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The childhood vaccines that the CDC is dropping from the recommended scheduled have successfully beat back illness and death in children from rotavirus, hepatitis and other pathogens.

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As the Oregon Ducks and Indiana Hoosiers go head-to-head in Atlanta, Georgia, here's how to watch Peach Bowl 2026 for free and from anywhere in the world.

This elite soundbar offers real side surrounds and huge bass for smaller spaces, and with an astounding early bird price

Ready for integrated graphics to take over from discrete GPUs? Asus believes 'it's just a matter of time' now.

Easy setup, precise navigation and turf-friendly blades keep your lawn looking its best.

The directives served their purpose and are no longer needed.

A Thousand Blows steps out of the bareknuckle boxing rings of Victorian London to focus on bleaker themes in the second season of Steven Knight's historical drama. While there are still plenty of wince-inducing brawls, A Thousand Blows season 2 is less about gritty fight sequences and more about the fight for survival in an unforgiving Victorian London.

Like the first season, Knight has once again mixed fact with fiction, using real historical events to inspire the narratives throughout the series, which he describes as "stepping stones" for creating a foundation to the overall storyline. "Usually, you’ve got a date, maybe a fight that happened, a boxing bout that happened or a robbery that happened for real," he explained. "You know these things happened, and then it’s up to you to find out why they would have gone from that to that."

Knight confirmed that the second season is roughly 35% based on real-life. That formula adds a layer of authenticity to the show that it balances throughout with emotional story arcs to thread the varying narratives together, from Hezekiah Moscow’s (Malachi Kirby) journey from lion tamer to heavyweight champion to Mary Carr's (Erin Doherty) daring department store robberies as the leader of the notorious all-female crime gang the Forty Elephants.

In season 2, Hezekiah is seen dusting himself off from the aftermath of the fatal boxing bout at the end of the first season. Still reeling from the loss of his brother Alec (Francis Lovehall), he feels more far from home than ever before.

These emotions weigh him down, but they're also the spur for a new redemption arc that ties into Knight's belief about the timelessness of basic human motivations. "It doesn’t matter how far back in time you’re going," he says. "People were the same. The same motivations, the same emotions, jealousy and passions."

Partly due to Knight's focus on these themes, season 2 has a lot less boxing than the first chapter. That gives it a more relatable feel for those with less interest in pugilism, with the series referencing real historical events like the Matchgirls’ Strike of 1888 at the Bryant & May factory. "They used white phosphorus, which was poisonous and caused horrible diseases for the workers," Kirby noted. There are also echoes of Jack the Ripper that further ground the show in a layer of authenticity of the time.

(Image credit: Disney )

Doherty summed up the atmosphere of the period: "Life was fragile then, it was easily lost… When you understand how many people would just die on the streets, the stakes are incredibly high." Adding: "When you're trying to find the human in it all, it's not too hard because it was so terrifying and bleak."

For Darci Shaw, who plays supporting character Alice, it was digging into that bleak history that helped her to fully understand what was at stake. "I read quite a bit about the period and the state of women in homelessness at the time, and I think that just helps to understand the stakes and why these women [the Forty Elephants] are so confident and will do whatever it takes because they don't have a choice," she said.

Other supporting characters like Edward 'Treacle' Goodson are also given more depth. James Nelson-Joyce, who plays Goodson, credits Knight’s scripts for the character’s complexity in season 2. "Steven’s writing is unbelievable," he said. "You’re never playing one thing. There’s always layers, always something underneath what’s being said."

Despite one extremely heartbreaking storyline, Treacle and his brother Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham) don't play as big of a role in the second season, leaving space for Hezekiah's and Mary's comeback act to take centre stage.

The stakes are no less serious, though. While there’s less boxing than in the first season of A Thousand Blows, the brawls remain brutal, but it's the characters' battles outside the ring that give the second season its dramatic force.

All six episodes of A Thousand Blows season 2 premiered on January 9, 2026, on Disney+ (internationally) and Hulu (US).

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A Thousand Blows season 2 returns to Disney+ and Hulu, and this time, it's an even tougher fight for survival.

Officials are calling for transparent investigations into controversial shootings involving federal agents. Here's a recap of the latest developments in Portland and Minneapolis.

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The AI chatbot has been creating sexualized images of women and children upon request. How can this be stopped?

Despite the police's best efforts, ransomware continues to rise with more actors, more victims, and more trouble.

The Dell Pro Max 16 Plus is a little brother to the Dell Pro Max 18 Plus I previously reviewed. It trades a bit of screen real estate for a higher-quality display and the ability to be tucked away in a backpack for on-the-go use. While it may not fit in the tighter laptop bags, it will fit in larger, more robust backpacks.

The Pro Max 16 Plus delivers powerful performance, featuring an Intel Core Ultra 9 chip, an NVIDIA RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell GPU, and up to 128GB of RAM. Simply put, this is one of the best mobile workstations of its class.

The two Thunderbolt 5 ports showcase the drive for speed, power, and forward thinking for the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus. Dell knows that at this price point and with this power, not everyone can swap them out as quickly as cheaper laptops. So, they have made sure to future-proof this one as much as possible.

The Dell team also found a way to pack in an SD Card, a Smart Card reader, an RJ45 port, and a 280W power adapter to power up this beast of a machine. It's a compelling option for developers, engineers, data professionals, and generalists who need a single machine that serves as their all-in-one tool to handle all their workloads without breaking a sweat.

Dell Pro Max 16 Plus: Price and availability

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future )

The Dell Pro Max 16 Plus has a base price of around $4000, available from both the Dell US and Dell UK websites. I'm also seeing it available from some online retailers.

As ever with Dell laptops, there are a huge number of configurations available, so prices will vary. In this review, I'm testing a model with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX (16 Cores, 24 Threads, 5.5 GHz Turbo, 55W), 128GB RAM, an NVIDIA RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell GPU, and 2TB SSD. All alongside the 16-inch OLED 3860x2400 with 500 nits max.

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future )Dell Pro Max 16 Plus: Unboxing and First Impressions

After just reviewing the Dell | Pro Max 18 Plus, I knew this 16-inch model was going to be very similar. It's essentially 98% as good as the Dell Pro Max 18 Plus in a smaller shell, with an upgraded Tandem OLED 120Hz Display.

Unboxing, I realized that while the 2-inch difference, of course, makes a difference for screen size, the heft of this machine is still very prevalent. This is not an Ultrabook, it’s not a thin machine you toss in your bag and forget about.

And Dell isn’t ashamed of that at all. It proudly packs an insane amount of power into this unit, all while making it look pretty good and having superb usability in day-to-day operations.

Plus, with the ability to take in 280W, I want to be able to take that charger with me everywhere, but the sheer size of this brick is wild.

Dell Pro Max 16 Plus: Design & Build Quality

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future )

This is a hefty computer. There’s no denying that. But at the same time, it is light enough and portable enough to take around. Unlike the larger 18-inch brother, which pretty much means yes, you can carry it. Still, only to and from a workspace, the 16-inch laptop is more portable and easier to toss in a backpack, take with you out of your workspace, and experience the power of portability.

While the Dell Pro 14 Premium is hyper portable and designed to be lightweight, and the Dell Pro Max 18 Plus is designed to be an entire barrage of horsepower crammed into one machine that can technically be called portable, the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus fits between the two, while still favoring the hefty side. I wouldn’t want to walk around holding this with one hand while typing with the other, but I wouldn’t mind closing this, heading to where I am going, and then popping this back open again on a table, desk, or even my lap.

In fact, comparing laptops, this one feels more like a more powerful Precision 5690. Naturally, the Precision runs on older architecture, but it’s the same size screen, a similar keyboard, and fills a similar amount of space dimension-wise on everything except thickness.

The Pro Max 16 Plus can fit in my beloved Nomatic Backpack, but is too large for sleeker backpacks like the Bellroy Transit, primarily due to the thickness on top of the 16-inch display. But then again, there are some mid-sized bags, like a few from Troubadour, that this fits in, so it really comes down to the design of the laptop pouch.

Dell has done a fantastic job at keeping ports where users want them. I’ve seen some laptops, specifically workstation-class ones, that place ports on the back of the computer, with the idea of having this machine pretty much just docked.

Thankfully, Dell takes portability seriously, even with this tier of powerhouse. Because of this, the ports are on the left and right of the machine: the RJ45, HDMI, 2x TB5, SD card, and smart card ports on the left, and the 2x USB-A, TB, and headphone jack on the right. For my testing and my use case, this layout is fantastic and has had no issues so far.

While Thunderbolt 5 is still pretty new, putting it in this kind of machine is a wise, future-forward move by Dell, putting the faster, newer, and more powerful ports in their top-of-the-line machines, knowing that people grabbing these are not swapping them out every few months or even years. Still, they have been running them hard for a while.

The last thing I’ll mention regarding design is the display. I understood the Dell Pro Max 18 Plus, as people aren’t really going to use that machine for display-first tasks. They’re not buying that kind of machine to have a great display. This one, though, has a beautiful 3860x2400 Tandem OLED with 120Hz refresh rates, though it’s limited to 500 nits.

While this is still not a machine that the average video editor would grab as their first choice, nor a pro-gamer or photographer, this can be a machine used by someone who either cares about having a high resolution display for the real estate on their screen, fitting more content, crisper, or it could be someone who is a bit of a generalist-specialist. I see this being perfect for engineers who also work in graphic design or UI design, or heavy CAD users, who want to make sure they see everything clearly.

Dell Pro Max 16 Plus: In use

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future )Specs

CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX
GPU: NVIDIA RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell w/24GB
RAM: 128GB
Display: 16" Tandem OLED
Resolution: 3860x2400
Brightness: 500 nits

I’ve had this laptop in my rotation of machines for a whopping 113 days at the time of writing this paragraph. I’ve run some heavy workloads on it, I’ve used it for a few days in my real day-to-day world, I’ve used it for odds and ends, and I’ve run benchmarks all to see if this machine is what it says it is. So far, it has held up wonderfully to everything I have thrown at it.

Proving its might as one of the best laptops for programming, it’s blasted through local dev environments I have run on it, it doesn’t sweat at DBeaver repos, or pulling up large codebases in VS Code, it doesn’t even flinch. I dabbled in some local LLMs to try it, and I haven’t even been able to make the Intel Core i9 even sweat.

I pulled up large building schematics as CAD Files, I opened every productivity app I could think of and ran an absurd number of draining Chrome tabs, I was processing files, converting videos, transferring on and off of drives, and still, it’s great.

Don’t get me wrong, this won't be the best business laptop for every professional, due to its heft and power consumption, but for those who cannot or will not compromise on power and still want the option to bring their primary machine with them everywhere they may go, this might be the way to do it.

Compared to the Dell Pro 14 Premium, the Dell Pro 14 Premium focuses much more on battery life and portability than the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus. Still, you’re also getting true desktop-class power, now with a spectacular display too.

My model has an Intel Core i9-285HX with 16 cores, 24 threads, and 5.5 GHz turbo. It’s an absolute animal of a chip. Paired with the NVIDIA RTX 5000 Blackwell with 24GB, 128GB of RAM, and 2TB of SSD Storage, with the option of going up to 16TB on the device, which is truly absurd. I know of desktops drooling at these specs for productivity and performance. To get some numbers, I ran some 3DMark benchmark tests. For the CPU Profile Benchmark Tests, my max-threads test scored 11,717 points.

In everyday use, this machine has handled everything I have thrown at it, with room to spare. It’s got insane power for even the professional user, and gives power into the hands of the nomads without sacrifices.

The 16-inch size is great, offering excellent screen real estate without being too cumbersome, unlike the 18-inch counterpart.

Dell Pro Max 16 Plus: Final verdict

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future )

Few laptops offer this level of power while still fitting within a portable form factor. The Dell Pro Max 16 Plus is designed for the everything-fractional-developer who has to be able to do anything and everything at a moment's notice. It's designed for the generalist who dabbles in multiple high-demand areas of computing power.

The mobile workstation is designed to handle your day-to-day tasks without requiring you to hand off processing power to another companion device or even a dongle. It's self-sufficient for most tasks.

For those who need this class of workhorse, few are rating better than this one right now. Yes, it's not perfect, but it's a phenomenal option for those looking.

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The Dell Pro Max 16 Plus is an impressively powerful mobile workstation designed to take on any and all challenges you may throw at it in the professional workspace, all at the same time.

The PlayStation Portal is one of the most surprising gaming accessories I’ve owned in years.

Founded in Germany in 1988, IONOS (formerly known as 1&1 Hosting) is a web hosting giant and one of the best web hosting providers with 2,000 employees, 10 data centers, more than 90,000 servers, and 8 million customer contracts worldwide.

Putting that into perspective, Datanyze says IONOS (still listed there as 1&1) has a 7.4% share of the web hosting market: that's ahead of everyone but Google Cloud (8.37%), Amazon AWS (20.16%), and GoDaddy (7.53%). In an industry crowded with service providers, it's a remarkable achievement and a testament to its resilience.

What types of hosting does IONOS offer? 

There are products covering every area (Image credit: 1&1 IONOS)

IONOS offers plans covering a wide range of hosting types and needs. Low-cost shared hosting, website builder plans, and managed WordPress plans are ideal for personal and small business sites.

More powerful VPS, cloud, and dedicated hosting have the resources to handle more demanding business and ecommerce sites (and if it's web stores you're after, there's managed WooCommerce hosting, too).

IONOS is also one of the few remaining service providers offering Windows-based ASP.NET hosting. It's also great for devs, thanks to its Deploy Now plans that make an easy 3-step build-and-deploy to GitHub process possible.

For high-flyers, there is also a pathway to the heavens via cloud and dedicated servers. The wide variety of options lets you choose between AMD- and Intel-based servers for either computer- or storage-focused plans.

There isn't the space to cover every detail of what IONOS has to offer, but scroll down, and we'll break down the company's key ranges, explore their pros and cons, and find out which products could work for you.

Shared hosting

(Image credit: Future)

Shared hosting is where several websites are hosted on the same server. It's cheap because server costs are shared across all accounts. However, with many sites sharing the same CPU, RAM, and network connection, performance may be poor. Still, a good shared hosting package has more than enough power for most low-traffic blogs, personal and small business sites.

IONOS offers four shared hosting plans, priced from $4 to $10, with the most basic ‘Essential’ plan offering 10 GB of storage and support for 1 website and 100 website visitors per minute. The highest ‘Ultimate’ plan adds a ton of resources, supports unlimited websites, offers unlimited storage, throws in Site Scan malware protection, a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and analytics to monitor your website traffic. Yet, it's still only $10 a month with a 3-year term.

All plans include free wildcard SSL, a free domain, daily backups and recovery, 24/7 support, and easy WordPress installation. Plus, they all also come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

On the downside, IONOS doesn't offer free website migration to import your site from a previous host, and all plans include only one email account. It's a good one (2GB inbox, spam filtering), but that's no help, especially if you're a business that needs several email accounts.

If the solo email account is an issue, check out Hostinger and HostGator for their low starter prices, extended email abilities, and lengthy feature lists. Otherwise, what IONOS offers is a great deal from a cost-features balance point of view.

WordPress hosting

WordPress plans range from seriously cheap to very powerful (Image credit: Future)

WordPress is a hugely popular website creation tool that can be used to build everything from a simple personal site to a large, feature-packed international web store.

It’s worth noting that IONOS's unmanaged and managed WordPress hosting plans are essentially the same, priced between $5 and $12 a month on a 3-year term. The main features are similar, too: free domain, free SSL, and still no free migration.

Improved email support means the mid-range plan supports five email addresses, and the top plan supports 10. All plans include malware protection, geo-redundant data centers, and anti-phishing and anti-spam filters, and the top plan can remove any threats it finds.

The one significant downgrade is that, whereas shared hosting plans support unlimited websites, IONOS' managed WordPress plans allow only a single site, even on the highest-end plan.

WordPress-specific additions include the WP Assistant to build a simple initial site for you, automated WordPress updates, and free themes (pre-built website designs)—handy if you'd like to give your site a new look and feel. There’s also 24/7 support, including phone assistance, to help you navigate any issues or questions that arise.

All in all, these are all solid offerings and will work perfectly well if you're looking to master WordPress or bring your SEO tools to good use. However, if your needs are a little more advanced, consider Hostinger, which is the best WordPress hosting provider right now.

VPS hosting

(Image credit: Future)

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting improves on shared hosting by giving you exclusive access to the system resources provided. This has the potential to enhance performance significantly.

IONOS offers 6 VPS hosting plans, so there are plenty of options for you to choose from. All plans include unlimited traffic, free SSL, 24/7 support, firewall management, DDoS protection, the ability to host your VPS in the USA, UK, Germany, or Spain, and a 99.99% uptime guarantee. You can also get a professional backup and recovery solution from Acronis at 6.5 cents per GB per month.

The plans start with 1 CPU core, 1 GB RAM, and 10 GB of fast NVMe storage for a tiny $2 a month. That's cheap, but slightly underpowered for most users. The most powerful plan has 12 cores, 24 GB of RAM, and 640 GB of storage, and it's a good value at $30 per month for the first 6 months.

IONOS VPS plans give you the flexibility to deploy on either Linux (AlmaLinux, Debian, Rocky Linux, or Ubuntu). However, there is also an option for Windows VPS hosting, which costs much more, ranging from $11 to $76 per month on 3-year terms.

While IONOS offers high-quality VPS hosting plans, we’d also suggest considering Hostwinds. It provides more powerful high-end plans for heavyweight projects (up to 16 cores); uptime is 99.9999%; there's a 1Gbps connection to the outside world; and it's cheaper in many configurations.

Dedicated hosting

(Image credit: Future)

Dedicated hosting sits right at the top of the hosting tree. There's no sharing of RAM, network connection, or anything else, because the entire server is yours. It's the perfect choice for serious high-traffic sites.

IONOS is the best cheap dedicated hosting service, thanks to its excellent server deals that let you get started at just $41/month. This plan comes with 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD storage, and a 4-core Intel Xeon CPU with a respectable 3.9 GHz turbo boost. However, it’s worth noting that you will have to pay an additional $50 upfront as a setup fee.

All the regular plans are competitively priced, too, but the standout feature of IONOS dedicated hosting is the massive range of options available. Aside from choice in CPU provider, you can also opt for compute, storage, or GPU-focused plans. All plans also include a free domain, free SSL, anti-fishing, anti-spam, and firewall management.

These plans are good value and a decent choice for experienced business users who need speedy, reliable hosting but are also on a tight budget. However, a slight downside is the lack of configurability. Once you click the “Configure” button, you can only play around with RAM, storage, and the OS. If you are looking for a good amount of customization, check out Liquid Web or InterServer.

Cloud hosting

(Image credit: Future)

Cloud hosting offers increased reliability when compared to conventional web hosting. This is because websites or applications in cloud hosting are hosted on a network of interconnected servers, known as the cloud, instead of being hosted on a single physical server.

Genuine cloud hosting services come with auto-scaling (hands-off upgrading and downgrading of your hosting plan to meet unexpected spikes in website visitors) and geo-redundancy, where your website’s resources are shared between multiple data centers so that your website is up and running at all times.

Speaking of geo-redundancy, IONOS is one of the very few hosting services to expressly mention geo-redundancy as one of its benefits, even on its web hosting plans. The provider has 10 wholly-owned, geo-redundant ISO 27001 certified data centers; your websites will be up and running and won’t be affected due to maintenance or outages in any single location.

Prices for IONOS Cloud vary greatly depending on what type of cloud services you choose to focus on. For example, dedicated core (server core) hosting starts at $0.0037/core/hour. Block-Storage for managed Kubernetes starts at $0.0533per 30 days/GB.

In addition to being a top choice for small businesses, IONOS’s cloud offerings are also suitable for large companies thanks to its premium-level 3XL, 4XL, and 5XL plans. The top-tier plan ($420/month) includes 24 vCores, 48 GB of RAM, and 480 GB of SSD storage. Storage is a little less, though, especially for the price.

IONOS offers the best uptime with its cloud plans: 99.998%. This is on par with industry leaders Liquid Web and OVHcloud.

Does IONOS have a website builder? 

(Image credit: Future)

If you don't have a website or much idea of how to make one, then a website builder is the simplest solution. Most come with a range of pre-built site designs called templates, and all you have to do is choose one you like, drag and drop elements you need on a page (text, images, maps, videos, contact forms), then customize the site with your own content.

IONOS has a simple website builder (it also features on our list of the best website builder platforms) with a 17,000+ royalty-free image library, a free domain, a single email account (yes, just one, with varying storage), and free SSL. Where it really shines as a website builder, though, is its selection of themes; it offers many sophisticated template designs. Even better, the templates are organized by industry and type, making it easy to find the proper layout for your website.

Additionally, IONOS has hopped on the AI wagon and now offers AI-generated websites via its website builder. As they claim, it's minimum effort while providing maximum results. They've even thrown in an AI logo generator.

The Starter plan is cheap at just $6 a month for the first six months, $12/month on renewal. The mid-level Plus plan adds an AI image generator, an AI SEO text generator, site analytics, and integration with business apps, such as booking and review systems. It offers unbeatable value for money: $1 for 6 months, $18/month on renewal.

IONOS’s website builder is great for both small businesses and scalable businesses, thanks to its multilingual translation. This can translate a site’s content into 62 different languages. Not only that, it’s even possible to have up to 25 different languages on a site at any given time.

Furthermore, you can add eCommerce support to all plans—no initial cost at all on the Starter and Plus plans, but an extra $15 on the highest plan. All plans include payment and shipping support, popular payment methods, and allow selling via Facebook and Instagram.

Can you build a web store with IONOS? 

(Image credit: IONOS)

IONOS's website builder supports building a web store; then you can use its online store plans to sell up to an unlimited amount of physical and digital products. All plans come with just one email (a similar pain point as the other plans), free domain, competitor tracking, integrated payment and shipping methods, and the ability to sell directly on Facebook and Instagram.

Here, too, the best value-for-money plan is the Plus plan at $1 a month for the first six months, $30 a month on renewal. You can sell up to 5,000 physical products, get site analytics, and enjoy access to Google Ads and other Google products as well as an AI text generator and a mobile app for shop management.

Upgrade to the Pro plan to be able to sell digital products, where you will also get advanced product SEO. The highest-end plan is priced at $42 a month for the first six months of the annual plan, $92 afterwards. That's a better choice for larger stores, or if you have real ecommerce ambitions.

Other eCommerce options include using popular platforms such as WooCommerce, PrestaShop or Magento to build your store.

All in all, this is a decent set of plans covering just about every type of user, but there are still other options worth considering. HostGator's Gator and Hostinger's website builder support building basic web stores at minimal cost; Wix has better store templates and many more features, and Bluehost's WooCommerce plans include an array of business-friendly marketing and SEO extras.

How fast is IONOS? 

For speed testing, we use a WordPress benchmarking tool and Siege. The former lets us see how well WordPress runs on the hosting plan, while the latter load-tests the system to see how well it stands up under pressure.

WordPress benchmark testing

CPU & Memory

Operations with large text data

10

Random binary data operations

8.71

Recursive mathematical calculations

8.92

Iterative mathematical calculations

9.5

Filesystem

Filesystem write ability

8.81

Local file copy and access speed

8.91

Small file IO test

9.34

Database

Importing large amount of data to database

0.85

Simple queries on single table

2.61

Complex database queries on multiple tables

5.1

Object Cache

Persistent object cache enabled

0

Network

Network download speed test

10

Overall

Your server score

7.2

Our WordPress core benchmark tests showed that IONOS performed remarkably well in CPU and memory performance. These are two highly essential areas for WordPress performance. However, it lagged slightly behind in database operations. This means that at higher traffic volumes, database performance is likely to be the bottleneck for your website.

Overall, though, these performance numbers put IONOS ahead of many competitors in the shared hosting space. Based on performance alone, I'd say their shared hosting plans are at least worth a try.

Siege test

5

9

15

Transactions

4370

6835

5839

Availability

100

99.88

99.1

Elapsed time

299.25

299.97

299.64

Data transactions

247.82

385.03

325.24

Response time

0.34

0.39

0.76

Transaction rate

14.6

22.79

19.49

Throughput

0.83

1.28

1.09

Concurrency

4.99

8.96

14.77

Successful transactions

4370

6835

5839

Failed transactions

0

8

50

Longest transaction

2.59

3.88

12.3

Shortest transaction

0.13

0.14

0.15

The standard shared web hosting plan we tested on states that up to 100 visitors can be handled at once, but based on transaction totals, availability ratings, and response times, this claim is slightly dubious. Even with 9 concurrent users, we observed several failed transactions appearing in our test results.

Claims notwithstanding, the overall load test results indicate that IONOS shared hosting performs better under pressure than the average web host. There are indeed failed transactions, but they occur less frequently than we're used to and, honestly, are pretty good where shared hosting is concerned.

How easy is IONOS to use? 

(Image credit: IONOS)

Log in to many web hosts, and you'll find familiar industry-standard platforms: WHM to manage your accounts, cPanel for all your key website management tasks, and Softaculous to install and manage WordPress reliably. That's generally good news, partly because they're top-quality tools (which is why they became industry standards), but also because if you've any experience of web hosting, you're likely to know how to use these already.

IONOS ditches all these in favor of its own custom control panels. That has some advantages (it probably saves a pile of cash in license fees, helping IONOS keep its prices low), but it also means even expert users will have to spend some time exploring the system to find the functions they need.

This isn't as easy as we'd like. Functions aren't always organized intuitively, and everyday tasks, such as logging into a WordPress site, took longer to find than we expected.

IONOS' website search engine helps a little. Enter 'WordPress', say, and it doesn't just list top WordPress support articles. A 'Product and Actions' includes control panel tasks such as 'Install WordPress', and clicking these links takes you directly to that page. It's a good idea, but it doesn't quite work everywhere. We tried to find the right keywords to show a WordPress newbie how to log in to the dashboard, for instance, but never quite managed it.

If you're an experienced user who makes extensive use of low-level cPanel and other features, this could easily be an issue. Even once you've found the functions you need, there's no guarantee they'll deliver precisely the same results.

But if you're only after the hosting management basics - configure your domain, set up some email addresses, install WordPress - then this may not matter very much. Sure, it might take you a few extra minutes to master the control panel basics, but after that, you'll use IONOS much like any other host.

What is IONOS support like? 

IONOS offers a massive amount of self-help content in its knowledgebase. (Image credit: Future)

IONOS offers support via its website knowledgebase, phone, live chat and email. The support site ‘Help Center’ has a considerable number of articles, sensibly organized into categories such as WordPress, Email, Domains, Hosting, Online Marketing, My Account, SSL Certificates, and loads more. Some of these articles are a little short, but there's a lot of valuable information here.

Unusually, telephone support doesn't simply mean 'dial this international number and be left on hold wondering what this is going to cost.' You can book an appointment and have the company call you. When we tried this at 12:10pm, the site offered 15-minute slots from 1pm, so you probably won't have to wait long for a response. However, if that's not convenient, you can book up to 4 days in advance from 8 am to 8 pm.

We set up an appointment, and sure enough, a call arrived within 30 seconds of our starting slot time. The agent listened carefully to our query about installing WordPress on subdomains, clearly explained what we needed to do, and sent us additional advice via email. Impressive.

IONOS also offers a shocking amount of localization in its support efforts. It offers 14 phone numbers for local support in different countries. Furthermore, if you click on the country’s name - Germany, for example - the entire support site, including all the help articles, loads in German. This is really good.

IONOS offers a massive amount of self-help content in its knowledgebase. (Image credit: Future)

One notable point was its Live Chat support. The service was down when we tried to use it. However, that's not the point here. When services are down, most hosts aren't as transparent and often leave customers wondering what's gone wrong. IONOS was upfront about its Live Chat being down, which earned our respect.

Final verdict

IONOS cuts a few corners with its shared hosting plans (no free migration, only one email account, below-par performance), but they're still great value. If you need more, there's a wide range of WordPress plans, and the company has rock-solid VPS, dedicated, and cloud hosting products to cater to everyone, from enthusiastic amateurs to SMB and enterprise users.

There’s also a handy and feature-rich website builder on offer, plus startups and small businesses have the option to benefit from IONOS experts, who will build a professional online store or website for them.

Sign up for 1&1 Ionos US deals here.

Sign up for 1&1 Ionos UK deals here.

IONOS FAQsWhat payment types does IONOS support?

IONOS accepts payment by card and PayPal.

Does IONOS offer refunds?

IONOS has a general 30-day money-back period covering most hosting products and a handful of other services (check the small print for the precise details).

Domains, SSL certificates, cloud and bare metal servers are not included.

Does IONOS have an uptime guarantee?

IONOS has a 99.99% uptime guarantee for its hosted web pages. If the company doesn't hit the target, you can claim an account credit to match the real downtime (90 minutes downtime, your account is credited with the cost of 90 minutes hosting).

At first glance, that looks better than most providers, who only offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee. But limiting compensation to the actual downtime isn't as generous. The top-of-the-range shared hosting plan is $8 a month in the first year, for instance, or $0.263 a day. If your site is down for eight hours, that could be a disaster for you, but even IONOS admits responsibility, you'll get just $0.09. It's not even worth your time asking.

ScalaHosting 'only' offers a 99.9% guarantee, but if its uptime is less than 99% (that's only seven hours, 18 minutes and 17 seconds in a month) you'll qualify for a whole month. That's still not a huge amount, and it's best to have no downtime at all, but we like the principle: if the service doesn't hit a certain standard, you effectively get it for free.

Host your site at IONOS with a choice of data centers (Image credit: Future)Where are IONOS's data centers?

IONOS has ten data centers located across the USA, Germany, the UK, and Spain. The company lets you choose your preferred data center for some of its higher-end products. You can't pick a data center if you're buying regular shared hosting, for instance, but you do get the option with VPS plans.

What is my IONOS IP address?

Log into your IONOS control panel.

Click Domains and SSL, then find and click your domain in the list.

Click the DNS tab.

Scroll down and look for a record with the type A, the host name @ (or www) and the service 'Webhosting.'

Your website server's IP address is displayed in the Value column for that A record.

What are IONOS's nameservers?

If you sign up for IONOS hosting but are using a domain managed elsewhere, you may need to find IONOS' nameservers to connect the domain to your hosting plan. Sounds complicated, but fortunately it only takes a few clicks.

Log into your IONOS control panel.

Click Domains and SSL, then find and click your domain in the list.

Click the Nameserver tab and the control panel displays the IONOS nameservers for your account.

(Image credit: IONOS)How do I cancel an IONOS product?

Log into the IONOS control panel.

Click the Account icon top-right, and select Contracts & Subscriptions.

Find the plan you'd like to cancel, click the gear icon to its right and choose Manage Contract.

Click 'Show Cancellation Options' and decide what you'd like to cancel: an entire contract, or specific add-ons only.

If you got a free domain with your plan and don't need it, select the 'Change domain expiration dates' option to disable automatic renewal.

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