Based in Tallinn, Estonia, web hosting provider Virtuaal has been in business since 2003. Over a period of 16 years, Virtuaal has hosted almost 8000 domains on its Estonian servers.
This company is committed to providing excellent service and support to customers, and it claims to answer queries and solve customer problems within a few minutes.
Virtuaal’s website can be switched between the English, Russian, and Estonian languages, but some parts of the website do not translate fully into English.
Features and Ease of Use
Virtuaal offers shared web hosting, VPS, and dedicated servers.
There are four shared hosting plans, the first of which (the Micro plan) fits the bill for small business needs. It comes with 2 GB SSD storage, one hosted domain, and three email addresses. Then there’s a big jump to the second plan (Plan I) that offers 150 GB SSD storage, unlimited domains, and 100 email addresses.
All shared hosting customers can enjoy the following features:
- 99.9% uptime
- Unlimited addon domains on all but the Micro plan
- Let’s Encrypt SSL
- Weekly or daily backups, depending on the plan
Customers on all but the Micro plan also get control over their PHP settings, plus the ability to use the Python and Ruby on Rails programming languages. It’s the same for SSH access and the Installatron script installer that are also not available on the Micro plan. However, beginner webmasters will be pleased to see that the website builder is available to all.
The shared servers utilize CloudLinux to ensure stability and separate hosted users from each other, ensuring that everyone receives the resources they have paid for.
Pricing and Support
Virtuaal’s shared hosting plans are reasonably priced; maybe even cheap for the features on offer. The huge increase in resources between the Micro plan and Plan I could be a subtle kind of upsell, like maxing your meal at a fast food restaurant, so no wonder Plan I is labeled the “most popular” plan.
While you can pay for plans monthly, you can get a 17% discount by buying annually, which you might be tempted to do because the 30-day money-back guarantee gives you a potential “get out” if anything goes wrong within the first few weeks.
Virtuaal’s customer support can be contacted via email and support ticket. I never received a response when I sent an email, which was quite disappointing for a vendor that claims it responds within a few minutes.
To get beginners off the ground, and to solve your technical issues, there’s a reasonably well-populated knowledge base:
