In this STRATO vs IONOS comparison, our extensive tests on both providers cover everything from pricing and performance to customer feedback. We find out which one stands out. This comprehensive analysis gives you a clear picture of why IONOS is often the preferred choice for website owners.
I wanted to start my own blog so I got an account created with STRATO. I couldn’t figure out how to make it all work and get my site started because …
it seemed to confusing. I contacted their technical support and they basically did everything for me. I was really happy that they got me up and running so quickly. I’ve been with them almost a year now and haven’t had any further issues.
As someone who has used Ionos web hosting for the past 2 years, I can confidently say that I had a great experience with their service. I was impresse…
d with the reliability of Ionos web hosting. My website was always up and running smoothly, without any downtime.
I open an account with them, I subscribe to Cyberprotect and VPS service with them. I terminate the VPS as I no longer using it. I have cancel the Cyb…
erProtect for more than a month now, and I keep getting debit alert on my account.
I have try to reach out to them, but unable to as I am not able to find their email and the phone number is not going despite been in Austria and The company been in Germany.
They charge me twice. and no no chat option no email option no call option very bad service, even you can’t cancel subscription. please never buy IONO…
Strato and Ionos are two awesome hosting providers, so you may be wondering which of them is better for your website. After reviewing each host, Ionos came out on top and is better than Strato. Read on to see why and what makes each host stand out.
Starts at £ 4/month ($4.73); 30-day no quibble guarantee
Starts at $4/month; 30-day money back guarantee
Performance
99.9% uptime, 455 ms average speed
99.9% uptime, 1.5 s average speed
Support
24/7 support, Email Support, FAQ Knowledgebase, Live chat, FAX
24/7 support, One-on-one support, Email Support, Live chat, Phone support, FAQ help center
Ease of use
Easy-to-use dashboard
Plesk panel
WordPress install in a few clicks
Website Builder
Intuitive dashboard and cPanel alternative
Automatic WordPress setup
Website builder starting at $1/month
Security
AntiVirus
STRATO SiteGuard
For advanced plans – SSH Access, Phishing filter, MySQL Database backup, STRATO backup
Free SSL
Daily backup and recovery
SiteScan protection (paid)
DDoS protection
Server location
Germany – Berlin, Karlsruhe
USA – Las Vegas, Newark
Europe – Frankfurt, London, Berlin, Logroño
Winner: Ionos
Overall, if you want more versatile hosting plans, support, and a wider server footprint, Ionos is the winner but Strato has its strong points too. Read more to see what makes each host stand out.
About Strato and Ionos
Strato AG is a hosting provider founded in 1997 and headquartered in Germany. The company currently provides hosting services to over 4 million domains and has over 70,000 servers in German cities, Berlin and Karlsruhe. Strato provides shared hosting, VPS, cloud, and dedicated hosting packages to its customers.
Ionos, formerly 1 & 1 Internet, is a hosting provider/domain registrar founded in 1988, and also headquartered in Germany. The company currently serves over 12 million domains powered by over 90,000 servers distributed in 9 countries in the U.S.A and Europe. IONOS offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, Windows, dedicated, and agency hosting plans to its customers.
Round 1: Hosting features – Key Hosting Features and Services
Hosting Feature
Strato
Ionos
Disk space and bandwidth
Shared Hosting – Unmetered bandwidth and traffic; 2GB webspace
Strato provides a free domain and unmetered bandwidth (traffic cap) on all its hosting plans, and up to 1TB storage capacity on its dedicated hosting package. On your servers, you get to enjoy high-performance SSD and HDD, and free daily backups and restore on every plan. Plus, if you have a WordPress website, the WordPress plans are just for you.
You can also migrate your existing website for free to Strato and if you don’t have one yet, you can build a simple blog quickly using the EasyBlog builder that comes with the basic plan.
Key Ionos Features
Ionos also offers unmetered bandwidth on all its plans, up to 800 GB SSD storage on its dedicated hosting plan, and unlimited storage on its agency plans. You get all the goodies on its most basic plan like free backups and restore and free WordPress installation.
With Ionos you get a free domain and SSL, and free migration too. However, you don’t get a free website builder.
And the winner is… Strato
In the first Strato vs Ionos round, Strato wins with more storage and an out-of-the-box blog builder.
Round 2: Prices & Plans
Shared Hosting
Strato
Ionos
Entry Level plan
Basic Web
$4.73 / month
Essential
$4 / month
Middle plan
No middle plan
Business
$0.5 / month
Highest plan
No high-tier shared plan
Expert
$8 / month
VPS Hosting
Strato
Ionos
Entry Level plan
Power Web
$6 / month
VPS S – $2 / month
VPS M – $4 / month
VPS L – $8 / month
VPS XL – $2 / month
VPS XXL – $18 / month
Middle plan
N/A
VPS vCore M – $6 / month
VPS vCore L – $10 / month
VPS vCore XL – $4 / month
VPS vCore XXL – $20 / month
Highest plan
N/A
VPS M RAM – $8 / month
VPS L RAM – $12 / month
VPS XL RAM – $2 / month
VPS XXL RAM – $24 / month
Cloud Hosting
Strato
Ionos
Entry Level plan
Advanced Web
$11.82 / month
N/A
Middle plan
N/A
N/A
Highest plan
N/A
N/A
Dedicated Hosting
Strato
Ionos
Entry Level plan
Enterprise Web
$17.73 / month
A8i SSD – $45 / month
L4i HDD – $47 / month
Middle plan
N/A
L-16 SSD – $70 / month
L-16 HDD – $60 / month
XL-32 SSD – $110 / month
XL-32 HDD $90 / month
Highest plan
N/A
XL-64 SSD – $140 / month
XL-64 HDD – $120 / month
WordPress Hosting
Strato
Ionos
Entry Level plan
N/A
Start
$2 / month
Middle plan
N/A
Grow
$1 / month
Highest plan
N/A
Boost
$6 / month
Specialized plans
Strato (No specialized plans)
Ionos (Agency Hosting)
Entry Level plan
N/A
Essential
$4 / month
Middle plan
N/A
Business
$0.5 / month
Highest plan
N/A
Expert
$8 / month
Strato Pricing Plans
Strato offers just four hosting plans – one for each category. They are:
Shared hosting plan – This entry-level plan is best for basic websites with one or few pages
VPS hosting plan – This plan is great for small businesses that need a bit more power
Cloud hosting – This plan helps business scale their resources quickly, as needed
Dedicated hosting – Strato’s highest-level plan provides dedicated resources and storage for large corporations.
Apparently, Strato also offers WordPress hosting but I couldn’t find any information on their website.
Shared hosting plans – Entry-level plans in three tiers suited to new and small business websites
VPS hosting plans – 13-tier VPS plans that give incredible flexibility to mid-sized business websites
Dedicated hosting plans – Three-tiered plans for corporations that need the most power and dedicated resources
WordPress plans – Plans designed with WordPress websites in mind
Agency hosting plans – Plans suited to agencies and freelancers
And the Winner Is… Ionos
Ionos offers far more hosting options as well as a specialized agency plan. Strato offers just four hosting plans that you’d have a hard time finding info on.
Round 3: Website performance (Uptime & Speed)
Your hosting provider’s uptime is basically how consistently their servers are ‘up and running’. Your website speed is how quickly users get the info they want after they click a page and this directly depends on your host’s server speed. Higher uptime and server speeds mean your website experiences no downtime and your web pages load quickly, minimizing bounce rate and increasing conversions.
Test
Strato
Ionos
GT Metrix
0.50 s
0.97 s
PageSpeed Insights
0.4 s
1.9 s
Strato Uptime & Speed
To measure Strato server speeds, I ran the host’s domain through GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights – two popular testing tools. See the results:
On GTMetrix, Strato server speed (Time to First Byte) was 503 ms and had a good performance of 84%:
Running Strato’s domain through PageSpeed Insights yielded:
A TTFB of 400 ms and an overall 74% performance:
Ionos Uptime & Speed
To measure Ionos server speed, we ran the host’s domain through two testing tools – GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights. See the results below:
On GTMetrix, Ionos server speed (Time to First Byte) was 970 ms and had a low performance of 61%:
Running Ionos through PageSpeed Insights yielded even poorer results of TTFB values of 1.9 s and an overall performance of 29%:
Note that these values can vary wildly depending on the test location and physical distance between the servers and where the query was made.
And the Winner Is… Strato
I myself wasn’t expecting this, but Strato outperformed Ionos in both tests. Do note that these values are only relative and depend on where you’re located.
Round 4: Customer Support – Who Has the Best Support System?
Type of Support
Strato
Ionos
24/7 support
Yes
Yes
Phone Support
No
Yes
Live chat
Temporarily unavailable
Yes
Email Support
Yes
Yes
Ticket support
Yes
Yes
Forum Support
No
No
Video guides
No
No
Knowledgebase
Yes
Yes
Strato customer Support
Strato offers limited support options when compared to most hosting providers on the market.
You get 24/7 support and live chat that seems to have been down for quite a while. I couldn’t find any way to chat with an agent live but they do offer a knowledgebase that’s still ‘okay’ at best:
Most topics are limited and I felt there should have been far more information in the knowledgebase considering they’ve been in the game for a while.
You can also contact and write Strato via an email contact form:
That automatically opens a support ticket. To enjoy Strato’s full support options conveniently, you’ll have to be a customer.
Ionos customer Support
Ionos offers the basic support goodies – 24/7 support, Phone support, Live chat, Email support, and Ticket support. Plus, a vast knowledgebase (The Ionos Help Center) with answers to every question you may have:
Ionos also boasts a unique ‘Personal Consultant’ where you get your to speak to an help agent one-on-one:
You can contact an Ionos agent anytime, through phone but to enjoy their other support options, you’d have to login as a customer:
And the Winner Is… Ionos
Ionos offers more support options out-of-the-box and I particularly like that you can contact via phone to solve urgent issues. But that’s it if you’re not yet a customer.
Round 5: Ease of use – Which Platform Is Easier to Use?
A
B
Account management dashboard
Easy
Easy
Control panel
Medium
Medium
Setup process (Install OS)
Easy
Easy
Transfer an existing website
Easy
Easy
Easy creation of backups
Easy
Easy
Emails
Easy
Easy
Enable CloudFlare
Hard
Medium
Strato Ease of use
Strato has a very straight-to-the-point user interface, in fact, one of the most straightforward dashboards I have ever seen. Right away, from the homepage, you can search for a domain, check out their hosting plans, and get more info on the company:
The Strato cpanel seems to be provided by their partner Plesk and looks intuitive enough:
Strato made all its navigation buttons as compact as possible which even though I think was for a good cause, just made it very hard to find all the info you’ll need.
The text is in smaller print and it’s easy to miss different features if you don’t look twice. Overall, the color theme and navigation are not the best, and other host’s provide much easier-to-use UIs.
Ionos Ease of use
On the other hand, Ionos provides a much more user-friendly interface and the right color combinations and design to make the important things you need to know stand out.
Navigation is super easy and their different features are easy to see. You can also expand the compressed features to see more detail on each plan tier.
The Ionos cPanel too is quite different from the traditional cPanel and is also intuitively designed:
From the main page, you can choose the product you want to use and start managing right away.
And the Winner Is… Ionos
In terms of ease-of-use and user interface, Ionos is the clear winner. Strato’s UI doesn’t look that great and they don’t clearly state the features they offer. Ionos makes it much easier and looks far better overall.
Round 6: Security – Which Platform is More Secure?
Strato
Ionos
Free SSL certificate
Not stated
Yes
DDoS protection
Yes
Yes
CloudFlare
No
Yes
Daily backups
Yes
Yes
Malware scans
Yes
Yes
SiteLock Security
Yes
Yes
WAF (Web Application Firewall)
ModSecurity (can be installed for free)
ModSecurity (can be installed for free)
Security Features
Daily backups
AntiVirus scans
SiteLock support
DDoS
Free SSL
DDoS
CloudFlare support
Daily backups
Malware scans
SiteLock compatible
Strato Security
Strato doesn’t say exactly whether they offer free SSLs on their plans but apart from the basic plan, you get SSH access, MySQL backups, and a phishing filter out-of-the-box. You also get daily backups, and the Strato SiteGuard and an in-built antivirus scan your website for malware.
Strato is also SiteLock compatible and you can also install ModSecurity, a free WAF plugin for extra forte. Strato is said to be CloudFlare compatible but many users have reported that their websites broke when they tried to point to their servers.
Ionos Security
Ionos clearly states that they provide a free SSL, DDoS protection, and are CloudFlare compatible. You also get daily backups, automatic malware scans, and a paid SiteLock security option.
Ionos doesn’t come with a WAF but you can also install ModSecurity for free.
And the Winner Is… Ionos
Strato’s security features are blurry since they don’t clearly state them. Ionos is the winner here since it’s also easier to point to CloudFlare.
Round 7: Server locations
The server footprint of your host directly affects the speed of your website. The more distributed your host’s servers are, the better your website will perform to a worldwide audience.
Strato Server location
Strato has servers in Germany – in the cities of Berlin and Karlsruhe. The company keeps most of its server locations a secret as a security measure.
Ionos Server location
Ionos has servers located in the U.S.A – Las Vegas and Newark, and Europe – Frankfurt, London, Berlin, Logroño. Ionos also provides easy CloudFlare integration to expand your website’s footprint to several other continents:
And the Winner Is… Ionos
Ionos has a wider server footprint and more servers than Strato meaning your website is more likely to load faster on the former than the latter under ideal conditions.
Strato vs Ionos: final recommendations
When to Choose Strato?
Strato is overall a decent hosting provider that’s surprisingly quick for its smaller server footprint and straightforward to use. Go for Strato if:
Most of your audience is based in Europe
A straightforward dashboard
You don’t want to have to choose between tiered plans
You want the most storage for dedicated hosting
Go for Ionos if you:
Ionos wins this matchup for good reason. Choose Ionos if you:
Want the best support
Are an agency or freelancer
You target a worldwide audience
Want very flexible VPS plans optimized for storage and CPU
Want an easy-to-use interface
More security features out-of-the-box
A free domain and SSL on every plan
The Bottom Line
In the seven-round Strato vs Ionos matchup, Ionos came out on top, but Strato was a strong Ionos competitor. Both hosts feature free domains on all plans and are easy to migrate existing websites to for free.
Ionos, however, also offers a free SSL on all plans, is far more intuitive to use, and provides very versatile hosting plans plus niche packages for different businesses. Both hosts were born in Germany and hold a special rivalry – one of Strato’s founders was a top executive at Ionos.
If you are a large corporation or business and most of your target audience is based in Europe, Strato is the host for you. However, if you’re targeting a more worldwide audience and need more flexibility, Ionos is the host you should go for.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is 1 & 1 now Ionos?
Ionos was formerly known as 1 & 1 when it was founded in 1988. After expanding its operations from Germany to the U.S., 1 & 1 became 1 & 1 Ionos in 2018. And then finally Ionos in 2020.
2. Is Ionos better than Strato?
Ionos is a better host and a solid Strato competitor because the company provides better support, a wider server footprint, an easier-to-use user interface, and cheaper hosting services.
3. Can I transfer my website to Ionos or Strato?
Yes, you can. You’ll have to sign up and become a customer on Ionos first though. After that, you’ll need to prepare your domain transfer and then use the auth code to initiate the transfer. The great thing about Ionos is the company retains your domain subscription period from your former host.
4. What are some great Strato and Ionos alternatives?
Some good Strato alternatives and Ionos alternatives are GoDaddy, Bluehost, Namecheap, Hostinger, and Hostgator.
HostAdvice.com provides professional web hosting reviews fully independent of any other entity. Our reviews are unbiased, honest, and apply the same evaluation standards to all those reviewed.While monetary compensation is received from a few of the companies listed on this site, compensation of services and products have no influence on the direction or conclusions of our reviews. Nor does the compensation influence our rankings for certain host companies.This compensation covers account purchasing costs, testing costs and royalties paid to reviewers.
