Finding a trustworthy web hosting provider is an important step to take whenever you are developing a new website or conceiving of a novel concept for an online business. Because there is such a large selection to choose from, determining which option is best suited to meet your requirements can be a challenging endeavour.
IONOS is one of the companies that made it onto our list of the best web hosting providers of 2023 due to the fact that the company manages 12 million domains and has contracts with eight million customers all over the world.
The company received a high score according to our ranking criteria as a result of its competitive pricing and unrestricted data storage.
Check out this in-depth review of IONOS to see if it’s a good fit for you.
All web hosting services provide identical plans that essentially promise the same things. In this comprehensive review of IONOS, we put them to the test in the following ways:
Reliability: Will your website be available 24/7 or there is chance of downtime in the middle of the night or on the weekend?
Performance: When hosted by IONOS, how quickly will your website load?
Pricing: Do they offer competitive prices? If there are any discounts available for IONOS?
Customer Support: Is IONOS reliable when you need immediate assistance with your website?
Features: Do they provide everything you need to create a website?
IONOS Hosting Review Summary
Performance grade A+
Average load time 743ms
Average response time 171ms
Free domain Yes
Free SSL Yes
Support Phone/Knowledge base
About IONOS
IONOS, formerly known as 1&1, is a large web hosting provider that operates on an international scale. The company provides a wide range of hosting options, such as shared hosting, hosting for WordPress websites, virtual private servers, and dedicated servers.
IONOS has more than 12 million domains registered all over the world and its headquarters are located in Germany. The company has been around since 1988 and was one of the very first companies to provide hosting services for websites.
Overall, IONOS is an excellent web hosting provider for those on a shoestring budget; however, its features and performance do not compare favourably to those of more expensive hosts.
IONOS Performance Test
Every hosting provider boasts that their servers are the quickest, that they have the best customer service, and that their clients have the best experience possible when using their services.
We came to the conclusion that it would be in our best interest to conduct our own exhaustive testing on the claims that were made by IONOS in order to determine how well they perform in comparison to the criteria that we use when conducting tests.
IONOS Speed Test Results
Websites that load more quickly typically perform better in general. As a result, we began by employing Pingdom to examine the rate at which the website loaded.
The following is what the research found:
During our testing, the site loaded in less than a second, which is very good.
IONOS Hosting Plans and Features
IONOS provides three distinct pricing options, as follows:
IONOS Essential: This plan is for basic websites and projects. Essential will cost you an initial $4 per month for the first year of service. After that, the cost that is incurred each month goes up to $6. The following items are included in the Essential package:
- One website
- 10 GB RAM
- Free professional email
- 10 MariaDB or MySQL databases
- Free domain name for 1 year
IONOS Business: This plan is for businesses and medium size project.
The price of doing business starts out at $0.50 per month, but it quickly increases to $10 after the first year has passed. It is ideal for an unlimited number of websites and comes with the following features
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited database
- Domain name extension for 1 year
- Professional email domain
- Upgraded MEM and CPU resources
IONOS Expert: This plan is for multiple web projects and built-out websites.
The Expert plan is designed for companies or agencies that are working on multiple web projects at once. It begins at $8 per month and increases to $16 per month after the first year of the contract has been fulfilled. It consists of the following features
- Unlimited websites
- Unlimited storage and databases
- Professional email and website domain (first year)
- Advanced security features
- Site analytics
- Maximum CPU and MEM resources
- Lightning-fast CDN
Pros and cons of IONOS
Even though IONOS is the web host of choice for a lot of people, it is possible that it is not the optimal choice for everyone. Before making a choice, it is important to give some thought to both the advantages and disadvantages of each possibility.
Pros of IONOS:
Strong uptime: One of the most important performance indicators for a web hosting provider is their uptime. If you are going to pay to have your website hosted online, you should make sure that it is accessible to the people who visit your site. IONOS has strong uptime, averaging 99.97%. Customer support at IONOS claims that the only reason the company can’t guarantee a success rate of one hundred percent is because it is unable to predict natural disasters.
Pricing: When it comes to IONOS, the price is reasonable. IONOS is one of the most cost-effective web hosting providers, with monthly plans beginning at just fifty cents. Web hosting may not be a significant concern for most budgets, however, it is an additional consideration that can help small businesses and individuals who are just getting started save money.
Speed: Because load time is one of the most important ranking factors for Google, the extent to which it affects your indexing on the most widely used search engine in the world is highly dependent on it. Nobody wants to hang out on a page that isn’t responsive, and it is Google’s responsibility to only show users the best pages that are relevant to the search queries they enter. The typical amount of time required for IONOS to load a page has significantly decreased and now stands at 745 milliseconds.
Free SSL: IONOS includes a complimentary SSL certificate with the purchase of each hosting plan. SSL, which stands for “Secure Sockets Layer,” is the security protocol that is used as the industry standard to create an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. Because of this link, all of the information that is transferred between the web server and browsers stays private and unaltered.
The Developer Shared Hosting, the Developer eShop Packages, and the Developer Dedicated SSL Certificate are all included in the Developer package. The Wildcard SSL Certificate is available for shared hosting plans on both Linux and Windows operating systems.
Very nice user interface: Since the IONOS backend was built from the ground up, the user interface is very intuitive. The navigation is straightforward, and the majority of the features do not require extensive explanation. You can easily view the statistics pertaining to your site’s usage, as well as your domain name and hosting plan, from their dashboard.
Lower Carbon footprints: IONOS follows environmentally responsible hosting practises and derives 100 percent of the electricity needed to power its servers from renewable energy sources.
Let’s have a look at pros now.
Pros of IONOS
No free web host transfer: If you are moving to IONOS from another web host, you will not be eligible for a free site transfer with this company. The vast majority of web hosts provide access to this common feature.
Customer support: IONOS has discontinued their live chat service; however, they continue to provide round-the-clock customer support via phone, email, and a database of blogs and frequently asked questions. The majority of people find that getting answers to their questions through live chat is the easiest and most convenient way to do so. You are out of luck unless you are willing to wait several days for an email response or wait on hold for several hours to speak to a real-life representative over the phone.
Support and Customer Service
A difference of any significance can be attributed to the quality of the customer support provided, and hosting providers recognise the significance of this factor. If something goes wrong with your website, you want it fixed as quickly as possible so that it can be accessed by users again.
IONOS provides phone support 24/7, 365 days a year, in addition to a comprehensive knowledge base that contains answers to frequently asked questions and step-by-step tutorials. IONOS also offers complimentary one-on-one support from a personal consultant after you have subscribed to one of their plans. This support is provided by your own personal consultant.
IONOS has discontinued their live chat service.
Bottom Line
You now have all of the information you require regarding IONOS web hosting; congratulations! Due to the fact that they offer a diverse selection of services at reasonable prices, they are undeniably an excellent option for companies of varying sizes.
They did not, however, make it onto our list of the best web hosting providers because there are other providers out there that offer pricing that is more transparent, slightly higher quality services in their own respects, and excellent customer service. This is why they did not make it onto our list of the best web hosting providers.