Website comparison

Web storage

Web storage is for your HTML files, images, scripts, and databases, which you need for your websites and emails. The data is saved on high-speed SSD disks with StarEntry and StarBiz and superfast NVMe disks with StarPlus.

Cloud storage

For each hosting subscription you order from Hoststar, we’ll give you Cloud storage at no extra cost. Use it to have your data, music, videos, and pictures available to you at any time and from any place and to share them. Depending on your subscription, you can create up to 10 additional users in your cloud, each with 10 GB of additional storage space. Share the data with your friends, family, and business partners.

Additional Cloud users

Depending on your subscription, create up to 10 additional users for your cloud, each with an additional 10GB of personal storage space. Share the data with your friends, family, and business partners.

Number of MySQL databases

With our hosting packages, you can create unlimited MySQL databases.

Number of database users

Depending on your hosting plan, you can create different numbers of database users.

Simultaneous MySQL connections

For each database user, there is a limit of 10, 25, or 50 concurrent MySQL connections depending on the subscription. This limit ensures that each customer has enough MySQL server power so that the websites can achieve the best performance.

External access to databases possible

With external access, you can access your database from your computer at home. This option can be activated in My Panel.

Get your free domain for the first year included in our hosting price

Our hosting plans include a free domain for the first year. In the second year, you will receive the standard renewal fee and can decide whether to continue registering your domain or change or cancel it. You can choose from one of the following promising new domain extensions!

.online     •     .site     •     .website     •     .space     •     .tech     •     .store

Additional domains

With our hosting offers, you can activate an unlimited number of domains.

Websites

Create up to 150 individual websites with any domain name in a single hosting package.

GDPR compliant

As a Swiss web hosting provider, Hoststar runs all services in accordance with the GDPR. For the correct implementation of the GDPR, customers can enter into an agreement for data processing with us.

FTP access

You can copy and download data from your website using file transfer protocol (FTP) anytime. For this, you can use Hoststar’s Web FTP. It enables you to transfer FTP in your browser or use a free FTP program like FileZilla or Cyberduck. You can also use SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) for encrypted FTP connections. SFTP builds an SSH tunnel through the FTP connection, which encrypts data transfer to and from the server. In addition to the commands entered, the data channel is also encrypted. This implies that both access and data are transmitted in encrypted form. Our servers support SFTP by default.

Unlimited FTP users

You may add and manage an unlimited number of FTP users. Directory permissions can be set individually for each FTP user.

SSH access

You can establish a secure connection to the hosting web server with SSH and execute various commands via command line to manage your hosting. Managing a web hosting via SSH is only recommended for experienced users.

Unlimited traffic

Our packages are available to you without any traffic restrictions.
In addition to website requests, unrestricted data transfer includes FTP transfers and email data. 
However, websites with download portals or streaming services are not permitted. See our GTCs.

Internet connection

StarEntry and StarBiz are connected to the Internet at 1 GB/s and StarPlus at 10 GB/s. We recommend our StarPlus package for larger systems and cloud solutions to achieve significantly faster upload and download rates.

Individual PHP settings

You can set the desired PHP version for each web hosting directory. The latest PHP versions are available to you. In addition, you can manage various other PHP settings, for example, the following parameters:

• max_execution_time
• memory_limit
• error_reporting

PHP memory limit

PHP allows using a default amount of memory for processing a website. Sometimes a website needs more than the default amount of memory. If this is the case, you can increase the amount to fit the needs of your website. The maximum amount of PHP memory has to be limited to provide you and other customers with a stable web service.

Editable error pages

Error pages are messages generated by the server and displayed when a non-existing URL is requested, or a dead link is clicked. You can redesign these pages as you see fit.

Password-protected directories

If you want specific website directories to be inaccessible to the public, you can protect them with a password.

Full log file access

Log files record access and error messages from the various services running on the web server.
The statistics server uses the log files to create statistical analyses. In addition to the comprehensive statistics provided by Hoststar, you can install your own statistics server anytime, as you have unrestricted access to your log files.

Designer storage

Storage space refers to the amount of hard disk space that is provided on the server for the website you create with Designer. Depending on the hosting package you choose, different amounts of storage space are available to you.

Number of configurable pages

You can use Designer to produce a number of pages for your website, depending on the hosting package.

Multilingualism

Create a multilingual website and offer multiple languages for your site visitors.

Embed images, files, YouTube videos and SoundCloud audio files

Upload your images and position them where you want them. Designing your website couldn’t be easier. With the Designer, all files (e.g., PDF or zip) can be linked to your website via the Dropbox module. Upload the file and create the desired link. Embedding YouTube videos is just as easy. Position the YouTube place-holder where you want it, add the link to the video, and the video can be played on your website. Use the same function to embed SoundCloud audio files as well.

Design forms

Thanks to the Designer, creating forms is easy. Position the form placeholder and specify the email address to send the form data.

Blog module

Use the blog module in Designer to embed a blog quickly and easily in the desired position on your website.

Google Analytics included

Google Analytics is included in Designer. Use this analysis tool for your website.
Please note that, depending on the country from which you operate your website, you may have to adapt your general terms and conditions and data protection statement, as Google Analytics uses IP-based personal data for its comprehensive reporting functions.

Mobile-ready

Every Design template is ready for PCs, tablets, and smartphones and is automatically adjusted to the most suitable screen resolution. It doesn’t matter which design you choose; it will work perfectly on every device.

Payment options for online shops

Offer the customers of your online shop a variety of payment methods such as PayPal, stripe, 2CHECKOUT, and more.

Number of wordpress installations

You can manage a limited number of WordPress sites via our WordPress Toolkit in My Panel. However, if you want to set up more WordPress sites, you can do it through our Software Center or with a manual installation.

Free Premium Templates

As a Hoststar customer, you will benefit from an exclusive collection of free premium templates that will make your WordPress site look unique.

Automatic Backup for Updates

When you update your WordPress site using our WordPress Toolkit in My Panel, a backup of your site is automatically created before the update. In case of failed updates, you can revert to the previous state with just a few clicks.

Hoststar’s TLD list

Your domain name is comparable to your home address: a unique address with which you can be identified on the Internet.
You can find a list of all international domain extensions that you can register independently here:
Hoststar’s TLD list

Free domain activation

Activation of registered domains is included in our offer. There are no extra charges for this service.

Domain forwarding

Use domain forwarding (URL forward) to forward a domain (e.g. «yourDomain.at») to another internet address (e.g. «yourDomain.com»).

Subdomains – as many as you want

You can add an unlimited number of subdomains to your domain. A subdomain is attached to the domain name and points to a subdirectory on your disk space. You can therefore create several subsections per domain (departments, people, etc.).

Example:
customers.yourDomain.com
staff.yourDomain.com

And: your domain can be reached both with and without the www prefix:
yourDomain.com
www.yourDomain.com

Many visitors will therefore be able to find your website more efficiently, and even search engines honor this function.

Name-server administration

Managing your domain’s name server is easy, thanks to Hoststar’s intuitive Domain Manager. Decide whether your domain should point to your Hoststar server or your own.

DNS administration

You can edit your DNS zones/records (A-, CNAME-, MX- etc.) anytime. This area is where you set up the URL and email redirects you want.

Free domain change and de-registration.

We’d happily take over the domain if you wish (name server change). With us, a change of hosting provider entails only the smallest amount of effort on your part. And your domain stays fully functional during the shift to the new server.

Extras – Additional services

More than just web hosting—Hoststar’s extras. One provider—many extras. Whether you need our Designer and Pictures to create your website, the Shop, or our Web Apps and countless tips and tricks on search engine optimization, all this bounty is just one click away. Enjoy hundreds of ways of making your daily life that little bit easier.

Support – Immediate help

Do you have any questions about the individual features in the My Panel software suite? No problem! A large and comprehensive support area is available to you at any time. Step-by-step guides with graphics are there for your immediate needs. Our experienced support staff will gladly assist you if you need more.

Unlimited email accounts

Email accounts provide storage space for your emails; you can set up as many as you want. You can set the disk space limit individually for each email account (StarEntry: max 5 GB, StarBiz: max 15 GB, StarPlus: max 20 GB). As a Hoststar customer, you can use the following email protocols: POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP. The IMAP4 protocol was designed to make accessed email accounts and messages appear on your local computer. In contrast, with POP3, the emails remain on the server and are managed there. IMAP4 is the right choice when using one email account from several devices.

Unlimited email addresses

You can create an unlimited number of email addresses for each domain name.

For example:

info@yourdomain.com
sales@yourdomain.com
admin@yourdomain.com
smith@yourdomain.com
jones@yourdomain.com

Mail limit per hour (100 mails/h default)

The maximum number of emails per mailbox per hour must be limited to provide you with stable and secure email traffic. This protection mechanism prevents the server's IP address from ending up on an IP blocklist if spam is sent from an address. The limit per hour can be temporarily increased to the subscription maximum for 24 hours at a time.

Connection to your company mail server

Our package lets you connect to your company mail server (e.g., Exchange server) for email administration. You can directly set the relevant MX records in the DNS administration area on your company mail server.

Unlimited email auto-responder and auto-forwarding

With the auto-responder, you can set up automatic response emails for your email addresses, for example, when you want to inform senders of your absence. Email forwarding redirects emails to another email address, for example, to another of your email addresses at another internet provider.

Example: jsmith@yourDomain.com to jsmith@anotherDomain.com

You can set up as many email forwarding addresses in My Panel as possible.

Catch-all email

All dubiously addressed emails can be caught with a catch-all email address. This means all emails are sent to @yourDomain.com but not to a specific address, e.g., info@yourDomain.com. This applies if you only want to receive emails at @yourDomain.com. In this case, setting up several email accounts is unnecessary. You just have to direct, e.g., info@yourDomain.com and smith@yourDomain.com or contact@yourDomain.com to one account.

Spam filters and virus scanners

• Hoststar’s spam protection was written by our highly experienced server administrators and support teams. It scans all incoming emails.
• In addition to this, Hoststar’s blacklist is synchronized with three international anti-spam databases. This ensures a reliable and effective spam blocker. By adding relevant spam servers (open relay servers) to the blacklist, entire waves of spam can be stopped.
• The Hoststar OCR spam filter (optical character recognition software for images) recognises spam emails based on graphics and reliably filters them out.

As a protective measure against emails and files infected with viruses, we offer you the following virus scanners:

• Hoststar’s virus scanner checks all emails for viruses and automatically deletes infected emails.
• Hoststar’s FTP virus protection thoroughly checks every file uploaded and downloaded to our servers and only saves them when it's sure they're not infected.

Send professional newsletters

Use Hoststar’s newsletter tool to make your first step into the world of email marketing an easy one. Create a professional newsletter in just a few clicks and inform your customers about your new products or your company’s next corporate event.

Free telephone and email support

Do you have any questions about your Hoststar subscriptions? Contact our hotline! (Calls from the Austrian are 0.25 EUR/minute.)

Our support staff is happy to help you from Monday to Friday¹ from 8.00 a.m. – 05.30 p.m. and on Saturday from 09.00 a.m. – 4.00 p.m. by telephone.

You can reach our support team here

¹ Administration: Monday to Friday, technical support: Monday to Saturday

12-hour support response time (working days)

We place a high value on competent advice and professional support for our hosting products. Our qualified and motivated support team is happy to help you with your inquiries. For more information, see Hoststar’s quality guarantee (SLA).

Premium support

Our premium support form is there for your urgent inquiries or problems outside our regular support hours (Monday to Friday¹ from 8.00 a.m. – 05.30 p.m. and on Saturday from 09.00 a.m. – 4.00 p.m.) and on Sundays or public holidays. After receiving your message, our on-call staff will contact you as quickly as possible.

Extensive online support area

We provide you with a comprehensive support area. Thanks to countless guides (including screenshots), you can easily manage your systems. The support area is kept updated, and new topics are constantly added.

Download Centre with free programs

Our Software Archive contains pre-configured scripts, software, and links to various topics on browsers, FTP programs, email programs, and website tools.

Support links

Many interesting links to websites, forums, and tutorials on programming and scripting languages, such as HTML, CSS, PHP, Perl-CGI, etc., can be found here.

Remote support on demand

We provide the option of resolving system issues remotely. Contact our technical support here. Quick help with no confusion!

Around-the-clock server monitoring

The entire Hoststar server farm is monitored around the clock by the latest monitoring technologies. Even the most minor error messages are forwarded to our on-call service 24/7 and can be immediately analyzed and rectified.

Hosting with a backup feature

You can use Hoststar’s backup administration tool to configure your backups of your data to one of Hoststar’s backup servers or an FTP server of your choice. Create, save and restore a backup with the click of a mouse.

Guaranteed availability (server uptime)

For our servers, we guarantee an annual average availability of 99.9%. The entire server infrastructure is monitored around the clock every day of the year. On top of that, the server hardware is equipped with 100% redundantly installed components monitored over three backbones every minute of the day. Our infrastructure offers you above-average high availability!

Redundant internet connection

Our computer centres are equipped with multiple redundant network systems. Various connections to the most critical nodes offer almost 100% security against network outages. All of our network technologies are based on JUNIPER hardware.

Server hardware from Dell

As a Austrian web hosting provider, we place as much value on trouble-free operations as on high quality. We invest and reinvest in redundant and highly reliable systems. We use hardware from Dell for our web servers, which provide better stability and performance thanks to their high-quality components. Hoststar’s web platforms are run in computer centers that are among the most powerful and secure in the business. Your website’s data is stored on the latest server systems from Dell that are redundantly designed from the storage unit (SSD with Raid 5 and NVMe with Raid 10) and energy supply to the network connections.

Firewall

The entire server farm is protected by cutting-edge firewall technology. And Hoststar’s Network Operating Centre monitors the whole server farm using the latest monitoring systems, 24/7, 365 days a year. Even the most minor error messages are caught and reported around the clock.

DDoS protection

With a DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service), an attacker attempts to overload the bandwidth or resources of a server with many simultaneous requests. The results are high load times for your website or, in the worst case, a total failure. Our DDoS protection has been permanently active for all our web hosting customers since the middle of 2016. If an attack is detected, the safety switches on dynamically within a few seconds and filters the attack.

ModSecurity: Open source web application firewall

ModSecurity, often just called "ModSec", is a firewall for web applications. ModSecurity protects your websites from attacks and manipulation. Sometimes, however, a desired function is blocked. In this case, you have the option of deactivating the corresponding ModSec rule.

Quick activation (working days)

When you order a hosting package or a vServer from us, we activate your package as quickly as possible after receiving your payment and checking your data. This can be as soon as a few minutes after placing your order! Your complete satisfaction with our products is our highest priority.

Click to change to a different package

Your needs change over time. With Hoststar, you can change your subscription to a bigger or smaller package at any time with the click of a mouse.

• Subscription upgrades should be done before the invoice period, as the difference between the smaller and larger packages will be transferred immediately to your order.
• Subscription downgrades should be carried out just before the invoice period, as hosting fees already paid for the larger package cannot be reimbursed.

No activation fees

Installation and activation of your hosting account are included in our offer. There are no extra charges for this service.

SLA (Service Level Agreement)

Hoststar’s quality guarantee (SLA) includes all offers and products. This agreement defines the quality standards that Hoststar promises to deliver to you, its customer. These quality standards include items such as network and server availability, connection capacity, customer support, and backup of legal data stored on Hoststar’s infrastructure.

Payment forms & invoicing period

You receive payment information by email after an online order has been placed. You can settle the outstanding invoice using a payment slip by post, e-banking, or credit card. Recurring invoicing occurs annually, always 60 days before the end of the subscription period and is sent by email. So please keep your contact email address up to date!

30-day money back guarantee

You have enough time to test our service thoroughly. If in the first 30 days after placing your order, you are not happy with Hoststar as your service provider or with your product, you can cancel the subscription within this time, and we guarantee that we will fully reimburse you. Send us an email at order@hoststar.at. Quality doesn’t always have to be expensive. Try us and find out for yourself.

Service – My Panel

Our exclusive My Panel combines high functionality and a user-friendly interface for effortless management of your subscriptions.

More information about My Panel

Service – Website builder

Discover how easy it is to create your own professional website and get it online. All you need is the perfect website builder!

More information about the website builder

Service – Cloud

Cloud from Hoststar gives you global access to your online storage repository of files, photos, music and videos. Each hosting and website package includes your own personal Cloud service free of charge.

More information about Cloud

Service – Mail

With Hoststar Mail's comprehensive and clearly organised contact management, you can always keep an eye on everything, even with numerous contacts. Multiple address lists, vCard support and easy sharing of contacts simplify administration, making personal and business correspondence even easier.

More information about Mail

Service – Domain check

You want to buy a domain and already have a few names in mind? Then check the availability of your desired domain right here!

More information about Domain-Check

Service – SEO (search engine optimisation)

To attain a high position in today’s search engine results or even to be found at all, there are a few things you have to know. We’ll give you our tips and links.

More information about SEO-Tool

Hoststar VPN

A VPN (virtual private network) is an encrypted tunnel between your computer/mobile and the Internet and is used to anonymize your data and Internet activities. The secured connections of a VPN are effective for protection against hackers and also ward off snooping software from public Wi-Fi networks, for example. Content blockers can be bypassed to give you unrestricted access to your favourite content from anywhere.

More information about Hoststar VPN

Service – Sitelock

SiteLock is a cloud-based service that scans your website for malware and vulnerabilities on a daily basis - similar to an antivirus program. SiteLock checks for malware, SQL injections, cross-site scripts and other threats and removes them in the process, or points out vulnerable areas.

More information about SiteLock

phpMyAdmin – Database administration tool

phpMyAdmin, installed on our servers, is an administration tool that makes managing MySQL databases easy. Using the device requires no knowledge of SQL, as the databases can be structured via the user interface. The databases are first created in My Panel in your Hosting Control Panel.

More information on phpmyadmin.net

Cronjobs

A cronjob is a task automatically executed by the computer in the background at defined intervals. The function is used when data needs to be processed at regular intervals. You can set up your own cronjobs in My Panel.

Sendmail

Sendmail is a mail-transfer agent or a computer program that transfers emails from one computer to another. Sendmail is a classic program, the most well-known of its type.

Mod-rewrite (htaccess)

The rewrite module enables you to automatically redirect calls from a defined web address (URL)—one managed by your web server—to another web address. This means, for example, that web addresses remain valid during a change to the file hierarchy. These features contribute to user-friendliness and make your website easy to find in search engines.