IONOS Review 2024

Edited by Johnathan Bell

Updated


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IONOS (previously 1&1) prioritizes innovation, dependability, and first-class web hosting service. It presently hosts over 12 million domains in its regional data centers in the United States and Europe, along with over eight million active client contracts.

Who should choose IONOS? IONOS web hosting is a good choice for small- and medium-sized businesses, Windows developers, and WordPress professionals.

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Hostinger

The easiest option

Starts at $2.49 per month

  • Fail-proof setup
  • Great for beginners
  • Free AI tools

Bluehost

For new WordPress sites

Starts at $2.95 per month

  • Guided onboarding
  • Recommended by WordPress
  • 24/7 support

HostGator

Best security and scalability

Starts at $3.75 per month

  • All types of hosting
  • Enhanced security tools
  • Affordable as you grow

IONOS Pros and Cons

IONOS comes with a multitude of advantages and years of expertise within the business; nevertheless, there are certain downsides that should be considered prior to acquiring a web hosting service.

If you’re unsure which IONOS web hosting plan to choose, the following are the most prominent pros and cons to note.

What we like about IONOS

  • Proven track record: Since its founding in 1988, IONOS has had worldwide success, allowing it to build a robust and forward-thinking portfolio.
  • Automatic daily backups: I liked how daily backups are performed automatically and without my intervention.
  • Windows and Linux hosting: IONOS provides both Linux and Windows hosting solutions.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee: With IONOS web hosting, you can ask for a full refund in case you are dissatisfied with the performance of your basic services.

What fell flat

  • Only one free SSL certificate per plan: All IONOS web hosting plans include a complimentary Wildcard SSL certificate with your hosting account; however, if you have more than one domain with them, you must buy any extra certificates.
  • No migration services: Well, not just yet! Currently, IONOS only offers a manual migration guide, but a new tool to make automated migrations possible at no additional cost will be released shortly.
  • Unreliable live chat system: Although I found customer assistance to be nothing short of excellent, the live chat support feature was often unavailable throughout the day.
  • No cPanel or Plesk: All IONOS web hosting services come with their own proprietary interface, which may feel a bit different if you’re used to working with cPanel or Plesk. It certainly has its benefits, which can easily turn this con into a pro for those willing to adapt.

Digital.com’s Editorial Review

During my testing, I discovered IONOS to be incredibly dependable and to provide very efficient web hosting servers. It offers strong overall user ratings, exceptional uptime stats, great features, and an established track record.

See how we review web hosting providers.

Plans & Pricing

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  • Essential–$4 per month
  • Starter–$6 per month
  • Plus–$1 per month (promo)
  • Ultimate–$10 per month
  • Unmanaged VPS–$2 per month

Features

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  • Simple control panel
  • Great range of plugins
  • 30-day guarantee
  • Georedundant infrastructure
  • 99.95% uptime
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Free domain for one year
  • Daily backups
  • Free professional email

Performance & Uptime

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  • 99.995% uptime over 30 days
  • Average response time: 97 ms

Security

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  • ModSecurity rules
  • Refuses suspicious requests
  • Anti-virus scanner
  • Virus protection plan

Support

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Customer service representatives are thoughtful and highly knowledgeable, guaranteeing a smooth website hosting process.

  • Live chat
  • Phone
  • Ticketing
  • Knowledge base

Improvements

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IONOS is constantly developing new features and refining existing ones to better serve the approximately 12 million domains now hosted on the company’s servers.

IONOS Plans and Pricing

IONOS offers shared and unmanaged VPS hosting plans as well as a website builder. Those plans include:

Essential–starts at $4 per month

  • Good for: hosting one new website

Starter–starts at $6 per month

  • Good for: growing projects, up to 10 websites

Plus–starts at $1 per month (promo)

  • Good for: Larger projects, unlimited hosting

Ultimate–starts at $10 per month

  • Good for: hosting multiple high-traffic sites

Unmanaged VPS–starts at $2 per month

  • Good for: developers who want complete control at a low price

While the Essential plan offers fewer features at a higher monthly price than the Business plan, it renews at a lower rate after the first year. All IONOS shared web hosting plans offer a free domain for one year, Wildcard SSL certificate, professional email, daily backup and recovery, and 24/7 support.

Features

No matter which IONOS web hosting plan you choose, you will get great features, including a free WordPress guide and a free domain name for one year. All plans even include a premium Wildcard SSL certificate for free.

Simple control panel

All web hosting packages have an IONOS custom interface that varies somewhat from the industry standard cPanel or Plesk. The dashboard was easy to use, with huge tiles referring to essential functions like domains, emails, websites, hosting, and account information. The hosting section contains a file manager, FTP (file transfer protocol) support, database administration, and the ability to alter the PHP (hypertext preprocessor) version of your domain.

IONOS's simplified control panel

Great range of plugins

As a website owner, I found IONOS a breeze to work with and adapt to my needs. I tested various plans, and they all came with a combination of excellent plugins from multiple content management systems like TYPO3, Joomla, Drupal, and PrestaShop.

The WordPress plugin was also accessible for installation; however, the WordPress plans offered seemed more practical for an all-around solution. IONOS allowed me to download a “WordPress for Beginners” guide, which I thought was quite helpful from a first-time user’s point of view. It covers the fundamentals of creating a WordPress site your way, including how to implement the sheer variety of free plugins and themes.

IONOS's free WordPress guide

30-day money-back guarantee on shared plans

I was able to cancel and receive a full refund for shared IONOS web hosting plans within the first 30 days. This is ideal for first-time users who want to get a sense of how the platform works before committing to and growing with this web host provider.

Georedundant infrastructure

Since IONOS replicates data across 10 data centers, all of their hosting plans boast impressively high rates of uptime. This gave me confidence that my website would stay up and running even if one of the components failed.

IONOS has data centers in five countries with thousands of services in operation and over a million customer contracts

99.95% uptime guarantee

The IONOS uptime guarantee states that your hosting servers will be online and ready to handle traffic 99.95% of the time. In my tests, IONOS servers had an average uptime of 99.995% over the last 30 days, which is even higher than the advertised statistic.

Free SSL certificate

All IONOS web hosting subscriptions include a free Wildcard SSL certificate, which protects your website and up to 10,000 subdomains. It establishes a secure connection and shields all sensitive information from unauthorized third parties.

Free domain for one year

I chose a 12-month package, and IONOS handed me a free domain name. The extensions offered were .us, .ca, .com, .net, .org, .info, .me, .biz, and .online, and I could see the regular fee that I would be paying after the initial contract period expired.

Daily backups

IONOS makes daily backups that are accessible for a maximum of six days. I preferred to preserve certain versions for a longer amount of time, so I made some additional manual ones. One thing I appreciated about IONOS is that it has a variety of different tutorials on how to achieve this in the help area.

Free professional email

Even the most basic IONOS web hosting package provides a free professional email account with 2 GB (gigabytes) of storage and a cutting-edge spam filter.

Performance and Uptime

My tests revealed that the IONOS servers had an average uptime of 99.995% over the previous 30 days, which is higher than what they claim. Assured reliability is just one of the many benefits of hosting with IONOS.

IONOS uptime report from hrank.com

Site response times

IONOS has an average response time of 97 ms, which is much faster than Google’s recommended response time of 200 ms. Nonetheless, web hosting providers such as Kinsta records faster response times.

Line graph showing total load time in different locations over three days. From Sucuri

Security

As a secure hosting provider, IONOS employs the ModSecurity rules to scrutinize each request. It refuses all suspicious requests while prohibiting all harmful ones. Furthermore, an anti-virus scanner deactivates malicious files automatically.

If, despite all efforts, hackers manage to upload malware to your online space, the IONOS premium virus protection gets involved, disables the file privileges from the malicious files, and notifies you through email.

SSL certificates

All IONOS web hosting plans come with a free Wildcard SSL certificate, but if you own more than one domain or subdomain, you need to purchase all additional certificates.

Protecting your data

IONOS provides automatic backups of your data. I was able to create additional ones manually while also opting for additional paid backup packages via the Backup Agent.

Support

I found the IONOS Help Center to be an excellent starting point for all types of queries. There’s a section devoted to web hosting with a list of frequently asked questions, as well as a search option that helped me quickly discover what I was searching for.

Customer support from IONOS on Twitter

IONOS promises a 24-hour support system through email, phone, and live chat. While my overall experience was excellent, I discovered the live chat function on the website to be unavailable many times during the day. I had to resort to Twitter, where the specialists were quick to respond to my inquiries and clarify any points I was unclear on.

Recent Improvements

IONOS has lately expanded and enhanced its offerings in the following ways:

  • Next-level WordPress hosting: IONOS has just revamped its WordPress hosting service with a new emphasis on providing an isolated environment for increased speed and security.
  • Customizable updates: The latest addition of IONOS gives you the power to decide. It was possible to disable or enable automatic updates independently for the core, theme, plugin, and PHP versions.
  • Site migration tool (coming soon): IONOS is currently developing a new feature that will simplify importing pre-existing projects.

Compare IONOS Alternatives

IONOS is among the best web hosting providers for small and medium-sized businesses and excels in innovation, reliability, and experience. Nonetheless, there are a plethora of reliable alternative providers available. Here are a few of my current favorites after using and researching dozens of different hosting providers.

Hosting Provider

Pricing + Basic Plan Features

Starts at $1 per month

  • One website
  • 10 GB storage
  • Free 24/7 support

Starts at $3.49 per month

  • Two websites
  • 100 GB disk space
  • Unmetered bandwidth

InMotion offers two websites and 10 email addresses with its cheapest shared hosting plan, while IONOS offers free daily backups.

Consider InMotion if: You’re interested in hosting more than one website.

Starts at $2.99 per month

  • Free migrations
  • 100 GB SSD storage
  • 24/7 customer support

A2 has a 24/7/365 Guru Crew support team who takes care of all site migrations duties free of charge, while IONOS only provides users with instructions.

Consider A2 Hosting if: You prefer having your site migrations done for you by a professional team.

Starts at $2.99 per month

  • One website
  • 10 GB storage
  • Unlimited bandwidth

SiteGround offers stellar 24/7 customer service channels with minimal waiting times, but IONOS has cheaper long-term solutions.

Consider SiteGround if: You value having solid customer service options.

What You Need to Know

Is 1&1 the same as IONOS?

Yes and no. 1&1 was formed in 1988 in Germany, and in 2018 it merged its web hosting, app, and server product lines with ProfitBricks’ cloud infrastructure solutions to become 1&1 IONOS. It rebranded in 2020, emerging with IONOS as its new name.

What type of web hosting plans does IONOS offer?

IONOS provides numerous web hosting services, including shared, VPS, dedicated, and ASP.NET hosting.

Is IONOS a good hosting platform for WordPress sites?

Yes, IONOS offers WordPress users three distinct plans: Start, Grow, and Boost. Each package includes a free domain name for a year, a free standard SSL certificate with domain validation, and site analytics, allowing you to track the site’s fundamental performance indicators.

What is IONOS’s cheapest hosting plan?

I was able to get a 12-month plan for IONOS’s web hosting services for just $1. There is virtually no risk involved because the provider offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on its lower-cost plans. Once the initial year expires, the Essential shared hosting plan begins at only $6 per month.

Does IONOS offer domain name registration?

Yes, IONOS allows you to buy and transfer domains. Each includes a professional email address, up to 10,000 subdomains, and one Wildcard SSL certificate. In addition, each hosting plan comes with a free domain name registration for one year.

Does IONOS use cPanel?

No, cPanel isn’t available with any of the IONOS web hosting packages.

How We Reviewed IONOS

I test web hosts based on the following factors

  • Plan value: What plans are available, and do they offer a good value?
  • Ease of use: Is the dashboard easy to navigate?
  • Support: How fast can you get help when needed, and is support genuinely helpful?
  • Features: What features does the host offer, and how do they compare to similar competitors?
  • Security: Does the host offer SSL certificates, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack protection, backup services, and scans for viruses and malware?
  • Speed and uptime: Does the provider offer a fast, stable environment for your website? How does it perform in tests, and what kind of servers does the hosting company use?
  • Recent improvements: What has the host done lately to update its technology and services?

Learn more about our review methodology.

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