Cityhost.ua review

First impression

Eminent with their commitment to quality equipment, CityHost employs only renowned brands such as Intel, Supermicro, Dell, HP, CISCO, and the similar gear. Surprisingly enough, CityHost was the pioneer in implementing FTP account security and protection of the most common CMS systems in Ukraine by heuristic scanning, an option that they have made unique in the industry.

Trial Period

They are amongst the rare hosting providers to offer free trial offers and money-back guarantees on their Shared Hosting, VPS (Virtual Private Server), and VDS (Virtual Dedicated Server) packages. Whereas their Shared Hosting packages give a 10-day free trial, that of VPS/VDS is for 5 days. Refund term of their shared hosting is 30 days from the date of order. But for paid services that exceed 30 days, they do not offer any refund money.

It should be noted here that refunds are not given for Domain Registrations and SSL Certificates.

Billing Cycle

Shared Hosting and VPS customers can choose monthly, 3-month, 6-month, yearly, or 24-month (for shared hosting) billing periods. Choosing longer billing periods on shared hosting plans is highly discounted.

Payment options are all major Debit and Credit Cards, Bank Transfers, Beznal, LiqPay, Transaction Cloud (for foreign customers), Monobank, and Privat24.

Control Panel

They offer a control panel built specifically for their Shared Hosting plans, which their support team calls hosting 2.0. Although it has no name, the panel is easy to use and extremely intuitive, with a full complement of features.

In VPS packages, the users have the liberty to select between FastPanel, Hestia Control Panel, or Vesta Control Panel. The users can even opt for a server without a control panel and install one, keeping in mind the full root access provided.

Limits

Their Shared Hosting can host literally anyone, from beginners on their lower plans right up to large eCommerce sites on the “Unlim Hosting” plans. Their lowest plan, the “Apartment” provides 10GB NVMe storage with 512MB RAM and it increases with each plan right up to unlimited NVMe SSD storage with 1536MB RAM on the “Premium Unlim” plan.

All plans come with unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts, MySQL databases, free SSL certificate by Let’s Encrypt, and comes with Node.js support as a default feature with the option to choose if your files will be hosted in Germany or Finland. CityHost also comes with PHP versions 5.2 – 8.3.

VPS packages, however, are offered in five scalable plans. Their most basic VPS package, the KVM-35, features 35GB NVMe SSD storage, 2x Core CPUs, and 2GB RAM, while the KVM-400 features 400GB NVMe SSD storage, 16GB RAM, and 8x Core CPUs. A dedicated IP address, full root access, 100 MB/s Port speed, Unlimited traffic, POP/IMAP email accounts, and an Interface to control your DNS records are all included in all VPS packages. Clients can choose to have either Ukraine, Germany, or the Netherlands as server location.

Website Builder

CityHost provides its own website builder, the "Website Constructor," as a complimentary feature for all of its hosting plans. While very basic compared to today's builders, it's ideal for beginners with no web development experience. The builder comes with over 200 easily editable templates (with the option to change color schemes, menu styles, logos, etc.) that are all responsive. With the easy drag-and-drop interface, users can have a professional-grade website up and running in a matter of minutes even without coding skills.

Security

Free SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt, Anti-Virus software that conducts heuristic code scanning, that is, scanning the source code of a program and comparing it with the source codes of previously known viruses that are already included in databases, Anti-Spam software and a high-end firewall, which monitor and manage network traffic, thereby making it more secure are also included in CityHost hosting plans. Along with this, SSH, a cryptographic network protocol for secure running of network services over an insecure network is also available at request.

Although they offer simple traffic filtering DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) security, they strongly recommend that their clients tie their websites to CloudFlare if they will most likely be attacked by it.

If you need longer SSL certificates, you can purchase PostiveSSL, RapidSSl, or QuickSSL Premium certificates at an additional fee.

OS

CityHost Shared Hosting plans leverage lightning-fast NVMe SSD drives optimized with Memcache, OPcache, and Redis for increased performance. The preferred operating system is CloudLinux, which is highly acclaimed for its stability and security.

On the other hand, CityHost VPS plans offer customers flexibility through the provision of Unix and Windows-based plans. Customers are able to tailor their VPS configuration through the selection of one of a number of operating systems, such as Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Debian, AlmaLinux, Windows Server 2016 (default operating system for Windows-based plans), Windows Server 2012, or Windows Server 2019. Such a wide selection provides customers with the option of selecting an operating system that is most appropriate to their individual requirements and wishes.

Support

Customer support at CityHost is available through Live Chat and Email, facilitated by friendly and helpful agents around the clock. It's worth noting that while they provide a phone number for sales inquiries on their website, technical support is not offered through this channel.

The support team is very responsive, with Live Chat queries responding usually within under a minute. Apart from this, all emails were replied to within under an hour in my experience.

Conclusion

CityHost is a suitable option for Europeans seeking low-cost and performance-oriented hosting plans. An added advantage is that they also provide trial periods for their Shared and VPS hosting plans in addition to the money-back guarantee. While their website builder is extremely simple and better suited for beginners, CityHost is otherwise a suitable option otherwise.