Expert Overview
Quality Hosting since 1998
Ikoula has been in business since February of 1998 providing good quality hosting to their customers. Unlike many hosting companies that started in the earlier days of the Internet, Ikoula has managed to stay innovative and competitive. They have kept up with the latest trends in the industry and they continue to grow and expand. They currently host over 35,000 sites on more than 5000 servers. The company is financially independent, which gives them stability and greater control over the direction of the company and how they service their customers.
Ikoula states that they were the first hosting companies to sell 100% dedicated servers, the first to sell packs AJAX-ASP.net to 2.0-MS MSQL 2005 and they have many other innovations as well. They are clearly good at finding the latest technologies and figuring out which ones will be a success so they can offer them to their customers. In addition to hosting, you can buy domain names, use their security features, use email hosting and much more.
Uptime & Reliability
Excellent 99.999% Uptime Guarantee
You’ll get a 99.999% uptime guarantee, which is quite exceptional. This company is able to provide high quality, powerful hosting that is stable and ready to go. Looking through what other users of this hosting company have said, it appears that there are virtually no issues related to downtime or even slowness with their servers. This is thanks in part to their high quality data centers, which they run quite well.
Features
Lots of Hosting Options
You’ll find that there are a lot of hosting options to choose from with this company. They have done a good job at laying everything out in simple tables that provide you with all the details of their services so you know exactly what you’re getting. The entry level shared hosting package starts with 10 gigs of disk space, which is above the industry average. You can go up to 250 gigs with their high end shared hosting options. You’ll also get unlimited traffic on each of the three options at this level.
If you need something with more power and control, you can move up to their VPS solutions. These servers use cloud computing power and help ensure you have stable hosting at all times. Unlike the shared hosting packages, you have to ‘design’ your own VPS. This is done through a simple slide bar that lets you select which processor, memory and hard drives you would like for your VPS. This is a fun and convenient way to get exactly what you need without paying anything extra for items you don’t want.
Not surprisingly, you can also get dedicated servers with this company. They have quite a few options at a variety of levels. Some of them are quite inexpensive, though the server specs aren’t the best. The lowest level ‘green’ servers use Intel Atom processors, which is a lower end CPU. They do give you 2-32 gigs of RAM, however, which is nice. If you need something more powerful, they have a number of higher end servers powered by the XEON series of process made by Intel. These are nicer servers, the highest end of which offers 64 gigs of disk space, RAID 10 storage and powerful 6 core CPUs.
Support
Friendly Tech Support
From what I am able to gather, the tech support with this company is easy to get in touch with and very friendly. They are also competent to solve just about any problem you might bring their way. You can get in touch with them through their website or via the phone depending on your preference. They do have some self-help information, but not enough to really understand the services like some people would like.
Pricing
Reasonable Prices at Most Levels
The pricing with this company is really quite reasonable for most options. The one exception is at the high end dedicated server where they offer a very powerful server for 1099 Euro per month. While the server is certainly a high end model, it is not worth that much each month. After all, you could just buy the server outright for what it would cost to rent for just a few months. When you look through the rest of their packages, however, you will find that the prices are very reasonable based on what it is you are getting.
User Friendly
Everything is Easy to Use
This company is very easy to work with and they seem to put a lot of effort into ensuring their customers don’t have any trouble getting exactly what they need. Whether you’re browsing through their site looking at the easy to understand hosting packages or setting up a new page through their cPanel, you will enjoy the experience. If you have to work with their sales or support teams it seems like they are also quite friendly, though they don’t speak English so I couldn’t get a personal experience with them.
Summary
Excellent Overall Hosting
This is a great hosting company that has a proven reputation for quality and innovation. The company itself is quite impressive, and the hosting services they manage is as well. Whether you’re looking for an entry level hosting package or something to run your corporate websites, this company will have it all for you.
Pros:
- Lots of Hosting Options
- Reasonable Prices
- 99.999% Uptime Guarantee
Cons:
- Highest Dedicated Server is Over Priced
