Active 24 is a Czech hosting company that was established in 1996. As one of the pioneers in the field of web hosting, they’ve done a great job of keeping up with technological developments. They currently serve over 100,000 clients across the Czech Republic, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K.
Features and Ease of Use
Active 24 offers shared and managed VPS hosting solutions, with your choice of Windows or Linux as an operating system. E-commerce website owners also have the option of their specialized WooCommerce or fully-featured e-Shop packages.
Their entry-level Linux shared hosting package, a minimalist plan named Start, provides you with:
- 1GB storage
- 250MB email storage
- Unlimited data transfer
- Daily backups
- Unlimited email accounts
- SSL certification
- One hosted domain
This package really cuts out all the fluff though. It doesn’t include any MySQL databases, support for any scripting languages, or any automatic installations of the popular CMSes such as WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, and WooCommerce. (That’s not to say that it precludes manual installations, fortunately.) Of course, this is their cheapest package, so it’s likely meant for those who simply want a basic online presence.
One level up, you have the Complete package, which gives you:
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited data transfer
- 5GB email storage
- Automatic installations of popular CMSes like WordPress and Joomla!
- Support for scripting languages
- Unlimited MySQL databases
As with the Start package, this is capped at one domain per account. This plan gives you solid value for money — you’d be hard-pressed to find those resources and features at that price range with any other host. If you need to set up multiple websites, you can go for their Firm or Expert packages, which allow you five and 10 domains per account respectively.
All shared hosting accounts come with the industry-standard 99.9% uptime guarantee. If you’re going for their managed VPS hosting packages, they come with a 99.93% uptime guarantee.
If you’re a beginner to website creation, you might want to consider subscribing to Active 24’s website builder plan. The Premium package gives you access to over 220 mobile-friendly templates, 5GB space, 1GB email storage, and over 400000 stock photos. You can even publish a Facebook page and edit CSS styles via the website builder. This service enables you to get a website up and running without having to hire professional designers or programmers.
Pricing and Support
Overall, Active 24’s prices are highly affordable, which explains why they’re so popular in Europe. A unique advantage Active 24 offers is that when you choose to migrate to their service from a different provider, they’ll double your chosen contract length for free. This means that if you move your existing domain to their servers and pay for a year in advance, within 14 days they’ll credit a second year of hosting to your account at no extra cost. However, this only applies to their shared hosting packages, and you’ll have to subscribe to their service for at least six months to get the bonus.
Active 24 offers a 14-day money back guarantee on their shared hosting packages. This might feel a bit stingy, but bear in mind that they also offer limited free trials of almost all their services.
Support is available via live chat, email, and telephone. They also have a German help desk open during business hours on weekdays. Since they’re based in Prague, all of their technical documentation is written in the Czech language. Non-Czech customers may find this situation challenging. However, when I reached out to their customer support, I discovered that they were able to communicate in English, so it might not pose as much of a barrier.
