Established in 2003, Host Factory is a Swiss provider of web hosting and dedicated server products based in Zurich. They are a competitive and professional provider with affordably priced products that cater to their customers’ needs with high-end servers and features. They have served more than 15,000 customers with 22,000+ web hosting solutions. Their data centers are located in Switzerland, and they provide their services in Swiss German.
Features and Ease of Use
Host Factory hasn’t neglected any of the hosting essentials. They provide:
- Domain registration (not included in product prices)
- SSL certificates, free via Let’s Encrypt and with more options available
- Webmail hosting as well as business email hosting via Microsoft Exchange
- Daily backup and restore plus management tools
- The Plesk control panel with a 1-click auto installer, and DNS administration
- POP3, IMAP, and SMTP management
The 1-click installer allows you to install any web hosting application you like, plus your choice of CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal. Another great option is the Weebly website builder that boasts beginner-friendly features, templates, and a drag-and-drop builder.
Host Factory also has a fantastic customer portal with an administration dashboard to manage all your products, services, add-on purchases, and accounts. It’s great that you can choose your OS as well as your server backup schedule. The web hosting option for their web server products is good, because this isn’t always offered with these types of products.
Pricing and Support
Host Factory offers web hosting and server products. The web hosting products come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, but there is no refund policy for their dedicated servers. All plans come with a choice between Linux and Windows, with the dedicated server plans offering different flavors of Linux. Unfortunately, they only have long contract periods of a year or two years, but you can opt for anything from monthly to yearly billing.
- Web Hosting: Comes with Cron jobs, SSH, and a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. Choose your operating system (Windows/.NET or Linux), your number of domain accounts (2 to 250), storage (2 GB to 250 GB), and whether you want SSD storage. There are three standard configurations you can choose from.
- Reseller Hosting: Works exactly the same as normal web hosting but with tools to help you manage sub-accounts for customers.
- Dedicated Server: You get server space with full root access. You have the option to choose a clean server without any pre-installed software or a web hosting option with Plesk as your management software. You can select storage up to 75GB, RAM from 2GB to 16GB, and 1 to 4 CPU cores. You also have the freedom to choose your operating system and snapshot backup options.
The prices are surprisingly affordable for a Swiss-based hosting company, and are consistently below the industry average. Several payment methods are supported, including PayPal, Mastercard/VISA, and Rechnung.
Host Factory offers 24/7 support via email/ticket, plus phone support during office hours (09:00-17:00) on weekdays. If you submit a ticket after hours, you might find that it gets answered the next day. Despite this downside, I’ve only ever had positive experiences when working with the excellent technical support staff. The FAQ and knowledge base sections of the client area are decent enough, but not quite as comprehensive as I would like.
