With 15 years of expertise in the web hosting industry, ScalaHosting(opens in new tab) is a seasoned Dallas-based provider.
The product portfolio of ScalaHosting spans everything from shared hosting for basic websites to VPS(opens in new tab) for more complex commercial projects to specially designed managed clusters, a collection of servers that can handle even the biggest websites.
With only 20GB of storage and support for one site, ScalaHosting’s entry-level shared hosting plan(opens in new tab) seems a little underwhelming. Everything else, however, is as expected: free domain, free SSL (opens in new tab), free site migration, unlimited bandwidth, a 1-click WordPress installer, live chat and email support (not phone), and a few nice extras like remote backups of your sites for the last seven days.
More CPU resources, support for an unlimited number of websites, hacker protection, priority support, and SEO guidance to (hopefully) improve your Google ranking are all benefits of upgrading. The price increases to $5.95 per month for three years ($8.95 when you renew), but it is still reasonable considering what you get.
Similar to A2 Hosting, ScalaHosting only has 16 hosting locations in total, including Amsterdam and Singapore.(opens in new tab). All of ScalaHosting’s shared hosting plans utilise NVMe storage, something few of its rivals do. These discs are at least ten times as quick as an ordinary SSD.
These shared hosting plans are often of high quality, simple to use, equipped with all the essential features you’ll require, and reasonably priced considering what you get. a wise decision when hosting new users or for small to medium sized personal and company websites where speed is not a top priority.
Scala Hosting hosts WordPress
The WordPress plans from ScalaHosting are exactly like those in its shared lineup, offering the same features (as mentioned above) for the same cost (starting at $2.95 per month). However, there are respectable shared plans and some helpful WordPress-related features, so it isn’t necessarily a problem.
For instance, the firm promises to move as many sites as you request at no cost. You can only use one from many providers, and some don’t even offer free migration.
The servers of ScalaHosting have been configured with special security settings to thwart “99.9% of web attacks” and are optimised for WordPress performance.
The support staff goes above and beyond the typical server issue-solving to assist you with more WordPress-specific problems like plugin troubleshooting.
All plans include daily backups going back a week, which is something we don’t always see with less expensive WordPress hosting options. Malware scans and removal also keep your site and users secure.
ScalaHosting’s selection more than covers the essentials for a very low cost if you’re hoping to learn WordPress or utilise it to develop a modest personal or commercial website. The robust specialised plans from WordPress, IONOS(opens in new tab), and A2 Hosting, however, come with more potent WordPress capabilities as well as priceless business and other extras, if features are more important to you than bargain basement costs.
VPS hosting at ScalaHosting
With more capacity than shared hosting, ScalaHosting’s VPS (Virtual Private Server) plans dramatically improve load speeds and prevent the slowdowns you frequently experience with shared plans.
Prices for a system with two CPU cores, four GB of RAM, and fifty GB of SSD appear to be quite pricey at $29.95 per month, but you get a lot for your money. Unmetered bandwidth, free domain and SSL transfers, daily backups, WordPress backup, cloning, and staging, protection from malware and hacking, and no need to purchase a cPanel licence because the cPanel-compatible SPanel is included.
If the default four plans don’t meet your requirements, you can create your own by deciding on the optimal combination of CPU cores (2–24), RAM (4–128GB), and storage (50GB–2000GB).
Even the choice to host your VPS with Amazon AWS rather than ScalaHosting is available. Although they are more expensive, they may host your server in data centres all around the world and have far wider networks.
Although these aren’t plans for casual users or price-conscious shoppers, ScalaHosting almost surely offers a VPS for you if you’re working on a demanding project for medium to large or mission-critical websites.
ScalaHosting’s speed is how fast?
We measure website performance using a programme called GTmetrix to determine how long it takes for a page’s major content to load and show. (a figure known technically as Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP). The quicker your site loads in the browser and feels snappier and more responsive, the lower the LCP score is.
The LCP from ScalaHosting was 0.730 seconds. That’s slightly slower than average, but it’s still faster than budget providers like Domain.com (1.5 seconds) and iPage(opens in new tab) and within reach of household brands like GoDaddy (0.667 seconds) and GreenGeeks (0.692 seconds). (1.6 seconds.) In general, ScalaHosting’s shared hosting offers respectable performance that should be adequate for modest to medium-sized personal and commercial websites.
Another crucial component of hosting performance is reliability. Your website may load almost immediately, but if it is frequently unavailable, your visitors won’t be pleased.
Every five minutes for 14 days, Uptime.com checks a test website to determine its reliability; we register any passes and failures. Because Scala Hosting had no errors and achieved a flawless 100% uptime, the outcome was simple to calculate. That’s what we would anticipate for a little test, but it’s a promising beginning. Additionally, we’ve kept the Uptime.com test running and will periodically update this evaluation with longer-term findings.
How simple is it to use ScalaHosting?
The web dashboard for ScalaHosting is simple and easy to use. After logging in, your hosting plan is visible right away. The location of common tools is frequently only a click or two away. You can quickly access the many hosting administration tools in cPanel thanks to a button labelled “launch cPanel.” Additionally, the company uses the outstanding Softaculous as its 1-click WordPress installer, which further improves usability. We’ve set up numerous test WordPress sites, and Softaculous (opens in new tab) is by far the fastest, most customizable, and most dependable option.
We did discover a startling security problem. The ‘start cPanel’ button on the dashboard logs you in, but it does not create an encrypted HTTPS connection.It simply uses HTTP, therefore our browser displayed a “not secure” error. If we used an unsecured public Wi-Fi network to access cPanel(opens in new tab), others could be able to listen in on our conversations and possibly steal confidential data.
We opened a support ticket to inquire, reasoning that there must be some transient issue involving our account. In four minutes, an agent responded, but the message wasn’t good. He said we had to use hydra.vivawebhost.com:2083 to get a secure connection, and that the dashboard automatically uses a URL starting with hydra.vivawebhost.com:2082. He concluded by saying, “I’ll report that to our developers, and they’ll check if this can be fixed so you’ll be redirected to a secure connection from your client profile as well.”
In other words, even though you can log into cPanel securely using other URLs, if you do it from the dashboard, it automatically establishes an unsafe connection. Although it shouldn’t be necessary, your browser should make it plain that there is an issue, in the hopes that users would notice and try a new login method. Customers have a right to demand more attention to security issues than we see here because web hosts have access to some highly sensitive data.
What is the support like for ScalaHosting?
calaHosting provides 24/7 help through its website, live chat feature, and ticket/email system.
The company’s YouTube knowledge channel more than makes up for the site knowledgebase’s below-average size. With only 304 articles, for instance, the Hosting area covers shared, VPS, and reseller hosting, domains, DNS, security, email, and more. Although there is some helpful information on this site, it is mixed up with basic “how to” instructions, and using the search function effectively can be challenging.
Fortunately, contacting the support staff is quick and simple if the website is unable to assist. The agents that answered our test questions during our live chat sessions often responded in under a minute.
For complex issues, using tickets can make more sense, and ScalaHosting did well in this instance as well. Response times ranged from four to just under forty minutes, and they were informative and thorough.
Conclusion
Although the shared plans from ScalaHosting aren’t the fastest we’ve encountered, you get a lot of power for your money, so they can be suitable for bargain hunters with small- to medium-sized company websites. The company’s expert and highly adjustable VPS hosting, which has the ability to manage significant business-critical sites, is the true draw here.
