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The web hosting category is a vast one that includes low-cost shared servers for blogging purposes and powerful, dedicated servers that can handle high traffic volumes. ScalaHosting believes there’s ample space for something in the middle. Although ScalaHosting has many hosting options, its primary offering is managed cloud VPS. ScalaHosting touts this as the best of all worlds, with reliability, performance, and support that takes server maintenance out of your hands. ScalaHosting is a strong contender in the cloud and VPS categories, but it lacks the many tiers and server OS options found in our Editors’ Choice winners, DreamHost and Hostwinds.ScalaHosting Shared PlansScalaHosting has four shared hosting tiers. With shared hosting, your website lives on a server with other sites. The websites share server resources (hence the category’s name), which lowers the individual costs. Unfortunately, this also means that a traffic spike on Site X may take server resources from Site Y, impacting performance. If you need more resources or reliability, VPS or dedicated hosting is the way to go. More on those in a bit.
ScalaHosting offers monthly, annual, and triannual plans. The cost goes down as you commit to longer annual terms.Mini (which starts at $2.95 per month with an annual commitment and renews at $11.95 per month) is the entry-level shared plan that has enough server resources for a single site. It includes 10GB of NVMe storage and unlimited monthly data transfers. The Start plan (which starts at $5.95 per month with an annual commitment and renews at $14.95 per month) lets you create unlimited sites and offers 50GB of storage, unlimited monthly data transfers, and daily offsite backups. The Advanced plan (starting at $9.95 per month with an annual commitment and renewing at $19.95 per month) kicks the available NVMe storage up to 100GB and tacks priority support onto the package. The most powerful plan in this tier, Entry Cloud (starting at $19.95 per month with an annual commitment and renewing at $34.95 per month), offers dedicated CPU and RAM, and 50GB of upgradable NVMe SSD storage.Note that ScalaHosting lacks Windows-based shared hosting options—it’s Linux or bust. For a server powered by Microsoft’s operating system, check out HostGator, our Editors’ Choice winner for shared hosting. It offers a choice of Linux- or Windows-based servers at competitive prices, plus monthly shared hosting plans.
(Credit: ScalaHosting)
ScalaHosting Cloud VPS PlansVirtual private server (VPS) hosting is a step up from shared hosting. With VPS hosting, multiple sites live on the same server, but in a far less crowded fashion than shared hosting. It’s a good option if you’re looking for more server power and reliability, but don’t want to spend too much money. ScalaHosting’s VPS servers use cloud infrastructure, which means you can scale your servers to suit your needs, similar to the Cloud VPS offerings from services like LiquidWeb. You can select managed, self-managed, or even Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers.Managed VPS hosting comes in four tiers. The Build 1 plan (which starts at $25.95 per month with an annual commitment and renews at $49.95 per month) gives you two CPU cores, 4GB of RAM, 50GB of NVMe storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers. Next up is the Build 2 plan (starting at $44.95 per month with an annual commitment and renewing at $91.95 per month), which offers four CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, and 100GB of storage. If you need more server power, the Build 3 plan (starting at $69.95 per month with an annual commitment and renewing at $165.95 per month) bumps the CPU cores to eight, RAM to 16GB, and storage to 150GB. Finally, the high-end Build 4 plan (which starts at $94.95 per month with an annual commitment and renews at $239.95 per month) contains 12 CPU cores, 24GB of RAM, and 200GB of NVMe storage.Sself-managed VPS hosting retains the same plan structure, albeit with lower pricing. The Build 1 plan for self-managed cloud hosting (which starts at $19.95 per month with an annual commitment and renews at $24.95 per month) has two CPU cores, 4GB of RAM, 50GB NVMe storage, and 3TB of monthly data transfers. Build 2 (starting at $36.95 per month with an annual commitment and renewing at $49.95 per month) offers four CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, and 100GB of storage. Build 3 (which starts at $69.95 per month with an annual commitment and renews at $95.95 per month) boosts those numbers to eight CPU cores, 16GB of RAM, and 160GB of storage. Finally, the Build 4 plan (starting at $122.95 per month with an annual commitment and renewing at $183.95 per month) nets you 16 CPU cores, 32GB of RAM, and 240GB of NVMe storage. Lastly, AWS VPS services come in four tiers. AWS4GB ($61.95 per month) offers 4GB of RAM, 80GB SSD storage, and 4TB of monthly data transfers. AWS8GB ($89.95 per month) offers 8GB of RAM, 160GB of SSD storage, and 5TB of monthly data transfers. AWS16GB ($149.95 monthly) gets you 16GB of RAM, 320GB of SSD storage, and 6TB of monthly data transfers. The highest tier, AWS32GB ($249.95 per month), offers 32GB of RAM, 640GB SSD storage, and 7TB of monthly data transfers.None of these tiers are set in stone, though. ScalaHosting lets you configure your VPS hosting plan using numerous sliders. For example, RAM maxes out at 64GB and NVMe storage can go as high as 2TB. Configuring a top-tier, managed VPS server is $839.95 per month; most people won’t need that, but it’s great that you are given a choice. ScalaHosting also offers customizable, self-managed VPS plans if you want to get your hands dirty with server care. Customized, self-managed VPS plans also have Windows-based servers as an option (an additional $20 per month). ScalaHosting’s VPS servers are satisfyingly flexible, but don’t quite dethrone Hostwinds, our Editors’ Choice winner for VPS web hosting. Hostwinds’ lowest tier is $10.99 per month for one CPU core, 1GB of RAM, 30GB of SSD space, and 1TB of monthly data transfer. Plus, Hostwinds lets you set up a Windows-based server. Likewise, if you are in the market for purely cloud-based hosting options, take a look at DreamHost. And if you need more overall cloud power, check out the enterprise-grade Ionos. That web host is ready for high-end and enterprise users with its impressive (and expensive) cloud hosting options.ScalaHosting WordPress PlansScalaHosting lets you install the WordPress content management system (CMS) onto any server. However, it also offers WordPress-only servers. There are four tiers: WP Mini, WP Start, WP Advanced, and WP Entry Cloud. In terms of specs and pricing, they mirror the company’s shared hosting options.Once again, ScalaHosting stands close to the competition. ScalaHosting’s WP Mini plan renews at $11.95 per month, which is comparable to Bluehost’s $11.99 per month Basic WordPress plan. For more robust WordPress services, A2 Hosting excels by offering 50GB of NVMe strorage with its basic plan, and unlimited monthly transfers. If you’re just getting into WordPress, A2 is a great place to start.ScalaHosting Reseller and Dedicated PlansIf you’re looking to get in on the web hosting business but don’t want to mess with expensive physical server infrastructure, ScalaHosting has several reseller hosting packages. The beginning tier is Scala1. For $17.95 per month, you get access to 25GB of SSD storage, daily offsite backups, and up to 20 CPanel accounts. That scales up to Entry Cloud ($29.95 per month), which has 50GB of upgradable SSD storage and unlimited CPanel accounts. That said, Hostwinds remains the reseller hosting top dog. The company’s plans mirror its shared hosting plans, starting at $6.99 per month for unlimited email, storage, and data transfers. On offer are dedicated and VPS packages of both the Linux and Windows varieties, as well as shared hosting, which is limited to Linux. Hostwinds also lets you apply your branding to the servers you rent, and it supplies 24/7 tech support, too.Unfortunately, ScalaHosting lacks dedicated web hosting. If you’re interested in that level of high-end hosting, check out AccuWeb Hosting, our Editors’ Choice winner.
(Credit: ScalaHosting)
Building a ScalaHosting WebsiteOnce you’ve signed up for service, ScalaHosting offers a fairly standard backend client area. You can configure your servers to use either the free SPanel or the industry-standard CPanel, with the latter having an additional licensing cost. CPanel pricing starts at $26.95 for five accounts, and the price increases as you add more websites (for example, $32.95 for 30 accounts). We built a website using the SitePad website builder. It let us select a site design from several attractive themes, upload images, and create pages as needed. That said, the bespoke site builders some other hosts offer contain more user-friendly options that guide you through the process and provide context on how website elements fit together. Squarespace and Wix, for example, offer very easy-to-use website builders.For more on getting started with web hosting, you should learn how to create a website. You might also want to check out how to register a domain name for your website. Don’t forget to read our SEO tips, too.ScalaHosting E-Commerce OptionsWith ScalaHosting, you have access to several standard e-commerce services. OpenCart, osCommerce, Magento, ZenCart, and more are available for installation at the press of a button. With just a few clicks, you can install a shopping cart and create a great online store via simple drag-and-drop functionality. Excellent UptimeA great site is nothing if it keeps going down. ScalaHosting has an uptime guarantee that credits you with a percentage of your subscription for every unscheduled downtime that sinks your site’s uptime below 99.8%. If your uptime dips beneath 99%, you’ll receive a 100% credit to your account, which is both cool and reassuring.We used a website-monitoring tool to track the uptime of the site we created on ScalaHosting’s service over 14 days. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings the website and sends an email if it is unable to contact the site for at least a minute. The testing data revealed that ScalaHosting didn’t have any failures over a two-week testing period. Building a website might be harder with ScalaHosting compared with some of the competition, but the site you build will rarely go down.
5 Things You Need to Know About Web Hosting
Strong Customer ServiceScalaHosting has excellent customer support. Before you sign up, you can access the company’s Knowledge Base and live web chat for answers. The live web chat delivers fast responses in a short amount of time; the customer service reps quickly answered our questions.ScalaHosting has a 30-day money-back guarantee that offers a full refund. More specifically, the first 30 days of service are fully refundable. If your service exceeds 30 days, ScalaHosting offers what it calls an anytime money-back guarantee, in which the company issues a pro-rated refund for the remaining days. These are generous conditions that make it a service well worth considering.Verdict: A Dependable VPS-Focused Web Hosting ServiceScalaHosting believes in the power of a managed VPS service; it’s where the company’s strengths lie. If you’re looking for VPS hosting that scales resources as your site grows and doesn’t cost a lot of money, ScalaHosting is a high-quality service we recommend. Just keep in mind that rival web hosts, such as Editors’ Choice winners Dreamhost and Hostwind, offer more plan and server OS options should you want to expand in the future.Mike Williams contributed to this review.
Pros
Reliable uptime
Flexible VPS hosting plans
Good prices
Dependable customer service
Prorated, money-back guarantee
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The Bottom Line
ScalaHosting offers well-priced, flexible cloud-based VPS hosting plans and reliable uptime that serve your business or personal hosting needs.
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