THE BEST DEALS OF THE DAY
Better known as the domain name registrar, Gandi is a French web server registered in 1999 and launched a year later. Their success story began with a vision from Internet pioneers Pierre Beyssac, Laurent Chemla, David Nahmias, and Valentin Lacambre, and was later acquired by an experienced management team who would help them realize that vision.
In two decades, Gandi has remained a "small but mighty" company employing more than 150 different experts on three continents, with offices in France, the United States, Canada, Luxembourg and Taiwan. They currently manage more than 2.4 million domain names and host more than 100,000 websites from 192 countries around the world. At the time of writing, Gandi is considered the leading domain name registrar in France, the sixth in Europe and among the top 10 in the world.
Gandi's head office is in Paris, France, the world capital of love and enlightenment, and its data centers are in France and Luxembourg. Their official site is nice to see and just as easy to use. It is also available in English, French, Spanish, Chinese (both Orthodox and Simplified), and Japanese, and the translations appear to be done from start to finish.
Social media fans can follow Gandi on Facebook, Twitter, and GitHub, and all accounts seem to be more active than not.
Award
Gandi's range of hosting solutions covers both the low-end and high-end of the market, which means there is something for everyone. Those who want something simple will check out their shared hosting or WordPress hosting solutions, while those interested in something more advanced will opt for one of their cloud, VPS, or IaaS hosting packages.
While the starting price is surprisingly cheap (currently 85% off) for new users, it will end with the promotional period after which you'll be billed at the regular price. The easiest shared hosting plan to use is "Starter" and for €0,90 ($1,05) per month it will provide you with two websites (which is more of a recommendation), 1 CPU (up to 256MB), Bandwidth unlimited, 50 GB of storage space (can be expanded up to 2 TB), free TLS / SSL certificates, automatic link to your domains, one-click installations and Varnish web accelerator. The only thing that changes with "bigger and better" shared hosting plans is the number of processors.
While Gandi does not offer a money-back guarantee, there is a 10-day free trial and you won't even have to fill out your credit card information.
Gandi accepts payments via major credit cards, PayPal, electronic bank transfers, checks (for French residents only), and cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash).
Ease of use
To get started with Gandi, you'll first need to choose a hosting plan, which shouldn't be a difficult task as they're all laid out transparently. Press the "Select" button to access the configuration page where you can choose between "Standard" (which includes the installation of PHP 7.3, MySQL 8.0 and WordPress) and "Custom" (where you can select a programming language, a version for PHP and database) plan type. Available programming languages include PHP, Node.js, Python, and Ruby, and there are a few versions of PHP (7.2, 7.3, 7.4, and 8.0), MySQL (5.7, and 8.0), and PostgreSQL (11, 12, and 13). ) databases, so choose wisely.
Before proceeding, you will also need to select a data center location (France or Luxembourg) and confirm the plan you have previously chosen. However, this is where we should point out that if you want to take advantage of the free trial, this is where you can select a "no obligation" 10-day trial as your plan. It will provide you with all the features of the "Medium" plan.
You will now need to create an account with Gandi (if you don't have one) and to do so, you will be asked to provide a username and email address, as well as a password. After that, you will be transferred to the Gandi dashboard, which looks quite advanced but easy to use. Here you can do everything from managing your account information to browsing other Gandi products and checking procedures, to creating a new site, connecting your domain to it, installing WordPress, and implementing your creativity. .
If you already have a great site, you can download it via SFTP, as there is no browser-based file manager that you would normally get with the more popular control panels. It should also be noted that all Gandi hosting solutions come with a free snapshot backup feature. This means that if everything crashes, you can restore your site data at no additional cost.
Speed and experience
Although Gandi doesn't boast of its fast performance, a GTmetrix speed test report that was carried out on Gandi's site shows that it would have a valid case for doing so. The site fully loaded in just 1.3 seconds, which seems nothing short of exceptional compared to the 8.1 second average. At the same time, all of the other critical speed metrics - higher content paint, total hang time, and cumulative design lag - gave us one of the most flawless performances we've seen in some time, resulting in an A ( 100%) as a final GTmetrix rating.
When it comes to availability, Gandi doesn't say much more than guaranteeing 99,95% availability per day, which is backed by their “Simple Hosting” contracts. If the downtime exceeds that, you will be properly compensated with credits equal to a full day of accommodation. Fortunately, we had no reason to test this on our own, as not a single second of downtime was recorded during our two weeks of testing via UptimeRobot (our tool of choice).
Support
All freelancers will be happy to know that they will get everything they normally expect from Gandi. There's a help center, a comprehensive knowledge base, an FAQ section, a server status page, and everything seems up-to-date. That said, while the guides cover most of the terrain, they are not particularly suitable for beginners.
On the other hand, experienced users may find more help than they would like with Gandi. For example, some questions in the "Domain Names" section are grouped under the "Advanced Users" tab and include information about Gandi's secondary nameservers, configuration templates, Glue logs, and more.
Those wishing to contact the Gandi support team can do so by opening a ticket or scheduling a phone appointment with a member of the team. Unfortunately, Gandi doesn't offer 24-hour phone support, and we only noticed the "semi-live" chat option after selecting a plan, both of which can turn off less-experienced users.
Competition
If you are a French user who wants to find an alternative to Gandi without going global, OVHcloud is another French host and a good place to start. Both are poorly supported and aimed at tech savvy users capable of offering some of the most comprehensive cloud solutions on the market. However, there are some differences. Gandi is a bit cheaper up front and offers a 10-day free trial, while OVHcloud has some nice freebies (like a domain name for the first year), but it doesn't offer a free trial or money-back guarantee.
Nuxit is another long-standing French host, but it only offers its services to clients in France, so it is impossible to recommend users elsewhere. However, if that's not an issue for you, be sure to check it out. Nuxit offers a wide variety of usability, security and performance improvement features, 24-hour customer support, and a 30-day money-back guarantee, where you'll have plenty of time to test everything before the big decision is made. .
Bluehost and Gandi are somewhat similar in terms of price. Both hosts offer a huge discount right out of the box, only so that you can then go up in price just as big. However, to be fair, they are both commendable and transparent about it.
Like Bluehost, HostGator is a US-based web server with all of its data centers within the borders of its home country. On the other hand, with Gandi, you have the option to choose between data centers in France and Luxembourg, which makes Gandi more attractive to European users. On top of that, with Bluehost and HostGator, users can expect a more beginner-friendly experience, while Gandi hopes its users will know how to get around.
Final verdict
Gandi promises simple, scalable and secure hosting solutions, and as far as we are concerned, it delivers on this promise with flying colors. It may not be the cheapest option on the market, but it offers excellent value for money, convenience and credibility. However, Gandi has a few drawbacks, making it not the ideal option for everyone.
If you can't cope with below-average support or don't have data centers outside of Europe, you should struggle less with hosts like HostGator and Bluehost.
THE BEST DEALS OF THE DAY