Aruba.it review

First impression

Aruba S.p.A is a web hosting provider that was founded way back in 1994 by Stefano Cecconi, who is still their CEO to this day, making them one of Italy's oldest providers. The company operates seven fully owned data centers across Europe and serves roughly 16 million users. They offer a range of services such as domain registrations, shared hosting, email solutions, VPS and dedicated servers, fiber-optic connections, and online marketing to name just a few.

Trial Period

Unfortunately, most of their products don’t come with any free trials, so you generally can’t test them before committing. However, their Aruba Cloud provides a 14-day free trial for their VPS services. For other plans, if you signed up and feel they don't live up to your expectations, you can cancel your plan within 14 days to receive a full refund.

Billing Cycle

Aruba’s shared hosting plans are only available as annual subscriptions, so if you sign up you are in for the long haul. However, their other server options offer more flexibility. Dedicated server plans are prepaid, with terms ranging from 1 to 12 months, while their VPS plans feature either monthly or hourly billing, where you only pay for the time the server is active. This can be a significant cost saver for users who need servers for short-term projects, testing, or variable workloads.

They currently accept Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and bank transfers as valid payment methods.

Control Panel

All of their shared hosting and server plans include Aruba’s custom-built control panel, the Aruba Panel. This panel lets you manage domains, hosting space, email accounts, databases, and file uploads (via the File Manager) from a single, convenient location. It’s well-designed, super easy to use, and gets the job done efficiently. For dedicated server plans, they also offer the option to install the Plesk control panel, a powerful and hugely popular control panel that works on both Linux and Windows, designed to simplify website, server, and application management.

Limits

Aruba's shared hosting plans all run on blazing-fast SSD storage drives with no size limits, include a complimentary domain and a pre-installed DV SSL certificate and are available in four scalable options for both Windows and Linux. The Basic plan comes with 5 POP/IMAP email accounts and 1 MySQL database. The Easy plan offers unlimited 1GB POP/IMAP mailboxes and 10 'Gigamail' accounts - these mailboxes can be expanded up to 50GB. The Advanced and Professional plans feature unlimited 1GB POP/IMAP email accounts, along with 20 and 30 'Gigamail' accounts respectively, plus 5 MySQL databases each. Both of these higher-tier plans also include SSH access.

Their VPS plans, on the other hand, come in multiple predefined options, ranging from 1 vCPU and 1GB RAM on the 'CS O1A2' plan, up to 32 vCPUs and 64GB RAM on the 'CS O32A64' plan. They exclusively use block storage—a type of cloud storage that functions like a raw, high-performance hard drive attached to your VPS, with additional costs depending on the amount you require. However, Aruba also encourages users to build custom servers with their preferred specifications.

Website Builder

All their shared hosting plans come standard with Softaculous, through which users can install the most popular CMSs such as WordPress, PrestaShop, OpenCart, and Joomla with a single click. These content management systems come packed with all the tools necessary to create a professional-looking website quickly and effortlessly. Aruba also offers the SuperSite website builder in two, rather expensive options, that vary in features. This builder comes with pre-designed templates, a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, and generative AI to effortlessly produce text, images, and product descriptions. Super easy to work with, but not sure if it is worth that monthly cost though!

Security

Aruba has some solid security measures in place. Their data centers feature 24/7 surveillance, biometric access controls, and redundant power systems to prevent unauthorized entry and downtime. All their hosting plans come with a free SSL certificates (DV standard) to encrypt website traffic, while their VPS solutions offer DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) protection to block malicious attacks. Furthermore, Aruba provides automated backups (on select plans) and firewall management, ensuring data recovery in case of breaches. Their ISO 27001 certification confirms compliance with international security standards, and they use hardware-level isolation on VPS servers to prevent cross-tenant vulnerabilities. While they don’t offer advanced WAF (Web Application Firewall) by default, users can configure additional security via SSH key authentication and custom firewall rules.

OS

This provider does not disclose which version of Linux or Windows operating system they utilize on their shared hosting plans, but on their VPS plans users will get to choose between Debian 11 / 12, Ubuntu 22.04 / 23.10, CentOS 7 / Stream 8 / Stream 9, AlmaLinux 8 / 9, Rocky Linux 8 / 9, Fedora 38 / 39, or Windows Server 2019 / 2022, these two does carry an additional licensing cost.

Support

Support proved to be somewhat frustrating in my experience. The only available contact methods are phone or support tickets, which require site registration to submit. When I did file tickets, the responses to my questions were very vague, leading to unnecessary back-and-forth that could have been resolved with a single clear email. While this was my personal experience and likely an isolated incident, I did note that responses (as vague as they were), came quickly, typically within an hour. For a provider of this size, I was somewhat surprised by the lack of a live chat option on their website, which would have made communication much more efficient.

Conclusion

Aruba has been around for ages and is a solid choice for Italian businesses, offering budget-friendly shared hosting with free domains, SSL certificates, and decent VPS scalability - all backed by local data centers for fast performance in Europe. However, its lack of live chat, limited billing cycles on shared hosting, and rather a costly website builder can frustrate users.