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Short on Time? These Are Scaleway’s Best Plans in 2024:
- Cloud Hosting Premium ($35) – Good startup option, with solid resource set, good features, and good value for medium-traffic websites.
- Dedicated Server Start-3-L ($66) – Cheap, entry-level dedicated server with more storage and better performance than some more expensive options.
- Dedicated Server Core-7-M-A ($320) – Best value, with an advanced CPU core, more storage, and better performance for high-traffic sites and large businesses.
Scaleway Features and Pricing Overview
Cheap Entry-Level Plans, but No Free Support Option
Scaleway keeps its prices low by not including managed support as part of its plans, like what you get with Liquid Web. You get cPanel with the cloud hosting plans, and it does offer various levels of paid support for all plans, but you will still have to configure and maintain the dedicated servers yourself, or hire someone to do this for you. There are three cloud hosting plans and around 30 dedicated server configurations available at any given time. Scaleway doesn’t set term lengths, so you pay on a monthly basis and can cancel at any time. You have 14 days to cancel your account and get a full refund. After that, you can cancel via email, but you won’t get a refund. Based in France, Scaleway’s prices are listed in euros. It accepts credit and debit cards, direct debit, and bank transfers. Scaleway is a great option if you’re looking for medium-to-enterprise scale hosting on a budget, but to get the most out of Scaleway, you may want to pay extra for advanced support and features, like backups.Cloud Hosting
Scaleway’s cloud hosting plans are some of the lowest-priced on the market. Although it does offer various paid support upgrades, the service is primarily designed for developers and experienced users. As such, beginners may want to try a service like Hostinger, which offers slightly less heavy-duty infrastructure, but is also very reasonably priced, and is more newbie-friendly.
The resources and features you get are a bit limited, but performance is solid, making Scaleway a reasonably-priced cloud hosting option for small-to-medium-sized businesses. But as with most cloud hosting, it’s not really intended for sites with consistently heavy traffic.
Essential
Scaleway’s Essential plan is one of the least expensive entry-level cloud hosting plans on the market. With 2 virtual CPUs, 1GB of RAM, and 500GB of SSD storage, it’s best for single-author blogs or other low-traffic websites that need to sustain occasional traffic surges. And like all Scaleway’s cloud hosting plans, you get one free domain name, as well as free SSL certificates, unlimited email accounts, and cPanel to manage your sites. Essential is most akin to Hostinger’s entry-level cloud hosting plan, as it provides the same number of vCPUs (2), more RAM (3GB), and less storage (200GB). But Hostinger provides better value with managed support and more free features, like automated daily backups. If you need to handle more sustained monthly visitors or power more complex websites, it might be worth upgrading to Performance or Premium.Performance
For less than double the price of Essential, Scaleway’s Performance plan gives you double the vCPU (4), double the RAM (2GB), and 50% more SSD storage (750GB). You get the same features, so whether or not to choose this plan comes down to your resource needs. This plan is most comparable to Hostinger’s midrange cloud hosting plan. But while you get 750GB storage with Scaleway versus Hostinger’s 250GB, Hostinger again offers more RAM (6GB) and more features.Premium
Premium is the most expensive Scaleway cloud hosting plan, but it offers the best value of the three. You get the same features as the other plans, but Premium’s 8 vCPUs are twice as many as Performance and four times as many as Essential. And while it gives you the same 750GB of storage as Performance, you get 8GB of RAM. You can take the fullest advantage of Scaleway’s unlimited traffic and its unlimited number of domains with the Premium plan, but given its resource caps, it’s still best for medium-sized businesses with periodic traffic surges that aren’t too enormous. Kamatera’s customizable cloud hosting with per-second charges is a better option for higher-traffic sites that need to accommodate longer-term traffic increases, but of course you’ll have to adjust server resources yourself as they won’t be implemented automatically.Is Scaleway Cloud Hosting Right for You?
Scaleway cloud hosting is a great choice if you get occasional spikes in traffic rather than a high sustained volume of traffic, and you want the ease of use that comes with cPanel. The prices are reasonable, even for the Premium plan. But if you need to serve consistently high levels of traffic, it may be worth looking at some of the alternative vendors I’ve suggested below.Dedibox Dedicated Server Hosting
Start-3-L | Pro-7-S | Core-7-M-A | Core-7-L-I | |
Initial term starting price | $66 | $103 | $320 | $480 |
Price on renewal | Same as above | Same as above | Same as above | Same as above |
CPU cores | 1 Intel Xeon D | 1 Intel Xeon E | 1 AMD EPYC | 2 Intel Xeon Silver |
RAM | 32GB | 32GB | 256GB | 576GB |
Storage | 2 x 500GB SSD | 2 x 480GB NVMe | 2 x 1.92TB NVMe | 2 x 1.92TB NVMe |
Bandwidth | 300Mbps | 750Mbps | 1Gbps | 1Gbps |
Dedicated IPs | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Data center locations | France, Amsterdam, Poland |
Start-3-L
It may not be Scaleway’s cheapest dedicated server plan, but Start-3-L is by far its best. And it only costs slightly more than InterServer’s lowest priced plan, which gives you 2 fewer cores and 24GB less memory. Start-3-L gives you 6 cores, 1TB of storage, and 32GB of RAM. Start-3-L also achieves the highest CPU Benchmark rating of all Scaleway Start plans, meaning it offers potentially the best raw performance. But if you need even better, you’ll have to move up to a Pro or Core plan.Pro-7-S
Pro-7-S delivers excellent value for the price. It provides the same number of CPU cores (6) and same amount of RAM (32GB) as the Start-3-L plan, but Pro-7-S uses higher-spec server and storage technology. Combine that with 750Mbps of public bandwidth, and that should add up to much better server performance. At about half the price of Liquid Web’s most similar plan, Pro-7-S offers more CPU power, more storage, and more RAM. However, Liquid Web offers managed service by default. Scaleway charges extra for this, which is one reason it costs so much less.Core-7-M-A
Scaleway’s Core 7-M-A plan might offer the best value of all its dedicated server plans, though it is specifically geared towards mission-critical, ultra-high-performance deployments. It includes significantly more computing horsepower than Pro plans, with nearly four times the NVMe storage of Pro-7-S and significantly more memory. You can get Core-7-M-A for about half the price of A2 Hosting’s most advanced dedicated server plan, which offers half the storage and memory, but gives you dual AMD EPYC processors.Core-7-L-I
Dedicated server hosting plans can be very expensive. The Core-7-L-I plan boasts ultra-high-level resources for a mid-range price. You get two Intel Xeon Silver servers with 24 cores each, nearly 4TB of NVMe storage, and 576GB of RAM. Not many dedicated server hosts can match this calibre of hosting at this price. InterServer has a similar plan with more CPU cores but less memory.Is Scaleway Dedicated Hosting Right for You?
If you’re after dedicated servers for competitive prices, Scaleway is worth a serious look. Many of its plans provide solid value, especially Core-7-M-A, which gives you more-than-ample resources at a competitive price. It is possible to add reasonably-priced managed support to Scaleway’s dedicated server plans, and the Business Service Level offers bonuses, such as on-demand customizations to your server’s storage allocation. But these services are not intended to replace your own system administration knowledge or in-house IT staff, so if you want to pay for fully-managed hosting as part of your hosting plan, you’ll have to look elsewhere.Recommended Scaleway Alternatives
Scaleway is a reputable enterprise-tier web host, but with limited customizability, and without a fully-managed option or data centers outside of the EU, it may not give you everything you need. Here are some other top-rated hosts who may be a more appropriate fit for your (or your organization’s) hosting requirements.
Starting Price | Main Pro | Main Con | ||
Scaleway | $11.62 | Competitive pricing for quality hardware | Data centers in Europe only | |
Kamatera | $4.00 | The most flexibility | Decent support costs extra | |
Liquid Web | $169.00 | Managed hosting | High prices | |
Hostinger | $2.99 | Lowest prices | Limited customizability, and no bare-metal option | |
InterServer | $67.00 | Decent flexibility | Disappointing support | |
Cloudways | $11.00 | Managed performance optimization | No cheaper unmanaged option | |
A2 Hosting | $79.99 | Good combination of features and performance | Support isn’t great | |
SiteGround | $2.99 | Extensive features | Weaker performance in testing |