Atman.pl review

First impression

Atman is a major cloud and data center provider with an office in Warsaw, Poland. It is currently part of ATM S.A., and was founded by Tadeusz Czichon and Tomasz Putyrski in 1991. They were Poland's very first commercial Internet provider, and now provide services such as VMware solutions, cloud hosting, dedicated servers, colocation services, and containers for developers.

Trial Period

They have a no-obligation 14-day trial for cloud hosting. This allows potential customers to test out and use their hosting services, such as high availability, scalability, and security, for no upfront costs at all. If you don't like what they have to offer, just terminate your plan within the first 14 days without having to pay anything.

Billing Cycle

Atman provides customers with two billing models to select from. You can sign up on a yearly, two-year, or three-year basis and be billed monthly (more discounts the longer you commit) or you can go with PAYG, paying only for what you consume.

They currently accept payments via bank transfers and credit card payments through payment gateways.

Control Panel

Atman does not adhere to one size fits all approach - its control panels mold themselves to fit what service you're running. Cloud hosting gives you OpenStack's environment, so you have options: Horizon dashboard for graphical management, direct API for automation, traditional SSH for command line aficionados, or even Terraform/Ansible when you're part of the infrastructure-as-code group (which, honestly, every serious developer should be these days).

Dedicated server users get Atman's very own, no-frills control panel, that allows you to reboot servers, move from Windows to Linux distributions in minutes, install KVM over IMPI, and manage IP addresses like a network administrator. It's not pretty (think early 2000s enterprise software), but it gets the job done with military precision.

Limits

Their Cloud Hosting is built on OpenStack environments and is divided into two main categories, the standard Cloud, which runs on high-performance 3GHz processors and a 1Gbps line, and the Cloud Basic, which comes with basic functionality as the name suggests. With the Cloud Basic, users can choose between three scalable plans. The Starter plan features 2x vCPUs, 100GB of disk space, 4GB of RAM, and 1x IPv4 address. The Business plan coms with 4x vCPUs, 150GB of disk space, 8GB of RAM, and 2x IPv4 addresses, while the Enterprise plan, their top-tier plan, boasts a powerful 8x vCPUs, 16GB of RAM, 200GB of storage, and 3x IPv4 addresses.

On the other hand, the standard Cloud Hosting is customizable according to your specific requirements. Users can select the number of CPUs, RAM, disk space, and more to meet their needs.

Website Builder

Atman does not have a website builder in its offerings because the company deals in high-performance data center and cloud solutions such as colocation, cloud hosting, and dedicated servers for business houses that need scalable and secure IT environments. Solutions of Atman are firm-specific with higher requirements, usually with tailor-made configurations and more advanced technology requirements, compared to the entry-level website building solutions.

Security

They have some robust physical and virtual security measures to protect their infrastructure and hosting services. Data centers have security accesses via biometrics, ongoing surveillance, and backup power. Distributed anti-DDoS protection, advanced firewalls, and replicated data across geographically disparate availability zones are also included to ensuring that your data is safe in case of failures in the region.

OS

They provide a range of different operating system (OS) options for their Basic Cloud Hosting, including the more common Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and also Cirros, one I don’t see often. Cirros is a very light, cloud-specific Linux distribution used extensively for development and test hosting in the cloud because it has such a minute footprint. It's used where quick and small footprint are the primary requirements, and developers can spin off or de-instantiate instances in an instant without first booting a complete operating system. If the need for Windows-based hosting arises, they sell a Windows Server license.

Support

They have several channels of support where their customers can reach out to should they run into trouble. You could contact their support team via phone, email, or through their customer portal, from where you could raise support tickets for more technical issues. Atman's support team is polite, very capable, and respond back with very informative and useful solutions. Turnarounds were generally quick, and although there was a very small language barrier (at least for me), they replied with useful support in a timely manner.

Conclusion

I believe they are a strong contender if you're looking for reliable and secure business hosting services; however, they may not be suitable for entry-level users. Their robust infrastructure, backed by high-performance hardware and advanced security measures, ensures your data is safe and your operations run smoothly. With a variety of hosting options, including customizable cloud services and dedicated servers, Atman offers flexibility to meet different business needs. While their support is responsive and knowledgeable, minor language barriers might occasionally arise, though these are generally handled well. Overall, Atman is a solid choice for those seeking dependable hosting solutions in Poland.