Editor's opinion
Sean Thompson
I am a full-time web developer & IT professional with more than 18 years experience. I have been working with numerous hosting companies over the years.
First impression
Sered, founded in 2009 in Ourense, Galicia, Spain, is a web hosting provider with a dynamic approach to delivering innovative solutions. The company has experienced rapid growth and offers a range of services, including Shared Hosting, VCS (Virtual Cloud Server) Hosting, Elastic Hosting – combining VPS power with the simplicity of an optimized shared server, and Domain Registrations. Their data centers are strategically positioned in Barcelona, Madrid, and Talavera de la Reina.
In 2023, Sered became part of the Miss Group, an international web hosting company renowned for providing diverse hosting services at competitive rates, establishing a global presence.
Trial Period
Sered, unfortunately, doesn’t have a free trial period to test out their hosting, but they do however have a 30-day money-back guarantee in place on their Shared hosting plans. If you regret signing up with them or simply want to move whilst still within the first 30 days of signing up, simply cancel your plan for a full refund.
It's important to highlight that licenses such as cPanel, Nginx, CloudLinux, LiteSpeed, and any other license type, along with SSL certificates and Dedicated IP addresses, are not eligible for a refund.
Billing Cycle
They provide flexible payment options, allowing customers to select monthly, annual, biennial, or triennial payment plans. The more extended the contract, the greater the discount.
Valid payment methods include AMEX, Discover, Maestro, Maestro UK, MasterCard, VISA, JCB, Dinners Club, Bank Transfers, PayPal, Direct Debits, or PaymentWall, a global payment platform that integrates more than 150 payment methods, encompassing credit and debit cards, bank transfers, e-wallets, prepaid cards, and mobile carrier billing.
Control Panel
Sered wholeheartedly embraces cPanel as the chosen control panel for all their hosting plans. This industry-leading panel, trusted by millions of users worldwide, empowers users to install applications, configure and edit their sites, manage DNS, monitor page performance, and more, all from one convenient graphical interface.
Limits
Their Shared Hosting plans, featuring free SSL certificates and daily backups that get stored for 7 days, provide users with a range of options, starting from the Mini Plan with 5GB Standard SSD storage space and 3 POP/IMAP email accounts. On the other end, the Elastic Hosting 3 plan offers 150GB super-fast NVMe disk space, 14x VCPUs, 8GB RAM, unlimited inodes, MySQL databases, and traffic. (The Elastic plans serve as their alternative to VPS Hosting).
All plans except for the Mini plan, which is basically just an entry-level web builder plan, run on LiteSpeed Web Servers with LSCache, a powerful cache-management tool.
The Elastic Hosting plans, however, are fully scalable, allowing customization based on specific needs. Users have the flexibility to increase or reduce resources as needed, with payment aligned to the actual resources utilized.
Website Builder
Sered provides its own intuitive, user-friendly, and custom-built website builder, available at an additional monthly cost. This builder features an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, a diverse selection of premium and fully responsive templates that can be easily customized, built-in SEO optimization, e-commerce functionality, and more. Perfect for newbies and seasoned professionals alike.
Security
Sered hosting plans benefit from robust security measures, including an Advanced Firewall powered by Immunify360, a Web Applications Firewall (WAF), and Proactive Defense that automatically detects common viruses, malicious network connections, and web shell connections. Additionally, they employ Hardened PHP to support older PHP versions securely, Brute Force Attack Protection to prevent password and credential hacking, Virus and Malware scanning, Direct Link Protection, and CageFS, which encapsulates each customer for privacy.
Furthermore, they offer a Security Audit service at an additional cost where they analyze Auth Bypass / Directory Traversal, Remote Code Execution / Remote File Include, SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting, Arbitrary File Upload, Data Leaks, Cross Site Requests, Forgery, HTML Injection and more.
OS
They implement CloudLinux across all their hosting plans. This Linux-based operating system aims to provide shared hosting providers with a more stable and secure environment by segregating each customer into a distinct "Lightweight Virtualized Environment" (LVE). This allocation and limitation of server resources, such as memory, CPU, and the number of simultaneous connections, for each web hosting tenant, contribute to a more controlled and secure operating system.
Support
Technical support comes in the form of Live Chat, Phone, Email, or a Ticketing System that is available around the clock, 365 days a year. Their agents are well trained and give one the impression that you matter as they are friendly, professional, and eager to resolve your issues. One drawback however is that their Live Chat doesn't have the option to switch to English, so if you are unfamiliar with Spanish you are better off just contacting them via email. Emails luckily get answered quickly, I have put them to the test multiple times and got assisted within 5 minutes every time.
Conclusion
Pros |
Cons |
- Great uptime;
- SSD Storage;
- Money-back guarantees;
- Free SSL certificates;
- Good support.
|
- No data centers outside Europe;
- No server locations outside Europe;
- Live Chat only in Spanish;
- No Windows options.
|
Sered is a solid choice for anyone looking for a quality hosting provider based in Europe. They offer affordable and performance-driven plans and their technical support is a pleasure to deal with. It would be nice to see some Windows options in the near future, but overall a great choice.