a price starting at $10.95 (you can get about 80% off on sale), going green might sound even better.   

Final verdict

One of the hallmarks of hosting with 20i is their very own custom-made My20i control panel and it is the closest thing to an industry-standard control panel (such as cPanel and Plesk) we have seen since the Jurassic period of web hosting. Its beauty lies in its simplicity, intuitive design and sheer user-friendliness, which is something we seldom see with non-standard counterparts.

At the same time, 20i has been quietly gaining worldwide momentum thanks to its well-structured, feature-rich and easy-to-set up hosting solutions, a performance one can rely on and professional and polite in-house support staff.

We just found too many inaccuracies on their site which could fall into being misleading for us to strongly recommend this hosting provider for everyone. If you're looking for the best UK web hosting, there are other options.

Claimed score vs real score

The company with the curious name of 20i was launched in 2016 by a dynamic duo consisting of two brothers, Tim and Jonathan Brealey. Although 20i is still basically a new-born in the trade, its creators are industry veterans, having gathered extensive web hosting experience while working on their previous creations.

Their first project was Webfusion, which was the first company to offer a customized version of a control panel called Virtual Control Panel. Three years later they founded 123-Reg, which remains a market leader in domain name registration in the UK. After two decades of experience the brother's launched a hosting company that would (in their words) “break the mold” (let’s hope for the better).

20i’s head office is located in Ransom Wood, the UK, and they have two of their own datacenters, one in London and one in Dallas, Texas. Plus they have the option of using AWS and Google Cloud servers. 20i also provide a global CDN (content delivery network) with twenty-one locations across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa, but their infographics could lead you to believe there are more locations included in their network than there are. So, double check the CDN locations when making a purchasing decision.

Actual amount and location of CDN nodes

Plans and pricing

20i are best known for their reseller hosting but they also provide managed cloud hosting for AWS, and managed WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting from their own datacenters and AWS and Google Cloud servers. For reseller plans you can't choose the datacenter location but for other plans you can. 

If you create a reseller account with US login details you'll automatically be given servers in the US datacenter. If you create a reseller account with UK login details, you'll get the UK datacenter. For other plans you can choose the location but only customers from outside the UK have the option to use the USD listing price which is cheaper than the GBP listing price after currency conversion. If you use a VPN you might be able to take advantage of the USD prices (but check the T&Cs).

We asked 20i about why the pricing is different and we were told that it's because of the lower costs to run a datacenter in the US. This didn't add up though because for this plan you can choose a server location anywhere in the world. 

Even though 20i focuses on reseller hosting, its shared, WordPress and VPS packages offer a wide array of fantastic features such as free website migration, CDN, website acceleration suite and much more. All hosting plans are presented in a very detailed manner where you can  get all needed information about web hosting packages, their cloud platform, security measures, e-mail features, supported web hosting software and their promises (some of which are backed by a guarantee) within a few clicks.

We've noticed at least one inaccuracy in the specifications listed for 20i plans. For example, for managed WordPress hosting unlimited MySQL databases with a 5GB capacity are provided but in the small print it says that database size is limited to 1024 megabytes. We asked 20i about the database capacity and were told that the limit is actually based on the SSD size of the hosting plan.

After you select a plan, you’ll be provided with a few options regarding the domain name. Here, in addition to the typical options (register a new or use an old one), you can choose to feed the little master of procrastination that lives in all of us and decide to, well, decide later what to do about your domain.

In any case, the rest of the process is everything one might expect from it. You are required to provide a first round of personal data, opt for a payment frequency (monthly or annual, with the annual one getting you one month of free hosting) and go through 20i’s terms and conditions. Now it’s time for the second round of personal data and the content of a form slightly differs depending on whether you are acting as an individual or on behalf of a company.

Ease of use

20i have their own control panel (named simply My20i) that, without much subtlety, proclaims its superiority over the fan-favorite “old-school” Linux-based cPanel. Funnily enough, My20i and cPanel look like chips off the same old block, which is something even the casual eye would take a notice of.

However, we have to admit, My20i is one of the most user-friendly tailor-made control panels we have seen and the one that will make everything you need readily available at your fingertips. It is a genuine one-stop solution for managing all of your web hosting, e-mails, databases and software. In addition to this, it has to be noted that My20i is included with all hosting packages, so you won’t be driven to pay extra just to enjoy its elegant simplicity and intuitive ease of use.

As an alternative (not that you will need one), you can use 20i’s drag-and-drop website builder,  but if you haven’t opted for their “Startup”, “Premium”, “Business” or any of the reseller plans, it will come at a price.

Speed and experience

Considering that 20i utilizes worldwide CDN and their own website acceleration suite in order to improve your site speed and “make it fly”, we came with a certain set of expectations regarding the speed performance. After we performed a speed test on 20i’s main website (provided by GTmetrix), our expectations were pretty much justified.

The page fully loaded in just 1.8 seconds (the average result is 8.1) and it required 55 requests to do so (the average being 98 requests). In addition, all other vital web metrics were ahead of the curve i.e. all but one, and that is total blocking time that regrettably took 352 milliseconds, although ideally it should be less than 150. Nevertheless, GTmetrix rated the speed performance of 20i’s site with a B (86%), which is one of the better performances we have seen so far.

20i emphasizes security of their “state-of-the-art” data centers that are manned day-and-night and reinforced with high-level physical security measures that cover everything from backup power generators to advanced fire protection. However, oddly enough, they failed to say a lot about the uptime we can expect while doing business with them.

As per usual, we put the uptime of 20i’s main website to the test, so you don’t have to. After a month of steadfast monitoring (via tireless UptimeRobot), our efforts were rewarded by pretty promising results. There was no recorded downtime at all resulting in an impeccable 100% of uptime. 

Support

Although all visitors to 20i’s website have an option to reach its support staff via telephone, if you are looking for some good old customer support, you will notice that their help is primarily text-based. The first pick for most of us will be live chat, which seems available during the working hours at a minimum. Fortunately (for both parties), after testing the willingness of their helping hands, we were well pleased with all the hand-holding we got. 

If you’re not in a rush, you can get in touch with 20i’s technical team via support ticket or email. However, if you want to remain as self-sufficient as humanly possible, there are some excellent options for you as well. The principal one is their knowledgebase (titled “Support Database”) as it manages to cover all key issues and concerns in an easy-to-understand way. On the other hand, if you are more into how-to video guides, 20i’s YouTube channel features a stack of them (actually, around sixty) and those we have checked out seem really handy. 

The competition

Most newcomers looking for a well-balanced reseller hosting solution are likely to consider web hosting providers like InMotion Hosting, HostGator and A2 Hosting at some point, and not without reason.

Since you are here, you are presumably taking 20i into consideration. And if you pick them out, you are right to expect a full list of features (many of which are unlimited), lightning speed and powerful performance in general, together with a standard 30-day money-back guarantee. However, if this should be your first close encounter with reseller web hosting, InMotion Hosting is most likely your safest bet. Their packages present a great value for money at a pocket-friendly price of $26.59 (with 20i it is about $49.50) per month, with cPanel, WHM and WHMCS  included together with an overgenerous 90-day money-back guarantee that will give you quite a bit of time to try them out before making any definitive decision.

Although HostGator is not as reseller-focused as 20i, its reseller plans can grab anyone’s attention, particularly in terms of features. For a really reasonable price HostGator will put no limitations on the number of domains, subdomains, email accounts, MySQL databases and FTP accounts. However, if you want an unlimited hosting in its true form, you’ll have to go with 20i for they will throw in an unlimited number of websites, unlimited storage space (100% SSD), unlimited bandwidth and unlimited Wildcard SSL certificates.

Bluehost is another popular alternative for those on the lookout for a novice-friendly hosting provider that has something to meet most needs. However, while Bluehost offers no reseller packages (which are 20i’s specialty), 20i doesn’t provide an option for demanding users in need of dedicated servers (and Bluehost does). This is one of those differences that can serve as a decisive point for certain types of users.

In terms of features, GreenGeeks is comparable with InMotion Hosting, but one feature that sets them apart from all the hosts above is (not hard to guess considering the name of the company is highly suggestive) their dedication to eco-friendly hosting. If we add that they guarantee 99.98% of uptime, provide 24/7 live support chat and all at a price starting at $10.95 (you can get about 80% off on sale), going green might sound even better.   

Final verdict

One of the hallmarks of hosting with 20i is their very own custom-made My20i control panel and it is the closest thing to an industry-standard control panel (such as cPanel and Plesk) we have seen since the Jurassic period of web hosting. Its beauty lies in its simplicity, intuitive design and sheer user-friendliness, which is something we seldom see with non-standard counterparts.

At the same time, 20i has been quietly gaining worldwide momentum thanks to its well-structured, feature-rich and easy-to-set up hosting solutions, a performance one can rely on and professional and polite in-house support staff.

We just found too many inaccuracies on their site which could fall into being misleading for us to strongly recommend this hosting provider for everyone. If you're looking for the best UK web hosting, there are other options.

Claimed score vs real score

The company with the curious name of 20i was launched in 2016 by a dynamic duo consisting of two brothers, Tim and Jonathan Brealey. Although 20i is still basically a new-born in the trade, its creators are industry veterans, having gathered extensive web hosting experience while working on their previous creations.

Their first project was Webfusion, which was the first company to offer a customized version of a control panel called Virtual Control Panel. Three years later they founded 123-Reg, which remains a market leader in domain name registration in the UK. After two decades of experience the brother's launched a hosting company that would (in their words) “break the mold” (let’s hope for the better).

20i’s head office is located in Ransom Wood, the UK, and they have two of their own datacenters, one in London and one in Dallas, Texas. Plus they have the option of using AWS and Google Cloud servers. 20i also provide a global CDN (content delivery network) with twenty-one locations across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa, but their infographics could lead you to believe there are more locations included in their network than there are. So, double check the CDN locations when making a purchasing decision.

Actual amount and location of CDN nodes

Plans and pricing

20i are best known for their reseller hosting but they also provide managed cloud hosting for AWS, and managed WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting from their own datacenters and AWS and Google Cloud servers. For reseller plans you can't choose the datacenter location but for other plans you can. 

If you create a reseller account with US login details you'll automatically be given servers in the US datacenter. If you create a reseller account with UK login details, you'll get the UK datacenter. For other plans you can choose the location but only customers from outside the UK have the option to use the USD listing price which is cheaper than the GBP listing price after currency conversion. If you use a VPN you might be able to take advantage of the USD prices (but check the T&Cs).

We asked 20i about why the pricing is different and we were told that it's because of the lower costs to run a datacenter in the US. This didn't add up though because for this plan you can choose a server location anywhere in the world. 

Even though 20i focuses on reseller hosting, its shared, WordPress and VPS packages offer a wide array of fantastic features such as free website migration, CDN, website acceleration suite and much more. All hosting plans are presented in a very detailed manner where you can  get all needed information about web hosting packages, their cloud platform, security measures, e-mail features, supported web hosting software and their promises (some of which are backed by a guarantee) within a few clicks.

We've noticed at least one inaccuracy in the specifications listed for 20i plans. For example, for managed WordPress hosting unlimited MySQL databases with a 5GB capacity are provided but in the small print it says that database size is limited to 1024 megabytes. We asked 20i about the database capacity and were told that the limit is actually based on the SSD size of the hosting plan.

After you select a plan, you’ll be provided with a few options regarding the domain name. Here, in addition to the typical options (register a new or use an old one), you can choose to feed the little master of procrastination that lives in all of us and decide to, well, decide later what to do about your domain.

In any case, the rest of the process is everything one might expect from it. You are required to provide a first round of personal data, opt for a payment frequency (monthly or annual, with the annual one getting you one month of free hosting) and go through 20i’s terms and conditions. Now it’s time for the second round of personal data and the content of a form slightly differs depending on whether you are acting as an individual or on behalf of a company.

Ease of use

20i have their own control panel (named simply My20i) that, without much subtlety, proclaims its superiority over the fan-favorite “old-school” Linux-based cPanel. Funnily enough, My20i and cPanel look like chips off the same old block, which is something even the casual eye would take a notice of.

However, we have to admit, My20i is one of the most user-friendly tailor-made control panels we have seen and the one that will make everything you need readily available at your fingertips. It is a genuine one-stop solution for managing all of your web hosting, e-mails, databases and software. In addition to this, it has to be noted that My20i is included with all hosting packages, so you won’t be driven to pay extra just to enjoy its elegant simplicity and intuitive ease of use.

As an alternative (not that you will need one), you can use 20i’s drag-and-drop website builder,  but if you haven’t opted for their “Startup”, “Premium”, “Business” or any of the reseller plans, it will come at a price.

Speed and experience

Considering that 20i utilizes worldwide CDN and their own website acceleration suite in order to improve your site speed and “make it fly”, we came with a certain set of expectations regarding the speed performance. After we performed a speed test on 20i’s main website (provided by GTmetrix), our expectations were pretty much justified.

The page fully loaded in just 1.8 seconds (the average result is 8.1) and it required 55 requests to do so (the average being 98 requests). In addition, all other vital web metrics were ahead of the curve i.e. all but one, and that is total blocking time that regrettably took 352 milliseconds, although ideally it should be less than 150. Nevertheless, GTmetrix rated the speed performance of 20i’s site with a B (86%), which is one of the better performances we have seen so far.

20i emphasizes security of their “state-of-the-art” data centers that are manned day-and-night and reinforced with high-level physical security measures that cover everything from backup power generators to advanced fire protection. However, oddly enough, they failed to say a lot about the uptime we can expect while doing business with them.

As per usual, we put the uptime of 20i’s main website to the test, so you don’t have to. After a month of steadfast monitoring (via tireless UptimeRobot), our efforts were rewarded by pretty promising results. There was no recorded downtime at all resulting in an impeccable 100% of uptime. 

Support

Although all visitors to 20i’s website have an option to reach its support staff via telephone, if you are looking for some good old customer support, you will notice that their help is primarily text-based. The first pick for most of us will be live chat, which seems available during the working hours at a minimum. Fortunately (for both parties), after testing the willingness of their helping hands, we were well pleased with all the hand-holding we got. 

If you’re not in a rush, you can get in touch with 20i’s technical team via support ticket or email. However, if you want to remain as self-sufficient as humanly possible, there are some excellent options for you as well. The principal one is their knowledgebase (titled “Support Database”) as it manages to cover all key issues and concerns in an easy-to-understand way. On the other hand, if you are more into how-to video guides, 20i’s YouTube channel features a stack of them (actually, around sixty) and those we have checked out seem really handy. 

The competition

Most newcomers looking for a well-balanced reseller hosting solution are likely to consider web hosting providers like InMotion Hosting, HostGator and A2 Hosting at some point, and not without reason.

Since you are here, you are presumably taking 20i into consideration. And if you pick them out, you are right to expect a full list of features (many of which are unlimited), lightning speed and powerful performance in general, together with a standard 30-day money-back guarantee. However, if this should be your first close encounter with reseller web hosting, InMotion Hosting is most likely your safest bet. Their packages present a great value for money with cPanel, WHM and WHMCS  included together with an overgenerous 90-day money-back guarantee that will give you quite a bit of time to try them out before making any definitive decision.

Although HostGator is not as reseller-focused as 20i, its reseller plans can grab anyone’s attention, particularly in terms of features. For a really reasonable price HostGator will put no limitations on the number of domains, subdomains, email accounts, MySQL databases and FTP accounts. However, if you want an unlimited hosting in its true form, you’ll have to go with 20i for they will throw in an unlimited number of websites, unlimited storage space (100% SSD), unlimited bandwidth and unlimited Wildcard SSL certificates.

Bluehost is another popular alternative for those on the lookout for a novice-friendly hosting provider that has something to meet most needs. However, while Bluehost offers no reseller packages (which are 20i’s specialty), 20i doesn’t provide an option for demanding users in need of dedicated servers (and Bluehost does). This is one of those differences that can serve as a decisive point for certain types of users.

In terms of features, GreenGeeks is comparable with InMotion Hosting, but one feature that sets them apart from all the hosts above is (not hard to guess considering the name of the company is highly suggestive) their dedication to eco-friendly hosting. If we add that they guarantee 99.98% of uptime, provide 24/7 live chat support going green might sound even better.   

Final verdict

One of the hallmarks of hosting with 20i is their very own custom-made My20i control panel and it is the closest thing to an industry-standard control panel (such as cPanel and Plesk) we have seen since the Jurassic period of web hosting. Its beauty lies in its simplicity, intuitive design and sheer user-friendliness, which is something we seldom see with non-standard counterparts.

At the same time, 20i has been quietly gaining worldwide momentum thanks to its well-structured, feature-rich and easy-to-set up hosting solutions, a performance one can rely on and professional and polite in-house support staff.

We just found too many inaccuracies on their site which could fall into being misleading for us to strongly recommend this hosting provider for everyone. If you're looking for the best UK web hosting, there are other options.

Claimed score vs real score

As the name suggests, UK2 is a UK-based host, headquartered in London, and it has been in the web hosting industry since 1998. During more than two decades of operation they’ve registered more than one million of domain names of websites in more than 200 locations around the globe, so there is definitely a reason why they are considered one of the largest web hosting companies in the UK and why they're listed on our best UK web hosting guide.

• Want to try UK2? Check out the website here

The UK2’s main website is not quite as intuitive as it should be and many users might spend considerable time navigating around while forgetting what they were looking for in the first place. The first search window you encounter upon entering the site isn’t related to knowledgebase, FAQ or similar information source, but rather a way to check availability of your desired domain name. If anything, the website is responsive and appears to be updated regularly.

UK2 has a decent-looking blog filled with the various interrelated subjects, some of which are highlighted by the criteria of popularity and publication date. It appears to be active and updated on a monthly basis.

As for the social media, they have presence at Facebook and Twitter, and both profiles seem to be active and available for customer interaction.

Pricing

Upon entering the site, you will be offered a hosting a plan that is currently on sale with details about pricing, discount and additional features. Scroll down and you will be prompted to “design your perfect hosting solution” by picking the options that define you as a user and your professional requirements. Following this, you’ll be offered three hosting plans that ought to suit your needs, varying by the hosting type, price and added features. Basic shared hosting, WordPress, Cloud, Managed, SSD VPS and dedicated server are all at your disposal. 

UK2's basic and most budget-friendly Starter WordPress plan starts at £4.99 ($6.47) a month, but if you choose a year or two, the monthly price drops to mere £2.00 ($2.59) which is £23.95 ($31.06) for a whole year or £47.90 ($62.12) for two. This will get you one domain name, access to FTP, 5GB SSD Disk Space, five 10GB Pro IMAP Emails, Cloudflare CDN (which is always included with WordPress hosting plans) as well as backups and automatic malware removal. 

If you are more ambitious, you could go with Business Hosting, which will allow you to build up to a 100-page website and up to 1000 x 10GB email addresses to share with your contacts and customers, all within reasonable prices. All previously mentioned plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

Although VPS Cloud Hosting is consider to be aimed at the tech-savvy, UK2 will throw in “state-of-the-art” cPanel and first-rate 24/7 customer support to make everything much easier.

When paying methods are concerned, the options include direct debit, debit/credit card and PayPal, which is more than what is usually available.

Ease of use

Upon picking out your plan, you’ll be immediately offered a few add-ons such as Website SEO Guru (a marketing tool) or SiteLock (which should improve security of your website) and all for an extra price. After this, you’ll be prompted to choose your domain or use an existing one, add your personal details and select a paying method. At every step of the way, a “Having problems?” window will pop up, offering you to contact customer service via telephone or live chat, which may be needed because some parts of the process are not as intuitive as they could be.

While selecting the paying method you are offered a checkbox choice to store it, which is quite refreshing to see. The last step is creating an account password monitored by quite rigorous strength meter, after which the sign-up process is finalized.

Since UK2 uses an industry-standard cPanel, if you’ve used web hosts in the past and are familiar with the layout, you’ll have no trouble navigating around. Even if you haven’t, cPanel makes for a largely easy-to-use experience. If you’ve selected VPS or a dedicated server, you’ll be able to decide between a selection of cPanels, depending on whether you use Windows or Linux as an operating system. 

In any case, with CPanel you’ll be able to efficiently monitor and manage everything, from variety of tools and add-ons to domain, checking or changing your account details, upgrading your hosting plan or contacting your customer service. Installing WordPress, MediaWIki, Magento, Softaculous or similar apps is only a click or two away.

Although the UK2 doesn’t provide any kind of website builder with its standard account, the website builder feature is offered through the main website and throws in social media integration, search engine optimization, editing tool for digital media and SSL certificate with support, which is always nice to have.

Speed and experience

Following the test run with GTmetrix, we found that UK2 passed the speed trial, at least judging by the performance of their main site. It took 6.9 seconds to fully load from the average of 8.2 and 74 requests from the average of 89, which shows a good performance.

Interestingly, when it comes to uptime, UK2 doesn’t make any definite promises, besides pointing out that “performance and ultimate uptime are their top priority”. Despite that, during the uptime test that run over two weeks on their main website, we recorded no downtime at all and an insignificant amount of oscillations. Although the period we tested is relatively short for a definitive judgment to be made, all things considered, UK2 is clearly off to a good start.

Support

On first impression, the knowledgebase is as confusing as the main site. They offer an alphabetical index in the center of the page, a list of “Recently updated articles” on the right and the tree of categories on the left side. To find a desired piece of information you’ll need to make your way through several subcategories. In its defense, there is search box in the top right corner, but that will get you plenty of articles that only deal with topics in brief, so you will be forced to invest more time in your research.

To avoid that, you could, as suggested on the same page, simply contact the customer support. Luckily, UK2 provides 24/7 support 365 days a year via telephone, live chat or ticket and it is truly one of the highlights of the company’s offer. 

UK2 Help Centre currently doesn’t have a support forum.

The competition

Both UK2 and Tsohost are web hosting companies originating from the UK and with more than decade of experience behind them. They offer more than a decent array of features and extras, a newbie-friendly approach, as well as competent support. However, cPanel that Tsohost offers is their customized version, so if you are looking for the industry-standardized one, UK2 might be a right choice for you.

Bluehost is an equally competent host from the US, with years of experience behind them, a great deal of features on offer, more budget-friendly prices than UK2 and all of their plans including unlimited bandwidth. Therefore, if data centers inside the UK are not a must for you, Bluehost can provide you with everything you are looking for.

UK2 as well as Hostgator are newbie-friendly, but all plans offered by the latter include a free website builder, which is a great tool to have at the start. In addition, although both of them offer 24/7 support, Hostgator’s website is more user-friendly and its knowledgebase is better organized, so if that matters to you, Hostgator might be an ideal choice. 

Hostinger also have some really great value VPS plans but they're unmanaged. They may not be a UK hosting brand but they do have servers in the UK and a range to top hosting features for beginners.

Final verdict

UK2 certainly isn’t the most affordable host to have, but it offers competent customer service and a cPanel packed with helpful tools which will boost the morale for beginners. If you want all of the abovementioned features with the addition of unmetered bandwidth and more budget-friendly prices, then Hostgator or Bluehost could be a more suitable choice for you. 

SiteGround is now 20 years old and is one of the world's largest independently owned hosting companies. They started off with a handful of staff and have grown to  have 500 talented employees and data centers in six continents used by over 3,000,000 domains.

SiteGround are world leaders when it comes to hosting technologies. In 2009 they revolutionised shared hosting making it safer for businesses and have created numerous optimizations for WordPress. Since 2020, SiteGround uses Google cloud servers for their infrastructure which gives the added bonus of easier scalability and even more reliability.

The support offered by SiteGround is also word leading. The top 2% of candidates for the team spend over 6 months in specialist training and on average over 90% of tickets get resolved at first contact.

For speed, reliability, and service, SiteGround are up there as one of the best hosting services. You don't get as much storage as standard compared with competitors but if you don't require bottomless buckets you should find everything you need for a hosting provider in SiteGround.

What types of hosting does SiteGround offer?

SiteGround market their products in two main categories: Web Hosting and Cloud Hosting. They also provide reseller hosting, WordPress hosting, and email marketing plans. The reseller plans and WordPress hosting are very similar to the web hosting plans.

Web Hosting from SiteGround comes in three tiers: StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek.
These plans don't state what resources you get but rather what they're capable of delivering. The main differences between the plans are storage, speed, support, and the number of websites you can host. 

The lowest plan, StartUp, supports one website, 10GB of web space, 10,000 monthly visits, a free domain, free SSL, daily backups, free CDN, free email, and more. For new signups this costs $2.99/mo for 12 months and then renews at $17.99 a month.

GrowBig is essentially the same but supports unlimited websites, 100,000 monthly visits and 30% faster PHP. You also get an extra 10GB of space, on demand backups and staging. This comes at $4.99/mo for new signups and renews at $29.99/mo. For $44.99/mo after renewal, you can get up to 400,000 monthly visits, and priority support with the GoGeek plan.

SiteGround's Cloud hosting range has four tiers: Jumpstart, Business, Business Plus, and SuperPower with prices from $100/mo to $400/mo. CPU and memory start at 4 CPU cores and 8GB of RAM and both jump incrementally by four for each additional tier with SuperPower providing 16 CPU cores and 20GB RAM. Your resources are guaranteed and managed and you can scale your CPU and RAM with one click or automatically.

WordPress hosting 

SiteGround's WordPress Migrator plugin provides an easy way to import your WordPress site from another host but you can also pay SiteGround around $30 to migrate each site for you. Sometimes, SiteGround have a special offer that provides free site transfer for all plans.

SiteGround's AutoUpdate system keeps your WordPress installation and plugins up-to-date with the latest security patches and experts and business users might appreciate WP-CLI, a command-line tool which allows automation of many common WordPress management tasks.

SiteGround is not ideal for new users with little experience and a website that does not demand much. They'll be very happy here but might find better value for money with one of the best shared hosting providers or best Wordpress hosting providers.

If you have a more power hungry WordPress site then you'll get much more value from hosting with SiteGround.

Cloud hosting 

SiteGround's cloud hosting might seem expensive, but this is heavy duty hosting, not aimed at personal and small business websites. SiteGround's cloud technology is far more suited to high-traffic and feature-packed websites where response time is critical, and even 60 seconds of down time is a very big deal: a busy web store, say, or a regularly-updated news site.

As SiteGround uses Google Cloud servers the power used to host sites is 100% matched with renewable energy. So, if you want your business to have green credentials and the power too, SiteGround is a good choice.

If you have that kind of demanding website but SiteGround is a little out of budget you may find a good alternative on our best cloud hosting page.

Can I build a web store with SiteGround?

SiteGround do not have a range of specialist eCommerce plans but recommend their GoGeek play for WooCommerce.

WooCommerce is based on WordPress and is a very capable system which can handle most web store requirements. If you like SiteGround's hosting, you're already familiar with the ecommerce basics (or are happy to take the time to learn), opting for SiteGround's WooCommerce hosting could make sense. But if you're a novice, or just looking for more help getting started, alternatives like Bluehost's WooCommerce plan, or the online store side of GoDaddy's Website Builder have more tools, more features, and extra ecommerce support when you need it.

How fast is SiteGround? 

Uptime.com accessed our site every five minutes over 14 days recording any failures and how quickly the server responds. SiteGround had no fails at all, giving it a perfect 100% uptime. Average response time was 0.207 seconds, the fastest in our last 15 tests (most hosts are in the range 0.3 to 0.8 seconds).

GTmetrix measures load speed by grabbing a test page on our site, and measuring how long it takes to display the main content (a figure known technically as Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP). A low LCP means a snappy and responsive website, and (hopefully) plenty of happy visitors.

SiteGround's LCP was fractionally below average at 0.735 seconds, ninth fastest in our last 15 tests. But that's not far behind the top providers (most score in the 0.6 to 0.8 second range), and an acceptable time overall.

K6 goes beyond an individual load time by unleashing 20 simultaneous visitors and watching to see what happens. Our site managed an average of 14 requests per second, with a peak of 20. Again, that's fractionally behind the competition (most average in the 14 to 16 second range), but not enough that you're likely to notice.

(Please keep in mind that these tests are based on the performance of a shared hosting plan, and they can't tell us anything about the speeds we might see from VPS, dedicated or other hosting).

How easy is SiteGround to use?

Getting started with a web host can be intimidating, but SiteGround does a fair job of helping out. Log into its Control Panel for the first time and you'll find links to support pages covering several common setup tasks: how to import an existing WordPress site, launch WordPress, create email accounts at a new domain, point an existing domain to WordPress, and more.

This isn't quite as useful as it could be. We hoped the 'Access WordPress' link would launch the WordPress dashboard, for instance, but instead it opened a support page explaining how we could do this ourselves. That's still valuable, and better than we see with many hosts, but life would be even easier if the startup page gave us direct links to WordPress and other functions.

Skip past the walkthroughs, though, and SiteGround performs very well. A simple walkthrough makes it very easy to add a new site, for instance. Choose a domain, install a new application (WordPress, WooCommerce or Weebly Sitebuilder) and the site is ready to go in seconds. 

It feels like there's real thought gone into the control panel design. Choose 'Create Subdomain' on most panels, they prompt you for the subdomain name, and that's it. SiteGround's control panel understands that you might want to install something there, and offers you an Install Application button to help.

(The installer is relatively basic compared to the likes of Softaculous, with only 13 applications and fewer installation options. But it's also simple, and we had WordPress ready to go within seconds.)

Even then, SiteGround's helpfulness keeps going. Launch WordPress and a wizard prompts you to choose a theme, then offers to install useful free plugins (contact forms, an image gallery, a calendar, Google Maps, WooCommerce, a contact manager, SEO advisor and more).

What is SiteGround's support like?

SiteGround offers 24/7 support via phone, live chat, ticket and its web knowledgebase.

A comprehensive set of tutorials provides lots of useful information on getting started with the service. There's general guidance on setting up your website, managing domains, creating email accounts and more. 

The WordPress section begins with similar startup advice - how to install WordPress, create a post, install a plugin - but then adds a little more depth with articles on improving security and optimizing performance. They're a little on the short side, and sometimes too technical for newcomers, but the site still has more and better guidance than many competitors.

You can also contact the support team via phone, live chat and (apparently) ticket, although the website makes this more difficult than usual. There's a Contact Us button, but this walks you through a support wizard which works hard to direct you to a support site article or website tool. It won't even display a chat button, phone number or anything else unless it thinks you're 'deserving.'

This proved to be an unexpected hassle. We decided to ask a test question about our shared plan's automatic backups (could we set the backup time, or was it fixed?), but the wizard just directed us to the 'create a manual backup' button, without ever giving us a contact option to ask further questions.

So, we decided to cheat the system, and just chose alternative wizard options until eventually it offered us live chat or telephone options (no tickets, though). We chose live chat, an agent appeared within seconds, and gave us a clear answer immediately (automatic backup times are set when you sign up and can't be changed). 

We tried the phone support later, with similar success. It's an impressive support service, but we'd like it even more if the website didn't try quite so hard to ration our access.

Final verdict

While many hosts try to win you over with low headline prices, SiteGround is far more interested in power. Its shared and cloud hosting plans may look expensive, but they give you plenty of features and functionality for your money, and could be a high performance choice for demanding users with high traffic or business-critical sites. 

SiteGround FAQs 

• Want to know how SiteGround compares to another top European web hosting provider, check out Hostinger vs SiteGround

Founded in 2010, Hostwinds is a Seattle-based web hosting provider with feature-packed products for slightly more experienced users.

Hostwinds offers cheap and easy-to-use shared hosting plans, with plenty of features . A huge range of VPS (Virtual Private Server) plans give your site well balanced resources making them a cost-effective choice for demanding small to medium business sites.

Developers and other experts can build a custom setup with multiple cloud servers, load balancers, block and object storage for whatever suits their precise needs.

Hostwinds shared hosting

Hostwinds' shared hosting starts at an affordable $5.24 a month for three years, $6.99 afterwards.  All Hostwinds shared hosting plans come with solid-state drives (SSDs), free SSL certificates, and access to the latest cPanel for easy site management. They also include unlimited FTP accounts, databases, and email accounts to help you manage your website effectively. You also get Softaculous Auto Install for easy application installation, Weebly Site Builder for drag-and-drop website building, and 24/7 customer support to assist you.

Upgrading to the next shared hosting plan gets you support for hosting more websites, or you can opt for Hostwinds' Business Web Hosting range for extra performance. This has less accounts on a server, and uses LiteSpeed's fast web server, but with prices starting at $8.24 a month over three years ($10.99 afterwards), it's still relatively cheap.

You don't get a free domain, but the nightly backups are worth more, and overall, these are quality shared plans for a bargain price.

Hostwinds WordPress hosting

Hostwinds has a managed WordPress hosting range, but it's essentially the regular shared hosting products, with the same prices, and just more website focus on any WordPress-specific features.

Softaculous is on hand to automatically install WordPress in seconds, for instance, and help you manage it afterwards.

The company offer WordPress support including helping you customize your WordPress installation using themes and plugins, create and restore backups, automate updates for WordPress, add security to WordPress, and troubleshoot issues.

That's good news, and with prices starting at $5.24 a month, the plans are certainly cheaper than the specialist Managed WordPress competition. If you're not committed to Hostwinds, though, or looking for more features, Bluehost, IONOS and A2 Hosting add extras such as free themes, easier WordPress website testing, automatic WordPress updating, extra security, performance optimizations and more.

Hostwinds VPS hosting

A step up from shared hosting, VPS hosting ramps up your website speed by giving it more server resources. A capable VPS can host sites with hundreds of thousands of visitors a month, making the technology a good choice for business-critical sites, busy web stores, or any heavy-duty projects where performance is top priority.

Hostwinds has a lengthy list of ten VPS plans, ranging from a basic but pocket-friendly 1 CPU core, 1GB RAM setup for $4.99, to a giant 16 CPU core, 96GB RAM, $328.88 a month server with the power to handle almost anything.

The plans are hugely configurable, too. Need a cheap unmanaged plan where you run the server? No problem. Or do you want Hostwinds to handle all that? There are managed plans, too. You can opt for Windows and Linux hosting, add cPanel licenses, buy more IP addresses, choose a US or Amsterdam data center, and more. We love the control you get over the finished package, and if other providers aren't quite giving you the VPS plans you need, it's always worth checking out what Hostwinds has to offer.

Hostwinds dedicated hosting

Opting for a dedicated hosting plan gets you an entire server, just for your website. No more sharing of resources, no more slowdowns because some other site is busy. Dedicated servers offer the best and most consistent performance, ideal for the most serious heavyweight sites.

You can choose from different processors, the amount of RAM, number and type of storage disks, and even Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) configurations.

The entry-level dedicated server option, the E3-1270 v3, comes with a 3.5 GHz quad-core processor that can turbo up to 4 GHz, 8 GB of RAM (expandable), and options for configuring hard drive storage, starting with a 1TB Enterprise HDD. This server setup starts at $122/mo and includes 10 TB of outbound bandwidth along with 8 IP addresses. You can additionally customize your plan based on various specs like adjusting the RAM storage, adding RAID configurations, and selecting from various operating systems like CentOS.

Importantly, all dedicated servers from Hostwinds are fully managed and come with 24/7 technical support, server monitoring, nightly backups, and high-quality networking for steady performance and uptime. These dedicated resources mean that each server provides 100% of its capabilities to a single user and avoids the drawbacks of shared environments. This setup is great for applications requiring high computational power and storage, such as web and application hosting, game hosting, data analysis, and more. You can also choose from multiple data center locations globally to improve the latency and user experience of your site.

Hostwinds could be a reasonable choice for experienced users who need a mid-range dedicated server and know exactly which options and extras work for them. But if you need something on the budget side, IONOS has unmanaged servers from under $50 a month, while A2 Hosting starts at a similar price to Hostwinds, but has more high-powered servers and is even more configurable.

 Cloud Hosting 

The most basic cloud plan starts at just $0.006931 per hour, which costs approximately $4.99/mo. This entry-level option comes with 1GB RAM, a single CPU core, and 1TB monthly data transfers. On the higher end, the most advanced plan costs $0.456931 per hour or about $328.99/mo. This plan offers a substantial 96GB of RAM, 16 CPU cores, 750GB of storage, and 9TB of monthly data transfers.

With all plans, you get 1 Gbps ports coupled with solid-state drives, a 99.9999% uptime guarantee, enterprise-level firewalls, and nightly backups. Additionally, Hostwinds supports custom ISO uploads, giving you the flexibility to deploy customized configurations.

Does Hostwinds offer a website builder? 

Hostwinds' shared hosting packages include the Weebly website builder, It's a simple tool which allows you to create a small website by choosing a pre built site design, customizing colors and styles, then using the drag and drop editor to add blocks of text, pictures, videos, maps or whatever else your site needs.

This may work for you if you only need a very simple family or personal site, just a few pages, but it doesn't have the power for anything serious. Take a look at Wix if you need a website builder that can take on the most serious projects, including quality web stores and business-critical sites, or read our best website builder guide for more advice.

Launching cPanel gives you access to Softaculous, a popular platform which makes it easy to install WordPress and 400+ other big-name web applications.

Hostwinds' shared hosting plans include the Weebly website builder, an excellent template-based web designer with a stack of drag-and-drop widgets and UI elements.

There's a problem, though. What you're getting here is Weebly's very limited free plan, which includes Weebly branding on the footer and restricts your website to just 500MB.

You can upgrade to more capable plans from within Hostwinds, but from what we can see, you'll pay much the same price as if you went to Weebly direct. (And remember, this is an extra cost – you'll still be paying your regular Hostwinds fees.)

The service could still be useful in a few situations. If your plan supports multiple domains, for instance, the Site Builder might help less technical family members create their own small personal sites. But there's not a lot of value here for most users, and typically you'll get better results by installing WordPress.

If WordPress and Weebly don't interest you, there are all the usual tools to build and manage a website from scratch: FTP, SSH, a file manager, MySQL, phpMyAdmin and more.

Can I build a web store with Hostwinds? 

Hostwinds doesn't have specialist ecommerce hosting or online store builder plans. 

You could sign up for one of Hostwinds' shared, VPS or dedicated plans, then use Softaculous to install an ecommerce platform that can help you (WooCommerce, Magento or PrestaShop are popular choices). But as Hostwinds doesn't have specific support for any of these, it's not going to give you much help.

If you'd like a simpler way to get started, HostGator's Gator website builder supports a tiny web store with even its cheapest plans, and Bluehost's WooCommerce plans include tools to help build and market your site from only $12.95 a month.

How fast is Hostwinds? 

We measured Hostwinds' performance by signing up for a shared hosting account, setting up a simple WordPress site using a standard template, then running various tests.

Uptime.com checked the availability of our site every five minutes for 14 days. Hostwinds managed 99.95% uptime, a little disappointing, but within the range we expect for a shared hosting plan (most providers offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee).

GTmetrix loaded a page on our site and calculated its LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), a measure of how long it takes to load the most important content. Hostwinds had an LCP of 0.774 seconds, a little below average (it ranked 10th in our last 15 tests), but acceptable for all but the most speed-sensitive sites. 

We set up k6 to unleash 20 users on our test site simultaneously, and monitor what happened. It managed a peak 17.67 requests per second, with an average of 13. That's a little below par (most providers peak at 20 requests per second and average 14-16), but that's not a difference you're likely to notice with most sites.

How easy is Hostwinds to use? 

Hostwinds uses industry-standard hosting tools and platforms across its service. 

Its web account dashboard, where you'll manage, add and cancel products, is powered by WHMCS. It's a very popular system, and if you've signed up with hosting providers in the past, there's a good chance you'll immediately know your way around.

Softaculous is available to automatically install WordPress and hundreds of other apps. It's one of the best auto-installers around, and will set up whatever service you need with the minimum of hassle.

Hostwinds' shared accounts include cPanel, an excellent control panel with all the tools you need to manage your domains, email accounts, files, databases, and every other aspect of your web space.

These can get complicated, particularly if you've complex hosting needs. But we'd much rather see quality and standard hosting tools than the basic home-made control panels offered by some providers. And overall, Hostwinds has more than enough power for most people to get their sites online at speed (and keep them there).

How good is Hostwinds' support? 

Hostwinds has three different ways to support its users– product documentation, in-depth tutorials, blogs, and a support team. We find their product documentation quite insightful for understanding their services in-depth and utilizing them efficiently. You can find the description and the use case of all their products under this segment. There are also many tutorials that can guide you in troubleshooting some common and complex issues that may arise during daily activity.

These tutorials span from their hosting plans descriptions to tons of how-to guides on how you can make the most of hostwinds offerings. You get detailed step-by-step guide along with multiple snapshots that helps you understand it better.

But, if you don’t want any of this hassle, Hostwinds’ offers customer support via email, call, and a live chat. To test it, we asked a couple of queries and their support agent answered back within minutes and that too with some helpful suggestions. Overall, Hostwinds support is pretty impressive and you even get sufficient information on their blog to get comfortable with the platform.

Is Hostwinds right for you?

Hostwinds offers a variety of hosting options, from shared hosting to dedicated servers, with both managed and unmanaged VPS hosting available. This diversity is indeed a plus point for targeting a wide audience, but its worth mentioning that many hosting providers deliver this many plans these days. 

Price-wise, Hostwinds is competitive, especially considering features like unlimited bandwidth and disk space in their shared hosting plans. However, there are areas where Hostwinds could improve. First, many users have pointed out that while Hostwinds markets itself on performance and reliability, there are occasional reports of downtime and slow server responses. Additionally, the cost of add-ons can accumulate, as essential services like automatic backups and advanced security features come with extra charges. These additional costs may not be clear upfront and could be a point of contention for users who are budget-conscious or require a more comprehensive out-of-the-box solution.

Hostwinds FAQs