Scala Hosting Review: Should You Use It?
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Overall rating
4 out of 5 stars
There are so many hosting providers on the market, and we know it can be difficult to choose between them all. If you’re on a quest for the perfect host and want to know if Scala Hosting is the perfect fit for your business, then this review is for you.
In our recent round of hosting research, we analyzed Scala Hosting’s plans, pricing, features, performance, and more, awarding the host with an overall score of 3.7 out of 5.
Founded in 2007, Scala Hosting’s core mission is to make VPS hosting accessible and available to the masses. While it also offers different hosting types, such as shared and WordPress hosting, VPS hosting is Scala Hosting’s primary product. But is it a good fit for your website?
In this article, we’ll do a deep dive into Scala Hosting’s offerings, from its hosting types and pricing to features and support options. Let’s begin!
Pros and Cons
Scala Hosting Pros
- Range of hosting types: Scala Hosting primarily focuses on VPS hosting, but also offers shared and managed WordPress hosting plans.
- Anytime money-back guarantee: If you’re not happy with your plan, you can get your money back without question!
- Dependable security & backups: Scala Hosting’s plans come with automatic daily backups, as well as a suite of security features, such as a free SSL certificate.
Scala Hosting Cons
- No green hosting: Given the rise in popularity for eco-friendly solutions and green hosting, it’s a shame that Scala Hosting currently has no green initiatives.
- Pay to use cPanel on VPS plans: While its shared and WordPress hosting plans come equipped with the familiar cPanel, Scala Hosting’s VPS plans use its own version: sPanel. If you’d rather use cPanel on your VPS plan, you can pay to switch.
- No phone support: Despite a number of help and support options, Scala Hosting doesn’t allow customers to contact the company via phone. So, if you prefer to talk directly to a real human, you’re out of luck with Scala Hosting!
Features
Scala Hosting offers three different types of hosting: shared, managed WordPress, and VPS. We’ll share details on these plans throughout the review, but if you want a top-level breakdown, see below:
- Shared: Affordable and usually the best option to start with
- Managed WordPress: Ideal for hosting a WordPress site due to optimized features
- VPS: A step up from shared hosting, with more resources to help your business grow
While Scala Hosting primarily promotes its VPS hosting plans, our research found that its WordPress hosting plans are actually its strongest offering, scoring 4.2 out of 5 overall. Scala Hosting’s VPS plans sit just behind with an overall score of 3.6 out of 5, and then comes shared hosting with a less exciting score of 3.3 out of 5.
Scala Hosting’s shared and WordPress hosting plans are pretty similar when it comes to features, offering the basics you’d expect to see, such as unmetered bandwidth and a free SSL certificate.
The web host also has an advertised uptime of 99.9%, translating to almost nine hours of downtime per year.
WordPress Hosting
It’s worth noting that its WordPress hosting plans come with additional features, including a free one-click WordPress installer, free WordPress migration, and staging tools. We tested over 13 providers in our managed WordPress hosting research, and Scala Hosting is the fourth best for features, scoring 4.3 out of 5.
VPS Hosting
Of course, VPS hosting is a real step up from the previous hosting types, and the features on offer highlight this. You can expect up to 12 CPU Cores, 24GB RAM, and 200GB of storage on the highest plan. You can even upgrade to 2000GB of storage if you’re happy to pay the price!
For its VPS hosting features, Scala Hosting sits in the middle of the pack out of the 12 hosting providers we examined. It scores 3.2 out of 5 for its features.
In comparison, the best host for VPS features – HostGator – scores 4.3 out of 5. So, for a hosting provider that markets itself as one of the top-rated platforms for VPS hosting, we found it a little lackluster when put against its competitors.
More Information
- Best Web Hosting Providers: Take a look at the best hosting providers on the market right now.
- If you’re looking for high-quality features, we’d recommend reading our IONOS Review and GreenGeeks Review as they receive high scores in our features research.
Pricing
To ensure fair reviews of all the hosting providers on our website, we’ve focused on the 12-month pricing for each plan. If you commit to a longer subscription, which is 36 months in Scala Hosting’s case, then your plan will be cheaper.
Let’s take a look at the 12-month starting prices and renewal fees for each hosting type:
- Shared hosting: $2.95 per month, renews at $9.95 per month
- Managed-WordPress hosting: $2.95 per month, renews at $9.95 per month
- VPS hosting: $39.95 per month, renews at $49.95 per month
Each hosting type offers four different plans as well as price increases with each upgrade, maxing out at $189.95 per month for Scala Hosting’s Build 4 VPS hosting plan.
For cheap hosting, you’d be best off with shared hosting since it’s generally the most affordable type of hosting. However, in this case, Scala Hosting’s WordPress hosting plans are set at the same price of $2.95 per month!
What’s great about Scala Hosting is that it offers an anytime money-back guarantee, so if you’re unhappy with your plan or think you need to reconsider, you won’t face a blow to your budget.
Scala Hosting Pricing vs Competitor Pricing
The numbers we’ve shared above are hard to judge unless you compare them with other hosting providers. Below, we’ve compared Scala Hosting to our top three web hosts and their 12-month starting prices:
| Provider | Shared Hosting | WordPress Hosting | VPS Hosting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scala Hosting | $2.95 | $2.95 | $39.95 |
| Bluehost | $2.95 | $2.95 | $19.99 |
| HostGator | $3.95 | $7.95 | $23.95 |
| InMotion | $3.49 | $4.49 | $14.99 |
As you can see, Scala Hosting’s introductory prices, especially for shared and WordPress hosting, are very reasonable. However, the jump in price after the initial term is a real drawback.
In our hosting research, its best performance for price was for its affordable WordPress hosting plans, scoring 3.6 out of 5.
If you’re a new business or looking for something cheap and easy to manage, we’d recommend starting off with Scala Hosting’s shared hosting plans. Of course, if you have a WordPress site, then WordPress hosting would be the ideal route for you to take.
Both start at the reasonable price of $2.95 per month (billed annually), but remember to keep a lookout for the steep renewal costs once your initial term has ended.
More Information
- Best Cheap Web Hosting Providers: For affordable hosting, take a look at our list of these nine web hosts.
Security
Your website’s security is incredibly important – you need to protect your business from attacks and you’ll likely have customer information to keep secure as well.
Every Scala Hosting plan comes with a free SSL certificate, indicating to visitors that your site is secure. However, the hosting provider goes the extra mile by providing additional features, including:
- SShield security
- Anti-spam protection from professional SpamExperts
- Security scans
- CDN
- Dedicated firewall (on Entry Cloud plan)
- FTP with SSL
- Virus, spam, and malware protection
Services will vary depending on your chosen plan, so just make sure to double check before signing up.
Help and Support
If you need a helping hand, Scala Hosting offers 24/7 live chat and email services. In fact, they go so far as to promise a live chat response within 30 seconds, and an email ticket response within 15 minutes!
Plus, if you happen to be on the Advanced hosting plan or above (applicable to both shared and WordPress hosting), you get additional priority ticket support. Any server or backend hosting issues should be resolved by Scala Hosting’s technical support team automatically.
However, Scala Hosting is let down by its lack of phone support and limited Help Center, and it fails to score above 3.3 out of 5 in our help and support research. If you’re looking for top-level support from your hosting provider, we can’t recommend HostGator enough.
More Information
- HostGator Review: Our top hosting provider for help and support.
Additional Products
It’s not uncommon for hosting providers to tack on additional products to your checkout when you’re purchasing a hosting plan, and Scala Hosting is no exception.
Most plans come with a free domain for the first year, but your checkout page will flag the cost of the domain so that you’re aware of what you’ll need to pay after the introductory deal. If you’re looking for a .com domain name, an additional year will set you back $16.95.
Another additional product to mention is Scala Hosting’s preference for its own comprehensive control panel (SPanel). Its VPS plans use this platform instead of the widely-used cPanel, but you can pay to upgrade to cPanel if you’d rather make use of a familiar dashboard. For a 12-month term, it’ll cost an extra $275.40 to opt for cPanel.
Scala Hosting Review: Summary
While we can’t say that Scala Hosting is the best hosting provider out there (that crown belongs to Bluehost), but there’s a perfect web host for everyone. Scala Hosting could be the right fit for you if you’re a new business looking to get online cheaply but safely, thanks to its affordable starter prices and dependable security features.
Though it primarily promotes its VPS hosting services, we found that Scala Hosting’s managed-WordPress hosting plans were the best it had to offer, scoring 4.2 out of 5 for the hosting type overall.
It offers decent security features, such as a free SSL certificate and anti-spam protection, and its cheap introductory deals (plus anytime money-back guarantee) make it easy to try the provider out for yourself.
However, we were disappointed by Scala Hosting’s steep renewal prices, lack of dedicated hosting plans, and no phone support, which can prevent some customers from getting the help they need. If you’re after better value plans or you’re looking for dedicated hosting, we recommend Bluehost instead. If great support is important to you, check out HostGator.
With an overall score of 3.7 out of 5, Scala Hosting can fight among the market’s best, but is it the right fit for your website? Let us know in the comments!
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