STRATO is fine, but fine is not good enough. While STRATO is a decent web host, you can get better quality hosting at a cheaper price with Hostinger, for example.
Founded in 1997, STRATO is a German web hosting vendor dedicated to providing small and medium-sized businesses and individuals with professional-quality website hosting solutions. It boasts more than 1.6 million hosted websites, 60,000+ deployed servers, and more than four million registered domains.
STRATO’s website is in German.
Features and Ease of Use
STRATO offers a comprehensive set website related services including shared web hosting and WordPress hosting.
The shared hosting includes the following features:
- Unlimited traffic
- FTP and SFTP access
- Flexible email storage
- 24/7 expert hotline support (at extra cost)
- Expandable webspace
- Backup control
- SiteGuard
Of the four shared hosting plans, the lowest plan comes with an SSL certificate, 10 GB of mail storage, 1,000 mailboxes, 50 GB of web space, two databases, and support for up to three domains. This should be more than sufficient to get you started, and you should note that the databases are stored on SSD for improved performance.
The flexible hosting plans support CMS integration, facilitated by the AppWizard that provides one-click installations of many popular applications.
Pricing and Support
STRATO’s hosting is pretty pocket-friendly to start with, but you should be wary of the much higher renewal prices. It’s good to see that you get a free SSL certificate.
All hosting plans come with monthly and annual billing options, but they must be paid for by bank transfer using an International Bank Account Number (IBAN). If you decide to sign up for a year up front, you’ll be pleased that the 30-day money-back guarantee should get you out if anything goes wrong within the first month.
STRATO provides an FAQ knowledge base for self-support, along with a topic-driven contact form for customers and non-customers to “ask the experts” by email. I received a reply within a couple of days of contacting the company.
Higher levels of support are available in the form of a 24/7 expert hotline and a set of service level agreements (which include the hotline facility). Note that you have to pay extra for some of these support services.
How much does STRATO cost?STRATO offers plans from $3 to $22. The price depends on which type of hosting plan you choose. You can see the updated pricing table (updated weekly) below.
Which STRATO plan should I get?My recommendation is to start with a cheaper plan. You can always upgrade later on. STRATO can help you with the migration to a more expensive plan. The increase in visitors many times takes longer than expected and you shouldn’t pay a lot of money until the need arises. Of course, your needs may vary, and you can consult with a hosting expert from STRATO here.
How good is STRATO’s customer support?STRATO is not ranked as one of our top web hosts. But that can also be a result of STRATO being a small, under the radar, hosting provider. There are advantages to a small hosting company – as a customer, you are more important to them. You can also check out our comparison of the most popular web hosting services here.
