Cyon.ch review

First impression

Cyon is a web hosting provider that was founded in 1996 by Thomas Sprenger and Martin Steige in Brunngässlein, Basel, Switzerland, making them one of the country's oldest hosting providers. They offer services such as shared hosting, managed servers, and domain registrations, and are made up of a close-knit team of 42 hosting professionals. Their data center is based in Basel and is powered by 100% sustainable electricity.

Trial Period

They offer potential new customers a full month to test out their shared hosting, ample time to test them out and make sure their services live up to your expectations before committing. Unfortunately, this free trial period doesn't apply to their managed servers, and they also don't have any money-back guarantee in place, so if you are testing their shared hosting, you'd better make sure they are the right fit before committing.

Billing Cycle

Their shared hosting plans are generally billed annually only, but their sales agents have confirmed that they do offer other cycles to some clients. They don't advertise this, so if you are looking to pay for a shorter period, best would be to get in touch with them to make arrangements. Their managed servers, on the other hand, are billed per month only.

They currently accept all major credit cards, PayPal, as well as payments via Swiss QR code, a method of digital invoicing and payments in Switzerland.

Control Panel

Cyon hosting plans don't come with household names like cPanel or Plesk to manage your accounts, but rather their very own, in-house created control panel, simply named the my.cyon. This panel comes with a well-designed and easy-to-navigate interface and will let you manage all aspects of your accounts, such as invoices, databases, SSL certificates, and more, from one convenient location. You can also log support tickets here and even browse through their latest blog posts. It has all the features you can possibly think of, maybe even a bit too many, as some clients might feel it is a bit overwhelming. But, for me personally, I think it's excellent!

Limits

Their shared hosting plans come in three straightforward options, the Single Cherry, the Double Cherry, and the Triple Cherry. The Single plan starts off with 50GB lightning-fast SSD storage space, 1GB RAM, 10 MariaDB databases, and has a limit of 10 domains.

10 domain spaces. Pretty good specs for an entry-level plan, as you can host a decent-sized website on 50GB. Next up is the Double plan, which comes with a whopping 25 GB SSD disc space, 125% computing power, 1GB RAM, 50 MariaDB databases, and allows you to host up to 50 domains. Finally, there is the Triple Cherry plan, which boasts 500GB SSD storage space, 150% computing power, 2GB RAM, 100 MariaDB databases, and unlimited domains, perfect for just about any type of project, big or small. I must admit, I have seen a lot of VPS plans with less impressive specifications than this plan!

Cyon's managed servers are equally impressive, and as with their shared plans, also available in three options with the exact same names. These range from 8 core CPUs and 16GB RAM on the Single plan, up to 32 Core CPUs and 64GB RAM on the Triple plan. All three plans come standard with 1000GB's of blazing fast SSD web space.

Website Builder

Cyon offers the SiteBuilder website builder in three options that vary in SSD space and email accounts at an additional monthly fee. This builder is really easy to use as it comes with a drag-and-drop interface and a variety of fully responsive templates that one can easily edit to create your desired website. Having worked with numerous builders over the years, I can confirm that this is one of the better ones out there.

Security

When it comes to security, they most definitely don't cut corners! Their impressive array of security measures includes a web application firewall (WAF) to detect suspicious activity and protect your site from malicious attacks, automatic patching, to find and close security gaps in the system, a network firewall to block unwanted access, DDoS attack protection, malware scanning, 2FA to log on securely, and free SSL certificates by Let's Encrypt. As if that isn't enough, they also have live kernel patching, make use of LVE technology to create a protective layer around each individual web hosting account, intrusion detection, and even PHP proactive defense, to analyze the running PHP codes and prevent malicious code from executing. 

OS

All Cyon's servers operate on CloudLinux, the lightweight and hugely popular OS that was specifically created for shared environments. This OS isolates each plan's resources, so that if one site gets compromised, it won't affect others. It is very stable and secure, and also seamlessly works with most control panels. This OS also includes enhanced security features such as kernel hardening and PHP selector tools, making it a firm favorite amongst a lot of providers that need enterprise-grade reliability for their shared infrastructure.

Support

If you run into issues and need urgent help, you can contact their friendly and well-trained support agents via email, phone, support tickets, or their AI chat bot (which I surprisingly found quite helpful). Tickets get answered within an hour, but it is worth noting that their email and phone support are only available during certain hours of the day.

Conclusion

What's there not to like about this provider! Their hosting runs on fast SSD drives, comes with more than enough space, security is top-notch, and their support is fast and efficient. If you are based in Switzerland and looking for a new provider, be sure to consider them as they check all the boxes in my opinion!