The verdict
IONOS (formerly 1&1) is one of the largest hosting companies in the world, backed by United Internet. It offers a full suite from domains and shared hosting to enterprise cloud, with strong pricing on first-term offers.
The full picture
IONOS is the hosting arm of United Internet, a German public company, and traces its origins to 1&1 in 1988 — which makes it one of the oldest hosting businesses still operating. It serves over eight million customers, mostly in Germany, the wider EU and the United States, and it operates its own data centres in Europe and North America rather than reselling capacity.
The product range is unusually wide for a company that markets to small businesses: shared hosting from about a dollar a month, managed WordPress, VPS, dedicated servers, an OpenStack-based Compute Engine cloud, managed Kubernetes, a domain registrar business, email, and an office productivity suite. Every account also gets a named personal consultant, which is genuinely unusual and genuinely useful for non-technical buyers.
The complaints are consistent across markets: introductory pricing that renews sharply higher, a contract structure with minimum terms and automatic renewal that European consumers are used to and American buyers often are not, and support quality that varies substantially by region. Read the contract terms carefully before purchase; the product itself is technically sound.
What you get
- Free domain included
- Unlimited traffic
- Geo-redundant data centers
- Free SSL Wildcard
- 24/7 expert support
Every hosting type it sells
| Product | From | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Web hosting | $1/mo | Essential through Expert, with a free domain and email included. |
| Managed WordPress | $1/mo | WordPress with automatic updates and a starter assistant. |
| VPS | $2/mo | Full root access, unlimited traffic, NVMe storage. |
| Dedicated servers | $45/mo | Bare metal billed by the minute, no minimum term. |
| IONOS Cloud | Hourly | Enterprise compute, block storage and managed Kubernetes. |
Plans & pricing
- 1 Website
- 10 GB Storage
- Unlimited Websites
- 50 GB Storage
What the price actually costs you
- The one-dollar headline rate is an introductory term; renewal is several times higher.
- Contracts carry minimum terms with automatic renewal — note the cancellation window.
- Domains renew at standard registry rates after the free first year.
- A 30-day money-back guarantee applies in most markets.
Technical specification
| Control panel | IONOS custom panel, with Plesk available on VPS and dedicated |
|---|---|
| Web server | NGINX and Apache depending on product |
| Storage | NVMe SSD across the current VPS and dedicated ranges |
| PHP versions | PHP 7.x through 8.x with per-site selection |
| Backups | Daily backups included on most web hosting tiers |
| Mailboxes included with hosting plans, plus a separate email product | |
| Personal consultant | A named advisor assigned to every account |
| Networking | Unlimited traffic on most VPS and dedicated products |
| Compliance | ISO 27001, GDPR-aligned, EU data residency options |
| Support | 24/7 phone and chat in local languages |
| Uptime SLA | 99.9% on shared, up to 99.99% on cloud |
Performance in practice
Solid and unremarkable, which at a dollar a month is a compliment. European data centres give good regional latency, the United States facilities cover North America, and NVMe storage on newer plans keeps things responsive. The dedicated and cloud products are enterprise-grade; the cheapest shared tiers are resource-constrained in the way a one-dollar plan must be.
Infrastructure & support
Support channels
- 24/7 phone support
- 24/7 live chat
- Email ticketing
Data centers
- Germany
- United States
- United Kingdom
- Spain
- France
Security & compliance
- Free Wildcard SSL included on most hosting plans
- DDoS protection across the network at no extra charge
- Daily backups with restore included on standard web hosting
- ISO 27001 certified facilities with EU data residency guarantees
- Two-factor authentication and a site scanning tool on higher tiers
Moving a site in
IONOS offers free migration assistance through support and a WordPress import tool, and the assigned personal consultant will coordinate the move. It is not a white-glove engineering service, but it is more help than most budget hosts offer.
The trade-off
In its favour
- Very low introductory pricing
- Massive global infrastructure
- Full product ecosystem
Worth knowing
- Steep renewal pricing
- Upselling during signup
Who should look elsewhere
- Buyers who dislike minimum-term contracts and automatic renewal
- Developers wanting modern Git-based workflows and staging on cheap plans
- Anyone who wants transparent flat pricing with no introductory discounting
- Support-sensitive customers outside the core European markets
The company behind it
| Ownership | United Internet AG, publicly listed in Germany |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Montabaur, Germany |
| Founded | 1988 as 1&1, rebranded IONOS in 2018 |
| Scale | 8 million+ customers, 22 million domains under management |
| Facilities | Owned data centres in Germany, the UK, Spain, France and the United States |
How it got here
- 1988 Founded as 1&1 in Montabaur, Germany.
- 1998 Expands into the United States and United Kingdom markets.
- 2018 Merges with ProfitBricks and rebrands the hosting business as IONOS.
- 2021 Launches IONOS Cloud with OpenStack-based Compute Engine and managed Kubernetes.
- 2023 Lists separately on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
Common questions
Is IONOS the same company as 1&1?
Yes, 1&1 rebranded internationally as IONOS in 2018.
The bottom line
A serious, long-established European host with a genuinely broad catalogue and the unusual benefit of a named human advisor. Buy it for a European small business site or a cheap dedicated server, read the contract term carefully, and treat the introductory price as a first-year offer rather than the real cost.