ScalaHosting Review

Website owners searching for an affordable, fast, and secure hosting provider should not miss ScalaHosting. The latter has been in the site hosting industry for over a decade and has established a reputation as a trustworthy provider. But is it that reliable? In this review, we shall look into all ins and outs of the solution, check its domains, backups, security measures, performance, and all other aspects that can prove ScalaHosting’s reputation true or exaggerated.

What Is ScalaHosting?

ScalaHosting is one of the hosting providers that come first when looking for a reliable hosting solution for a small website. It’s a great choice for those searching for a premium Managed VPS plan since the company is primarily built as a VPS hosting provider. However, it has plenty of other options to meet clients’ requirements, including Shared, WP, email, and Reseller hosting plans. The company has heavily invested in its infrastructure to provide its users with responsive and fast-loading sites.

ScalaHosting claims to deliver an impressive uptime of 99.99% based on its USA and European data centers (Dallas, New York, and Sofia), along with a series of performance-enhancing and in-house security tools. What’s more, the company undertakes all technical aspects of hosting a site, including security, software updates, maintenance, etc., so that users can get started without any tech or coding knowledge.

ScalaHosting Pros

ScalaHosting is a beneficial solution given the multiple pros it has got. To give an overall characteristic description of the platform, it’s worth seeing its major advantages:

• SPanel premium control panel: ScalaHosting uses an intuitive, modern control panel for a streamlined and straightforward user experience.
• Competitive pricing: ScalaHosting introduces more affordable hosting plans than plenty of other hosting providers.
• Reliable security tools: Malware scanning, daily backups, DDoS protection, and other security tools ensure stellar protection of any website hosted by ScalaHosting.
• Responsive customer support: Premium support through the ticketing form and live chat are available to all ScalaHosting users, whether they are on an entry or a premium plan.
• Good performance: The company uses a global CDN, caching technologies, and SSD storage to ensure credible performance.

ScalaHosting Cons

Despite the abundance of positive features, ScalaHosting also has several downsides which shouldn’t be neglected, either. Particularly, the essential cons of ScalaHosting involve the following:

• Limited server locations: Hosting servers of ScalaHosting are located in Europe and the US. This is a downside for those whose target customer base is in Asia, Australia, Africa, or South America.
• No Windows hosting: The company offers only Linux-based shared hosting plans.
• No in-house website builder.
• One free backup: ScalaHosting offers only one free automatic backup. Other than this, backups are offered for additional charges.

How Expensive Is ScalaHosting?

ScalaHosting pricing is confusing. Although the entry plans look affordable, the maximum discount becomes available only with an annual subscription. Surprisingly, three-year plans have the same price as annual ones for all hosting types except for Managed VPS Hosting, leaving no point in choosing the service for the long term.

Furthermore, the default SPanel comes included in every ScalaHosting plan, whereas the optional cPanel is offered at an insane cost.

See the ScalaHosting pricing system for more details:

• Web Hosting: The cheapest Shared hosting plan is Mini, priced at $2.95/mo (renewal monthly price is $9.95). Appropriate for hosting only one site, the tier includes unlimited bandwidth, emails, and DBs, as well as one-click installation, 10GB fixed NVMe SSD, SSL, and daily offsite backups. Prices for Shared hosting reach up to $14.95/mo (renewal monthly price is $29.95).
• Email Hosting: The introductory Email Hosting plan StartUp for 10 email boxes is priced at $2.95/mo for a three-year subscription and $4.95/mo for an annual one. ScalaHosting doesn’t offer email hosting on a shorter term unless you sign up for the highest Cloud plan, priced at $29.95/mo if bought monthly. The entry plan includes 50 GB of email storage, one email domain, daily offsite backups, etc. Other than the StartUp plan, there are three other email hosting plans.
• WordPress Hosting: WP Mini introductory hosting plan costs $2.95/mo if bought for a year or three years in advance. Otherwise, its price is $9.95/mo. This tier provides users with everything included in the entry Shared hosting plan.
• Managed VPS Hosting: ScalaHosting, primarily known for its reliable and feature-rich VPS hosting, offers Managed VPS Hosting at $39.95/mo with Build #1 for an annual subscription. However, the renewal cost is $49.95/mo. The tier includes 4 GB RAM, 50 GB NVMe SSD, unlimited bandwidth, automatic offsite backups, etc. The highest-priced tier, Build #4, costs $189.95/mo if bought for a year.
• Reseller Hosting: The entry Reseller hosting plan Scala1 is priced at $14.95/mo for an annual subscription. The tier allows managing up to 20 accounts, 25GB SSD storage, WHM/cPanel, SSL, etc.

Performance

ScalaHosting delivers great results regarding website speed and performance. Its servers respond quickly to requests thanks to the combination of caching technologies and solid-state drives. Also, the company incorporates Cloudflare CDN to speed up the site loading times for visitors from worldwide. Although it somewhat reduces latency, the servers’ limited locations still make the site loading speed different depending on the site visitor’s location.

In addition to speed, it’s also essential to check the server’s ability to handle a high traffic volume without crashing or slowing down. The company uses premium-level software and hardware to ensure seamless handling of heavy traffic loads.

Furthermore, there is a list of performance optimization tools at ScalaHosting customers’ disposal, including gzip compression, server-level caching, image optimization, etc. All these tools aim at reducing file size to be loaded, thus lowering the website loading time.

Security and Protection

The premium security level is among the main benefits of ScalaHosting. The company implements the following tools to ensure stellar protection of its users’ websites:

• SSL certificate: The basic protection of domains and their subdomains via SSL certificate is provided for free.
• Two-factor authentication: The feature enables users to generate OTP codes through authenticator applications such as Google Authenticator or Authy to secure site visitors’ logins.
• SShield: The in-house security tool implements Artificial Intelligence to monitor and block any dangerous and malicious attacks on your site.
• SpamAssassin: The system is designed to filter all junk emails and add the Spam flag in the subject line of such emails.
• SWordPress Manager: Through this tool, you can install WP with one click and have all the necessary updates installed automatically.
• CSF Firewall: The firewall is installed on the server for extra protection and lets users control their site traffic.
• ClaimAV: This antivirus tool quickly detects almost all internet threats, such as trojans, viruses, malware, etc.
• ModSecurity Web Application Firewall: This security system blocks any unauthorized logins.

As you see, ScalaHosting highly prioritizes security and is entirely reliable regarding website protection.

Control Panel

ScalaHosting introduces users to a clean, straightforward, modern interface with all options and settings arranged neatly. All information regarding billing, your integrated services, support, etc., is available in the left-hand menu. Furthermore, you get one-click buttons for such actions as shutting down, rebooting, etc.

Regarding the control panel of ScalaHosting, here, users are provided with the company’s brand Spanel. Its overall design resembles that of the traditional cPanel, while the level of functionality doesn’t yield to the latter.

SPanel provides access to a thoroughly managed cloud VPS server and allows managing everything from one place. It has amazingly facilitated server management and made it possible even for inexperienced users to make the most of their hosting plan.

SPanel also supports web servers such as Nginx, Apache, OpenLiteSpeed, and LiteSpeed Enterprise to increase the site loading speed. Compared to traditional cPanel or managing the server through DirectAdmin, with SPanel, you get SShield, lightweight resource usage, and round-the-clock customer assistance through live chat.

Web Building Tools

There is no ScalaHosting website builder per se. However, the solution offers free and seamless WordPress migration within the WP Hosting scope. Hence, you can build your website anew if you are OK with WP. Or, if you already have your site, you can migrate to ScalaHosting.

Customer and Tech Support

ScalaHosting offers a responsive customer assistance service round the clock via a live chat and a ticketing system. Both options are reliable and respond quickly. The average response time for live chat is 30 seconds, while that of a ticket is 15 minutes.

Also, the company provides emails and phone numbers for different types of requests, like billing, tech support, and sales. To contact a ScalaHosting tech specialist, send an email to support@scalahosting.com. To report abuse, use the email abuse@scalahosting.com. If you need detailed information on billing or anything related, billing@scalahosting.com is at your disposal. And finally, for sales requests, use the email sales@scalahosting.com. Note that email responses can be expected from Monday to Friday, 2:30 AM to 5 PM (GMT -6, CDT).

However, before contacting a customer support specialist directly, checking the ScalaHosting knowledge base is recommended. The latter includes multiple comprehensible articles on SPanel, provided hosting services, billing, and how to get started on ScalaHosting. Overall, more than 300 articles are at your disposal. To make your survey in the knowledge base quick and easy, you can type a keyword in the search bar, and the system will reveal all related articles.

Is ScalaHosting Worth Trying?

ScalaHosting is a great website hosting choice as long as you already have a website, your target audience is in the States or Europe, or your site is either new or has low traffic. The thing is that website visitors from anywhere outside the States and Europe will experience long page loading times and slowdowns, although the solution delivers good results in terms of performance given the multiple tools incorporated.