THE BEST DEALS OF THE DAY
Founded in 1997 in Germany, Host Europe has enjoyed and enjoyed some success, and continues to provide web hosting solutions for individuals, small and medium-sized businesses. They claim that their primary goal is to provide their customers with the highest quality internet and server hosting possible. This rings true when you consider that they have won more than a couple of awards over the years.
In Readers' Choice Host Europe was voted Best Service Provider of 2019, 2020nd Best in XNUMX, and XNUMXnd Best in the Cloud Hosting category. They also received gold three times at Hosting and Service Provider Summits and received further awards from HOSTtest.de and the CHIP test portal for optimal accessibility.
Host Europe was one of the brands of HEG (Host Europe Group), a web hosting, email and domain registrar giant founded in 1997, together with its subsidiary. In December 2016, GoDaddy acquired HEG, and its name will be removed if the news is confirmed. However, this should not have a significant impact on the host Europe.
Host Europe has its headquarters in Cologne and two “energy efficient and secure” data centers in Cologne and Strasbourg. If you want to learn more about these two, the "Technology" section of their website has a lot of information about them.
The Official Host Europe site looks and feels dated, but not necessarily in a bad way, as it makes navigating pretty straightforward. The site is available in German and English and has a good blog, which is unfortunately not translated into English.
You can find Host Europe on Facebook (which is in English, although related articles are usually in German) and Twitter (which is openly exclusive to its German-speaking subscribers).
Award
Host Europe solutions include Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Ecommerce Hosting, VPS, Reseller Hosting, and Dedicated Server Hosting, as well as Domain Name Registration, SSL Certificates, Backup Storage, Site Security, Tools Microsoft 365, business email, and a website. builder. .
While Host Europe's hosting plans are generally affordable, choosing between them depends on whether you want to pay monthly or annually. The price is the same, but if you want to commit to just one month, you will also have to pay a one-time setup fee of € 14,99 (€ 17,30).
Whatever the billing cycle, for €4,99 (€5,75) per month, the "Basic" plan will get you one annual domain, SSL, 50 GB of storage space, two MySQL databases, one migration automated mailbox (included in the first 30 days) and antivirus protection from Kaspersky. The more expensive plans will not add additional features, but will increase the amount of storage space, the number of databases, and the number of antivirus software solutions.
Although Host Europe does not offer a money back guarantee, you can cancel your contract with them within four weeks.
Regarding payment methods, Host Europe accepts all major credit cards, PayPal, and SEPA direct debit.
Ease of use
To create an account with Host Europe, you will need to provide your full name, phone number, email and physical address, and create a strong password. Here you can choose whether you want to be contacted by email, phone or both. Depending on your choice, together you will receive an order confirmation by message or email, containing extremely detailed explanations of the features you can expect to receive, the cancellation policy, the terms and conditions, and the privacy policy.
After adding your payment information and making a purchase, you will be transferred to the Host Europe panel, which (unfortunately for non-German users) has an incomplete English translation. To be fair, the most important information is fully translated into English, but there are still parts in German, including the FAQ section that can be accessed through the control panel.
Since Host Europe is not the fastest provider, you may have to wait a while to find out if your order has been accepted or not. If so, you will need to provide additional information about your order before you can start using the product you have purchased. Lately, Host Europe is providing easy-to-use cPanel with its Linux-based products, and Plesk is available with Windows hosting packages, the two most popular control panels in the industry.
When it comes to website creation, in addition to a wide variety of CMS options (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.), e-commerce applications (Magento, Blestan, OpenCart, etc.), creation tools of communities (phpBB, Booked, Dada Mail etc) and other useful applications that you can easily install via Installatron, you will also get a simple version of a beginner website builder. To get more of everything (sites, web space per site, templates, email accounts, etc.), you will need to purchase one of the larger website builder plans as a plug-in.
Speed and experience
After taking the official Host Europe website to the GTmetrix speed test, we got overall average results. The time it took for the site to fully load was an incredible 1.3 seconds, but all the other vital speed metrics - increased content paint, total block time, and cumulative design change - were caught in the abyss of mean, which which led to the final score up to B (74%).
In terms of availability, Host Europe guarantees 99,95% availability of its data centers on a monthly average, excluding scheduled (and unscheduled) maintenance windows. This can translate to 4,5 hours of downtime per year, or about 10 minutes for two weeks.
After monitoring Host Europe official website uptime via UptimeRobot for two weeks, we experienced a disturbing 55 minute downtime, reducing total uptime to 99,76%, meaning that we should get good credit as compensation.
Support
If you need help, you can try to contact the Host Europe team via email, fax, live chat, and if you're in a hurry, a 24-hour phone number. Toll-free numbers are available for users in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as the "order hotline", which can be reached Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. m to XNUMX p.m. M.. There's even the Host Europe postal address if you want to write them an old-fashioned letter reminiscing about the "old days".
You can also look in the "Forms and Documents" section if you have questions about the Terms of Service, and it is available in English and German. There's also a well-equipped FAQ section (it's closer to a knowledge base), but it's not yet translated into English, which means that all users who don't understand German give themselves away. Unfortunately, there is no community forum as a last resort before contacting support staff.
Competition
If you want a well-rounded host that gives you more than enough time to decide whether you want to stay with them or go their separate ways, HostGator may be worth checking out. As well as offering an extensive 45-day money-back guarantee, it is also aimed at English-speaking users who become more attractive in an international market than Host Europe.
Another US-based alternative to Host Europe is Bluehost, a host known for its affordable prices and not particularly for price spikes after the promotional period. While there's a one-time setup fee with Host Europe with all monthly plans, at least you won't have to worry about price spikes.
If you're looking for a simple solution from Germany for personal or small business sites, a Berlin-based Strat might be worth a try. Although the scope of their hosting solution seems somewhat limited, all their plans support multi-domain hosting, come with free domain, free SSL certificate, many one-click installs, builder. Website and 30 days "no frills". Money back guarantee. Unlike Host Europe, Strato doesn't offer a monthly billing option, although the one you get with Host Europe will cost you a one-time setup fee.
Hostinger is one of the most popular hosts in Europe. It provides its users with access to its servers that are located all over the world, including the Americas, Europe, and Asia. With its 14-day "watch" period, you can try everything for yourself without worrying about your budget. Unfortunately, you won't have such luck with Host Europe.
Final verdict
Host Europe is an award-winning German veteran who is trusted by more than 250.000 customers at the time of this writing, and the number continues to grow. While it can accept data centers in Germany and France (sort of), the self-help options are German-only, a somewhat slow sign-up process, and considerable one-time setup costs (with monthly plans), be sure to give Host Europe. Otherwise HostGator or Bluehost might be a better option.
THE BEST DEALS OF THE DAY