A short time ago the 1 & 1 group and ProfitBricks merged to form 1 & 1 IONOS. The merger of Europe's largest web hosting provider and Germany's cloud specialists promises many interesting innovations.
In our large 1 & 1 IONOS experience report, we clarify whether the new merger can keep all promises and whether the new web hosting solutions really bring improvements to customers.
Contents
What does 1 & 1 IONOS offer?
As the largest provider of hosting solutions, 1 & 1 IONOS naturally offers pretty much everything there is when it comes to web hosting. Regardless of whether it is a domain, e-mail server, shared web hosting, dedicated server, cloud hosting, eCommerce solutions or even customized websites. You will find everything at 1 & 1 IONOS. We want to make sure you find the right web host for your needs. The most common type of web hosting is shared web hosting. This is often significantly cheaper but less powerful than, for example, dedicated web hosting. Other options are website construction kits, root or managed servers or cloud web hosting. What exactly these terms mean at 1 & 1 will be explained in the next section before we take a closer look at the quality of these at 1 & 1 IONOS.
Shared web hosting
If you don't want to spend a lot of money on web hosting, shared hosting is your best bet. This form of cheap web hosting places your website on a server with other websites. This means that your website shares the server resources with others, but also the costs. Shared web hosting is arguably the most popular form of web hosting. 1 & 1 IONOS offers you a total of five different tariffs for classic shared web hosting. The cheapest plan starts at $ 4 per month and can be canceled at any time.
VPS web hosting
VPS (Virutal Private Server Hosting) means you pay for storage space on a shared server, similar to shared web hosting. The difference with VPS web hosting is that your website is virtually separate from the other websites on the same server. With VPS web hosting, there is less or no competition for server resources. 1 & 1 IONOS has a total of five VPS plans available, all of which offer unlimited data traffic. In fact, the VPS web hosting tariffs are incredibly cheap, but sometimes offer incredibly little performance. These are therefore of interest for hosting a personal homepage as an online resume.
Dedicated web hosting
If your website requires a lot of system resources, dedicated web hosting is the best choice. With dedicated hosting, you use all of the server's resources without restriction, as your website is on its own server. As a result, the performance and the price are of course correspondingly high. Another advantage is that you can maximally configure a dedicated server. 1 & 1 IONOS has four different plans for dedicated web hosting. The cheapest plan is surprisingly cheap at $ 45 per month and is an alternative even for smaller businesses. Usually, dedicated web hosting is aimed more at professional users and large companies.
WordPress webhosting
1 & 1 IONOS has powerful managed WordPress packages. These allow you an easier setup, pre-installed and recommended plug-ins, automatic security updates and improved support. WordPress is the most widely used content management system in the world and enables the creation of a simple blog or the website of a Fortune 500 company. If you already know that you want to use WordPress for your website, you should use the WordPress tariffs from HostEurope.
The easily managed WordPress plans at 1 & 1 IONOS are really attractive for many users. As an alternative to the managed tariffs, you can also choose WordPress Pro plans. These bring technological optimizations such as improved caching and the possibility of website staging.
Homepage Building Kit
More and more web hosting providers are offering website construction kits in addition to their traditional hosting tariffs. The advantage of a website builder is that it allows you to easily create a website without any coding knowledge. If you use the website builder as well as the domains of a web hosting provider, this is one way of covering all your website needs from a single provider. So you don't have to deal with tariffs for domains, web hosting and possibly website design individually. 1 & 1 IONOS also offers a website builder. The website construction kit from 1 & 1 IONOS is aimed primarily at small and medium-sized companies in order to help them realize a professional website. Until recently, 1 & 1 was still with Jimdo worked together, but now they have a website construction kit solution from the US company Duda. At 1 & 1 IONOS, this website construction kit is called MyWebsite.
Cloud Hosting
As we mentioned above, 1 & 1 has teamed up with ProfitBricks. ProfitBricks were previously known as a German expert in cloud services. Therefore, after the merger, 1 & 1 IONOS has of course also specialized in the increasingly popular cloud hosting. It differs from traditional hosting in that it distributes resources across multiple servers, while traditional hosting draws performance from a single server. At 1 & 1 IONOS you will find many cloud hosting tariffs, either for managed or unmanaged web hosting. In fact, we found the cloud hosting plans from 1 & 1 IONOS to be absolutely excellent. Therefore, if you want to give cloud hosting a chance, you should definitely take a closer look at the tariffs of 1 & 1 IONOS.
Experience report 1 & 1 IONOS
Of course, it is hardly possible to write an experience report for each individual service and tariff from 1 & 1 IONOS. The offer is simply too huge for that. In the following experience report, we will therefore guide you from registering to creating your website. Then we focus on technical details like speed, support and uptime. Of course, you will find out all the advantages and disadvantages that we noticed with 1 & 1 IONOS. Finally, you will receive a tariff overview from us so that you can find the best plan guaranteed for you.
Registration
After you have selected your preferred 1 & 1 IONOS web hosting plan, you will be invited to register a free domain. If you already have a domain, you can simply skip this step more click. After that, 1 & 1 IONOS will offer you a handful of optional extras. You can also find many of them from other providers. For example, you can get SiteLock Malware Scanning for your website for $ 2 a month. Of course there is also an overview of SSL, domains and other security settings. However, there was a special option. You can choose to buy 100 GB of cloud storage for just $ 1 per month. It probably has to do with the merger with ProfitBricks. In fact, 100 GB of cloud storage space is a really cheap alternative. As a comparison, you pay 50 cents for 99 GB with Apple iCloud and $ 100 with Google Drive for 1,99 GB.
Credit card and PayPal are available as payment options. After you have paid for your tariff including optional extras, you will be redirected to the 1 & 1 IONOS control panel and receive a “Welcome” email. It all took less than a minute, was very easy to understand and clear.
Create your website
The 1 & 1 IONOS web dashboard is a simple, task-oriented, front-end. Large, clear tiles point to important functional areas such as domains, e-mail, websites, hosting and more. The web hosting tariffs at 1 & 1 IONOS do not use cPanel and the setting options are relatively limited. The hosting section includes a file manager, FTP support, phpMyAdmin for database management, an option to change your domain PHP version and that's it. These tools are not necessarily convincing either. For example, when we dragged and dropped our website file on the file manager, we received a warning that only one file could be transferred at a time.
Similar to other providers, 1 & 1 IONOS makes the installation of WordPress easier. This is even preinstalled in the managed WordPress web hosting tariffs. Otherwise, you can set it up in a matter of minutes. In addition, you get access to an app center with many top apps such as Joomla, PrestaShop, MediaWiki, Magneto and many more. The installation of apps works, but the system is not necessarily the best. Other providers offer access to Softaculous, for example. This platform enables the installation of over 400 apps, significantly more than with 1 & 1 IONOS. All in all, everything is still functional and sufficient for most users. For example, cPanel offers a few more setting options, but is also much more confusing and complicated.
Hidden costs
Similar to low-cost airlines, many providers seem very cheap at first glance, but then charge a lot of money for every little extra. Overall, 1 & 1 IONOS is one of the cheapest providers on the market, but there are not many hidden costs. The pricing is relatively straightforward and understandable. In fact, the main problem with 1 & 1 IONOS is not that there are many hidden costs, but that people are constantly trying to sell you something extra. Many functions such as e-mail, domains, security functions and more can be added for a fee. In the end, that costs more than you initially planned. Nevertheless, 1 & 1 IONOS is and will remain one of the cheapest web hosting providers on the market. Even with many add-ons, the prices remain affordable.
Support
At 1 & 1 IONOS you will find an excellent help center, which should be your first point of contact for all questions. Problems and frequently asked questions are clearly presented there. It all works extremely intuitively. If you ever have a question, or aren't sure how something works, you don't need to go to a separate help page, you can just type a keyword into the search box at the top of the control panel. In our test, this has always led to a helpful contribution. For example, after entering the keyword “WordPress” we received a variety of links to articles on setting up and installing WordPress, activating an SSL certificate, installing WordPress plugins and themes, and more. All articles are clearly displayed in a sidebar and not on a separate page.
The search function at 1 & 1 IONOS is actually extremely well thought out. It can even help you navigate through the various features of the interface. For example, if you can't find your FTP password or want to restore a backup, you can simply enter the keywords "FTP" or "backup" and you will be redirected to the appropriate link to the area. Even the account management functions such as the page for terminating your contract can be found in this way. If you enter “termination” in the search field, you will be redirected to the termination form. Other providers can learn a lesson from this. If you don't like working with the search function, you can also search the central support page.
Of course, you can also contact the support team directly. In addition to e-mail, there is also real-time customer service via live chat and telephone. We usually choose live chat first. After you open the chat window, you will be asked to describe your problem. A small negative point is the maximum of 300 characters per message. In our test, we didn't even have to wait five minutes for a support representative to contact us. A common problem with many web hosting customer services is that support staff forward them to other offices, which unfortunately also happened a little with 1 & 1 IONOS. Overall, we had the feeling that some of the staff were not as trained as other providers. On the other hand, it is positive that the support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Recently there is also a personal advisor at 1 & 1 IONOS. This means that you get a phone number that always connects you to the same employee. You can also reach this employee directly via email and live chat. This is a really interesting service, which hopefully improves customer service in the long term and ensures that unnecessary forwarding to different support areas is a thing of the past.
High speeds
Of course, we also have to concentrate on the technical details of 1 & 1 IONOS. Hardly anything is more important than the speed of your website, it influences both your search engine ranking (SEO) and the satisfaction of your customers. If you want to host a successful website, you need to make sure it loads quickly. An analysis by Google shows that 53% of all users leave your website if it does not load within 3 seconds. Especially modern websites with a lot of media files such as pictures or videos can, however, significantly slow down the loading time of your website, which makes it all the more important that you choose the right provider. Unfortunately, budget shared web hosting providers in particular often disappoint when it comes to performance.
We carried out various performance tests over a period of a week to test the response time of 1 & 1 IONOS. The result: very good. On average, the loading time was only 273 ms. We were particularly enthusiastic about these results because we carried them out with a cheap shared web hosting tariff. If you have a VPS or a dedicated server, you can expect even better loading times.
Responsiveness
The uptime or availability of your website is just like the speed, one of the most important aspects of a good web hosting provider. Your website can only be successful if it is accessible. If your website is down, customers will not be able to find it or purchase products or services from it. The higher the availability, the better. The uptime of a good website should be at least 99.9 percent. A 99% downtime versus 99.9% downtime doesn't sound like a huge difference at first. However, that is deceptive. Remember that a downtime of 0.01% is only about 53 minutes, while a downtime of 0.1% is 8,5 hours. So you can see that every% counts.
In our test, in addition to the loading time of the 1 & 1 IONOS servers, we also checked their uptime. The good news is that 1 & 1 IONOS servers offer excellent uptime. According to their own website, 1 & 1 IONOS promise you “almost 100% uptime”. At first, that sounded a little too vague and like typical PR promises. But the results convinced us. In the period we tested, our website was actually 100% accessible.
Privacy
Many 1 & 1 IONOS tariffs include an SSL certificate. For example in all WordPress web hosting tariffs and all web hosting tariffs for agencies and freelancers. Browsers like Google Chrome and Safari now warn their users if there is no SSL certificate, which makes it impossible to operate a successful and trustworthy website without an SSL certificate. If you choose a tariff without an SSL certificate from 1 & 1 IONOS, you can purchase one at any time for $ 49 per year. As mentioned earlier, you can also purchase SiteLock for $ 2 per month to protect your website from hackers, malware and unauthorized access. Back-ups and data backups are created daily from your web space. In all Linux-based web hosting packages, you can restore the data backup directly via the Control Center under Webspace Recovery. By the way, the backups of your web space are available for a maximum of 7 days. However, if you need data backups over a longer period of time, you can always create and secure one yourself. Otherwise, 1 & 1 IONOS automatically offers DDoS protection. What we particularly like is the website checker. This is particularly beginner-friendly and shows you where there are security deficiencies on your website.
1 & 1 IONOS has data centers in Las Vegas, New Jersery, London and Frankfurt a. M. You will automatically be assigned to the data center what is closest to you. For European data centers, this means very exemplary data protection due to EU laws. The data center in Frankfurt even has ISO 27001. You can find a great website where all the data on the individual data centers are displayed here.
Flexibility
What we really like about 1 & 1 IONOS is the great flexibility. This is significantly better than with other providers. So you have the option of a one-month term, you can scale hardware services at any time (and that in both directions!) This means that you can, for example, adjust RAM and PHP memory limit in seconds. It also comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, twice as long as the usual 14 days offered by the competition.
Expensive awakening
Unfortunately, as is now the norm with most providers, 1 & 1 IONOS also lures you in at the beginning of the contract with very low tariffs, which, however, quickly become expensive when they are renewed. As an example, the cheap “Essential” web hosting plan only costs €6 per month for the first 2 months. After the first six months, however, the costs double to €4 per month. With other tariffs the whole thing is even more drastic. The "Pro" tariff lures with incredibly cheap 1 € per year for 3 domains and SSL certificate, because you can hardly help but strike directly. However, when you extend your contract, the tariff suddenly costs €10 per month. With 1 & 1 IONOS, even with the cheapest tariffs, there is an additional setup fee of €15. This corresponds to almost the complete savings of the first six months.
Tariff overview
As already mentioned, 1 & 1 IONOS offers an incredible number of tariffs to choose from. There are also numerous offers that are permanently changing. For example, there is currently the WordPress web hosting tariff for € 1 in the first year (€ 7 per month for renewal) with a permanently free domain and SSL certificate. This is a really good offer and currently beats the prices of any competition. This of course makes it difficult to offer you a good overview of tariffs. For current prices, it is best to go directly to 1 & 1 IONOS go. In the following section we present the web hosting, VPS hosting and WordPress web hosting tariffs. Alternatively, you can of course also choose a dedicated server, for example, but for this you should find out more on the 1 & 1 IONOS website.
Webhosting rates
The web hosting tariffs at 1 & 1 IONOS are divided into “offers” and tariffs for agencies. For example, there is currently a large discount for the first year on the Pro tariff. Otherwise, it is advisable to start with a small and cheap tariff, as you can flexibly scale your tariff at any time,
| Membership | Essential | Business | PRO | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| webspace | 50 GB | 100 GB | 250 GB | 500 GB |
| Free Domain | Yes one) | Yes two) | Yes three) | Yes (four) |
| Email address | 10 e-mail boxes with 2 GB storage each | 100 e-mail boxes with 2 GB storage each | 250 e-mail boxes with 2 GB storage each | 500 e-mail boxes with 2 GB storage each |
| RAM | Up to 512MB | Up to 2,5 GB | Up to 6 GB | Up to 9 GB |
| Content Delivery System (CDN) | No | No | No | Ja |
| SSD databases | 5 with 1 GB each | 100 with 1 GB each | 250 with 1 GB each | 500 with 1 GB each |
| HTTPS security | Ja | Ja | Ja | Ja |
| SSL certificate | Ja | Ja | Ja | Ja |
| Registration price | 6 months: € 2 per month. Thereafter € 4 per month. Setup fee of € 15 | 6 months: € 4 per month. Thereafter € 8 per month. Setup fee of € 15 | 1 year for 1 €. Thereafter € 10 per month. No setup fee | 6 months: € 10 per month. Thereafter € 20 per month. Setup fee of € 15 |
VPS hosting tariffs
With all VPS hosting tariffs from 1 & 1 IONOS you get 100% SSD-SAN storage as well as real dedicated resources thanks to VMware virtualization. Similar to the web hosting tariffs, there are always tempting offers here. For all vServer tariffs you can also choose between a minimum contract period of 1 or 12 months. You can also upgrade your plan at any time via the Control Center.
| Membership | VPS-M | VPS-M | VPS-L | VPS-XL | XXL VPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| CPU | 1vCore CPU | 2vCore CPU | 2vCore CPU | 4 vCore CPU GB | 6vCore CPU |
| memory | 10 GB SSD | 80 GB SSD | 120 GB SSD | 160 GB SSD | 240 GB SSD |
| Email address | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| RAM | 512 MB | 2 GB | 4 GB | 8 GB | 12 GB |
| Registration price | €1 per month | 6 months: € 5 per month. Thereafter € 10 per month. | 6 months: € 10 per month. Thereafter € 15 per month. | 6 months € 1 per month. Thereafter € 20 per month. | 6 months: € 20 per month. Thereafter € 30 per month. |
WordPress web hosting tariffs
The WordPress web hosting tariffs from 1 & 1 IONOS are very attractive for you as a user, especially because of their simplicity. With all tariffs you get fast SSD storage, NGINX, PHP 7.3 with OPcache and HTTP / 2. You can choose between managed or non-managed WordPress hosting. There is also no setup fee for all WordPress web hosting tariffs.
| Membership | Essential | Business | Unlimited |
|---|---|---|---|
| bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| SSD storage | 25 GB | 100 GB | Unlimited |
| WordPress sites | 1 | 1 | Unlimited |
| E-mail mailboxes | 10 e-mail boxes with 2 GB storage each | 100 e-mail boxes with 2 GB storage each | Unlimited e-mail inboxes with 2 GB storage each |
| PHP memory | 640 MB | 768 MB | 768 MB |
| Visitors per minute | Up to 300 | Up to 500 | Up to 500 |
| Free domain | Ja | Ja | Ja |
| Railgun Content Delivery Network | No | No | Ja |
| SSL certificate | Ja | Ja | Ja |
| Registration price | 12 months for € 2 per month. Thereafter € 4 per month. | 1 year for 1 €. Thereafter € 7 per month. | 12 months for € 9 per month. Thereafter € 18 per month. |
As you can easily see, the tariff overview is very complicated. The tariffs for agencies also have no direct performance values, but so-called performance levels, which you can scale between level 1 and 5 at any time.
Conclusion on 1 & 1 IONOS web hosting
1 & 1 IONOS offers fast and reliable web hosting in our field report. There are a few small flaws here and there, but they don't spoil the overall impression. The quality of the servers is very good and the customer service is available 24/7. However, getting a capable support person seems a bit of a matter of luck. The merger of 1 & 1 with ProfitBricks has definitely brought a few improvements. The cloud hosting offers are particularly worth a look.
The countless add-ons are a bit annoying, as a result of which a cheap tariff can suddenly become significantly more expensive. However, these add-ons are all optional and since the prices of web hosting at 1 & 1 IONOS are very cheap, especially thanks to some great offers, we can ignore them. When extending a contract, you should still be careful that there is no shock from high prices.
The selection of hosting offers is so large that there is guaranteed to be something for you. It is not without reason that 1 & 1 IONOS is the largest hosting provider in Europe. So if you are looking for a fast and reliable web host for your next website, be it a blog or an eCommerce shop, we can absolutely recommend 1 & 1 IONOS.
Frequently asked questions about 1 & 1 IONOS web hosting
Is 1 & 1 Ionos good?
Definitely. 1 & 1 IONOS is the largest provider of web hosting services in Europe for a reason. The security, performance and uptime of the servers as well as the high flexibility within the various tariffs speak for the company.
How expensive is IONOS?
1 & 1 IONOS is one, if not the cheapest, web hosting provider. Especially with a new contract there are always really great offers. Like the current business tariff for € 1 per year. However, you should be careful when extending your contract, as the prices can sometimes rise sharply.
Does 1 & 1 IONOS have a money-back guarantee?
Yes. You will be offered your 30 day money back guarantee. You can also cancel many plans on a monthly basis.
Which 1 & 1 IONOS tariff is the best for me?
It is best to start with a cheap tariff and upgrade it if necessary. 1 & 1 IONOS is very flexible in the scalability of its tariffs.
Does 1 & 1 IONOS use cPanel?
No. You control the most important functions and settings of your website and your tariff via the in-house control panel. Although this is very clearly designed, it offers significantly fewer functions than a classic cPanel dashboard.
Is 1 & 1 IONOS safe?
Yes. 1 & 1 IONOS attaches great importance to the security of your website and its own server. In addition to special DDoS protection, you can buy various add-ons to protect yourself against malicious bots, malware and hacking, for example.
Who is behind the company?
1 & 1 IONOS is the merger of 1 & 1 and ProfitBricks. They are now the largest web hosting provider in Europe. The company has ten data centers in five countries with a total of 90.000 servers.
Does 1 & 1 IONOS have German servers?
Yes, one of the data centers is in Frankfurt am Main.
