Pros & Cons
-
- Excellent cloud hosting packages
- Many server customization options
- Easy-to-use website creation tools
- Many hosting plans for various budgets and needs
-
- Sparse email options
- Windows OS isn't available with all plans
- Lacks reseller hosting
Ionos by 1&1 Specs
| 24/7 Customer Support | |
| Cloud Hosting | |
| Dedicated Hosting | |
| Linux Servers | |
| Linux Servers - Cloud | |
| Maximum RAM - Dedicated | 64 |
| Maximum RAM - VPS | 12 |
| Maximum Storage - Cloud | 500GB |
| Maximum Storage - Dedicated | 80 |
| Maximum Storage - VPS | 240 |
| Shared Hosting | |
| Unlimited Monthly Data Transfers - Cloud | |
| Unlimited Monthly Data Transfers - Dedicated | |
| Unlimited Monthly Data Transfers - VPS | |
| Unlimited Monthly Data Transfers - WordPress | |
| Unlimited Storage - WordPress | |
| VPS Hosting | |
| Windows Hosting - Cloud | |
| Windows Servers | |
| WordPress Hosting |
Companies in need of feature-rich, reasonably priced hosting should consider Ionos. The web host, which caters to small and large hosting needs, offers a wide array of enticing packages, including shared, virtual private server (VPS), WordPress, and dedicated hosting. However, it's Ionos' robust cloud servers that set it apart from rival hosts. Ionos earns our Editors' Choice award for enterprise-class cloud hosting, alongside DreamHost, our top cloud-based pick for small businesses.
Shared Hosting: Affordable Prices, Skimpy Email
Shared hosting is one of the most popular forms of web hosting due to the low cost. With it, your website literally shares system resources (and the associated costs) with the many other sites hosted on that same server. Shared hosting isn't particularly powerful, but it's cheap web hosting. Sometimes, that's all you need.
(Credit: Ionos/PCMag)The entry-level Essential package ($8 per month or $4 per month with an annual subscription) includes a free domain name if you purchase at least a six-month plan. It also lets you host a single website and includes 10GB of storage, one email account, 10 databases, and unlimited monthly data transfers. The highest of Ionos' four shared hosting tiers is Ultimate ($18 per month or $10 per month with an annual subscription), which offers unlimited websites and storage, making it a more robust and flexible option. The shared web hosting servers run Linux, which is par for the course in the industry.
The Linux plans are good for, say, a mom-and-pop shop that just wants to list its inventory. The miserly email account offerings are particularly limiting for larger ventures, and unusual for the category, which typically offers unlimited email (though you can subscribe to one of Ionos' Mail plans for more accounts). HostGator, our Editors' Choice for shared hosting, offers unlimited email accounts.
VPS Hosting: Good Plans, With a Windows OS Option
VPS hosting is a step up from shared hosting. It's a more powerful option that sees your site leverage more server power. VPS hosting isn't cheap, but it isn't overly expensive either. You're less likely to notice a site slowdown because other sites on the same server take a big hit (which often happens with shared hosting).
(Credit: Ionos/PCMag)Ionos' five cloud-powered VPS offerings (starting at an extremely affordable $2 per month for 2GB of RAM, 90GB of NVMe storage, and unlimited data transfers) give you the essential tools for building a website that can handle the rigors of the internet better than traditional shared web hosting. Like Ionos' shared plans, the company's VPS plans don't offer much in the way of email; you can create just two email addresses.
You can outfit the Linux- or Windows-based servers with up to 24GB of RAM and 720GB of storage using the company's top-tier, $68-per-month VPS XXL package (discounted to an introductory $18 per month with a one-year purchase). Note that if you go the Windows route, the final price of your package can go up considerably due to licensing fees—$10 per vCore per month.
Ionos offers quality VPS web hosting packages, but Hostwinds, the Editors' Choice for VPS web hosting, tops them all by offering unlimited storage, unlimited domain hosting, and unlimited email. Hostwinds also offers flexible Minecraft VPS hosting starting at $4.99 per month.
Cloud Hosting: Excellent Specs for Big Businesses
Cloud hosting differs from traditional hosting in that it spreads resources across multiple servers, whereas traditional hosting relies on a single server. Ionos has wholeheartedly embraced this type of hosting, offering multiple tiers of managed and unmanaged cloud hosting that you can configure with Linux or Windows.
The four plans start at 0.8 cents per hour ($5.76 per month) for a single-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 60GB of SSD storage, and unlimited monthly transfers. The offerings max out at 12.5 cents per hour ($90.00 per month) for a 16-core CPU, 64GB of RAM, 960GB of SSD storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers. Depending on the tier, you can create between 10 and 100 email accounts, which is far more reasonable than other Ionos hosting plans.
Simply put, Ionos' cloud hosting packages are excellent, so much so that we crown the company an Editors' Choice winner for cloud hosting. If you want enterprise-class cloud hosting, Ionos is the way to go. DreamHost, on the other hand, is our Editors' Choice pick for smaller-scale sites that need a less demanding cloud hosting service.
Dedicated Hosting: AMD- or Intel-Powered Servers
When it comes to non-cloud hosting, you won't find anything more powerful than dedicated hosting. This hosting type lets your site leverage a server's full power, since it runs on the server by itself. No system-resource sharing here. Serious, mission-critical site-runners should consider dedicated hosting as soon as they can afford it.
Ionos offers several dedicated hosting tiers powered by either AMD or Intel servers. The plans come with either traditional hard drives or solid-state drives, which slightly affects the price. Ionos' dedicated servers are pay-as-you-go services that scale to match your business needs. AMD servers start with a Ryzen 5 Pro 3600 processor, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage ($81 per month or $73 per month with an annual plan).
(Credit: Ionos/PCMag)Dedicated Intel servers start with the Intel Xeon E-2356G processor, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and 2TB of HDD storage ($115 per month or $98 per month with a two-year plan). In a nice touch, you can create as many email accounts as you need with a dedicated hosting account, as long as they don't exceed the server capacity.
Both AMD and Intel dedicated servers have Windows configuration options, starting at $38 per month for a license. All of Ionos' dedicated hosting plans include Sitelock malware protection and the RailGun content delivery network (CDN) for faster page loads.
Those are good dedicated hosting plans, but consider AccuWeb's, which offers excellent tiers of configurable Linux- or Windows-powered servers. These start at $131 per month and include 32GB of RAM, 512GB of NVMe storage, and 100TB of monthly data transfers. You can outfit AccuWeb's dedicated servers with up to 256GB of memory, six 3.84TB drives' worth of NVMe storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers. As a result, AccuWeb Hosting's dedicated hosting plans reign as the category's Editors' Choice winner.
WordPress Plans: Signing Up for the Popular CMS
WordPress is the world's most popular content management system, with enough flexibility to power a blog or a Fortune 500 company's website. There are two ways to get WordPress up and running on an Ionos server. You can install WordPress on a standard server, or sign up for managed WordPress. Ionos has three Linux-based WordPress packages: Start ($9 per month or $5 per month for the first year), Grow ($14 per month or $1 per month for the first year), and Boost ($19 per month or $12 per month for the first year). The plans cost the same for both unmanaged and managed servers, and the annual prices rise after the first year (though they're still a discount compared with paying monthly over a year).
Similar Products
Our Current Picks for The Best Cheap Web Hosting Services for 2026
Start offers 25GB of SSD storage, one email account, the ability to host a single domain, and one free URL. Grow offers 50GB of SSD storage and five email accounts. Boost, the most robust of the three options, boasts 75GB of SSD storage and 10 email accounts. All plans include automatic malware detection and removal, automatic WordPress updates, a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, and a curated list of recommended WordPress themes.
That's a solid offering, but WP Engine takes the crown as our Editors' Choice for WordPress hosting due to its robust, highly scalable plans that cater to larger businesses. Likewise, Bluehost is a top WordPress pick, featuring a dedicated design tool with more WordPress customization options. (For more information on this extremely popular content management system, read about how to get started with WordPress.)
No Reseller Hosting Plans
If you're looking to get into the web hosting business but don't want to deal with infrastructure matters, reseller hosting is the way to go. However, Ionos lacks reseller plans, so you must look elsewhere for that type of hosting.
PCMag recommends Hostwinds, the Editors' Choice for reseller hosting. Hostwind's plans have unlimited email, storage, and data transfers. Dedicated and VPS packages are available in both Linux and Windows varieties, as is shared hosting, which is limited to Linux. The servers have the same RAM and storage amounts as those that Hostwinds supplies directly, which is not always the case. Hostwinds also lets you apply your own branding to the servers you rent and provides 24/7 tech support.
Building a Website With Ionos
If you're looking to create and customize a website, Ionos offers MyWebsite, a web-building tool with the functionality you'd expect from top services like the excellent Duda. MyWebsite uses a more standard layout, with the main toolbar on the left side rail. It also offers drag-and-drop functionality for easy page customization without requiring coding know-how. The Starter package costs $6 per month for a one-year package and renews at $18 per month thereafter. This gives you a free domain and email.
The website builder has an AI component for quickly building pages. With it, we entered prompts to whip up a retro-gaming-focused website in a few minutes, then manually tweaked it for further customization. That tweaking is important because AI website builders sometimes disappoint with their fairly generic results.
(Credit: Ionos/PCMag)For a more versatile toolset, you can opt for Plus ($1 per month for one year, $20 per month upon renewal). It gave us multilingual website options and dynamic site functionality, including cool video backgrounds and animations. The Pro tier offers specialized, dynamic content delivery options for your visitors for $17 per month for one year ($32 per month upon renewing).
If you want to sell products, the Ionos e-commerce website builder (starting at $1 per month for one year) lets you choose from several layouts and designs. It lets you drag-and-drop prefab design elements, but there wasn't much we could tweak manually during our testing. Ionos prompts you to (optionally) enter your sales tax ID and whether you want to display items with or without the sales tax included in the price. You can add products, list delivery methods and accepted payment types, and more. There's also a customer database for keeping track of your customers.
Ionos also offers dozens of apps for improving your website, including Amazon Deals, PriceGrabber, and Square Point of Sale. However, many are available only on the top-tier Online Store Expert plan ($92 per month).
For more on getting started online, read our tips on how to create a website. You might also want to check out our story on how to register a domain name for your website.
Security Features
Ionos includes a GeoTrust Dedicated SSL Certificate (encrypted website security that protects data exchanges between users and your site) free of charge with its Server, Developer Shared Hosting, and Developer eShop packages. If you don't have one of those plans, you can purchase a GeoTrust Dedicated SSL Certificate starting at $25 per year. Alternatively, you can buy a full GeoTrust True BusinessID Extended Validation SSL Certificate costing a hefty $200 per year.
A free SSL Wildcard and Site Scan from SiteLock are free features offered by Ionos to protect your website from hackers, malware, and unauthorized access. If you opt to display the SiteLock Trust Seal on your website, your visitors will see real-time verification that the site is secure.
Ionos' Uptime Promise
Website uptime is a vital element of web hosting. If your site goes down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services. It's in your best interest to find a reliable web host that can keep your site up and running. Otherwise, customers may go elsewhere and never come back.
Ionos offers a 99% uptime guarantee, which means your site should be available nearly all the time. You can view Ionos' server status via its Ionos Status Page.
Good Customer Service
If you have any problems with your hosting plan or simply have a hosting-related question, you can rest easy knowing that Ionos offers 24/7 email, web chat, and telephone support. How a company's customer service department responds to your complaint or query is vital, so we tested Ionos' mettle by placing calls on a weekday morning and evening.
We wanted to know the difference, if any, between Ionos' standard web hosting and its WordPress hosting offering, so we dropped a query in the online chat box. About three minutes later, an Ionos support person fielded our call. The rep correctly stated that WordPress hosting lets Ionos automatically update WordPress and any installed plug-ins—something users would otherwise handle manually with Ionos' standard offering. Ionos also has 24/7 phone support and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Ionos offers a decent 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can cancel the service at any time.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Ionos)
Ionos Web Hosting
Ionos stands out from the web hosting pack with a wide array of plans, most notably its excellent cloud packages, which place the service among the elite options in the field.