Features and Ease of Use
SafeBrands offers a full suite of website hosting services, including shared hosting, which includes the following core features:
- SLA guarantees available
- Daily automatic backups
- Domain registration available
- Up to 20 add-on domains
- SSL certificates available
- Up to 300GB disk space
- Unlimited traffic per month
There are four shared hosting plans, which all run on Linux operating systems. As well as running up-to-date Debian Stretch, the plans also support PHP version 7, which is twice as fast as version 5, often supported by hosting companies.
The control panel used is Plesk Panel, which is not as popular as cPanel, but is reliable and easy to use. You can also take advantage of the one-click installer to install popular programs such as WordPress and Joomla! easily from the control panel.
All of the usual features such as phpMyAdmin access, FTP accounts, and MySQL databases are available. Confusingly, the plans are called Ruby First, Ruby Standard, Ruby Expert, but they do not appear to support Ruby on Rails.
The servers are located in Marseille, France. It’s not clear the exact uptime guarantee., but it does appear that you can request an SLA. Also, your website data is stored on servers comprising numerous hard drives to mitigate the risk of disk failure.
Pricing and Support
The plans are relatively high priced compared to other local and international companies. Plus, SSL certificates, domain names, and VAT are all added costs on top of the package prices.
Unfortunately, there are no monthly plans available. You can only pay for plans on an annual basis and there isn’t a money-back guarantee, so the payment terms and prices are very strict.
If you’re the type of person who enjoys doing their own research, you’ll find a large FAQ section on the website. Additionally, there’s a client area that requires login, so there might be more resources available inside.
If you prefer to contact customer service, it is available 24/7. There are multiple offices around the world e.g., Paris, Marseille, and Nice in France, as well as Canada and Hong Kong, each with individual telephone numbers. If you want to send an email, you need to do it via an online contact form, initially.
In my experience, I submitted an online contact form at around lunchtime on a weekday, asking to confirm the companies uptime SLA. Despite waiting for several business days, I did not get a reply. I did contact the team in English, so potentially that was a blocker, I have no way of knowing.
