Based in 1999, Gandi is the highest area registrar in France, with round 2,000,000 domains below administration. However as with many different registrars, the corporate additionally has an intensive line in hosting, protecting the whole lot from easy private merchandise to powerhouse cloud internet hosting plans.
Gandi merchandise stand out for his or her help of a number of domains, with even probably the most primary low-end plan able to dealing with as much as 5 web sites.
Databases are one other spotlight. Whereas different suppliers usually limit you to a only a few 1GB MySQL databases, Gandi has no restrict on numbers or measurement.
The corporate handles storage slightly otherwise, too. All shared internet hosting plans include the identical 20GB of storage, however that is not a tough restrict – you’ll be able to add extra as required from £zero.19 ($zero.25) per GB per thirty days, as much as a most of 2TB.
The baseline Small plan provides you limitless bandwidth, 20GB storage and as much as 5 web sites for £four.20 ($5.46) a month. This can be cheaper than it seems to be, as we seen the web site included UK gross sales tax within the whole, the place most suppliers go away that out. However the down facet is you aren’t getting a bundled area, and there isn’t any SSL help.
The £6 ($7.80) a month Small+SSL plan extends the product with limitless SSL certificates.
The Medium, Massive and X-Massive plans add extra sources, whereas the top-of-the-range XX-Massive helps limitless web sites and limitless SSL certificates for £33.60 ($43.68) a month.
Gandi’s cloud internet hosting can be moderately priced, with plans ranging from £9.83 ($12.78) a month for a easy 1 core, 1GB RAM and 20GB storage product with an IPv6 handle solely, and ramping as much as £213.94 ($278) for a 16 core, 24GB RAM and 1TB storage setup. However there are potential catches, together with a 3TB month-to-month visitors allowance for all plans, after which ‘charge limits could apply’, apparently.
Maybe better of all, you’ll be able to check out Gandi’s Medium Internet hosting plan (as much as 10 domains) free for ten days, no cost particulars required. That is unusually beneficiant, and may offer you greater than sufficient time to check Gandi for your self.
Getting began
Making a Gandi account solely takes a second: enter your electronic mail, select a person identify and a password, and also you’re in, a lot simpler than regular.
The corporate is simply as easy in the case of serving to you get began. You are not despatched an enormous Welcome electronic mail filled with technical particulars, and Gandi’s console would not redirect you to a video tutorial or a startup wizard. You are simply introduced with Gandi’s easy account console, the place a single line of highlighted textual content explains which you can attempt a Medium internet hosting plan free for ten days, and a Attempt Now button factors you in the precise route.
Creating your Medium occasion is fractionally extra sophisticated than we anticipated, as the web site requested us to decide on a most well-liked internet language (PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby) and database (MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL). Newbies could also be not sure what to pick out, and it could assist if the web site not less than set PHP and MySQL as smart defaults.
The selection of information heart (France or Luxembourg) is less complicated, and also you’re additionally required to offer a reputation for this occasion, to establish it from any others you may create later.
Gandi’s web site subsequent takes you thru its common order course of, which incorporates offering your full contact particulars (identify, handle, telephone quantity) and creating an bill. However so long as you have chosen the trial plan, the bill will present there isn’t any cost, and you will not be requested for any cost particulars.
As soon as our order was full, Gandi activated our account and we had been in a position to entry our internet hosting dashboard. A easy interface gave us an summary of our account, and included instruments to create new websites and handle them from a customized management panel.
Making a web site
The Gandi dashboard has a Websites panel which permits managing a number of web sites inside your server area. Every one will get its personal folder and works as a person web site, with its personal area.
Creating a brand new web site is as simple as getting into its area identify. In case you’ve registered the area with Gandi, its LiveDNS system can replace your DNS data routinely, however in any other case the web site provides very temporary directions on how to do that manually. These are nothing greater than “add this report to your DNS report”, so rookies could also be left confused, however anybody used to managing domains will not have an issue.
Gandi would not provide a full 1-click set up platform, equivalent to Softaculous, however there may be an automatic WordPress installer. We tried it, and the system labored faultlessly, enabling us to log in to the WordPress dashboard inside a couple of seconds.
Your different foremost choices are to attach and add recordsdata by way of SFTP, or to deploy recordsdata by way of Git (the open supply model management system.) Sadly, there isn’t any browser-based file supervisor to examine your recordsdata or tweak them manually.
Administration instruments can be found in Gandi’s personal management panel. That is no match for cPanel, and offers you little greater than entry to Apache and PHP standing, PHP configuration, phpMyAdmin, Varnish cache management and various system logs.
Elsewhere, a helpful Snapshots function works as an emergency backup, taking 4 pictures of your disk at predefined occasions (1 day in the past, 2 days in the past, 7 days in the past, 14 days in the past.)
In case you run out of area, or simply need to attempt one thing extra highly effective, a Resize possibility permits selecting one other Gandi plan. The trial means that you can resize as many occasions as you want inside its ten days.
Whereas all this works properly sufficient, the interface makes it sometimes complicated. Navigation is inconsistent, with a number of methods of displaying your present location within the system, and stepping again to the earlier web page. Choices aren’t all the time the place you’ll count on them to be. Menus do not all the time have their very own scroll bars, permitting some choices to apparently “disappear” off the highest of the record. We quickly discovered how the system labored, however these points meant we by no means felt fully snug.
We additionally bumped into an issue with the momentary subdomain Gandi had allotted us (<id>.testing-url.ws), when Chrome warned us that it had been reported for phishing. Presumably this was because of the earlier proprietor abusing Gandi’s trial to get ten days of highly effective internet hosting without spending a dime. It would not matter a lot with a manufacturing web site as we might be utilizing our personal area, but when Gandi’s trial attracts loads of scammers, it is doable that extra of its IPs and sources will seem on safety blacklists.
Efficiency
Cloud internet hosting could be complicated, so it is necessary supplier provides respectable help. Gandi’s management panels do not present a lot assist in the interface, and there isn’t any always-visible Assist button, however a left-hand sidebar has Assist and Documentation choices which can level you in the precise route.
Gandi’s internet knowledgebase seems to be very like some other. Articles are organized into subjects (Domains, Internet hosting, Billing, extra), selecting a subject shows the preferred outcomes, and there is a search engine that can assist you discover particular solutions.
Most of Gandi’s content material is focused at skilled customers. In case you’re seeking to replace your identify servers to redirect a site, as an illustration, HostGator provides tailored instructions for fifteen widespread area registrars. Gandi simply has strains like “when linking a root area (e.g. instance.com), you may should create A and AAAA data”, and leaves you to determine the element your self.
We tried operating key phrase searches and seen a number of points. The search engine seems to look your entire web site, not simply help articles, so as an illustration some outcomes pointed to web site sidebars. A few of our searches returned each French and English-language outcomes, and these weren’t all the time very related to our key phrases. Coming into ‘WordPress’, as an illustration, bought us articles like ‘Console SSH d’urgence sur Gandi Easy Internet hosting’, ‘CNAME Data’ and ‘The Varnish cache system’ within the high 5.
These aren’t essentially deadly errors, and for those who’ve some information of internet hosting, you may discover your approach round. It is just a bit extra awkward and time-consuming than with one thing like cPanel.
If all else fails, you’ll be able to ship a message to the help staff. At the least, that is the speculation. We have seen loads of buyer opinions complaining about Gandi taking an age to reply, and never delivering a lot after they do.
We solely assessment hosts on our personal experiences, although, so we despatched a easy take a look at query (how can we view our server error logs?) by way of the web site’s on-line kind. This appeared to work, however on posting the message, redirected us to a web page which did not exist, and displayed a Return to the Dwelling Web page button which did not work.
Some 28 hours later, a really temporary response arrived. This did not particularly reply our error log query, as an alternative pointing us to the final help doc for Gandi’s management panel, which itself did not spell out the answer intimately. We’d nonetheless determine it out in a real-world answer by going to the management panel and testing the log choices, but when somebody has requested help for recommendation, we might hope to get a extra personalised and detailed response.
Last verdict
Numerous small points and annoyances, however good worth in some conditions, and perhaps price a search for skilled customers who want to host loads of web sites.