IONOS Hosting Categories and Pricing
Like any other hosting provider, IONOS offers a range of hosting categories from which you can select the hosting plan that’s best suited for you. These hosting categories are as follows: Shared Hosting, Windows Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Dedicated Hosting.
To give you a clear view of what you can experience with IONOS, we’ll walk you through a comprehensive review of IONOS’ hosting categories, the associated plans and their corresponding prices.
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IONOS Shared Hosting
In this hosting category, IONOS offers a couple of plans which are considered suitable for varying websites, including business websites, built-out websites, and basic websites. Notably, the kind of website or web project you’re handling determines the option you’d find suitable among IONOS’ three shared hosting plans which are as follows: IONOS Essential, IONOS Business, and IONOS Expert.
IONOS Expert: This is the biggest offer in IONOS’ shared hosting. At a starting price of $8 monthly, this plan specifically targets businesses and agencies handling lots of web projects. Due to its specialized use, IONOS Expert expectedly comes with several top-notch features including ultra-efficient CDN, maximum MEM and CPU resources, professional email and website domain (for the first year), site analytics, and advanced security features. This plan also offers unlimited storage and databases along with (the ability to host) unlimited websites.
Note that the $8 monthly price mentioned earlier applies only in your first year. After the first year (i.e. first 12 months), the price becomes fixed at $16 monthly.
IONOS Business: This is probably the ideal plan for you if you’re looking to host multiple websites without spending beyond $10 monthly. With IONOS Business, you’ll have a real shot at unlimited storage, unlimited databases as well as the chance to host unlimited websites. You should bear in mind that the price of IONOS Business increases to $10 monthly after your first year. The starting price however stands at $0.50 monthly.
The other features of IONOS Business include professional email domain, upgraded CPU and MEM resources, and one-year domain extension.
IONOS Essential: If you’re seeking to begin your IONOS hosting experience through the plan with the cheapest regular price, IONOS Essential is most likely the right fit for you. It is a basic shared hosting plan with a starting price of $4 monthly. Although this plan lets you host only one website, it does offer a decent number of features including free professional email, 10GB of storage, a free domain name (only for one year), and 10 MySQL or MariaDB databases.
After your first year of using IONOS Essential, the earlier-mentioned price ($4 per month) increases to $6 monthly.
IONOS Windows Hosting
The plans offered by IONOS under the Windows hosting category include Business, Pro and Expert. While the prices of these plans range between $10 and $20 monthly, the features you’re certain to get on each of them include:
- Free SSL certificate
- Free domain email
- Free domain name (for one year)
Business: This is the cheapest IONOS plan in the Windows hosting category. In addition to offering a free domain name (though only for a year), a free SSL certificate (for only one website) and free domain email, the Business plan gives you 25 MS SQL databases and up to 100GB of storage. The price of this plan is fixed at $10 monthly.
Pro: In addition to offering a free domain name (though only for a year), a free SSL certificate (for only five websites) and free domain email, IONOS’ Pro plan gives you 100 MS SQL databases and up to 250GB of storage. The price of this plan is fixed at $12 monthly.
Expert: At a monthly price of $20, this is frankly the costliest Windows hosting package offered by IONOS. Besides offering a free domain name (though only for a year), a free SSL certificate (for as many as 50 websites) and free domain email, the Expert plan gives you 500 MS SQL databases and up to 500GB of storage.
IONOS VPS Hosting
This hosting category is where IONOS offers the plans targeted at individuals and businesses looking to go beyond the basic efficiency of shared hosting. Moreover, VPS hosting is a sort of specialized hosting that costs less than dedicated hosting, while still allowing you to have your own (virtual) server.
While IONOS’ VPS hosting packs as many as nine plans, the prices of these plans range between $2 and $45 monthly. This clearly hints that VPS hosting is less expensive, compared to the dedicated hosting (category) where IONOS’ plans cost between $47 and $160 monthly.
Notably, five of IONOS’ nine VPS hosting plans are tagged “standard” plans while the remaining four are tagged “memory optimized” plans. Irrespective of the plan you eventually opt for, the features you’re bound to enjoy on these VPS hosting plans include:
- DDoS protection
- Firewall management
- SSL encryption
- Backups
VPS S: The highlights of this IONOS standard VPS hosting plan include 10 GB of SSD, 512MB of RAM, and one vCore. The price of this plan is $2 monthly.
VPS M: The highlights of this IONOS standard VPS hosting plan include 80GB of SSD, 2GB of RAM, and two vCores. The regular price of this plan is $7 monthly.
VPS L: The highlights of this IONOS standard VPS hosting plan include 80GB of SSD, 2GB of RAM, and two vCores. The regular price of this plan is $7 monthly.
VPS XL: The highlights of this IONOS standard VPS hosting plan include 160GB of SSD, 8GB of RAM, and four vCores. The regular price of this plan is $25 monthly.
VPS XXL: The highlights of this IONOS standard VPS hosting plan include 240GB of SSD, 12GB of RAM, and six vCores. The regular price of this plan is $35 monthly.
VPS M RAM: The features of this IONOS memory-optimized VPS hosting plan are as follows: 80GB of SSD, 6GB of RAM, and two vCores. VPS M RAM has a regular price of $15 monthly.
VPS L RAM: The features of this IONOS memory-optimized VPS hosting plan are as follows: 120GB of SSD, 12GB of RAM, and four vCores. VPS L RAM has a regular price of $25 monthly.
VPS XL RAM: The features of this IONOS memory-optimized VPS hosting plan are as follows: 160GB of SSD, 18GB of RAM, and six vCores. VPS XL RAM has a regular price of $35 monthly.
VPS XXL RAM: The features of VPS XXL RAM include 240GB of SSD, 24GB of RAM, and eight vCores. This IONOS memory-optimized VPS hosting plan has a regular price of $45 monthly.
IONOS Dedicated Hosting
Under its dedicated hosting category, IONOS offers a total of eight plans, and the features you’re certain to enjoy on each of these plans are as follows:
- Free domain
- Unlimited traffic
- RailGun content delivery network
- Site scan
L4i HDD: Besides offering site scan, unlimited traffic, RailGun content delivery network, and free domain, this plan offers up to 1000GB of (HDD) storage, 12GB of RAM and a total of four cores. The plan comes at a monthly price of $47.
L-16 HDD: Besides offering site scan, unlimited traffic, RailGun content delivery network, and free domain, L-16 HDD offers up to 1000GB of (HDD) storage, 16GB of RAM and a total of four cores. The plan comes at a monthly price of $80, but there’s notably a $50 setup fee.
XL-32 HDD: Not only does it offer site scan, unlimited traffic, RailGun content delivery network, and free domain, XL-32 HDD also offers up to 2,000GB of (HDD) storage, 32GB of RAM and a total of four cores. The plan comes at a monthly price of $110. There’s also a $50 setup fee.
XL-64 HDD: In addition to offering site scan, unlimited traffic, RailGun content delivery network, and free domain, this plan offers up to 2,000GB of (HDD) storage, 64GB of RAM and a total of four cores. The plan comes at a monthly price of $140. XL-64 HDD also requires a $50 setup fee.
A8i SSD: Besides offering site scan, unlimited traffic, RailGun content delivery network, and free domain, this plan offers up to 240 GB of (Intel SSD) storage, 8GB of RAM and a total of eight cores. The plan comes at a monthly price of $65.
L-16 SSD: Besides offering site scan, unlimited traffic, RailGun content delivery network, and free domain, L-16 HDD offers up to 480 GB of (Intel SSD) storage, 16GB of RAM and a total of four cores. The plan comes at a monthly price of $90, but there’s notably a $50 setup fee.
XL-32 SSD: Not only does it offer site scan, unlimited traffic, RailGun content delivery network, and free domain, XL-32 SSD also offers up to 800 GB of (Intel SSD) storage, 32GB of RAM and a total of four cores. The plan comes at a monthly price of $130. There’s also a $50 setup fee.
XL-64 SSD: In addition to offering site scan, unlimited traffic, RailGun content delivery network, and free domain, this plan offers up to 800 GB of (Intel SSD) storage, 64GB of RAM and a total of four cores. The plan comes at a monthly price of $160. XL-64 SSD also requires a $50 setup fee.
If you look carefully at IONOS’ eight dedicated hosting plans, as provided above, you should observe that the first four plans are HDD-specific while the remaining four plans are SSD-specific. While dedicated hosting generally provides you with a server that’s designed to be used only by you, the fundamental point to note about SSD-powered dedicated hosting and HDD-powered dedicated hosting is that the former is far more efficient than the latter. If you run a high-impact website with very huge traffic, you might be particularly interested in the dedicated hosting that offers more speed (efficiency). This is to ensure your dedicated hosting plan comfortably handles the huge traffic your website attracts. In that case, you’d have to opt for the SSD-powered dedicated hosting plan which has got an adequate amount of storage for your hosting needs.
If you want dedicated hosting for a new site with rather low traffic, you may as well start with IONOS’ cheapest SSD-powered dedicated hosting plan –precisely the A8i SSD –and hope to switch to a plan with higher SSD when the site significantly expands in the future.
Pros and Cons of IONOS
IONOS has pros and cons, but the exciting thing here is that the pros outweigh the cons.
Based on our findings, the Pros of IONOS Include:
Affordable Pricing
If you’re particularly looking to spend less on web hosting, IONOS might fall among the suitable hosting providers for you. This is because $0.50 –which is the starting price for IONOS’ Business plan –is unarguably one of the lowest monthly prices you can pay for web hosting.
Although large-scale businesses might be willing to throw sizeable budgets into web hosting, it’s very circumspect that small businesses look in the direction of cost-effective hosting providers. With $6 considered the cheapest regular (monthly) price you can get with IONOS, it’s really fair to count IONOS among the affordable hosting providers out there.
Both individuals and small businesses looking to save costs in the aspect of web hosting could make success with IONOS.
Guaranty of Excellent Uptime
IONOS boasts having an average uptime of 99.97%. While you might want to query IONOS’ failure to guaranty a 100% score, the truth is that a guaranty of 100% uptime doesn’t seem realistic due to inevitable circumstances. IONOS itself believes that natural disasters are inevitable, and they’re the reason why the hosting provider can’t guarantee a 100% uptime.
Nonetheless, an average of 99.97% is enough to tout IONOS as a hosting provider with an excellent uptime. Opting for IONOS might spell the impression that you don’t want to go wrong with your website’s uptime guaranty. Moreover, one sure way to always have your website accessible to visitors is to stick with the hosting provider that has got an excellent uptime.
Remarkable Loading Time
If you host your website with IONOS, you can expect an average loading time around 736 milliseconds. The good thing about choosing a provider with a remarkable loading time is that visitors wouldn’t get bored while trying to load your site’s pages.
As per its ranking metrics, Google, in fact, favors suggesting the “best” pages with respect to users’ search terms. Meanwhile, responsiveness is one of the key attributes of these best pages. If your site’s pages load very slowly, don’t be surprised to see them ranking poorly in Google’s search results.
Besides Google’s preference for swift-loading pages, another major reason why you should ensure a high page speed is that most people visiting your website are not ready to bear with slow pages.
Great UI
Packed with an easy-to-navigate dashboard, IONOS’ user interface is probably one of the good sides of the hosting provider. The contents of the dashboard, for instance, are so well-arranged that you can comfortably access your hosting plan, domain name and other important aspects of your web hosting.
Availability of Ecommerce Hosting
If you’re keen to enjoy reliable hosting for a WordPress-powered online store, you’ll especially find IONOS ideal for your hosting needs. This is because IONOS has a plan that’s dedicated for e-commerce hosting.
A Couple of Free Features
With any of IONOS’ hosting plans, customers are certain to enjoy a couple of exciting features, including free SSL security and free email hosting. Interestingly, some of IONOS’ free features are offerings you’d normally pay for if you were to choose any of most other web hosts.
Irrespective of the IONOS hosting plan you’re subscribing to, you’d be offered a discounted domain in your first year –this (discounted) domain costs as low as $1. Since domains could carry much higher prices (some domains cost more than $10 annually), it suffices to say that in addition to offering an array of free features, IONOS allows you the chance to significantly save on domain purchase in your first year.
Web Design Service
If you’d like to entrust an expert with your entire web design service without having to spend much, you could think of IONOS as your perfect fit. In addition to its comprehensive web hosting, IONOS offers a detailed web design service that wouldn’t compel you to spend unreasonably. The good thing about IONOS in this regard is that it guarantees you SEO integration along with the web design service.
How about the Cons of IONOS?
Although IONOS’ positives far outweigh its negatives, we can’t shy away from admitting that IONOS has got its own downsides. Based on our findings, the noticeable cons of IONOS include inadequate customer support, absence of free web host transfer, and (relatively) complicated pricing.
Inadequate Customer Support
IONOS no longer offers the live chat feature in its customer support. Although customers can contact customer support via email and phone, IONOS’ removal of the live chat feature is most probably the worst undoing with respect to the hosting provider’s customer service.
Most customers can’t deal with the delayed responses commonly associated with email and phone, and that’s why they’d always prefer the live chat option. Using this option, customers can conveniently ask questions and expect to get immediate responses.
Absence of Free Web Host Transfer
While majority of hosting providers let you migrate your site’s hosting without paying a dime, it’s quite unfortunate that you can’t get this chance with IONOS.
Complicated Pricing
Some people might not want to find faults in IONOS’ pricing, but the truth is that this hosting provider’s pricing isn’t transparent enough. IONOS’ Business plan, for instance, has a first-year price of $0.50 monthly whereas the price drastically increases to $10 monthly in subsequent years. There’s also an impression that IONOS has hidden charges.
Generally, lack of pricing transparency leaves customers with the risk of having to pay more than they actually bargained for. In respect of this, we consider complicated pricing one of the obvious downsides of IONOS.
