IONOS by 1&1 Review
Features: Free domain and 90 days money-back guarantee
If you heard about 1&1 hosting, you’ve heard about Ionos.
This web host was founded in 1988 in Germany and currently employs 2,000 employees with 8 million customers.
They have three shared hosting options, good uptime, and it sounds promising enough. Let’s see what are they offering.
Here is our 1&1 Ionos review:
Meet 1&1 Ionos
1&1 Ionos is a web hosting company owned by United Internet AG, a global internet services company. It was founded in 1988 in Germany, and currently has two headquarters, one in Germany and one in the USA.
In 2000, the company changed its name to United Internet. In the same year, 1&1 began operating in the United Kingdom, and three years later extended their business operations to the United States. One of the company’s biggest North American data centers is located in Lenexa, Kansas, with more than 40,000 servers.
In 2018, 1&1 merged with ProfitBricks and rebranded as 1&1 Ionos. This rebrand involved a name change and a redesigned website, but the services and prices stayed the same.
1&1 Ionos uses sustainable methods to reduce carbon emissions, including the use of 100% renewable energy in data centers and administrative buildings in the UK and Germany. The carbon is offset in other locations across the world with green certificates or by using local renewable sources.
1&1 Ionos has roughly 2,000 employees in 40 countries, 8 million customers, 10 data centers, and over 90,000 servers.
Advantages of 1&1 Ionos
1. Reliability
First check, uptime. And we already covered why uptime is that important. Uptime means that your web hosting service is online and your website is available for your visitors. If your website is not available online then mostly this has a bad impact on your business/blog.
1&1 Ionos has an excellent uptime of 99.96% and is one of the most reliable web hosts on the market.
Of course, there are better options and web hosts with better uptime, but this is really not that far from the best uptime on the market.
They also feature an uptime guarantee of 99.99%.
You may contact IONOS and request a credit for that month proportional to the amount of downtime, to be put towards the purchase of future 1&1 IONOS Inc. Services.
2. Load Speed
Why does Google pay attention to your load speed when it comes to ranking? Well, because Google doesn’t want to recommend slow websites to their visitors. That can have an impact on your website if it takes over 4 seconds for your pages to load. That’s where a good web host steps in.
1&1 Ionos has an average load speed of 531ms, which is good enough so Google doesn’t see you as a villain who will destroy their reputation.
3. Customer Service
Once you become 1&1 Ionos customer, you are getting a personal consultant. They will be there to help you with your hosting account, hosting products, and basically anything you might need from them.
Interesting customer support model, where you can request a callback and they will gladly contact you. And that is their primary contact channel.
They also have chat support, which is the fastest and our preferred channel.
We were quickly connected and Mike C provided answers to almost every question (could not provide info about site transfer) and links to the needed content.
Good customer service and an interesting option with a personal consultant really add up to the customer experience.
4. Data Centers and Servers
As we already mentioned, 1&1 Ionos has 10 data centers in 5 countries, and they are home to 90,000 servers. To be more precise, their data centers with their servers, no outsourcing business here.
With these data centers, Ionos can provide data security and better performance.
Of course, you have an option to select the data center, and you should consider selecting the one closest to your visitors, in order to optimize loading time.
5. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
The standard deal, you can try 1&1 Ionos for 30 days and if you don’t like them, you can ask for a refund.
This refund does not apply to new orders of domains and SSL certificates, or any additional features that you purchase.
Disadvantages of 1&1 Ionos
1. cPanel Missing
Like some of the other web hosts, 1&1 Ionos has developed their own control panel. This might be an issue for experienced users, where they just don’t want to go through motions of learning how to navigate through a new control panel or a new system.
And if you are a beginner, you are more likely to find support and additional information for cPanel than for any other control panel.
The beauty of cPanel is that it is open-source, not owned by anybody and it can be modified by any company or web host for personal use.
2. Site Migration – Not Free
Some of the web hosts offer free site migration, to lure you in when you are transferring from another web host.
Well, 1&1 Ionos is not one of them.
We asked via chat about the transfer fee and did not receive an answer.
Ease of use
We already mentioned that 1&1 Ionos does not feature cPanel, but their own version of this control panel.
It is a little bit overwhelming when compared to cPanel, especially with upsell tactics, and unnecessary ads.
This control panel is best used when you are buying a domain name from Ionos and preferably using their website builder.
When it comes to their website, you can easily navigate through and there is a Help Center, where you can search through a variety of topics.
Pricing plans
1&1 Ionos features three shared hosting options, where billing is on a month to month basis.
Here are the plans:
– Essential: $4 per month, this plan is the best for one website. You will have 10GB of storage, 10 email accounts, and a free domain name for one year. Optimized for up to 50 visitors per minute on your website. You can cancel whenever you want, so no worries there.
– Business: For the first month, this plan will cost you $1. After that, the rate goes to $8 per month. Unlimited websites, unlimited storage, 50 email accounts, and this plan is optimized for up to 200 visitors per minute on your websites. This plan can also be canceled at any time.
– Expert: Their best plan comes at $14 per month, with the option to cancel it whenever you prefer. Unlimited websites, unlimited storage, 100 email accounts, free domain for a year, and this plan is optimized for up to 500 visitors per minute on your websites. This plan comes with SiteScan and Content Delivery Network.
Conclusion
Should you go with 1&1 Ionos? Yes, if you have a short term project or your customer base is mainly from Europe.
Very good uptime, load speed, month to month payment, very good combo for short projects as you have the flexibility to cancel it whenever you prefer.
If you are planning something long term, check out Bluehost or SiteGround.
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