IONOS Web Hosting: plans, costs over 24 months, backups and data protection

For the reference project, a WordPress website with a .de domain, email address, SSL certificate and backups, the IONOS entry plan Web Hosting Standard is enough. According to the plan page it includes a domain, a mailbox, a DV wildcard certificate for one domain including its subdomains and a daily backup. The plan page does not list separate extra costs for these components.

IONOS uses introductory prices for new customers. In the entry plan the lower price applies for six months, in the Plus plan for twelve months. After that you pay the regular price, which in the entry plan is twice the introductory price. The entry plan also has a one-time setup fee; for the Plus plan, it is currently struck through on the plan page. For your planning, the regular price and the setup fee matter most. The 24-month calculation in the plan overview takes both into account. According to the footnote, prices include VAT.

According to the T&Cs, the contract is concluded with a minimum term of 12 months unless otherwise agreed. After that, it continues indefinitely and can be cancelled with one month's notice. The plan page notes that offers partly depend on minimum terms, and in the FAQ IONOS also mentions web hosting without a fixed term on request. The ordering process shows you which term applies to the introductory price.

There is a contradiction regarding the domain: the plan table speaks of a free domain for one year, while the help centre says included domains stay free for the duration of the contract. The costs over 24 months are therefore provisional: they assume that the included domain costs nothing extra in the second year. Before ordering, check in the cart whether domain fees apply from the second year.

For a single WordPress website, IONOS also has the separate offering Hosting for WordPress. According to the provider, its entry plan Start includes a permanently included domain, a mailbox, an SSL certificate and daily backups, lists no setup fee and costs less than Web Hosting Standard over 24 months. In return, it is limited to one website and less storage. You will find it under “All plans”.

In classic web hosting you install WordPress with a one-click installer that, according to IONOS, also covers Joomla, Drupal and other applications. WP-CLI is available for maintenance from the command line. IONOS mentions automatic updates on the plan page only in general terms in the security section, without saying whether WordPress, plugins and themes are included. IONOS does not describe staging for classic web hosting. The provider promotes automatic updates for its separate Hosting for WordPress offering, which runs as managed hosting.

According to the plan table, even the entry plan offers:

• 100 GB storage on NVMe SSDs
• 10 MariaDB databases with 2 GB each
• Shell access via SSH and SFTP accounts
• PHP 8.4, 8.3 and 8.2, selectable manually, plus Perl and Python
• Cron jobs via a cron manager

The larger plans mainly differ in storage, databases, mailboxes and CPU priority. From the Plus plan, a CDN and HiDrive cloud storage are added. The plan page does not state values such as memory_limit or the number of concurrent PHP processes. According to IONOS, web hosting has no root access; for that, the provider offers its own vServers.

According to the help centre, IONOS backs up the web space daily and keeps the backups for up to 14 days. For MySQL and MariaDB databases the help centre also names automatic backups with 14 days of retention. You restore deleted or overwritten files yourself in the IONOS account: you choose a backup, select files or folders, and IONOS places them in a separate directory from which you move them back into place. For databases you create a restore file and import it via phpMyAdmin or SSH. The help articles do not say whether a restore by support costs anything.

According to the plan page, security includes a DV wildcard certificate, DDoS protection and a malware scanner for websites. The plan table lists automatic malware removal from the Ultimate plan. You can protect your IONOS customer account with two-step verification, for example with an authenticator app.

On data protection, IONOS states that web servers and web space for web hosting are in Germany. According to the help centre, the data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR has been part of the IONOS terms since July 2022. For older contracts it can be concluded online in the customer account at no extra cost. The operator is IONOS SE, based in Montabaur. The company belongs to the listed IONOS Group SE, whose majority shareholder is United Internet AG.

The entry plan includes one domain. According to the plan table, the choices include .de, .com, .net and .org. DNS management, domain forwarding and subdomains are part of it.

The entry plan comes with one mailbox with 2 GB of storage. Plus offers two, Premium four and Ultimate five mailboxes, each with 2 GB. If you need several addresses for a team, you will hardly avoid a larger plan.

According to IONOS, you can reach support around the clock by phone, chat or email. On the contact page, IONOS states 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. According to the provider, a personal adviser is also available to you after ordering. These statements do not show how quickly and how well support helps in an individual case.

In our view, IONOS Web Hosting suits beginners, clubs and small companies that want to bundle a WordPress website with their own domain and an email address at one provider. Domain, certificate, mailbox and daily backups are already included in the entry plan, and according to the provider, support is available at any time.

The entry plan fits less well if you need several mailboxes or want to manage many client projects with permissions for clients and team. If you want to run WordPress without your own maintenance work, take a look at the separate Hosting for WordPress offering. Developers get SSH, WP-CLI, cron jobs and selectable PHP versions, but no root access.

With IONOS, always plan with the regular price and the setup fee. The low introductory price applies just for the first months.