IONOS: A Costly Nightmare for My Websites and Business
Where do I even begin? My experience with IONOS has been a nightmare from start to finish. Initially, their sales pitch lacked clarity, which should have been a warning. But the real trouble started when IONOS found a so-called "malicious file" on ONE of my domains. This file, an image with a slight permission change (something entirely normal within a WordPress setup), was flagged as a major issue.
Rather than handling this appropriately, IONOS took down my entire web space—every domain, every file, and every folder—resulting in error 403 across the all 5 websites. This catastrophic action not only tanked my Google rankings but also caused immense stress and disruption to my business. Their response? A vague directive to "follow the instructions to get your information back." Unsurprisingly, this process led nowhere.
The following day, I received a call stating my websites were back up. But this was far from the truth—only the front pages were restored, while admin pages remained inaccessible. It became clear that the only way to truly resolve this situation is to leave IONOS entirely. Ironically, only then did they manage to restore service properly.
Throughout my time with IONOS, they constantly tried to upsell me on their upgraded security package, which now feels like nothing more than a tactic to squeeze more money out of me.
IONOS’ heavy-handed approach to handling a non-issue, combined with their relentless upselling and inadequate support, has completely destroyed my trust in them. If you value your websites, rankings, and peace of mind, steer clear of IONOS.
UPDATE: The incompetence knows no bounds! After Canceling and being given 7 days to transfer my data, they deleted my domains entirely, so I lost most of my data. I have now spent a total of 7 hours on the phone trying to fix this. They tried to take an extra $90 per domain (so that's x5!). I will now be pursuing legal action for loss of earnings, google rankings, and loss of an entire day trying to get this sorted, I am writing this at 1:40 in the morning
November 14, 2024
Unprompted review