Features and Ease of Use
DDHost has high-grade servers in three locations: Germany, Poland, and the United States. You can host in any of these locations by purchasing any of their plans. With these plans, you get:
- Unlimited email addresses
- Unlimited FTP users
- Unlimited parked domains
- Anywhere from 2GB to 30GB SSD storage
- Unlimited databases with management tools
- Softaculous app installer
- mk domain forever
- Paid dedicated IP for the shared plans
If you’re a beginner, you should have few issues with any of their offers. There’s no website builder available, but every plan comes with a one-click installer for a number of CMSes, including WordPress, Joomla!, TikiWiki, and Drupal.
Another thing I like about them is their website transfer service. While certain hosting providers only offer this service with their top-tier plans, DDHost offers free website transfer from your previous host on all plans.
There’s no noticeable uptime guarantee listed on the DDHost website, but my quick tests revealed that they have an average of over 99.9% uptime.
Note, however, that setup time is 12 hours. Most shared hosting accounts are set up almost immediately, so a setup time this long might be a gripe for users who need a new web host immediately. Nevertheless, the presence of Softaculous makes software installations fast and more straightforward afterwards.
But what bothered me was that none of the plans offered free SSL certificates. You had to pay an extra fee to obtain one. It shouldn’t be like this, considering how crucial SSL certificates are for search engine ranking algorithms nowadays.
Pricing and Support
DDHost isn’t the cheapest web host on the market. The prices on their shared hosting plans don’t fit their offering, particularly if you’re not willing to commit to a three-year contract to get the lowest listed rates. You can find the same services or more at a lower cost elsewhere. Also, considering that they don’t offer a free SSL certificate on any plan nor a free domain (except .mk), it’s on the high side.
That said, if you’re in Macedonia and going for a .mk domain, their plans may work well for you. Most web hosts only offer the first year free for domain registration, but here we have a lifetime domain. As a new user, you have your .mk domain free forever.
The VPS, reseller, and dedicated hosting plans are fairly-priced. Plus, another plus about DDHost is their 30-day money back guarantee.
Monthly payment is only available with their unlimited plans. However, if you choose to pay for two or three years on any plan, you’d save about 30% or more of your money.
DDHost’s customer support leaves something to be desired. Although there is a knowledge base available, phone calls and text-based conversations have long response times. When I contacted them on Skype, it took over 48 hours before I received a reply. Email support was a little faster, but if you need help urgently, your best bet is phone support.
