IONOS is one of Europe’s largest web hosting companies that has over 12 million customers across the continent.
The company, formerly known as 1&1 or 1&1 internet, offers a wide range of web hosting products that range from shared hosting, cloud servers, domain names, SSL certificates and business email.
One of the good things about IONOS is that unlike GoDaddy they do not charge you for standard features such as SSL certificates and backups and they are also one of the very few hosts that include DDOS protection.
IONOS is a budget-friendly web host for those who are looking for a simple option. However, when compared to smaller web-hosting providers, IONOS falls short in several areas.
One of these areas is email hosting, IONOS only offers 1 mailbox per account and if you require more than one mailbox you will have to pay extra.
Performance is not as great as they make it out to be, it’s actually pretty disappointing, it’s sluggish and not what you would expect from a company that claims to be the UK’s ‘fastest web host’.
But one of the biggest eye-openers is that they are not transparent on pricing and there is nothing more distasteful than dealing with a company that has hidden charges.
As I’ve said many a time, being the biggest does not make you the best.
So without further ado, let’s look at IONOS alternatives and what they do better.
All prices listed on this page are excluding VAT.
DotEngine
DotEngine is a managed UK cloud hosting provider that offers application support that includes WordPress.
You can register domain names from £8.99 per year, and you get a free 10GB email account with every domain. You also get full domain name DNS management that is powered by Google Cloud DNS.
Web hosting plans start from £5.99 per month and include 100GB disk space, unlimited email mailboxes, free SSL, free CDN, daily backups and DDOS protection.
Better than IONOS:
- Cheaper
- Free migrations
- Free email forwarders
- Free SSL certificates
- Free CDN
- DDOS protection
- Free business email address
- No single point of failure
- Autoscaling hosting
- 70+ one-click app installations
- WordPress optimised
Krystal
Krystal is an independent cPanel UK host in a league of their own. They have an excellent record for both performance and customer support.
Krystal has several hosting plans that differentiate by disk space. Their starter AMETHYST plan costs £4.99 per month and includes 10GB of disk space free SSL, 2 Tbps of DDoS protection, free email, and backups.
If you are looking for an unlimited plan their £9.99 per month RUBY plan may be of interest.
Krystal uses LiteSpeed web server for their shared platform which is an excellent choice for WordPress, Drupal and Joomla websites.
Krystal domain names start from £7.99 per year and offer free DNS management.
Better than IONOS:
- Cheaper
- Free SSL certificates
- Free DDOS protection
- Free business email address
- Faster more reliable hosting
- One-click app installations
- WordPress optimised
Guru
Also see: Guru hosting review
Guru is a managed cPanel cloud hosting provider. They offer multiple plans depending on the amount of power you require.
Their servers are powered by LiteSpeed and they are a true cloud host, meaning that your website is not tied down to a single server, so if something fails your website will remain online.
Guru is very generous with its web space allowance, their starter shared plan offers a whopping 100GB of web space for £5.99 per month which includes free SSL, daily backups, and 1000GB of bandwidth.
The only letdown with Guru is that their shared plans do not include email but this is available as an add-on service.
Guru domain names start from £7 and offer free DNS management.
Better than IONOS:
- Cheaper
- Free SSL certificates
- Faster more reliable hosting
- One-click app installations
- WordPress optimised
20i
Founded in 2016, 20i has quickly grown to become one of the top-rated web hosting companies in the UK.
Their unique autoscaling platform and proprietary control panel sets them apart from traditional cPanel web hosts like Guru and Krystal and they include SSL and backups free in all of their individual hosting plans.
Web hosting starts from £4.99, WordPress hosting starts from £5.99.
Better than IONOS:
- Cheaper
- Free migrations
- Free email forwarders
- Free SSL certificates
- Free CDN
- Free DDOS protection
- Free email inboxes
- Autoscaling hosting