Expert Overview
Great Hosting with Solutions for High Risk Companies
Koddos is a reseller offering several different hosting options for customers worldwide. Founded in 2007, the company focuses on standard and “high risk” hosting, and security. This is very important in today’s environment since more and more hackers and other criminals are targeting websites. Having DDoS protection and other security features can be essential, especially for business sites.
Uptime & Reliability
Good Reliable Hosting
Most of the hosting services displayed a 99.9% uptime guarantee; the co-location offering that included DDoS protection offered 99.95% uptime. Having the extra security in place will, of course, help to benefit the overall uptime of the company.
Features
Good Features with a Focus on Security
Koddos gives customers a wide choice of products and services to choose from, including shared and dedicated servers, VPS, reselling, SSL certificates, domain services, and server management.
There were sections for “high risk” and “medium risk” but the only explanation given was that web sites and servers are at risk for a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, but no information as to what type of business would benefit over these services is stated. The few descriptions provided explain the function of a good firewall configuration rather than details of why this service is needed.
Support
Some concerns
The site states that there are level one and level 2 staff that rotate to ensure coverage in all time zones, but the Koddos FAQ says that they have only 3 employees handling support so I’m a little skeptical. The site also has a claim of “Fast & Free Support”, but on the support page the instructions state that customers should allow 24 hours for a response. While that might be the longest a customer has to wait, I would be uncomfortable if I had a business that depended on my web site being up and I had to wait 24 hours.
Price
Higher Prices for Higher Security
Despite the different locations of the business, all prices are in US dollars.
High-risk hosting packages range from $140 to $700 a month with disk space running from 10 to 30 GB, 100 to 500 GB of “premium clean bandwidth”, unlimited email and FTP accounts. Medium-risk hosting ranges from $39.99 to $389.99, with disk space running from 10-30 GB.
Standard offshore hosting is offered on “LiteSpeed” web servers and varies from 3 to 15 GB of disk space and 150 GB to 1 TB of premium bandwidth. Basic server management packages start at $19.99, the “complete” package is $59.99 per month with a $35 setup fee. The full management plan offers a 15 minute response time for emergency and 2 hours for non-emergency issues.
SSL certificates are priced at $30.00 and feature 128-bit encryption and have a self-service reissuing feature during a preset timeframe.
Summary
Nice option for Secure Hosting
Koddos seems to have a lot to offer, but as with any reseller, they will have limited control over their availability as well as the ability to correct physical plant and connectivity issues.
I had quite a few concerns when I had to do a web search to find their servers are located in Belize, but have staff in the United States and Western Europe, but the company is based on the Netherlands. I also read through the terms of service and while it had some good definitions and explanations, there were a few areas, such as a dispute process, that were unlisted or vague.
When I went to the blog linked on the Koddos site, the last update was April 2014. The recurring special for 20% off dedicated server packages also seemed to be from 2014.
Again, Koddos seems like they could do a great job for many different types of customers, but in my opinion they need to update their website and expand the explanations of their Terms of Service to attract customers; today’s hosting environment is simply too competitive to have an outdated site.
Pros:
- Many choices of Packages
- High Quality Security
- DDoS Protection
Cons:
- 24 hour SLA for support tickets
- Limited info on the company itself
