Result of our test: 4,7/5
Ionos is clearly a good web host. The performance is excellent and the quality/price ratio above the lot. If you are a site editor, Ionos can be a great alternative.
If you are aiming for the top of the search results with your site, you need to have a proper web hosting. Thanks to it, it will be much easier to install WordPress or other CMS and have pages that load quickly.
Today we introduce you to Ionos by 1&1, a historical hosting service. Since 1988, the company has been providing shared and dedicatedweb hosting at competitive prices.
So, you may be wondering what Ionos is worth as a web host. This is a good thing, because we were able to
test
this service in order to present it to you in detail. Discover its price, advantages, alternatives and much more!
Join 10,000+ makers and get all our latest tips for making a living from Blogging and Affiliate Marketing.
Contents
Presentation of Ionos
Ionos is a general public web hosting company. Indeed, the company offers several types of accommodation. You can get shared or dedicated hosting, VPS, Cloud servers or simply register domain names.
With this service, you will be able to host a website for a competitive rate. In addition, Ionos offers hosting designed only for certain CMS. Thus, it is possible to get specialized hosting for WordPress, PrestaShop, Woocommerce and others.
Therefore, Ionos allows webmasters to host a blog, a showcase or e-commerce site for an affordable price. Or, it is also a solution to host a large website. Indeed, Ionos offers dedicated hosting services with high performance.
Finally, Ionos has cloud servers as well as VPS. It is also possible toregister domain names for a very low price. For example, you can reserve a .com domain name for 1€ the first year and then 8€ per year.
Who is Ionos for?
Ionos is a full-service web hosting company that offers many hosting solutions. Therefore, it can be used by both individuals and professionals. Besides, it is possible to use the host to put online dozens of sites or a single site of authority.
For professionals, Ionos is a good way tohost an online store. Indeed, the company directly addresses the e-merchants by offering specialized hosting for WooCommerce or PrestaShop. The advantage in this case is the multitude of offers that allow you to choose a solution adapted to your needs and budget.
As far as website publishers are concerned, Ionos is also an interesting solution. With the various WordPress hosting options, a publisher will be able to put up many sites for a fair price. Besides, it is possible to opt for an ultra powerful dedicated hosting if you want to host a big authority site.
Finally, Ionos is also aimed at individuals who only want to host a website. In this case, this service will be very simple to use and above all very accessible, from 4€ per month. At the same time, this type of offer can be suitable for freelancers who use a website to sell their services.
The services offered by Ionos
Ionos provides a lot of services and has many features. So we are not going to present them all to you, but to focus on its main accommodations and their functioning.
One of the company’s flagship offerings. Shared hosting offers an affordable rate to host multiple sites.
Ionos also has several price lists, ranging from €5 to €25 per month. The main differences between the formulas will be the amount of storage, RAM and the number of databases. No matter what the offer is, you will be able to create a single email address.
WordPress hosting
Also a flagship offering,WordPress hosting is designed solely to host sites created with this CMS. The price of hosting varies from 4 to 14€ HT per month.
Depending on the 3 subscription plans, a lot of things will change. SSD storage will be 25GB, 100GB or unlimited. Then, the number of visits is limited and increases according to the formula, up to 25,000 monthly visitors for the Unlimited plan.
You can create 1, 5 or 10 email addresses depending on the offer. On the other hand, no matter which formula you choose, you will benefit from a free domain name for the first year.
Ionos offers two types of WordPress hosting. The first one is called WordPress Managed and includes several plugins for security, SEO and speed of installation of the CMS. It will also do the updates automatically. The second one will install a blank version of the CMS, without any plugin. Updates will have to be done manually.
Since both offers have exactly the same price, it is better to choose the Managed version.
Note that Ionos also offers hosting designed for WooCommerce. The rates will be the same, but the hosting will be more efficient to host an online store. If you have an e-commerce running on WooCommerce, we recommend you to opt for this offer.
Dedicated hosting
Ionos also offers dedicated web hosting, aimed at webmasters with more ambitious projects. Here, there are several plans(HDD or SSD/NVMe) that allow you to create a truly customized offer. With a dedicated server, you can expectexcellent performance for your website(s).
However, it goes without saying that the prices will be much higher. However, if you are looking for a dedicated server, Ionos offers such hosting for a good price-quality ratio compared to the competition.
Interface
Ionos by 1&1 does not work with cPanel, as it is the case with other web hosts like PlanetHoster or O2switch . You will have access to a dashboard designed by Ionos to find all the hostings, domain names and others. We will of course present it to you in detail.
To begin with, you can see the list of all the domain names ordered from this host. In this section it will be possible toadd subdomains, renew existing domains and order new ones. This part also allows you to install SSL certificates.
Then, the email part offers the possibility to create several email addresses associated with a domain name. Please note that the number of emails is limited depending on the subscription package. To see how many professional emails you can create, we invite you to look at the paragraph on rates just below.
Via the box “Websites and stores” you can install a CMS. Several content management software are available, such as WordPress or PrestaShop.
Right next door, the accommodation section. Here you will be able to view the storage used and create databases and FTP accounts. In this interface you can also find your Cloud and VPS servers.
Security
Ionos provides fast and efficient, but also secure hosting. Indeed, the host provides many tools to protect the hosting of its customers.
To begin with, you will be able to access SSL certificates for free. Secondly, Ionos has anti-DDOS protection that will filter out suspicious traffic. This protection will prevent your site from being taken offline during a denial of service attack.
As far as backups are concerned, they are done automatically on redundant servers. This means that your data will be stored in several datacenters, positioned in different locations. Thanks to this technology, you won’t lose your data and your site will always be online, even if a server goes down.
Finally, Ionos also protects the administrator account with a PIN code and dual authentication.
The rates
Ionos offers many different accommodations and therefore, there are many different rates. We will focus here on the price of a WordPress hosting:
As you can see, Ionos offers a reduced rate for the first year of hosting. So, for the e-commerce and Unlimited plan, you get a half price discount for one year. As for the Plus plan, the first year will cost only 1€ per month.
Depending on the subscription plans, many things will change. First of all, you should know that the number of monthly visitors will be limited. Depending on the package, your site(s) will be able to receive between 10,000 and 25,000 monthly visitors.
Please note that this only applies to WordPress hosting. If you opt for a classic shared service, you will not have a traffic limit.
Another thing that differentiates these plans is the SSD storage. Indeed, it will be respectively 100, 250 GB or unlimited. The same goes for the number of databases and the number of e-mail addresses that can be created.
Finally, Ionos offers a domain name for the first year, regardless of the hosting chosen.
Advantages & Disadvantages
After testing Ionos for several weeks, here are the strengths and weaknesses that stand out:
The advantages
✅ Discounted rates for one year
✅ Several accommodation offers
✅ Domain name offered the first year
✅ Fast, knowledgeable and available 24/7 support
✅ Anti DDOS, anti-malware protection and redundant storage
The disadvantages
❌ Limited number of monthly visitors
❌ No cPanel
❌ Limited number of email addresses
In summary : our opinion on Ionos
All in all, our opinion is positive about Ionos by 1&1. The accommodation is of good quality and the rates are competitive. The price is much lower than the competition in the first year and allows you to make real savings when you start. Even for the following years, the accommodations remain affordable and good value for money.
As for the choice of the formula, we recommend you to start on a specialized hosting for WordPress. The prices are the same, but you will be able to get a more suitable solution with better performance. The only disadvantage of this offer is the limited number of visitors.
Otherwise, the customer support is really good and available 24 hours a day. If you have a problem with your hosting, it will be solved very quickly. Likewise, this host is quite easy to use and is therefore suitable if you are just starting to edit your website.
In summary, we recommend Ionos which we think is a very good web host. The WordPress and shared hosting offers are of good quality and allow tohave very good performances. Whether you’re new to website publishing or already have a large blog network, Ionos may be a solution to consider.
Join 10,000+ makers and get all our latest tips for making a living from Blogging and Affiliate Marketing.
The alternative to Ionos
Ionos is one of the web hosting companies that offer both affordable shared hosting and high-end dedicated services. However, there are other hosting companies that allow you to have access to both types of offers.
PlanetHoster is a web hosting company that offers only two solutions. At first, it is possible to get an unlimited shared hosting for 5€ per month. In a second step, PlanetHoster provides high performance dedicated hosting for 41€ per month.
LWS is a French company that offers hosting solutions for a price lower than the competition. You will be able to find specialized hosting for a particular CMS(WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, etc.). Or, it is possible to have a dedicated Cloud hosting for a more ambitious project.
OVH is surely the most famous web host. This company provides a whole bunch of services, from VPS to shared hosting to minecraft server. However, it is also a company that offers high performance dedicated and managed hosting.
In case you are only looking for a cheap shared hosting offer, we recommend Hostinger and O2switch.
How to use Ionos?
Ionos can be used for a lot of things, but here we will only show you how to install WordPress. To start, you will need to go to your customer area, then to the control panel.
In the dashboard, you will have access to several elements such as domain names, mail accounts and others. To install WordPress, you will need to click on the “Websites and stores” section.
Once in this section, Ionos asks you to give a name to your website.
Once the name of the site is given, you will be able to choose your login details. Obviously, you are encouraged to create a long password, containing many characters as well as numbers and symbols.
Next, Ionos will ask you what type of WordPress installation you want. Here you can choose between the “Simple” or “Managed” WordPress version. In the Managed part, Ionos will automatically install some security, speed and SEO plugins. This version also allows automatic updates.
We clearly recommend that you choose the Managed version.
Once you have chosen a version, the installation will begin. Generally, the site will be online within a few seconds. Attention, in some cases, you will have a temporary domain name containing live-website.com. If you are in this situation, we invite you to claim your offered domain name to replace the temporary one.
The provisional domain name can also be a way to test.
