Scaleway Review 2024 – Can It Compete with the Big Players?

Focus on Business Customers

Founded in 2015, Scaleway is a subsidiary of French-based telecommunication company Iliad Group.

Scaleway targets professionals, developers, and scaling businesses by offering web hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers, private infrastructure, and bare-metal cloud services. However, if you need top quality web hosting for personal or small to medium-sized business, don’t miss this top web hosting comparison.

Scaleway also offers other cloud web-related services and security solutions, including, but not limited to, DDoS protection, RPN, and Failover IP.

It serves business clients in more than 150 countries and has four data centers in France and one in the Netherlands. The website is available in English and French.

Advanced-Level Cloud Hosting

Scaleway provides cloud infrastructure for developers and growing businesses. It’s not a managed host, so you won’t get assistance with server configuration or help with migration. Nevertheless, it offers three web hosting plans (Hosting Personal, Hosting Pro, and Hosting Business) that come with basic features like a free domain name, website building tool, CMS deployment tools (one-click installer), and DDoS protection. Read on to find out if Scaleway has what you’re looking for.

One-Click Deployment 

While the Scaleway website comes across as quite technical, it offers many of the usual features you’d expect with any standard host. Scaleway calls it “ready-to-use distributions and applications in a click,” which is just a fancy way of saying you can install popular programs via a one-click installer, InstantApps.

Above-Par Uptime SLA

Scaleway has an above-average uptime service-level agreement (SLA), which is between 99.9% and 99.99% depending on your plan. Plus, it promises that you will be compensated if you experience excessive downtime. I’d be a little cautious, as the exact compensation isn’t in the website terms and conditions.

Designed for Developers

After visiting Scaleway’s website, you should have no doubt that it’s targeted at developers. Not only is the language full of tech jargon, but there are also lots of developer-specific features.

There’s a developer program (you can submit your application on the ImageHub to reach potential customers), an open-source alternative to Slack, a VPN to securely browse the web, and SSH access.

Bare-Metal Servers with SSD Storage

Scaleway offers bare-metal servers that are entirely independent of your digital neighbors, meaning you won’t be affected in the event of peaks in other people’s traffic or even malicious attacks. Plus, the SSD storage will enhance your website’s performance up to ten times compared to HDD.

If you’re a developer or a growing business, Scaleway has you covered. It’s also easy to use for beginners, though it’s probably far more in-depth than a new website owner needs. The interface is sleek throughout, and it’s super simple to navigate.

Create an Account

It took me all of ten seconds to create an account with Scaleway. The only field of information required was my email address, and thanks to “passwordless login,” I didn’t even have to create a password. The process was simple, modern, and probably one of the quickest I’ve ever done. If only all hosts could make my life this easy.

Connecting a Domain and Installing WordPress

After my easy account creation process, I was excited to test the rest of the platform. As you might expect, Scaleway offered an easy WordPress installation. You’ll have to deal with some tech jargon along the way, but its one-click installer makes adding features to your website simple. If I’ve piqued your interest, read more about my experience installing WordPress here.

Instant Setup

I’ve tested a lot of hosting providers. If I were given a dollar for every time a host claimed to offer instant setup but didn’t, my bank account would be overflowing. With Scaleway, when it says instant setup, it means instant setup. And that’s a refreshing change.

Snapshot Backups

From your console, you can easily create snapshots of your website. These snapshots allow you to create point-in-time backups to restore your site in the event of a problem, or clone your entire website for use elsewhere. You can do all of this without contacting customer service.

Third-Party Integrations

Scaleway plays nicely with lots of handy third-party integrations, like Terraform, SaltStack, Docker, Cloud 66, and so on. It lets you seamlessly integrate with your favorite apps to manage your cloud infrastructure, all from one dashboard.

Impressive Speed

Unfortunately for Scaleway, it has a lot of negative reviews from past and present customers. While customer service and incorrect billing are often cited as issues, so is downtime. It’s a bit surprising, as it promises 99.9%–99.99% uptime. I was skeptical when I couldn’t find any compensation details listed in the terms and conditions.

Reviewers also complain that its servers are slow, so I decided to test it out for myself.

I ran a Sucuri page load test on my new WordPress website, and, well, I was impressed. In Paris (closest to the data center I’d selected when I created an account), the connection speed was a minuscule 0.008 seconds, and the slowest, which is hardly slow at all, was just over 0.3 seconds.

All of the other locations I tested scored well, and these were results without installing a content delivery network (CDN), which isn’t free. Now, I don’t know whether my results were a fluke or why some customers are so unhappy, but I can tell you that the results were excellent in my test.

Depends on Your Tier

Everyone gets 24/7 support, but the channel and response time depends on which support package you choose. By default, new customers get the free Basic plan, but you can upgrade for an extra monthly fee to access the higher tiers of support.

Basic customers are given ticket support only, with an unknown response time. Business and Enterprise customers get a dedicated account manager with phone and email support, and either 2-hour or 30-minute guaranteed response times.

There’s also a frequently asked questions page, a hefty knowledgebase with how-to guides and tutorials, and a handy community forum to reference. Overall, it’s not a bad level of support.

To be sure, I put it to the test. I signed up for the Basic plan, whereby 24/7 ticket support was the only channel I could test. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a reply within two hours.

A little underwhelmed by my support options, I decided to see how Scaleway would fare on social media. I sent a couple of messages via Facebook and Twitter. Despite waiting 48 hours for a reply, I didn’t get one on either social media channel. It looks like when they say ticket support only, they mean it.

Considering this is a cloud host, the prices are great. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were purchasing shared hosting with such low prices. Of course, you’ll need to consider the various added costs like support plans, domain name, SSL certificate, and a CDN, as the Scaleway plans only include your infrastructure.

Scaleway, along with cloud hosting in general, offers the advantage of adapting to your requirements and charging you solely for the resources you actively utilize on an hourly billing basis. This approach ensures that your expenses align with your usage without the possibility of exceeding necessary costs, although it’s important to note that refunds are not provided.

If you decide to give Scaleway a try, you will need to enter your credit card details when you create an account. However, you won’t be billed until later. You can pay by Visa, Mastercard, or American Express, and new customers are automatically given $100 credit towards their account.

Cancellations & Refunds

After reading the online reviews, I’d seen many customers complain about getting billed after they’d shut down their servers. I was nervous about this happening to me.

When the time came for me to cancel, I did a quick search online. It was easy to find a tutorial on how to cancel my account and stop my billing. It all looked straightforward, so I tried it out.

If you pause or stop your server, you will continue to be billed. To prevent any further charges on your account, you must delete or archive the server instance. You can do that inside your console by clicking a couple of buttons and typing DELETE.

It only took a minute, and as I hadn’t exceeded my $100 free credit, I wasn’t billed anything.