IONOS Shared Hosting vs alwaysdata
A detailed comparison to help you choose between IONOS Shared Hosting and alwaysdata.
Quick Verdict
3.5/5
IONOS Shared Hosting
0 reviews
3.9/5
alwaysdata
0 reviews
alwaysdata is rated higher (3.9 vs 3.5). IONOS (1&1) offers shared hosting from €1/month with German/EU servers and a free domain. cPanel-like control panel, WordPress one-click install, and GDPR-compliant EU hosting. French managed hosting platform with a free 1 GB plan and paid managed-cloud plans from EUR 5/month, supporting many languages, databases, email and SSH access.
IONOS Shared Hosting German shared hosting from €1/month | alwaysdata Managed cloud hosting with integrated development tools and databases | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.5 (0 reviews) | 3.9 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Starting price | From $1/mo✓ | From $5/mo |
| Best for | European buyers wanting GDPR-aligned shared hosting on owned German infrastructure with generous included features — personal sites, local businesses, and WordPress beginners who will pick a tier by its renewal price | European developers, agencies, and public-sector buyers who need EU data residency, managed hosting, and developer tooling without enterprise complexity. |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | — | — |
| Storage | 100 GB | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | 99.99% | — |
| Data-center count | 10 | — |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | Frankfurt x2, Berlin (DE), Paris (FR), London, Worcester (UK), Logrono (ES), Las Vegas (NV), Newark (NJ), Lenexa (KS) (US) | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | eu datacentergdpr compliant | free tiereu datacentergdpr compliant |
| Visit IONOS Shared Hosting → | Visit alwaysdata → | |
IONOS Shared Hosting
Pros
- + Very low entry pricing ($1/mo Plus intro) on owned German infrastructure with 10 ISO 27001 data centres
- + NVMe storage on all tiers, unmetered traffic, geo-redundancy, daily backups and DDoS protection included
- + Free domain, wildcard SSL, and professional email bundled with every plan
- + Better developer surface than most shared hosts: SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI, git, cron, selectable PHP versions
- + 24/7 support plus a free personal consultant; 30-day money-back guarantee
Cons
- - Renewal jumps are brutal (Plus $1 -> $14/mo; up to ~1,300%), with a 2026 price adjustment on some tiers
- - Custom IONOS control panel instead of cPanel/Plesk — workflow and plugin ecosystem don't transfer
- - Shared-resource ceilings (CPU priority ladder, 512MB-class RAM on lower tiers) limit busy sites
- - Free domain is year one only; monthly billing without a term costs 2-3x the annual promo rate
- - Beginner-scoped product: no root, no staging; growth means moving to IONOS VPS or cloud
alwaysdata
Pros
- + Free-for-life 1 GB plan with no credit card required
- + Clear published pricing with concrete support commitments (15-minute tickets)
- + French data residency with owned infrastructure and native IPv6
- + Real developer tooling: SSH, Git, multi-language versions, hosted email and databases
- + Two decades of operation with major French institutions as references
Cons
- - France-only footprint — no North American or APAC presence
- - Plus tier caps at 8 CPU / 8 GB RAM, then a jump to €369/month Max
- - No managed Kubernetes, S3-compatible object storage, or marketplace ecosystem
- - Small community — troubleshooting knowledge base is thin outside their docs
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