Website Planet
To compare the best web hosts, we hosted the same WordPress website on each one and tested performance, customer service, and value for money. Check out the results here.
Part of the GoDaddy group, velia.net has been in business since 2003. It currently employs more than 30 people and provides services to 5,000 business customers around the world. The main website is in German and English, but the checkout flow is also available in Chinese.
Features and Ease of Use
This provider’s dedicated servers are designed primarily for enterprise-level clients. Their core features are:
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Backup services available
- Up 100 Mbps port traffic included
- A choice of operating system
- KVM/IPMI remote access included
The six velia.net data centers are strategically located around the world, in the U.S.A. (St. Louis, Miami, and Los Angeles), France (Strasbourg), Germany (Frankfurt), and Hong Kong. However, I confirmed with customer services that velia.net doesn’t own the data centers. It’s not a showstopper for me, but I do think you’re more likely to get hardware issues resolved quickly and less likely to have resources oversold when your host owns its own data center(s). The good news is that velia.net owns all the equipment.
Customer services also confirmed a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is around the industry average. However, digging into the terms of service reveals the sentence “…provides its services with an availability of 99.0% in the monthly mean,” and it doesn’t say what credits you’ll receive in the event of excessive downtime.
Pricing and Support
The dedicated servers start from an affordable base price. Prices increase in line with specifications, but they remain good value for money. You can configure your server at the checkout by choosing the operating system, storage, and RAM for additional monthly fees.
There aren’t any setup fees, and you can make all purchases on a flexible month-to-month basis, which is great, but it also means there are no discounts for longer commitments.
Current customers have access to a client area, which may well include a decent set of self-support resources for all I know. The rest of us can contact the company via email or live chat. I was pleasantly surprised that my two mid-week, midday messages were answered instantly and expertly, for example.
