Not sure whether you should choose Hetzner or OVH?

Don’t worry! I’m going to provide you with a detailed data-backed review of both by comparing their features, service quality, pricing details, and more.

For this, I will be testing both of the providers, including their customer support, before I determine which one would be the better pick for you.

Overall Comparison: Hetzner vs OVH

Here’s a general comparison of each of the provider’s overall functionality:

Winner: Hetzner

Generally speaking, in my Hetzner vs OVH comparison, I’ve found that the services provided by Hetzner are better than OVH, since it offers quick and efficient customer support and highly competitive price rates.

Keep reading for more details on the services of each!

About Hetzner and OVH

Founded in 1997, Hetzner is one of the largest data center operators in Europe and has thousands of operating servers located in Germany, USA and Finland. The company offers powerful hosting services and IT infrastructure to its clients around the globe at competitive prices.

Founded in 1999 in France, OVHCloud offers public and private cloud products, as well as shared and dedicated hosting solutions in 140 countries around the globe. The company has datacenters in France, Canada, USA, Australia, Germany, Poland, the UK and Singapore, allowing it to operate efficiently worldwide. They also offer domain name registration, internet access and telephony services to their customers.

Round 1: Hosting Features – Key Hosting Features and Services

Key Hetzner Features

Hetzner offers unlimited traffic with all its web hosting plans, alongside NVMe SSD disk space starting from 10 GB in its most basic package. Moreover, you also get daily backups with an option to restore your site through backups whenever required.

With Hetzner hosting plans, you’ll also get 1-click installation of WordPress, as well as a Free SSL encryption and Let’s encrypt certificate without any cost for the duration of one year. The free SSL included in all of Hetzner’s web hosting plans is Symantec Basic SSL Certificate.

However, the hosting provider doesn’t offer free migration or a free website builder with its hosting packages.

Key OVH Features

Similar to Hetzner, OVHCloud also offers a Free SSL certificate for the duration of one year with all its web hosting plans. Alongside this, the hosting provider offers unlimited bandwidth with all its hosting packages, as well as unlimited SSD disk space with some of the plans.

Free daily backups and the option to restore when required is also provided with all plans. Hence, you’ll never have to worry about accidentally losing all your site’s data due to a server issue. Moreover, free WordPress installation is also offered, in addition to free 1-click installation of Joomla!, Drupal and PrestaShop (not in all plans), which is a feature not offered by various OVH competitors.

Nevertheless, free migration and free website builder aren’t provided by OVH.

The winner of Round 1 is Hetzner

Although most of the features offered by both in their hosting plans are quite similar, Hetzner is the winner here since they provide NVMe SSD disk space.

Round 2: Prices and Plans

Hetzner Pricing Plans

Hetzner offers four different web hosting plans, including Level 1, Level 4, Level 9, and Level 19. The Level 1 plan priced at $2.03 / month is perfect for simple WordPress websites that don’t require too much disk space or data storage. Level 4 is priced at $5.24 / month and includes 50 GB disk space alongside unlimited traffic and 10 MySQL/PostgreSQL databases.

The Level 9 plan is for $10.60 / month and offers 100 GB disk space which is perfect for professional websites and online stores.

Whereas, for websites with higher requirements, or if you want to host multiple websites, you may pick their highest plan which is Level 19. Priced at $21.30 / month, this plan includes 300 GB disk space in addition to various other resources.

OVH Pricing Plans

In comparison to Hetzner, OVH has only three different web hosting plans, namely Personal, Professional Plan and Performance Plan. Their most basic plan is the Personal plan for $3.99 / month. It includes 100 GB disk space which is perfect for launching your personal website or a blog.

The Professional Plan is priced at $6.99 / month and it includes 250 GB disk space, and is recommended for business website owners.

Lastly, their Performance Plan for $11.99 / month is best-suited for online stores and multi-site projects as it offers a whopping 500 GB disk space along with numerous other amazing features.

The winner in pricing plans comparison is Hetzner

Hetzner alternatives are hard to find when it comes to pricing! Their pricing is affordable and they offer numerous amazing web hosting features with their plans.

Round 3: Website Performance (Uptime and Speed)

If you really want to determine the performance of a web hosting service, their server speed and uptime are the two most major features to consider.

Uptime refers to the percentage of time for which the server continues to function and your website stays online. Server speed determines your website’s page load speed and the quality of user experience your visitors get.

Hetzner Uptime and Speed

I personally tested a website hosted on the shared hosting server of Hetzner. The complete page load speed of the website turned out to be 3.8 seconds when tested on both PageSpeed Insights and GT Metrix.

Here’re the results of the tests that I conducted:

GT Metrix test:

PageSpeed Insights:

OVH Uptime and Speed

A website hosted on the VPS hosting server of OVH was used for testing the speed of OVH’s web hosting services. When tested on PageSpeed Insights, the complete page load speed turned out to be 6.42 s. Whereas the speed results on GT Metrix depicted a complete page load speed of 5.9 s.

I’ve also attached the screenshots of both the tests here:

GT Metrix test:

PageSpeed Insights:

The Winner of Round 3 is Hetzner

What I’ve found from my page speed tests, as well as through my personal experience is that Hetzner’s services are better than OVH’s in terms of server speed. In fact, many of Hetzner competitors don’t have server speed that’s as good as Hetzner’s.

Hetzner is the clear winner here!

Round 4: Customer Support – Who Has the Best Support System?

Hetzner Customer Support

Honestly, the response time of Hetzner’s customer support is amazing!

They respond to tickets even on the weekends and their support executives are highly professional. However, their responses are quite straightforward and they don’t offer courtesy services to their clients.

For example, I wanted to replace an SSD disk on the server that I had purchased. For this, I requested them to mount a new disk so that I could transfer the data from the faculty disk to the new disk.

Their response time to this ticket was great. But, their team was quite direct in letting me know that my server can only support 4 drives.

Here’s a screenshot of my query:

And this is what the response was:

Nevertheless, I liked their support overall.

OVH Customer Support

Although the response time of OVH is not as good as that of Hetzner’s (in fact, I’d call it below average), the team is somewhat more patient. However, courtesy services are not provided by OVH as well.

Overall, the support team is professional, but their response time, not so much.

Here’s my chat with OVH for when I wanted them to replace a disk on my server:

And the Best Customer Support is Provided by Hetzner

Hetzner, obviously! Because when it comes to customer support in the web hosting industry, response time is what matters the most. And I personally found Hetzner’s support to be highly efficient and fast.

Round 5: Ease of Use – Which Platform is Easier to Use?

Hetzner Ease of Use

In Hetzner vs OVH, Hetzner offers a graphic client admin interface konsoleH to its customers. Their control panel offers numerous features that can be used for various purposes, and I found their admin panel to be quite diverse.

However, for an individual with little to no technical knowledge, konsoleH can be difficult to manage.

Below I’ve also attached a few screenshots of the control panel offered by Hetzner:

One major feature that I thought was missing in Hetzner’s control panel as an OVH alternative is the option for connecting your server to KVM automatically. For this, you’d have to send an email to Hetzner’s customer support and they’d connect your server to KVM for you.

OVH Ease of Use

Firstly, you can easily connect your server to KVM through the control panel offered by OVH. Moreover, clients are also enabled to send support tickets easily through the OVHCloud Control Panel interface, and you’d also receive replies to your email tickets within the admin panel. However, as mentioned earlier, their response time is not too good when it comes to customer support.

Apart from this, the overall control panel interface offered by OVH is less technical and more easy to use as compared to Hetzner.  Here’s what it looks like:

The Winner of Round 5 is OVH

If you ask me whose control panel interface is more easy to use, I’d vote for OVH. That’s because even a non-technical individual can navigate through the OVHCloud Control Panel interface, whereas Hetzner’s konsoleH is a bit tricky.

Round 6: Security – Which Platform is More Secure?

Hetzner Security

In terms of security features, Hetzner offers anti-DDoS protection, SSL certificate, as well as Let’s Encrypt certificate which is free for the duration of one year with most of their web hosting plans.

You’d also get password protection of your websites with Hetzner’s services. Moreover, they conduct a daily backup of your website data and you can restore this backup whenever required.

OVH Security

The security features offered by OVH are quite similar to those of Hetzner. They also offer anti-DDoS protection, a free SSL certificate and a free Let’s Encrypt certificate with their web hosting packages for the duration of one year.

Plus, with OVH a daily backup of your website would be conducted as well, and you can easily restore your website in the times of need.

The Most Secure Platform is Hetzner

After conducting a comparison of their security features, Hetzner provides a better level of security for their clients. You will get password protection for your websites and a configurable spam filter, in addition to a virus scanner, daily backups and Let’s Encrypt certificate.

Round 7: Server Locations

The location of your web host’s server has a direct impact on your website’s speed. That’s because servers that are located far away can slow down the data transfer process, hence your web visitors would experience site latency and a slow response time.

Hetzner Server Locations

As a company based in Germany, Hetzner has 2 high-tech data centers in Germany, one located in Nuremberg and the other one in Falkenstein. Hetzner has also expanded its market outside of Germany with a data center in Helsinki, Finland, and one in Ashburn, Virginia, USA.

OVH Server Locations

OVH has data centers located in 8 different countries, providing quality services around the globe.

The servers of OVH are located in France, Canada, USA, Australia, Germany, Poland, the UK and Singapore. Overall, OVH has 33 data centers located on all 4 continents.

The Winner of Round 7 is OVH

OVH is the clear winner here since it has data centers located in 8 countries and on all 4 continents, whereas Hetzner’s servers are only located in 3 different countries.

Hetzner vs OVH: Final Recommendations

When to Choose Hetzner?

In general, I believe Hetzner to be a great pick for all kinds of hosting solutions! Here are some of their amazing features that you can enjoy:

• Competitive pricing which provides real value for money
• Highly-efficient and fast customer support
• Provides a complete control over the server if you buy a dedicated server
• Offers custom solutions on demand
• Allows customers to have a flexible billing cycle

Go for OVH if You:

OVH is pricier as compared to Hetzner, but you should pick it if:

• You want to buy a server on a specific location
• You cannot compromise on the hardware and want the latest hardware
• You want a customized enterprise solution