Hetzner vs IONOS Comparison

Why choose Hetzner

• Higher Cost score (9/10 vs 8/10)
• Higher Customization score (8/10 vs 7/10)
• Better fit for developers (9/10 vs 7/10)

Why choose IONOS

• Higher Support score (6/10 vs 4/10)
• Higher Analytics score (5/10 vs 4/10)
• Better fit for enterprise (6/10 vs 4/10)
• Better fit for small business (8/10 vs 6/10)

Hetzner

Pros

• Compute is still cheaper than DigitalOcean, Linode or Vultr and several times cheaper than the hyperscalers, even after the 2026 price rises.
• Cloud servers are billed hourly with a monthly cap, and firewalls and private networks are included at no extra cost.
• Infrastructure can be automated through a REST API, a CLI, and integrations for Terraform, Ansible and Kubernetes.
• Hetzner owns its data centers in Germany and Finland, which suits teams that need EU data residency.
• Object storage includes 1 TB of storage and 1 TB of egress for a flat base price.

Cons

• Prices rose by about 30 to 37 percent in April 2026, the second increase in about 18 months.
• US cloud bandwidth allowances were cut sharply in December 2024.
• Reviewers often report strict identity checks that block or close new accounts.
• There is no 24/7 chat support, and some reviewers say support is slow to respond.
• Managed services are limited compared with the hyperscalers, so most of the stack is self-managed.

IONOS

Pros

• Shared hosting renews at a modest $8 to $18 a month and includes daily backups, unlimited traffic and a wildcard SSL certificate
• VPS+ plans include root access, DDoS protection, a firewall and unlimited traffic from $2 a month as an introductory price
• The IONOS Cloud platform covers managed Kubernetes, S3-compatible object storage and managed databases, with a Terraform provider
• Data centers in the US, UK, Germany, Spain and France, plus GDPR and data-sovereignty commitments, suit EU buyers
• Some users say 24/7 support responds quickly and is technically knowledgeable

Cons

• The introductory price can rise sharply at renewal (the Plus plan goes from $1 to $14 a month)
• Reviews and complaints repeatedly mention aggressive auto-renewal and cancellations that are hard to complete
• The control panel is described as dated
• The lowest shared hosting plan has no CDN and only one email account
• Ratings are mixed, with a G2 average of about 3.5 out of 5