Contabo.com review

For more insights into other services and an in-depth look at Contabo, take a look at the posts below.

Contabo VPS

First impression

The town of Munich in Bavaria, Germany, is renowned worldwide for Oktoberfest, but it is also the birthplace of the German hosting giant, Contabo, established in 2003. Originally named "Giga-International," the company underwent a name change in 2013 to Contabo when it expanded its operations to serve a global clientele, extending beyond the local German market.

This multi-award-winning company, made up of a team of over 300 hosting experts, provides VPS (Virtual Private Servers), VDS (Virtual Dedicated Servers), Shared Hosting, and Domain Registration to an ever-growing customer base of over 160,000 clients globally spanning 190 countries worldwide.

Trial Period

Contabo does not provide a trial period, but they do offer a 14-day money-back guarantee on all their hosting products. If you find that they are not the right fit for your hosting needs and it is within this 14-day timeframe, you can simply cancel and request a full refund.

Billing Cycle

VPS and VDS customers can opt for monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual sign-up plans. Unfortunately, there are no discounts available for longer commitments, but given their already affordable rates, this may not be a significant concern. Shared Hosting customers, on the other hand, are obligated to commit to an annual subscription.

Contabo accepts all major credit cards, PayPal, Skrill, bank transfers, and direct debits (for qualifying customers) as valid payment methods.

Control Panel

Contabo includes the industry-leading, cPanel control panel on their Shared Hosting plans. This user-friendly web interface lets you manage all aspects of your website and hosting features with ease. 

On VPS plans users will have the option to choose between cPanel for Linux, Plesk for Windows, as well as Webmin, a web-based server management control panel for Unix-based systems, that allows users to configure operating system internals, such as users, disk quotas, services and configuration files, as well as modify and control open-source apps, such as BIND, Apache HTTP Server, PHP, and MySQL. 

For developers, they also include Docker, a software platform to build, test, and deploy applications.

Limits

Their Shared Hosting plans have four distinct options to choose from. Web Package M, their entry-level plan, comes standard with 50GB disc space, 20x MySQL databases, 1 free domain, and 1000 POP/IMAP email accounts. Web Package L has 100GB space, 50x MySQL databases, 1 free domain, and 2000 POP/IMAP email accounts, whilst the Web Package XL plan features 250GB space, 100x MySQL databases, 2 free domain registrations, and 5000 POP/IMAP email addresses. Lastly, their Web Package XXL, the top tier Shared Hosting option, boasts 500GB disc space, unlimited MySQL databases, 3 free domains, and unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts. All these plans include a 1-click installation of popular applications, such as WordPress, Joomla, Nextcloud, MediaWiki, Laravel, Prestashop, Matomo, phpBB, and EGroupware, to name just a few.

One should note though that the free domains must be one of the .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, or .de extensions.

Their VPS plans, running on optimized hardware from Dell, HP Enterprise, Samsung, AMD, and Intel, feature fast and responsive AMD EPYC™ 7282 16-core processors, that can handle intensive workloads and super-fast NVMe SSD drives. Customers can choose from four scalable plans ranging from 4 vCPU Cores, 8GB RAM, 50 GB NVMe space (or 200 GB standard SSD space), 1 Snapshot, 32 TB Traffic on their Cloud VPS S plan, up to 10 vCPU Cores, 60GB RAM,400 GB NVMe (or 1.6 TB standard SSD space), 4 Snapshots and 32 TB Traffic on the top-level plan, the Cloud VPS XL.

Each server also comes with dedicated IPv4 and IPv6 addresses with the option to buy more should you need extra.

Website Builder

Contabo developed its own custom-made website builder, aptly named the Contabo Website Builder, in late 2017. Since then, they have made it available free of charge to all Shared Hosting plans. With over 200 templates at your disposal, this tool enables you to create and design your own responsive website, including e-commerce sites, with just a few clicks, even if you can't write a single line of code.

Security

Contabo data centers, spanning 8 regions and 11 locations globally, are highly secure facilities that are guarded 24/7 with strict access control and constant CCTV monitoring. 

They proudly state that they are obsessed with security, but they are reluctant to give out too much info about the exact details of their security precautions, an approach I quite like to be honest. 

On server level, they provide complimentary DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) protection that is activated automatically for all servers and webspace packets in the Contabo data centers. This advanced system automatically detects most DDoS attack patterns and filters the incoming traffic to the server so that the "malicious" attacking traffic is dropped and only the "real" desired traffic arrives at your server, so you will barely notice any change in the event of an attack.

They also include Free SSL Certificates by Let’s Encrypt on all plans, and Snapshot Backups on VPS plans, to restore a copy of your virtual server to a specific day and time.

OS

They make use of CentOS, known for its stability and reliability, as the operating system of choice on their Shared Hosting plans, whilst VPS customers will have the option to choose between CentOS, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Debian, openSUSE, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux. On Windows VPS plans there are Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2022.

Important to note is that should you opt for a Windows Server, then the Windows license fee is added on top of your monthly VPS fee.

Support

Their support team, comprising 64 specialists working at 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level support, is available via phone from Monday to Friday, 10 am to 8 pm CET, and through support tickets around the clock. Unfortunately, there is no live chat option. However, their well-trained agents typically respond within an acceptable time frame of 2 hours on average.

Conclusion

Apart from the noticeable absence of a Live Chat option, there isn't much to dislike about Contabo. Their plans are affordable and scalable. While I think server uptime could be improved, they still offer enough features to cater to both developers and first-time users. a Decent choice should you be looking for a European provider.