PlusServer In 2018: How Would PlusServer Clients Review Them?

PlusServer Introduction

PlusServer, corporately known as ‘PlusServer AG’, was founded in 1999 in Huerth, Cologne, Germany by Thomas Straws, Jochen and Christoph Berger. In 2006, it became a subsidiary of a holding company called intergenia Webhosting AG, which owned a variety of hosting-related events (like WorldHostingDays) and web portals (onlinekosten.de and Basic Thinking) throughout the dotcom boom, bust, and recovery.

Interesting side note: Basic Thinking was originally purchased through an eBay as part of a microsite promotional strategy for a PlusServer brand. Once the promotional campaign ended, Basic Thinking was turned into a tech blog.

The following year, PlusServer became the primary intergenia brand for domain names and website hosting.

In addition to PlusServer, the company also does business under the brand names “Internet24”, “Server4You”, “serverloft”, and Unmetered.com. Each of these sister websites provide a wide variety of hosting services to customers with different needs.

PlusServer’s complete web hosting portfolio ranges from virtual and dedicated servers to hybrid cloud solutions and infrastructure hosting.

Services

PlusServer’s website outlines five primary service offerings that cater strongly to midmarket companies and enterprise organizations: managed hosting, ecommerce hosting, managed cloud, web and mail clustering, web-based infrastructure, and colocation services.

Managed hosting services from PlusServer offer a high quality solution for companies that need to leverage an offsite provider for data center services, ecommerce, game servers, high availability, IT outsourcing, load balancing, and server management.

Ecommerce hosting from PlusServer can be pricey (starting at about 2000 euros/$2200 USD per month), but their service offering covers the industry-leading ecommerce solution Magento and several other shopping cart management platforms in a high security data center.

Managed cloud hosting can put your important files, applications, and websites in a virtual environment powered by a scalable, open source infrastructure that is built to help companies scale without keeping costs predictable.

Web and mail clustering is a highly-available solution designed to allow its customers to worry about business challenges, not whether or not their hosting provider is maintaining the website or mail servers.

Web infrastructure from PlusServer is designed for midmarket businesses and enterprises looking to save costs or capital expenses by moving their infrastructure from an in-house data center to the cloud. With so many different configurations based on existing infrastructures, these services can range from a couple hundred Euros per month to tens of thousands.

Colocation services from PlusServer will place your critical IT infrastructure and servers in a Tier 3-grade facility. Pricing options are available for a full rack, ½ rack, and ¼ rack. For companies that need information stored in multiple locations across the globe, PlusServer can provide hosting from data centers in nine locations across Europe and one in St. Louis, Missouri in the USA.

Datacenters

PlusServer provides its managed hosting and colocation services from 10 different locations – 8 are in Germany, 1 is in France, and 1 is located in the United States. According to reports from various online sources, the company hosts about 40,000 dedicated servers in only two of the data centers.

Geographic locations of the data centers include:

• Berlin, Germany
• Dusseldorf, Germany
• Frankfurt, Germany
• Hamburg, Germany
• Munich, Germany
• Strasbourg, France
• Stuttgart, Germany
• St. Louis, Missouri, USA

The data center in Strasbourg is environmentally friendly and energy efficient, using well water to supply the air conditioning power. It was completed in 2010 and is the first data center located in France to be certified Tier 3, with a five-star rating, and also be certified as an Approved Energy Efficient Data Center. Other interesting facts about the Strasbourg data center, according to information on their website:

• Consumes 25% less total energy than average data center
• Consumes 66% less energy for the data center infrastructure (cooling etc.)
• Cooling with clean hydropower
• Exclusive use of green electricity
• Carbon Dioxide neutral
• Uninterruptible power supply with redundant UPS systems and diesel generators
• Directly located on the main route for European fiber-optic lines
• Fastest connections to all carriers in Europe
• Fully redundant MPLS ring structure with a total capacity of 100 Gb/second

All PlusServer data centers are staffed 24/7/365 by guards. The entrance areas, outdoor facilities and other sensitive areas are also monitored by security cameras. Access control systems are built on two-factor authentication, and security personnel regularly conduct tours of the premises.

Summary

As a diverse corporation with multiple business units to serve the needs of the hosting community, PlusServer easily offers web technology services that fit the needs of customers of any size looking to host a website or server in Germany. The specific services offered by the PlusServer brand are specifically catered to midmarket and enterprise organizations that need cloud hosting of their infrastructure or IT outsourcing.

The costs to host with PlusServer are substantial even by enterprise standards, so businesses considering a migration from in-house server hosting to their data centers should thoughtfully consider their needs before making a switch. Otherwise, they may end up paying for a lot more than they need to keep their critical systems, websites, and applications online.