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Scaleway’s cloud hosting and dedicated server plan pricing starts so low, you might wonder if it’s legit. I can tell you, it is. When my colleague tested Scaleway, it delivered impressively-fast page loading speeds. But while Scaleway guarantees at least 99.9% uptime, I’ve seen quite a few reviews where users claim to have experienced extended downtime.
Scaleway is best if you’re serving a European audience because its data centers are all in Europe. Sure, you can use a content delivery network (CDN) to improve performance around the world, but it’s best to choose a data center nearer to your site visitors.
Scaleway’s cloud hosting is best for websites with average traffic and occasional traffic spikes, and its dedicated servers offer more computing power for media- or data-heavy sites with more consistently heavy traffic.
Is there a Scaleway hosting plan that’s right for you? Read on to find out.
Short on Time? These Are Scaleway’s Best Plans in 2023:
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.
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.
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.
Scaleway isn’t for beginners, but cPanel is still user-friendlyScaleway’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.
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.
Scaleway offers three ranges of dedicated server plans. The Start plans have very low entry-level prices with lower resource limits, and the Pro and Core plans offer correspondingly higher resource allocations.
Overall, Scaleway offers around 30 dedicated server plan variations, but availability may vary. You can find good value with some Pro and Core plans, but there’s only one Start plan worth considering. I’ve focused on the four plans I think give you the best value for money.
For a low-priced plan, Scaleway Start-3-L has a lot of storage
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.
Scaleway’s Pro-7-S is still a low-price dedicated plan, but gives you faster loading speeds
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.
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.
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.
With the most customizable plans on the market, Kamatera is a great choice for any business, small or large. And its performance is reliable and fast – when my colleague tested Kamatera, he recorded 100% uptime and page loading speeds of around 1 second.
Kamatera lets you set up instances with exact levels of each resource – up to 1,174 available resource configurations are available. Scaleway offers a limited range of hosting plans with limited (and paid) customizability, and resource maximums are much lower – which won’t matter to most customers, to be fair.
Scaleway charges by the hour until you reach your resource cap, but Kamatera charges by the second, so you’ll only pay for exactly what you use, but you’ll need to keep a fairly close eye on your resources in order to take advantage of any savings.
Liquid Web
If you want fully-managed cloud hosting, Liquid Web is a top choice. Its plans are far more expensive than Scaleway’s, but you pay for the convenience of very reputable managed support.
Liquid Web offers dedicated server plans as well, and although they include superior support and better features, they are also more expensive than Scaleway’s. And Scaleway offers a wider range of dedicated server plans overall.
Hostinger
Hostinger does not offer dedicated server plans, but it provides budget-priced cloud hosting. When comparing entry-level plans, Scaleway offers more storage (and arguably, better-quality infrastructure), while Hostinger provides more cores and RAM, along with additional free features, such as automatic backups.
Hostinger also offers managed WordPress plans. But what really sets Hostinger apart from Scaleway is that its services are suitable for any level of user, from beginners to developers. Scaleway is not really a host for beginner users.
InterServer
InterServer’s cloud VPS is a similar service to Scaleway’s cloud hosting with a lower starting price. There’s also more flexibility and scalability, with 32 resource configurations (16 for Linux, 16 for Windows).
And if you pay for four or more “slices,” you get free managed support, which is a big value-add over Scaleway.
Cloudways
Cloudways is a good cloud hosting alternative to Scaleway if you want better performance for a global market. Cloudways operates as a third-party provider of DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Engine (GCE) infrastructure.
Features and performance are based on the infrastructure you choose. Where Cloudways adds value is in its fully-managed service and its optimized hosting stack; unlike Scaleway, Cloudways will take care of all the infrastructure configuration and upkeep for you.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting offers managed and unmanaged dedicated servers, but it doesn’t offer cloud hosting. Its dedicated server plans tend to have lower resource limits than equivalent Scaleway plans, but A2 Hosting delivers superb performance and reliability not only in Europe, but also in Asia and the USA.
A2 Hosting also gives you a money-back guarantee and automatic backups with every plan – Scaleway doesn’t.
SiteGround
SiteGround offers cloud hosting, but not dedicated servers. The main advantage of SiteGround over Scaleway is that the service is managed, so you can focus on your website content and your business. But it comes at a correspondingly higher price.
For example, the top-end SiteGround plan gives you double the CPU cores and two-and-a-half times the RAM of Scaleway’s top cloud hosting plan, but it costs more than 10 times the price.
Yes, Scaleway is legit. It offers a number of competitively-priced cloud and dedicated server hosting plans. It is geared towards the higher end of the web hosting market, and is not necessarily the best option for small, simple websites.
If you want to compare some more straightforward web hosting plans, have a look at our list of the top 10 web hosts for 2023 to get a sense of what’s available.
Josh is a longtime writer and editor with experience in everything from content writing and copywriting to screenwriting. He has an MBA and loves analyzing and overthinking everything. His passions include creative writing, film and TV, sports, spreadsheets, and most of all, spending time with friends and family by the lake. Josh grew up in Maine, lived in California for many years, and now calls jolly-old England home.
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