I was pleasantly surprised to discover that ScalaHosting offers reliable hosting at a fair price. Consider ScalaHosting if you want to try a top-tier hosting company that seems to be flying under the radar.
Who should choose ScalaHosting? Small businesses, entrepreneurs, entry-level e-commerce sites, and personal websites.
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For new WordPress sites
Starts at $2.95 per month
- Guided onboarding
- Recommended by WordPress
- 24/7 support
Best security and scalability
Starts at $3.75 per month
- All types of hosting
- Enhanced security tools
- Affordable as you grow
The easiest option
Starts at $2.75 per month
- Great for absolute beginners
- Drag-and-drop website builder
- 150+ free templates
ScalaHosting Pros and Cons
ScalaHosting, a company that has been around for over 15 years, continues to provide customers with an exceptional hosting experience. There is a lot to like about this hosting company, and even its downsides will not present issues to most people. Check out the main pros and cons of this company to see if it is right for you:
What we like about ScalaHosting
- All hosting uses solid-state drives: No matter which hosting level you choose, you will benefit from the speed and reliability of solid-state drives (SSD).
- Exceptional customer support: ScalaHosting offers award-winning customer support 24/7. I experienced 30-second response times for live chat requests and 15-minute response times for trouble tickets.
- Daily automatic backups: Your website’s data will be kept safe and secure thanks to the daily backups. The data is also stored on remote servers for added safety.
- Fast VPS hosting: ScalaHosting has some of the best VPS hosting solutions in the industry.
What fell flat
- Only shared and VPS hosting: ScalaHosting is focused specifically on shared and VPS hosting, so if you need a dedicated server, this is not the company for you.
- Security limitation on entry-level hosting: The entry-level hosting package does not come with the SShield cyber-security tools. I am not a fan of providing reduced security, no matter the hosting package purchased.
- No website builder tools: You will not have access to a custom website builder suite with this hosting company.
Digital.com’s Editorial Review
After extensive research and testing, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that ScalaHosting offers such excellent services. If you want to try a top-tier hosting company that seems to be flying under the radar, I highly recommend this company.
See how we review web hosting providers.
Plans & Pricing
- Shared–$2.95 per month
- WordPress–$2.95 per month
- Managed VPS–$39.95 per month
- Email hosting–$2.95 per month
Features
- CDN on all plans
- Daily remote backups
- Free website migration
- Award-winning customer support
- Free SSL certificate
ScalaHosting Plans and Pricing
ScalaHosting offers two main types of hosting, including shared and VPS. There’s also a shared WordPress plan that comes with WordPress-specific features–everything else about it is identical to ScalaHosting’s shared hosting plans.
Shared–starts at $2.95 per month
- Good for: small businesses, entrepreneurs, new ecommerce stores, freelancers
WordPress–starts at $2.95 per month
- Good for: new WordPress sites, bloggers
Managed VPS–starts at $39.95 per month
- Good for: growing websites, midsize ecommerce stores, regional brands
Email hosting–starts at $2.95 per month
- Good for: businesses that only need email hosting
ScaleHosting offers multiple hosting plans at each level so you can get the hosting you need at a price you can afford. Note the prices listed are the introductory rate and will go up upon renewal. The introductory prices do last for up to three years, though.
Features
All of ScalaHosting’s hosting plans come with excellent features that will ensure your website looks and functions the way it should. While choosing the right hosting package based on your needs is important, you can be confident that whichever one you select will have various great features.
I was impressed with the services that this hosting company provides–it offers similar hosting features that you would see from premium hosting companies but at a much lower price.
CDN included with all hosting packages
All of the hosting packages available from ScalaHosting come with CloudFlare CDN integration free of charge. A CDN allows files from your website to be hosted on the ScalaHosting servers and copied to other servers worldwide. When someone accesses your website, their browser automatically pulls key files from whichever server is geographically closest.
In my testing, ScalaHosting had an average load time of approximately .65 seconds and an average response time of 23ms.
Daily remote backups of all your data
Keeping your website data protected is important, and ScalaHosting does a great job ensuring it is always safe. While almost all web hosting companies offer some type of backup services, I love ScalaHosting’s approach. Instead of making me set up and schedule my backups manually, ScalaHosting performed automatic daily backups for me.
The backups are stored on remote servers to make this service even better. This means that even if your server is compromised somehow (which is very unlikely), your data will still be safe and able to be restored quickly.
Free website migration
Most web hosting companies will help you migrate a website from another hosting company. Some companies even offer to do this for free if you are a new customer. ScalaHosting takes this a step further. It offers free website migration no matter how many sites you want to move. All I had to do was open a ticket with the technical support team, and a technician helped me migrate my sites to my new hosting account at no charge.
Award-winning customer support
One of the most important things to consider when evaluating a web hosting company is its ability to provide excellent customer support. ScalaHosting has 24/7 customer support, including technical support, that can help you with any issues or questions that you might be having.
In my experience, the ScalaHosting support team had an average response time of 30 seconds for live chat requests. The typical response time for trouble tickets with the technical support team was 15 minutes or less. Most importantly, the support team is knowledgeable and able to solve most issues immediately so your website is not negatively impacted.
Free SSL certificate with advanced security options
All ScalaHosting packages come with a free shared SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt SSL. This good SSL certificate provides your site with an important layer of security and helps keep you in line with internet best practices. Google has even confirmed that having an SSL certificate is preferred when ranking sites for search engine optimization (SEO).
Advanced security options
In addition to providing an SSL certificate for all websites, ScalaHosting also offers many other security features that keep your site safe. With the managed VPS package, I got access to the SShield Security suite, which offers real-time security services that can block 99.998% of attacks against your website.
ScalaHosting also offers free security scans on all hosting packages. When I made a request to the support team, a technician performed a full scan for site vulnerabilities. VPS hosting packages come with a dedicated firewall, so I could block traffic from specific IP addresses or ranges for improved security.
However, many security features are only available if you go with VPS hosting. I don’t like when hosting companies use security as a feature to get customers to upgrade.
Compare ScalaHosting Alternatives
ScalaHosting often flies under the radar for most people, but there is no doubt this top-tier hosting company will more than meet most people’s needs. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all hosting company.
If ScalaHosting’s not a good fit, check out our full list of web hosting providers or compare it to its competitors below.
Starts at $2.95 per month
- 1 website
- 20 GB SSD storage
- Daily remote backup
- Free domain for 1 year
- Free SSL certificate
Starts at $2.95 per month
- 1 website
- 10 GB of SSD storage
- Free SSL, CDN, and domain
- Custom WordPress themes
- One-click WordPress install
Consider Bluehost if: You’re building a brand new WordPress website or are a complete beginner.
Starts at $2.59 per month
- 1 website
- SSD storage
- Unlimited traffic
- Free domain
- Free SSL certificate
Consider DreamHost if: Security and privacy are your highest priorities.
Starts at $2.99 per month
- 1 website
- 10GB storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Free email
Consider SiteGround if: You want the best customer service.
What You Need to Know
Who owns ScalaHosting?
ScalaHosting is a privately owned company that is based in Dallas, Texas, that operates out of data centers located around the world.
What are the ScalaHosting nameservers?
The nameservers at ScalaHosting are ns1.scalahosting.com and ns2.scalahosting.com. If you register your domain with ScalaHosting, these are set for you by default. But if you purchase your domain with another company, you’d have to update the nameservers through the company where you bought them.
What kind of support does ScalaHosting offer?
ScalaHosting offers extraordinary support for all its customers, including technical and general customer support. You can reach out to the support teams via live chat or submit a help ticket, and hear back immediately. The support teams are staffed 24/7, so you can always get the assistance you need.
Where are the ScalaHosting servers located?
ScalaHosting operates out of a 68,000-square-foot data center facility in Dallas, Texas, where most of the servers and other company-owned hardware are kept. It also owns hardware in data centers located in Hawthorne, New York; Sofia, Bulgaria; Bangalore, India; London, England; Frankfurt, Germany; Singapore; Amsterdam, Netherlands; San Francisco, California, and Toronto, Canada. Your websites will be on these servers or spread over cloud facilities worldwide to achieve the best performance possible.
How We Reviewed ScalaHosting
I test web hosts based on the following factors:
Learn more about our review methodology.
