o2switch: shared hosting designed and run in Clermont-Ferrand since 2009
o2switch is one of the hosts most often mentioned by French WordPress users: a single shared hosting offer, split into three tiers since 2025, data centers in Clermont-Ferrand and a cPanel interface enhanced with in-house tools. This article covers the company, its plans and their real prices, its technical stack, its protections and its limits, then the first settings to make for a WordPress site.
Disclosure: this article is published by the WP Masquerade team, without an account at o2switch, without testing and without affiliate links, based on o2switch’s documentation and the sources listed at the end of the article. To see where o2switch stands among other hosts, see our comparison of web hosts for WordPress.
o2switch at a glance
- Company: SAS o2switch, registered in Clermont-Ferrand, share capital of €100,000, a telecom operator registered with ARCEP (the French telecom regulator). The brand was born in 2009, along with the company’s first data center.
- Owner: in September 2022, o2switch joined the Dutch group Total Webhosting Solutions (TWS), according to the press release published at the time, which presents Alexandre Yepes as the founder. In March 2023, TWS became Your.Online after its merger with Gandi; o2switch is one of the group’s brands.
- Data centers: o2switch says it owns and runs its own data centers, in Clermont-Ferrand.
- Size: the host claims more than 700,000 hosted sites.
o2switch plans for WordPress
For more than fifteen years, o2switch sold a single fixed-price “Offre Unique”. On February 20, 2025, its blog announced that it would be split into three tiers: Grow., Cloud. (the enhanced equivalent of the historical offer, to which existing contracts were moved from February 24, 2025) and Pro. (which replaces the former Scale’UP offer). There is no separate “managed WordPress” offer: the WPTiger tool, included everywhere, provides the WordPress-specific management.
| Plan | Type | Starting price | Sites | Storage | Key limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grow. | Shared (cPanel) | €7.00 per month excl. VAT, i.e. €84 per year excl. VAT | Unlimited | NVMe, “unlimited” | 8 vCPU, 16 GB of RAM, I/O 16 MB/s; 4 moons sharing the resources; 30-day backups |
| Cloud. | Shared (cPanel) | €16.00 per month excl. VAT, i.e. €192 per year excl. VAT | Unlimited | NVMe, “unlimited” | 12 vCPU, 48 GB, I/O 42 MB/s; 8 moons with their own resources; 45-day backups; TigerGuard; Nextcloud 250 GB |
| Pro. | Shared (cPanel) | €24.00 per month excl. VAT, i.e. €288 per year excl. VAT | Unlimited | NVMe and RAMfs, “unlimited” | 24 vCPU, 64 GB, I/O 84 MB/s; 16 moons; 90-day backups; priority L2+3 support |
| Managed Bare-Metal | Managed dedicated server | €149 per month excl. VAT (current offer) | Up to 100 cPanel accounts | System on 2 × 250 GB SSD in RAID 1 | No root access; hardware depends on stock; €140 to €300 per month excl. VAT according to the FAQ |
Billing is annual, with no monthly payment option. The displayed discounts (up to 88% on Cloud.) only apply to the first year: renewal is “at the usual rate”, the one in the table. A domain name is included, with a refund possible within 30 days. “Unlimited” is still bounded by CloudLinux quotas on CPU, memory and I/O; no inode limit is published. A “moon” is an additional cPanel account used to isolate a site.
Technical stack, tools and support
Web server and PHP
o2switch describes a two-tier architecture: front-end servers based on Nginx and LiteSpeed Web ADC, then the LiteSpeed PHP engine, while keeping compatibility with .htaccess files. Its in-house web server, PowerBoost, is “based on Nginx and OpenResty” according to the blog. The plan page lists PHP from 5.2 to 8.4, selected in cPanel’s “Select PHP Version”, MySQL 8 or MariaDB 10.6, and HTTP/2; HTTP/3 is not documented.
Caching and performance
- LiteSpeed LSCache: enabled per domain in cPanel, with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin. The domain then goes through the LiteSpeed Web ADC front end and changes IP address (DNS propagation of a few hours).
- XtremCache: a Varnish HTTP cache, another server-side option. Only one page cache at a time.
- Object cache: a private Redis (version 6 or 7) or Memcached instance, which WPTiger can connect to WordPress.
- Cloudflare: o2switch provides a guide, but does not support LSCache combined with the Cloudflare proxy. The hosting has no IPv6 address.
Tools for developers and for WordPress
SSH opens once your IP address is whitelisted in cPanel; WP-CLI has been installed by default since June 2019, and Git Version Control and PHP X-Ray are provided. WPTiger, the in-house tool, installs WordPress, creates a password-protected staging site, manages plugins and themes, checks file integrity and makes on-demand backups kept for 220 days on a remote server. Softaculous is still available.
Support
Support is in French, based in Clermont-Ferrand: tickets and email 24/7, phone and sales chat Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Cloud. and Pro. give access to priority support (level 2, then levels 2 and 3 on Pro.). The service status page (o2switch.info) publishes ongoing incidents.
Security at o2switch
We covered o2switch’s security tools in detail in our article on TigerProtect, PowerBoost and JetBackup backups; here is the essential for comparing.
- Network: Arbor anti-DDoS protection; the WordPress page also mentions Cloudflare Magic Transit.
- Web application firewall: TigerProtect, developed by o2switch, with WordPress rules you can adjust in cPanel (blocking
xmlrpc.php, rate limiting on/wp-login.phpand/wp-admin, sensitive PHP files, address reputation, countries). ModSecurity is enabled from the same tool. - Malware: ImunifyAV+ scans and cleans files on demand; TigerGuard, on Cloud. and Pro., monitors PHP script execution in real time.
- Isolation: CloudLinux quotas, “sandboxed” sites and moons to separate sites.
- Backups: daily, remote, kept for 30, 45 or 90 days, restorable in JetBackup, which does not run on-demand backups. According to o2switch, they “do not replace your own backup policy”.
- Accounts: TOTP two-factor authentication on cPanel and on the customer area (code by email for unknown IP addresses by default, TOTP app as an option). Free Let’s Encrypt certificates, renewed automatically.
Updates: WPTiger applies them in one click, but no automatic updates managed by the host are documented. Incidents: to our knowledge, as of the date of this article, we found no major incident (data breach, long outage) publicly documented by a reliable source.
To go further: our comparison of web application firewalls for WordPress and our guide to hardening PHP on a hosting account.
o2switch’s strengths and weaknesses
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
| Data centers owned and operated in France, support in French | Annual payment required, no monthly option |
| High resources and unlimited sites from Grow. up | Large first-year discounts: the renewal price is much higher on Cloud. and Pro. |
| TigerProtect firewall adjustable for WordPress, ModSecurity, ImunifyAV+ | No real-time scanning (TigerGuard) on Grow. |
| WPTiger: staging, integrity, on-demand backups, rollback to a plugin version | No managed WordPress offer with automatic updates by the host |
| Daily remote backups, from 30 to 90 days | No on-demand backup in JetBackup; destructive restore to handle with care |
| SSH, WP-CLI, Git, Redis, choice of PHP version | SSH subject to an IP address whitelist; no IPv6; HTTP/3 not documented |
| Moons to isolate sites | A single location (Clermont-Ferrand), no VPS or on-demand cloud |
The main drawback is reading the price correctly: Cloud. costs €16 per month excl. VAT at renewal (€1.86 per month as an introductory rate).
Who is it for? Profiles that suit o2switch
- Blog, brochure site, nonprofit: Grow. is enough in most cases, with unlimited sites and support in French.
- Small business and WooCommerce store: Cloud., for the resources, TigerGuard and 45 days of backups; a store also benefits from isolating its site in a moon.
- Freelancer and agency: moons keep clients separate; Pro. or the managed dedicated server for many sites.
- Less suitable: if you want root access, a server outside France, monthly payment or WordPress updates managed by the host.
To compare with other French-speaking hosts, see WordPress hosting at PlanetHoster and LWS’s WordPress plans; if you are looking for an international player with an in-house panel, read our analysis of WordPress hosting at Hostinger.
Getting started: installing and securing WordPress at o2switch
- Protect the accounts: enable TOTP two-factor authentication on the customer area and on cPanel, and save your codes; see our two-factor authentication guide.
- Isolate the site if you host several: create a moon in “Mon Univers Web”.
- Choose the PHP version in cPanel’s “Select PHP Version”: a maintained branch, compatible with your plugins.
- Install WordPress with WPTiger (“Créer un site WordPress” button) or Softaculous, with an administrator username that is not “admin”.
- Switch to HTTPS: generate the certificate in cPanel’s Let’s Encrypt SSL tool, then use “Forcer le site en HTTPS” in WPTiger, which fixes the addresses in the database and adds the redirect.
- Configure TigerProtect: keep the default rules, enable blocking of
xmlrpc.phpif you do not use it (see why disable XML-RPC) and blocking of WordPress’s sensitive PHP files. - Organize backups: find JetBackup, make a WPTiger backup before every major change, and keep a copy outside o2switch following the 3-2-1 rule.
- Test major updates on staging with WPTiger’s Staging tab (why a staging site), then turn on automatic updates for the plugins that allow it.
- Choose a single page cache: LSCache or XtremCache, not both.
WP Masquerade on o2switch
Based on how WP Masquerade works, on o2switch’s PowerBoost and LiteSpeed server, which reads .htaccess files according to the host’s documentation, the plugin folders return 404 without any setting, as on Apache. The points to know, detailed on the WP Masquerade compatibility with hosts and caches page:
- File aliases (Pro): the plugin generates the rule block for the “o2switch / PowerBoost” mode, to choose if automatic detection is ambiguous. Paste it at the top of the
.htaccessfile at the root of the domain, before# BEGIN LSCACHEand# BEGIN WordPress. See file addresses. - Checking from the browser: TigerProtect rejects requests a site sends to itself; Pro detects this and checks the aliases from your browser.
- Caches: the plugin purges LiteSpeed Cache through its API; exclude your new login address from the cache (Cache, Excludes, Do Not Cache URIs). XtremCache (Varnish) is not controlled by the plugin: purge it in cPanel and exclude the login address there too.
- Overlaps with TigerProtect and WPTiger: blocking
xmlrpc.phpand hiding the version, authors and readme files exist on both sides. Set each feature in one place only, so you know what blocks what. TigerProtect’s rate limiting targets/wp-login.phpand/wp-admin; once the login is moved, Pro’s login limiting protects the new address. - Real visitor address: behind Cloudflare, Pro restores the visitor’s address using Cloudflare’s official ranges; see WP Masquerade and Cloudflare and our Cloudflare guide. For the LiteSpeed Web ADC front end, o2switch does not document how the address is passed on: if in doubt, ask support to restore it at server level.
The plugin adds a custom login address, wp-login.php and xmlrpc.php returning 404, imitation of another CMS and, with Pro, two-factor authentication, login limiting, security headers and alerts. It does not filter attacks like TigerProtect, does not look for malware and does not make backups. Test it first on a WPTiger staging site.
Our take on o2switch
On paper, o2switch offers high resources from Grow. up, self-run data centers in France, a firewall adjustable for WordPress and WPTiger. Its limits: annual payment, renewals well above the introductory rates, no VPS or managed WordPress. A good choice for most blogs, business sites and small stores, to be compared on the renewal price. To see how it stacks up against other hosts, check our ranking of web hosts for WordPress, and for the application layer, our selection of the best WordPress security plugins.
Coming from another host? Our guide to migrating a WordPress site to a new host covers a zero-downtime switch, from the TTL to the rollback plan.
Key takeaways
- One cPanel shared hosting offer in three tiers: Grow. at €7, Cloud. at €16 and Pro. at €24 per month excl. VAT without promotions, annual payment.
- Data centers in Clermont-Ferrand, support in French; part of the Your.Online group since 2022.
- TigerProtect, ModSecurity, ImunifyAV+ and backups of 30 to 90 days; TigerGuard only on Cloud. and Pro.
- WPTiger handles staging, integrity and on-demand backups; updates remain your job.
- WP Masquerade works there without any server rule; Pro’s aliases are pasted before
# BEGIN LSCACHEand checked from the browser.
Sources
- o2switch FAQ: TigerProtect and ModSecurity (external link, opens in a new tab)
- o2switch FAQ: restoring a backup with JetBackup (external link, opens in a new tab)
- o2switch FAQ: two-factor authentication on cPanel (external link, opens in a new tab)
Other sources consulted: official pages of the hosting provider and software vendors, trade press articles.
