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In 2026’s persistent tug-of-war between online convenience and privacy, DeleteMe continues to stand tall as one of the most trusted and comprehensive data removal services. With over a decade of experience in privacy protection, DeleteMe’s mission is simple yet vital: to erase your personal details from the sprawling databases of data brokers who profit from your digital footprint.

Founded in 2011 by privacy-focused company Abine, DeleteMe has evolved alongside the internet’s rapid expansion. Today, it has processed well over 100 million opt-outs, adaptively navigating an ever-shifting regulatory landscape filled with new privacy laws, AI-driven scraping tools, and sophisticated cyber threats. Where many services promise quick digital cleanup, DeleteMe delivers sustained, expert-driven removal efforts that not only protect you from identity theft and spam but also restore a sense of digital calm.

DeleteMe: Plans and pricing

(Image credit: DeleteMe)

DeleteMe’s pricing is straightforward, centered on annual or biennial prepayments rather than short-term monthly options. This structure encourages consistency - keeping your data protected throughout the year instead of risking gaps in coverage.

For individual users, the one-year plan costs $129, which breaks down to about $10.75 per month, while the two-year plan costs $209 (approximately $8.71 per month). The savings for multi-year users are meaningful, especially considering DeleteMe’s ongoing monitoring and repeated scans.

Couples or two-user plans scale economically at $229 annually or $349 for two years (about $14.54 per month), and there’s dedicated family coverage for four users, designed for households that want everyone — parents, teens, even adult children — under one umbrella. Family subscribers appreciate the continuity this offers: when one person’s data pops up again online, the team often finds overlapping exposures and can act on behalf of everyone at once.

Each subscription tier includes:

• Unlimited removals for names, aliases, and emails
• Email alias masking tools
• Up to 40 custom data removal requests per year
• Quarterly progress reports summarizing every removal action
• Access to a dedicated privacy advisor

Enterprise plans are also available, with quotes starting near $180 per person annually - trusted by recognizable names like Google and ProPublica to safeguard high-risk employees from doxxing and organized data exposure. DeleteMe’s enterprise customers use it as a proactive defense tool in an era where C-suite executives and journalists are frequent targets of harassment campaigns.

Pricing transparency is one of DeleteMe’s major appeals. There are no confusing tier upgrades or hidden microtransactions, and every plan - including the most affordable - includes full access to core features. The company’s A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and full satisfaction guarantee reinforce this sense of reliability, though its services remain exclusive to U.S. residents.

DeleteMe: Features

(Image credit: Shutterstock / metamorworks)

What truly sets DeleteMe apart in 2026 is its blend of automation and human oversight. The platform covers over 750 data brokers.

DeleteMe automates removal from the 100–125 most active brokers, including notorious players like Whitepages, Spokeo, and MyLife, while expert privacy specialists manually handle the rest. This hybrid approach ensures that each removal is executed correctly and consistently, rather than relying solely on bots that might inadvertently confirm your data’s accuracy to brokers (a common pitfall of less automated tools).

The range of data types covered is impressively broad: names, birthdates, phone numbers, email addresses, past and current addresses, relatives’ names, and even property records and photos. As new brokers emerge, DeleteMe automatically adds them to its removal list at no additional cost.

Each quarter, users receive detailed reports showing tangible progress. These include screenshots, broker names, and verification timestamps that illustrate where the data was found and when it was removed. Early evaluations suggest that new users typically see an average of 57 site removals in their first round, often revealing listings they didn’t even know existed.

DeleteMe’s dashboard serves as a control center for tracking all this activity. It offers live metrics such as total removals, pending actions, and active exposures, and integrates a Google self-check tool, enabling users to monitor their search visibility in real time. Combined with masking utilities, it provides both transparency and reassurance: you can watch your digital privacy improve, click by click.

Additional tools, such as email alias creation (included at no cost) and phone masking (available for $7 per number), help users reduce their surface exposure. DeleteMe’s own manual also provides DIY guides for removing yourself from specific platforms, such as Reddit or BeenVerified, making it perfect for privacy enthusiasts who want hands-on control.

For organizations, DeleteMe’s business suite extends these protections to executive teams, journalists, and employees handling sensitive data. With targeted anti-doxxing and impersonation countermeasures, it is especially popular among companies that are conscious of online reputation risks.

DeleteMe: Setup and onboarding

DeleteMe’s signup process reflects its emphasis on simplicity. Users register online, create their profile via a welcome email, and fill in identifying information such as names, aliases, email addresses, phone numbers, and past addresses. The system only requests as much as it needs to find your listings, and optional identity verification helps confirm records for precise removals.

Once your profile is set up, DeleteMe’s privacy advisors launch manual searches and begin submitting opt-out requests almost immediately. More often than not, you will receive your first progress email within days.

What’s noticeable during onboarding is how low the learning curve feels. The dashboard is intuitive and clutter-free, with helpful tooltips for new users. You don’t need technical experience or cybersecurity know-how as DeleteMe’s team handles almost everything in the background while keeping you informed through reports and alerts.

DeleteMe: Ease of use

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

DeleteMe strikes a fine balance between professional rigor and user convenience. The centralized dashboard displays everything you need without demanding daily attention. Quarterly PDF reports offer a clear, chronological summary of which brokers were contacted, which entries were deleted, and which may require resubmission.

Submitting custom requests is equally straightforward. If you spot your information on a site not yet on DeleteMe’s list, you can submit a request through the portal. You can file up to 40 custom removals per year, and the privacy team typically responds within 48 hours, making it far faster than competitors that rely solely on automated scheduling.

DeleteMe: Security and privacy

DeleteMe’s architecture is built around privacy-by-design principles. All data deletions are performed by US based privacy experts, not by outsourced bots or offshore contractors, ensuring your personal information never leaves secure domestic servers.

This manual process emphasizes two key benefits. First, it maximizes compliance with brokers’ varying submission requirements, as some demand documentation or nuanced phrasing only a human can adapt effectively. Second, it minimizes risk: automated scraping tools may inadvertently validate a record’s accuracy, re-exposing users rather than protecting them.

DeleteMe’s internal handling of user data is deliberately minimal. Personal details entered during setup are stored securely, used solely to submit removals, and deleted once those removals are confirmed complete. The included email and phone masking features further protect users from re-identification or repeat listings.

While DeleteMe doesn’t directly clear Google’s cache, its approach focuses on root-cause removal by eliminating your records from the original sources so they eventually disappear from search engines as the cache refreshes. Over time, this results in a noticeable reduction in online visibility.

Delete: Customer support

DeleteMe offers email, live chat, and phone support, along with dedicated privacy advisors who review reports and guide each user through custom cases. The company’s Help Center includes articles on two-factor authentication, security best practices, and subscription management, along with downloadable DIY guides for over 100 brokers.

Customers commend DeleteMe’s support staff for their responsiveness, especially during the first few months, when exposure reports are most active. Unlike some competitors that offer only generic responses, DeleteMe’s advisors review your unique data profile before replying to ensure each interaction is specific, accurate, and genuinely helpful.

DeleteMe: The competition

(Image credit: Kanary)

In 2026, the data removal market has matured, and competition is fierce. Services like Incogni, Kanary, PrivacyBee, OneRep, and Mozilla Monitor Plus each approach privacy protection differently.

Each service has its niche. Budget-conscious or international users might prefer Incogni for its simplicity, while privacy enthusiasts who value versatility lean toward PrivacyBee’s ecosystem. However, for users who value human-guided removal, particularly Americans concerned about domestic data brokers, DeleteMe remains the benchmark for reliability, transparency, and verified follow-through.

DeleteMe: The verdict

After fifteen years of refining its craft, DeleteMe continues to set the standard for professional data removal services. Its combination of human expertise, automation, and transparent progress reporting makes it ideal for individuals, families, and businesses wanting continuous, realistic protection.

While other services may promise faster automation or lower prices, few can match DeleteMe’s track record or its deliberate attention to each user’s privacy footprint. Backed by a trusted reputation, a proven removal infrastructure, and a genuine focus on security, DeleteMe is an indispensable ally for anyone seeking to reclaim control of their online identity.

• Sign up to DeleteMe

Protecting personal information online has only become more crucial in 2026. With artificial intelligence tools making data scraping and identity fraud easier, consumers need protection that goes beyond basic antivirus software. Data removal services like Aura aim to give users back control of their information, automatically monitoring, securing, and removing their data from the web’s most persistent collectors: data brokers.

Aura continues to position itself as an all-in-one digital security platform, offering not just data-broker removal but also identity theft protection, credit reports, VPN protection, a password manager, device security, parental controls, and even scam-call filtering. Its 2026 version refines and automates much of this ecosystem, making it one of the most complete packages for personal and family privacy available today.

Aura: Plans and pricing

(Image credit: Aura)

Aura offers three main subscription tiers in 2026 — Individual, Couple, and Family — each priced for monthly or annual billing. While the structure hasn’t changed significantly since 2024, the company has updated its value propositions by introducing new automation tools and expanding insurance coverage.

• Individual Plan: Priced at around $12 per month (when billed annually). It includes full identity theft monitoring, VPN access, antivirus, password manager, credit monitoring from all three bureaus, and up to $1 million in identity theft insurance.
• Couple Plan: Approximately $22 per month annually. Designed for two adults, each with their own accounts and dashboards. Users also get an alerts dashboard and joint monitoring capabilities.
• Family Plan: Aura’s flagship package, available for about $29 per month with annual billing. It supports up to five adults and unlimited children, with added benefits such as child SSN monitoring, parental controls, and online safety tools, including cyberbullying detection alerts and predator activity monitoring on social media.

Across all tiers, Aura offers a 14-day free trial and a 60-day money-back guarantee, making it relatively low-risk to test. Prices sit slightly above pure data removal competitors like DeleteMe or Kanary, but Aura’s advantage lies in its breadth, as it’s not only about data removal but complete digital defense.

Aura: Features

(Image credit: Future)

At its core, Aura is built around identity monitoring and data removal automation, but the platform’s appeal lies in its suite of interconnected features that reinforce one another.

• Data Broker Removal: Aura routinely scans and requests removals from over 200 data brokers. In 2026, this process has become more proactive: once you enter key identifiers (such as email addresses, aliases, or phone numbers), Aura automatically generates and tracks opt-out requests. It even resubmits them if a data broker re-lists your information later.
• Privacy Assistant AI: New in 2026, Aura’s AI Privacy Assistant analyzes your online exposure and gives customized recommendations. For example, it might flag an old online profile that is still visible on a background-check website or recommend stronger security settings for your social media accounts.
• Credit & Identity Protection: All plans include near-real-time credit alerts from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. The system can detect unauthorized account openings, new address registrations, and suspicious transactions.
• Dark Web Monitoring: Aura scans dark web marketplaces and hacker forums for signs of compromised credentials, personally identifiable information, or leaked financial information. It stands out for automatically triggering password changes via its built-in password manager when data leaks are detected.
• Financial Fraud Alerts: In 2026, Aura enhanced transaction tracking with AI models trained to detect financial anomalies. You’ll receive immediate alerts about possible account tampering or fraudulent activity through text or push notifications.
• VPN & Antivirus Integration: Aura operates its own encrypted VPN network and now includes malware protection at the DNS level, stopping threats before they reach your device. This dual system offers more robust coverage than many competitors that still rely on third-party integrations.
• Secure Document Vault: Documents such as ID scans, medical records, and financial statements can be uploaded to Aura’s encrypted cloud storage. Files are protected with AES-256 encryption and accessible only through multi-factor verified logins.
• Lost Wallet Recovery: Still one of Aura’s most convenient tools, this feature helps users cancel and replace credit cards and government IDs quickly using their stored information.
• Parental Controls: Family users benefit from content filtering, screen-time management, and activity summaries, while the system can now detect potential cyberbullying language in messages exchanged through monitored accounts.

All told, Aura’s feature set is about integration—bringing security, privacy, and data removal under one, easy-to-manage ecosystem.

Aura: Setup

Aura’s setup process in 2026 has been streamlined considerably. Once you sign up, you’re guided through an onboarding sequence that sets up data monitoring, installs necessary apps, and helps connect bank accounts, social media profiles, and credit data.

The app (available for iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows) automatically detects your exposure level. You’ll see an initial Digital Risk Score, a new feature introduced this year that visually charts how exposed your personal data is, along with step-by-step suggestions for improvement.

Setting up the browser extensions - for Secure Browsing and Scam Protection - took minutes. The interface clearly marks whether each area of protection (such as identity, finances, passwords, and devices) is “secured,” “partially secured,” or “unprotected.”

Overall, users can expect to be fully set up within 15 to 20 minutes.

Aura: Ease of Use

Aura’s biggest achievement has been refining its user interface to be accessible without sacrificing complexity. The 2026 dashboard feels modern and uncluttered, offering a unified snapshot of your protection status.

The main screen now consolidates data-broker removal progress, credit alerts, device security, and VPN status in a single view. To help users track the biggest threats, notifications are sorted by severity - Critical, Moderate, or Informational - with suggested actions for each. The app also now offers Face ID login, faster push notifications, and in-app data removal tracking, all previously requiring desktop access.

While Aura remains feature-rich, its controls never feel overwhelming. Compared with 2024’s design, which buried alerts in submenus, the 2026 update puts essential information front and center.

The only minor drawback is that advanced users may want more filter or export options for data removal logs, which remain limited to Aura’s native interface.

Aura: Security and Privacy

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Security is where Aura continues to justify its cost. Every component is built around zero-knowledge architecture and bank-level encryption.

• Encryption: Data stored in Aura’s vault uses AES-256 encryption, and communication between clients and servers is protected by TLS 1.3.
• Authentication: Multi-factor authentication (2FA) is standard. In 2026, Aura introduced support for hardware keys (YubiKey, Titan) to enhance account protection.
• Privacy Policy: Aura remains U.S.-based, which means it’s not protected under GDPR-like rules—but it maintains SOC 2 Type II compliance and claims it doesn’t sell or share user data for third-party advertising.
• Insurance Coverage: Identity theft insurance now provides up to $5 million in total coverage for the Family plan (aggregated across family members), a significant increase from prior years.
• AI Fraud Detection: Aura’s AI monitoring system scans billions of data points for suspicious behavior, catching identity fraud attempts faster than many competitors.

Aura also distinguishes itself by combining privacy and cybersecurity at the infrastructure level—something pure data removal services typically don’t offer.

Aura: Support

Customer support has remained one of Aura’s strongest points. In 2026, users can reach support through:

• 24/7 Live Chat (available across all plans)
• U.S.-based phone support
• Email ticket system
• AI Help Assistant that routes users to relevant help articles or escalates issues automatically

Support responsiveness is fast, typically under two minutes on chat, and representatives are knowledgeable across billing, technical, and cybersecurity issues.

The Digital Security 101 help center remains excellent for learning privacy fundamentals, and Aura’s security alerts blog continues to update users about new scams, breaches, and fraud trends.

Aura: The competition

(Image credit: DeleteMe)

DeleteMe is still best known for data broker removals, manually handling over 700 brokers globally. It’s relatively affordable at about $10 per month but remains limited to removal only — offering no VPNs, threat monitoring, or credit alerts.

Kanary provides a clean interface and aggressive data tracking removal, with automation similar to Aura’s newer system, though it lacks the wide range of bundled security tools.

Privacy Bee combines data broker removal with marketing opt-outs and spam management, making it more affordable but missing Aura’s all-in-one security integrations.

Mozilla Monitor Plus focuses on breach alerts and limited broker removals within a privacy-first platform from a trusted nonprofit, appealing to open-web advocates.

IDX Identity, a long-established provider with government partnerships, delivers strong credit alerts but charges a premium while offering fewer non-financial privacy features.

Where Aura stands out is in its breadth — it consolidates tasks that competitors split across multiple tools, making it ideal for users who want a “set it and forget it” experience. The tradeoff, however, is cost, as Aura can run two to three times more expensive than minimalist removal services.

Aura: Verdict

In 2026, Aura remains a top choice for comprehensive identity and privacy protection. It’s overkill if you only want your data removed from people search sites—but invaluable if you want total online risk mitigation in one ecosystem.

For individuals and families who value privacy, security, and convenience over cost, Aura’s 2026 platform justifies its premium. It’s not just about removing data — it’s about controlling your entire digital presence.

• Sign up to Aura

It's unlike any hard-floor cleaner I've seen before.

4 UK Host is an experienced web hosting service, now owned by Miss Group, the company behind StableHost, nameISP, https.se and other hosting-related brands.

The host has four main product ranges: Shared Hosting, Value VPS, SSD VPS and Dedicated Servers. There's a focus on value, although there's real power available here, too. Dedicated servers start at £54.99 ($65.99) a month on the annual plan, for instance, but you can opt for a 2 x Xeon E5, 40 CPU core, 256GB RAM monster for £389.99 ($467.99) a month, if you can use it.

The baseline Shared Hosting 4UK-10 plan looks like great value, with unlimited bandwidth and 12 months for free. A one-year free trial, really? There must be a catch, we thought. And there was.

Drilling down to the details, the plan is relatively basic, with just 1GB disk space, one email account and no MySQL databases. And although it's advertised on the site as £0.00 a month, the comparison table shows it has a £14.99 ($17.99) setup fee. That's equivalent to £1.25 ($1.50) a month.

• Want to try 4 UK Host? Check out the website here

There's better news further up the range. The 4UK-30 plan gives you 15GB disk space, unlimited bandwidth, a free domain name, 10 databases, unlimited emails and FTP accounts, and support for hosting up to three websites. Prices range from £4.99 ($5.99) billed monthly, to a more competitive £3.54 ($4.25) a month billed three-yearly.

Support is available via live chat, 24/7. There's also telephone support, albeit for limited and slightly odd hours (7am-4pm).

Although the website doesn't make a big deal of any 'money-back guarantee', the small print makes it clear that's exactly what you get. 'If you are not satisfied within your first 30 days we would be happy to provide you with a full refund' (subject to the usual exclusions, like domain name registrations).

While these prices aren't bad, there are better deals around. Hostinger's shared hosting has fewer limits and can be 20% or more cheaper, or you could opt for a VPS and still save money (prices start at $3.95.) But beware, you'll have to subscribe for up to four years to get the headline prices.

Setup

Signing up with 4 UK Host starts by choosing your hosting plan, then entering whatever domain name you'd like to use. The latter can be something you register now, for free with some plans, or a domain you own already.

All plans may be billed monthly, or every one, two or three years. You'll need to pay yearly or longer to get a free domain name, and longer subscriptions get a 10-15% discount.

There aren't a lot of extras, especially for the more basic plans. Our 4UK-20 Shared Hosting plan came with free local backups, for instance, but 4 UK Host offered us remote weekly backups from £3 ($3.60) a month. Backups are important, but that's more than you might be paying for your main hosting account, which isn't going to appeal to bargain hunters.

The 4 UK Host registration form asks for a lot of personal data, including an email address, name, physical address and telephone number.

The form also asked for our 'Organization number / Personal number', but didn't offer any hints to what this was, or why the company needed it. We just entered a memorable number, assuming it would be treated as a second password, and the website accepted it.

Payment options were card or PayPal. We tried PayPal, but ran into a problem: the website hung for minutes, but no PayPal window appeared. Eventually we gave up, restarted the process, and went to pay via card. As we were about to do that, an invoice for the first aborted payment appeared. We gave up on our second payment, without entering any details, but, too late: an email invoice for that payment arrived, too.

Issues like this can happen with anyone, and we're not attaching any blame to 4 UK Host. But it did give us an opportunity to test how the company's systems could cope with unexpected events.

There were no obvious ways to help us solve this problem. The emails and invoices didn't explain what to do if we had problems. The web console displayed our two invoices, but had no way to cancel or delete them. An 'Open Ticket' option pointed us to a near useless web knowledgebase, where searching for 'invoice' gave us only two irrelevant hits: 'Passing Values to Offer URLs' and 'How those the price model work' (not a typo, that's the real title).

While that's bad news, 4 UK Host regained our respect with the quality of its live chat support. We opened a session, explained what had happened and asked for the company to activate our first order, and cancel the second invoice, and gave our two invoice numbers.

We expected to wait for an age, and possibly then be forced to answer an avalanche of questions (what's your name, your order number, your email address, your PayPal transaction ID, and so on). But instead, after two minutes an agent responded; after nine minutes, they told us they were checking; two minutes after that, they told us they'd activated one account and deleted the other invoice.

We didn't have to answer a single further question, the agent just did as we'd asked, and all in under a quarter of an hour. That's great support performance, especially for a very basic shared hosting package.

(Image credit: 4 UK Host)Creating a website

The 4 UK Host account management system is based on the industry standard WHCMS platform. That's generally good news, as it's a capable system, and if you've used it with another host you'll immediately feel at home.

Choose your hosting package, and WHCMS provides various shortcuts to help you get started. A link to the File Manager enables uploading an existing site to your web space, for instance. Experienced users get shortcuts to the MySQL Databases and phpMyAdmin modules, and you can create email accounts for your new domain by filling in a couple of boxes (email account name and password).

One further click takes you to a standard cPanel console, where you'll find the full set of site creation and management tools.

4 UK Host's Site Builder is a simple BaseKit-powered template-based website creator. It doesn't have the power of the high-end competition, and the bundled version is limited to just three pages, but that could be enough for simple tasks. Your three pages can at least have some rich content, with support for image galleries, custom forms, videos and SoundCloud clips, file links (Dropbox, PDF), basic social media integration and more.

4 UK Host shared hosting includes Softaculous, too, for automated installation of WordPress, PrestaShop, Joomla, and hundreds of other popular apps. It's one of the best user-friendly installers around, and not something you'll always get with the most basic shared hosting. (Some providers use simpler installers with fewer features, maybe supporting just a handful of applications.)

Once your site is up and running, you have access to all the usual cPanel site management tools, covering everything from FTP accounts, subdomains and aliases, to email forwarders, autoresponders and in-depth site metrics (Webalizer, AWStats and more).

We did have an issue with the web knowledgebase, which was short on content and poorly organized. Articles are in multiple languages, for instance, and if you search on a technical term which is identical in both ('DNS') then you'll get multi-lingual results.

Knowledgebase issues are much less important when you have decent live chat support, though, and overall, 4 UK Host provides a capable set of features with everything you need to build and run a quality website.

(Image credit: Uptime.com)Performance

It's tricky to measure the performance of any web host. The results you'll see will depend on the type of site you're running, the resources it uses (CPU, storage, database), where your visitors are, when they visit, and other factors besides.

We attempted to get a baseline idea of a server's performance by measuring it over time with Uptime.com. Average response times were fractionally below average, though by so little you're unlikely to notice (50ms). 

4 UK Host response times were relatively consistent, too, with no downtime, and no major spikes which might indicate an overloaded server.

Dotcom-tools website speed test measured the load time of our test site from 16 locations across the US and Europe. This second test broadly matched the results of the first. 4 UK Host achieved mid-range speeds only, but the difference wasn't significant, and our results showed consistent speeds over time.

Put it all together and 4 UK Host delivered the performance we'd expect from decent shared hosting; not outstanding, but good enough, and reliable throughout the duration of our review.

Final verdict

4 UK Host wasn't outstanding at any point during our review, but its products are generally well-specified, live chat support was good and we saw consistent and reliable speeds. Worth a look – check it out and see if the company has a plan which suits your needs.

• Also check out the best web hosting services.

ProfesionalHosting is a popular Spanish provider with over 17 years of experience in web hosting and domain registration.

To be clear, the company has absolutely nothing to do with Professional Hosting at 'professionalhosting.com.' And that matters, because the other provider is very, very different to this one. If you're typing its name somewhere, rather than following our links, be sure to type one 's' in 'profesional', rather than two.

However you arrive at the site, you'll find a huge range of products. You can get regular shared hosting, custom plans for specific web apps (WordPress, Magento, PrestaShop, more), along with a variety of VPS offerings. On top of that there are assorted dedicated servers (Windows, Linux, Elastic Cloud), video and streaming servers, and supporting services such as remote backup, email marketing, SSL certificates and more.

• Want to try ProfesionalHosting? Check out the website here

The company is largely focused on the Spanish-speaking market, claiming on the website that 'in our hosting you will have the best support and service in Spanish.'

There is an English language version of the site, but it's a little more difficult to use than it should be, thanks to some inconsistent and incomplete translations.

As we write, for example, the VPS link on the English language site takes us to a Spanish page. There's a language selector at the top, but choosing English just takes you to a 'Page not found' message – in Spanish! We could still find our way around with the aid of Chrome's Translate feature, but that shouldn't be necessary.

Brush these hassles aside, though, and you'll find an impressive set of products, where even the most basic plans are well-specified and ready for use.

Shared hosting starts at €6.19 ($7.29, £5.31) a month on the annual plan, for instance. Not a big outlay, but it gets you 3GB hard drive space, unlimited bandwidth, a free domain, a Plesk control panel (a powerful alternative to cPanel) antispam, daily backups, and free SSL via Let's Encrypt.

There are four plans in total, but picking just one, Plan WEB + enables hosting up to 10 websites, offers 10GB disk space, and throws in a free year of a professional SSL certificate, all for €15.44 a month ($18.18, £13.48).

You can get hosting for even less, but it often comes with hidden flaws and catches. ProfesionalHosting isn't cutting corners to get a low headline rate, and even its low-end plans should be able to handle some major tasks.

And even if it turns out that the company doesn't live up to its promises, you're protected by a 15-day money-back guarantee.

Setup

Signing up at ProfesionalHosting works much like any other host, at least in principle. But in real life, translation issues make it a little more complicated for English speakers.

You must opt to check out by clicking the 'Contract' button, for instance. The shopping cart icon makes that a relatively easy guess, but when you start the purchase process, even the English language page has a Spanish description of the money-back guarantee.

There's more confusion on the account registration page. Not only does this ask for your name, email address, physical address and phone number, it also demands your 'CIF/DNI' (a national ID number), and further asks '¿Como nos ha conocido?' (which means 'how did you hear about us?').

You can ignore that question, but not the demand for a national ID number. That's bad news if you don't have one, although the website can't validate it, so you can enter whatever you like, and no-one is likely to notice. (You're probably violating a 'be honest about your personal data' clause in the small print, but if you don't have the requested data, there aren't many other options.)

We completed the purchase process, handed over our cash, and three follow-up emails arrived – in Spanish, obviously.

This wasn't quite the hassle you might think. The final welcome email was easy to identify, and even if you don't speak a word of Spanish, it's easy to pick out the Control Panel URL and credentials, FTP login, nameservers, email servers and more.

Logging in took us to the main Plesk control panel, a one-stop platform for configuring and managing your account, domain, website and more. The Plesk interface can use multiple languages, but for some reason, ProfesionalHosting's shared hosting plans are available in Spanish only. You must choose VPS or higher to be able to run your console in English. It's annoying, but once again, Chrome's Translate feature was just about good enough to save the day.

(Image credit: ProfesionalHosting)Creating a website

Plesk's main website management screen includes tools to create and manage your website, email and FTP accounts, databases, subdomains and more, as well as key metrics on your visitors, which pages they're visiting, and a breakdown of your bandwidth use.

An automated installer tool makes it easier to set up WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, PrestaShop, Magento, phpBB and more. Its choice of 21 apps doesn't get close to the 400+ you'll get with Softaculous, a platform commonly provided with cPanel, but if you're happy with WordPress (or one of the others) you're unlikely to mind.

The installer is configured with Spanish speakers in mind, for example offering us no less than nine Spanish language options for our test WordPress setup (Spanish, Spanish from Chile, Spanish from Peru, and so on). But there are plenty of other options, this time, and ours had English selected by default.

Our general shared hosting package didn't include a website designer. As with the missing Softaculous, that's bad news for some, but won't matter to the majority.

There's no shortage of ways to manually set up a website, though. The File Manager uploaded our test site with a quick drag-and-drop, Let's Encrypt support allows even hosting newbies to quickly assign a free SSL certificate – and experts can play around with everything from FTP accounts and databases to PHP settings, DNS, and even Apache and web application firewall (ModSecurity) settings.

It's a capable set of tools, especially for the most basic shared hosting package in the range. It would be even better if ProfesionalHosting allowed shared hosting packages to be set up in English, but Chrome Translate got us through most issues, and overall it's a likeable service.

(Image credit: Uptime.com)Performance

Websites can fail for all kinds of unexpected reasons, and whether you're a total newbie or an old hand, it's vital to choose a web host with top quality support.

ProfesionalHosting offers 24/7 support via telephone, live chat, email and ticket, and for really stubborn problems, can even connect to your system via TeamViewer for a closer look.

This all sounds good to us, and the company handled our test query well. An agent responded within three minutes, didn't waste time with more questions or authentication (what's your username, your email address, your account number, your domain), and just gave us an accurate and helpful answer, immediately.

Language remains an issue for international users, with the opening chat screen displaying its instructions in Spanish. But we got through that in seconds, and there were no problems afterwards: we posted in English and got an English-language reply.

To complete the review, we ran a couple of performance tests.

Uptime.com monitored our site over time. Response times were a little below average, but that could be because ProfesionalHosting's Spanish servers were located further away from our testing locations. The difference was small, anyway, and there was no downtime during our review.

Dotcom-tools website speed test benchmarked the download speed of our test site from 16 servers located around Europe and the US. This is more relevant as a speed test, and here ProfesionalHosting performed a little better, with downloads running around 10% faster than average.

Final verdict

Not the cheapest service around (and using Plesk rather than cPanel won't appeal to everyone), but ProfesionalHosting's products are top-quality and fairly priced for the excellent features you get. But if you don't speak Spanish, the constant translation issues can be a major irritation.

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