Kylos, a company founded by engineering and computer science students in 2003, is a Polish hosting provider that offers a range of shared, VPS, cloud, reseller, and dedicated server hosting packages. In 2008, they launched their own data center in Łódź, Poland. They cater primarily to the Polish market.
Features and Ease of Use
Individuals and small businesses just starting out should opt for one of their shared hosting packages. The entry-level plan includes:
- 1GB of storage
- 100GB of monthly bandwidth
- 1 email account
- Free SSL certificate
- 1 MySQL database / FTP account / subdomain
- Backup functionality
- Installation of popular platforms such as WordPress, Joomla!, and PrestaShop
The storage space provided may seem low at first glance, but it also has a considerably lower price tag than many other options in the market. Also, IGB should be sufficient for individuals and small businesses to establish an adequate web presence.
On the other end of the spectrum you have the Kylos Platinum shared hosting plan, which has an increase to 100GB of storage and is unlimited for almost everything else.
Disappointingly, none of their shared hosting plans come with a free domain registration – I thought this would’ve been included with the higher-tier shared hosting plans. Also, Kylos does not appear to have an uptime guarantee.
On the upside, Kylos provides a free website migration service as well as a dedicated account manager for every client. Also, though small, Kylos beats many of its larger competitors in server performance. A quick test found that websites hosted on Kylos servers load faster than 90% of the websites hosted on other leading Polish hosts.
Since Kylos also offers a range of VPS and cloud hosting packages, businesses can rest assured that they can stay with the same hosting provider even when they expand.
Pricing and Support
Kylos prices their plans quite reasonably – in fact, the cost of their entry-level shared hosting plan easily beats those of their larger competitors. Note, however, that Kylos lists their prices in annual rather than monthly terms; a flexible month-by-month contract isn’t available. Like many web hosts, they offer a discounted price for the first year’s contract, then charge the regular rate after that initial term. That said, the 2nd year price increase isn’t that steep, so Kylos is still an inexpensive choice.
Kylos offers free 14-day trials of any of their shared hosting plans. These trial hosting accounts are fully functional, which means that if you already have a registered domain, you can even set up email accounts, MySQL databases, SSL certificates, and subdomains, testing everything until you’re satisfied. If at any time during the trial you’d like to change your package, you can contact their support staff. Alternatively, if you’d like to upgrade to a paid account, you may do so as well.
At Kylos, you can get support through a telephone hotline, email, a ticketing system, and live chat. They’ve also got an extensive knowledge base packed with helpful articles, although they are written in Polish. They do offer an option to translate them to English, but it seems that this functionality is currently broken on their website. Not to worry though, you can always run it through Google Translate instead. However, I understand that this could be problematic for non-Polish customers. They’re working on fixing it to ensure a smoother experience for everyone.