1&1 Ionos Dedicated Server Hosting Review

You’re looking to take your business online, and 1&1 Ionos is the perfect partner. From website design to SEO services, they have everything you need to get your business up and running. But what about the little things? They also offer customer research incentives for participation, so you know that your audience is really interested in what you’re doing. And with a growing community of customers who are eager to help you grow your business, it won’t be long before you hit your stride.

1&1 Ionos Dedicated Server Hosting Review

Overview of 1&1 IONOS

1&1 has been trading since 1988. It became 1&1 IONOS in 2018, moving forward with its mission of empowering businesses through powerful technology.

It offers five different types of website hosting:

Shared (web hosting)
VPS
Dedicated
WordPress
Cloud

With such a broad range of hosting on offer, it comes as no surprise that 1&1 IONOS manages 12 million domains and holds 8 million customer contracts worldwide.

That’s a lot of people. But 1&1 IONOS isn’t right for everybody. So is it right for you?

We recommend this hosting provider for small white-collar businesses. This is because of its all-around packages, relatively cheap pricing, and strong focus on security and reliability.

That said, 1&1 IONOS’ online reviews are a mixed bag. Plenty of people sing its praises, but a worrying number complain of poor customer service, sneaky add-ons, and hard-to-cancel direct debits.

Pros of Using IONOS Hosting

IONOS started out strong, delivering great uptime and improved speed results.

But what else are they good at?

Let’s have a more detailed look.

Improved User Interface

IONOS doesn’t use the classical cPanel, instead, they have developed their own custom backend. For those who are used to the cPanel, it may be confusing and take some time to get used to in the beginning, but overall, it’s rather easy to use.

In the dashboard, you can manage domains, SSL certificates, email addresses, check your site’s statistics, and so on.

IONOS has also added an improved search bar, where you can find settings and switch between products faster.

There have been a lot of mixed feelings from other users about IONOS’s interface, especially it not being very intuitive compared to cPanel. But it seems that IONOS has made an effort on improving the dashboard usability and made it more logical to use.

OK Loading Speed 722 ms

A slow site isn’t just annoying: when a page takes too long to load, many of your potential visitors will already look elsewhere.

Why is that?

Site performance is a big deal when Google examines your site. Your all-important SEO score, which determines your placement on the world’s most popular search engine, relies heavily on it.

Site speed is the fourth most important SEO ranking factor, behind only site security, crawlability, and mobile-friendliness.

So a slow site is an immediate turnoff for Google and website visitors.

We live in an age of instant communication and instant information. If you’re lagging, chances are that the user can find another site with similar information that cares more about their experience.

So how did IONOS perform?

They delivered an average page loading speed of 722 ms in the last six months.

The good news is, that they have improved their speed since last year (over 800 ms loading time), but the bad news is that they are showing an increasing trend for slower speeds. However, for now, they have earned a place in our pros section.

Strong Uptime – 99.97%

One of the most important metrics that we measure when it comes to hosting providers is uptime.

You’re paying to have your website online. If uptime is lacking and your site is routinely going down, then your hosting service has failed you in its most crucial area.

IONOS claims to have a 99.9% uptime. According to their customer service department, the only reason they don’t claim 100% uptime is that they are unable to account for natural disasters.

And so far from the data that we’ve gathered over the past 6 months, their uptime has been a strong 99.97% with almost an hour and a half of downtime.

Here’s the last 6-month average uptime data:

July 2022:100%
June 2022: 99.99%
May 2022: 100%
April 2022: 99.96%
March 2022: 99.88%
February 2022: 99.99%

Free SSL Security

Security is another important aspect of a hosting service. Thankfully, it is an area where IONOS excels.

The service uses a GeoTrust Dedicated SSL Certificate and a Wildcard SSL certificate. This encrypts your website for advanced security, which is something that should help you breathe a sigh of relief when you’re conducting business online.

An SSL certificate is needed to have an HTTPS website. If your URL starts with HTTP, Google will actually mark your site as unsecured. Additionally, SSL certificates protect the data that is exchanged between users and the site. This helps your customers trust you more, which is the backbone of any business relationship

The GeoTrust Dedicated SSL Certificate is included with the server, Developer Shared Hosting, and Developer eShop packages. The Wildcard SSL Certificate comes standard with all Linux and Windows shared hosting plans.

Free Domain and Email Account

Extras are always nice. We love to see hosting packages throw in some bonus features at no cost when you subscribe to one of their paid options.

IONOS actually offers two of the most common free features, domain registration, and email address.

A domain name is free for one year with Essential, Business, and Expert Shared Hosting Packages.

When it comes to a branded email account (another necessity if you want to be taken seriously by the people you do business with), both the Linux and Windows packages come with an email account on all levels.

Hosting Features

When it comes to features, 1&1 IONOS is a mixed bag; its cloud hosting and dedicated hosting plans are fairly strong, while its shared hosting and VPS hosting are both pretty poor. In our research, 1&1 IONOS scored 3/5 for features, ranking 11th out of 12 providers we analysed in detail.

Below you can see some of the main features – including storage – for the Shared, Cloud and VPS hosting plans:

Hosting Plan	Shared	Cloud	VPS
Linux or Windows	Linux hosting	Linux hosting	Linux hosting, Windows hosting optional
SSL	SSL Wildcard Certificate	SSL Wildcard Certificate	SSL Wildcard Certificate
Storage	100GB to 500GB webspace	50GB to 160GB SSD storage	50GB to 160GB SSD storage
Traffic	Unlimited traffic	Unlimited traffic	Unlimited traffic
Email Accounts	25 to 500 email accounts	10,000 email accounts	250 email accounts
Domain	1 free domain for 12 months	1 free domain for 12 months	–

Shared Hosting Features Breakdown

When it comes to shared hosting features, 1&1 IONOS basically bombs. For starters, it doesn’t have the industry standard cPanel dashboard, using its own clunky alternative instead. Since many people start out with shared hosting, this makes the whole experience harder for those who need it to be the easiest. We’ve covered this in more detail in the ease of use section.

1&1 IONOS’ shared hosting plans are cheap, but you get what you pay for. Storage, traffic allowances, and power (CPU cores) are a mixture of sort of okay and pretty disappointing. Its low price may appeal, but honestly, for the $3.99 extra per month, it’s more than worth springing for an InMotion plan (our top shared hosting provider).

VPS Hosting Features Breakdown

Our main takeaway from the VPS hosting plans is that they’re just a bit… weak. They have, on average, fewer CPU cores (power) and less RAM (memory) than competitors, so you may find your site to be slower than if it were hosted with a different provider. Again, they’re cheap plans, and that’s the tradeoff. For strong VPS hosting, we recommend you take a look at InMotion instead, or Bluehost if you have a WordPress site.

Cloud Hosting Features Breakdown

Cloud hosting is something 1&1 IONOS does really well. Its strength lies in its scalability; with eight different plans available, it’s super easy to upgrade as and when you need to. Start small with the Cloud M plan for just $10/month, then ease up to the Cloud Flex plan ($350/month) as traffic picks up.

Dedicated Hosting Features Breakdown

It’s a similar story with 1&1 IONOS’ dedicated hosting plan. There’s plenty of power on offer; if your website is getting serious traffic, it’s in very safe hands. 1&1 IONOS has 15 data centers available across the globe – more than double the number of the closest competitor. Being able to choose a data center that’s close to your audience is vital for keeping your site as fast as possible.

Cons of Using IONOS Hosting

Now let’s have a look at what IONOS is lacking.

No Free Website Transfers

If you’re migrating your site to a new web host, a great way to sweeten the pot is to offer a free transfer.

It allows a new customer to take some of the stress and financial burden off of the process.

So if you want to migrate your site to IONOS be ready to pay $70/hour.

“Limited” Customer Support

Some time ago IONOS offered 24/7 customer support for non-registered and registered users only via phone, email, or knowledge base.

Just recently they also started offering a live chat option which we tested out.

We were connected to the customer support representative in less than a minute and asked a simple question about site migrations. Even though the customer support rep was very fast to reply, they only offered one-syllable answers and it felt like we had to force the information out of them.

Overall, it’s nice that IONOS also offers a live chat option now, but we feel that it could be better.

Account Registration Only Possible in Limited Amount of Countries

One of the things that you first might not even notice about IONOS, is that you can register your account with them only in a limited amount of countries. The majority of the countries are represented but for example, if you’re located in China and want to sign up with IONOS, it’s not possible as it’s not on their list.

The same goes for most European countries. Even though IONOS was established in Germany and its headquarters are still located there, only some of the European countries are represented on the list.

Few examples where you can’t sign up with IONOS:

China
Iran
Egypt
Morocco
Myanmar
Europe (Poland, Romania, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Czech Republic, etc)

So, you might be better off checking before signing up, if you can even continue the registration in your country.

Ease of Use

Hosting can be a daunting thing to approach, especially if you’re new to it. The good news is, it really doesn’t need to be! A good hosting provider will make your life as easy as possible. So how do 1&1 IONOS step up to make their customers feel at home?

One of the key things to consider is the customer interface. The control panel is where you manage your site and your account, and the interface is how the control panel is laid out and how you interact with it.

The control panel is where you can track analytics, set up marketing campaigns, or manage your email accounts. But how easy is it to navigate? After all, it’s really important the interface isn’t going to give you a migraine every time you open up the control panel.

Most hosting providers, such as HostGator and Bluehost, use cPanel, which is a popular and reliable control panel. 1&1 IONOS breaks this trend by using its own custom setup.

It’s all very well being different, but the truth is, 1&1 IONOS could do with updating its control panel. It’s pretty dated, and not the most intuitive interface out there. It can be confusing and take some getting used to.

Considering 1&1 IONOS is aiming at small business owners and everyone from beginners to techies, it could do a lot more to make its service more user-friendly. For first-timers or nervous starters, we don’t recommend 1&1 IONOS.

Conclusion

One&1 Ionos is giving you the power to run your business online from anywhere. With One&1 Ionos, it’s easy to get started in the business of selling products online. By bringing the power of the internet to your business, you can take your business to new heights. 1 How One&1 Ionos is making the process of running a business easier than ever, which will help you grow and succeed. Having a long-term investment strategy and being prepared for volatility are two important things to remember when investing in One&1 Ionos stock. Stay up-to-date on financial news and be prepared for potential changes with One&1 Ionos. Overall, One&1 Ionos is offering a great opportunity to start or expand your business online.