Magic.fr review

First impression

Magic Online is a French company specializing in internet services, SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions, and web hosting. Headquartered in Montreuil, a suburb in the eastern part of Paris, France, this company has been operating since 1994. They have a solid, primarily French, customer base of over 60,000 users and host more than 30,000 websites. Their services include Domain Registrations, VMware Private Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, Broadband Internet Connectivity, VOIP, and High Availability SaaS services.

Trial Period

Regrettably, Magic Online does not offer a trial period to try out their services, nor do they have a refund policy, which is a common practice among French VMware & Dedicated Hosting providers.

Billing Cycle

All of their hosting plans, whether it's VMware or Dedicated Server Hosting, are billed monthly but require a yearly commitment.

Accepted forms of payment include Visa Cards, Mastercard, PayPal, and Bank Transfers.

Control Panel

Their hosting plans include their own, custom-developed, Magic Cloud Control Panel, which offers a user-friendly interface with all the necessary administration tools, such as SSL certificates, DNS, and more. Users also have the option to select Plesk Webadmin, Plesk Web Host Control Panel, or Plesk Web Pro at checkout, but these carry an additional monthly fee.

Limits

Magic Online does not offer Shared Hosting (although one can still order that through Nuxit, a subsidiary that forms part of the Magic Online Group) or VPS hosting, but rather specializes in Dedicated Server Hosting and VMware, a service enabling organizations to simply pool all their servers into a single resource, which can be distributed among virtual machines (VMs) that run application workloads across the enterprise.

Their VMware plans provide customers with six scalable and robust choices. These options range from the Magic Cloud S plan, which includes 1x 4 GHz vCPU, 4GB RAM, 160GB SSD disk space, and 2 public IPv4 addresses, to the Magic Cloud 3XL plan, which offers 1x 128 GHz vCPU, 128GB RAM, 3TB SSD disk space, and 64 public IPv4 addresses.

Dedicated Server customers on the other hand have multiple, fully customizable, options to choose from. Bronze, their entry-level plan, features an Intel Xeon E5-1620v4 3.5/3.8 GHz processor, 3GB RAM, 2 x 250GB SSD drives, and 100 Mbps bandwidth, whilst the top tier plan, the Rhodium, boasts 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6258R 2.7 / 4 GHz processors, 512GB RAM, 2 x 250GB SSD drives, and 500 Mbps bandwidth.

One should note though that none of their hosting plans come with a complimentary SSL certificate, and this needs to be purchased separately.

Website Builder

Because Magic Online prioritizes high availability cloud computing services like VMware and Dedicated Servers, they do not include website builders in their plans.

Security

Their data centers, all ISO27007, ISO9001, and PCI-DSS certified, fully redundant, and manned by security personnel 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, enforce strict access control via RFID cards, biometric palm scanners, and color video surveillance. Their network is protected by Cisco ASR routers which manage all inbound and outbound traffic to their IP transit providers and a Wanguard anti-DDOS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) system to prevent denial of service attacks. Their user accounts are protected by Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam software, as well as an integrated firewall that acts as a barrier, filtering incoming and outgoing network traffic based on security rules and policies.

As mentioned before their plans don't come with free SSL certificates, but certificates such as GeoTrust Rapid SSL, GeoTrust Rapid SSL Wildcard, and GeoTrust TrueBusinessID with EV can be purchased additionally.

OS

Magic Online offers users the choice between CentOS 7 / 8, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Debian 11 / 12, or Windows Server as the operating system.

Support

Their technical support team is accessible Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. via Phone or their Ticketing System. To raise a ticket, you need to be logged into the customer area. Avoid sending support-related queries to their admin email address, as you won't receive a response - something I had to learn the hard way! While the agents are knowledgeable and friendly, response times vary from 1 to 4 hours.

Conclusion

Magic Online provides meticulously organized and scalable plans utilizing cutting-edge Dell hardware. While their security and uptime are commendable, their support isn't available 24/7, and response times can be slow. Nonetheless, it's a solid option for those in France seeking high-availability cloud computing solutions.