PlanetHoster WordPress hosting review: The World plans and security

PlanetHoster: a Quebec host with data centers in Paris, Lausanne and Montreal

PlanetHoster is a Quebec host with a strong presence in France, data centers in Paris, Lausanne and Montreal and an in-house control panel, N0C, instead of cPanel. This article presents the company, its The World and HybridCloud offers with their prices without promotions, its technical stack, its protections and its limits, then the first settings for a WordPress site.

Disclosure: this article is published by the WP Masquerade team, without an account at PlanetHoster, without testing and without affiliate links, based on PlanetHoster’s documentation and the sources listed at the end of the article. To compare it with other hosts, see our ranking of WordPress hosts.

PlanetHoster at a glance

• Company: PlanetHoster inc., founded in 2007 in Quebec, headquartered in Laval, in the Montreal area. This company signs the contract, which is governed by Quebec law according to the terms of use.
• Shareholders: the company describes itself as fully independent, with no outside shareholders.
• Data centers: seven data centers in France (Paris), Switzerland (Lausanne) and Canada (Montreal), Tier III or Tier IV certified according to the website. The location is chosen for each project.
• Size: more than 150,000 customers and more than 500,000 hosted sites, according to PlanetHoster, which also runs its own network (AS53589) and is an accredited domain name registrar.

PlanetHoster’s plans for WordPress

The whole range relies on the N0C panel. The shared offer is called The World and is made up of “Web Projects”: a project groups a primary domain, its unlimited subdomains, its email and its databases, with its own isolated resources. You can mix three tiers, Standard, Plus and Ultra, in the same account. Beyond that, HybridCloud provides a fully managed server. PlanetHoster also sells VPS plans, but its VPS page now points to HybridCloud configurations.

Plan	Type	Starting price	Sites	Storage	Key limits
Standard Web Project	Shared (The World)	€7.99 per month; pack of 10 projects at €19.99, pack of 100 at €149.99	1 project (domain and unlimited subdomains)	10 GB NVMe and 50 GB N0C Storage (S3)	Isolated resources per project; 45-day backups
Plus Web Project	Shared (The World)	€12.99 per month	1 project	50 GB NVMe and 250 GB S3	More CPU and memory; 99.90% SLA
Ultra Web Project	Semi-dedicated (The World)	€19.99 per month	1 project	100 GB NVMe and 500 GB S3	LiteSpeed Enterprise and LiteMage; Auto Peak Power; on-demand snapshots; priority support
HybridCloud	Managed cloud server	€40 per month (Starter)	Unlimited N0C accounts	40 GB NVMe (up to 4 TB)	2 CPU units and 4 GB of RAM, up to 32 CPUs and 128 GB; 24/7 management

For a pack of 10 Standard Projects or for an Ultra Project, renewal is announced at €19.99 per month; a new-subscription promotion showed €5.49 per month, provided you pay for a 24-month cycle. The site displays both amounts side by side, which makes comparison easier. The prices do not say whether they are excl. or incl. VAT: the terms of use speak of prices including all taxes, while the HybridCloud page states that taxes are shown at checkout. So check the total when you pay. A domain name is free for the first year and the money-back guarantee runs for 60 days.

Technical setup: server, PHP, N0C panel and support

• Web server: LiteSpeed enabled by default according to the home page; The World’s technical table lists “Apache + LiteSpeed (LSCache)” for Standard and Plus, LiteSpeed Enterprise with LiteMage for Ultra. .htaccess files can be used, and the knowledge base gives examples.
• Protocols: HTTP/3, Brotli compression and OPcache are advertised.
• PHP: several versions to choose from in N0C (Languages, PHP), one version per Web Project, with extensions and php.ini options. PlanetHoster does not publish the list of versions as text.
• Caches: LSCache, which can be purged per domain in N0C (Performance, LSCache), and dedicated Redis and Memcached instances included.
• Tools: SSH with keys managed in N0C, WP-CLI installed by default, REST API, MariaDB 10.6 and PostgreSQL 16, S3-compatible N0C Storage. N0C WP installs WordPress and manages plugins, themes and users; The World page also advertises one-click site cloning.
• Support: salaried technicians, in French, 24/7 by phone, chat and ticket; priority support on Ultra. Free migration from another host. A public status page lists incidents.

A distinctive feature of The World: PlanetHoster says it spreads a customer’s projects over several physical servers, so that a server failure does not affect all your sites at once. Conversely, the sites on a HybridCloud server share the same machine.

Security at PlanetHoster

• Network: hardware anti-DDoS protection (layers 3, 4 and 7 according to the website), anycast DNS, own network.
• Web application firewall: ModSecurity with more than 200 OWASP rules, which you enable and customize domain by domain in N0C (Security, Web App Firewall), with a history of blocked requests.
• Malware: every file uploaded to the server is scanned by ClamAV and Linux Malware Detect, according to the home page.
• Isolation: CloudLinux LVE and CageFS, in addition to isolation per Web Project.
• Backups: daily, encrypted, stored in another data center and kept for 45 days, restorable by day for files or databases in N0C. Archive creation by the user was marked as “temporarily disabled” in the documentation. On-demand snapshots on Ultra only.
• Accounts and HTTPS: app-based two-factor authentication on the N0C panel, unlimited Let’s Encrypt certificates renewed automatically.

Updates: PlanetHoster says it applies server security patches, but the documentation does not describe automatic updates of WordPress and its plugins by the host. Incidents: to our knowledge, as of the date of this article, we found no publicly documented major incident.

To go further: our comparison of web application firewalls for WordPress and our guide to hardening PHP on a hosting account.

PlanetHoster’s strengths and weaknesses

Strengths	Weaknesses
Choice of data center per project: Paris, Lausanne or Montreal	Company and contract under Quebec law, which matters for some public procurement or disputes
Isolation per project, CloudLinux and CageFS, projects spread over several servers	One site per Web Project: several sites require a pack or several projects
Renewal prices shown next to promotions; 60-day guarantee	Prices without stating excl. or incl. VAT; best promotions tied to a 24-month cycle
24/7 human support in French, free migration	In-house N0C panel: fewer third-party tutorials than for cPanel
HTTP/3, LiteSpeed, Redis and Memcached included	List of PHP versions not published as text; CPU resources of Standard and Plus not quantified
45-day encrypted backups in another data center	No documented WordPress updates managed by the host; snapshots reserved for Ultra

For a single site, the Standard Web Project is easy to understand. For several sites, the math changes: each Web Project carries one primary domain, and the pack of 10 or 100 projects becomes the attractive option.

Who is it for? Profiles that suit PlanetHoster

• Blog, brochure site, nonprofit: the Standard Web Project, with a Paris data center for a French audience.
• WooCommerce store: the Ultra Web Project, for LiteSpeed Enterprise, snapshots and Auto Peak Power during a traffic spike.
• Agency and freelancer: packs of 10 or 100 isolated projects, or HybridCloud to group hundreds of sites.
• French-Canadian or Swiss sites: the choice of Montreal or Lausanne, project by project, from a single account.
• Less suitable: if you insist on cPanel, a contract under French law or a host that updates WordPress for you.

To compare with a host using cPanel and its own data centers in Clermont-Ferrand, read WordPress hosting at o2switch; see also LWS’s WordPress plans and, on the Swiss side, WordPress hosting at Infomaniak.

Getting started: installing and securing WordPress at PlanetHoster

1. Protect the panel: enable two-factor authentication in N0C (Security, Two-factor auth.) and keep the copy of the QR code offered for download; see our two-factor authentication guide.
2. Choose the region of the project according to your audience (Paris for France).
3. Choose the PHP version in Languages, PHP: a maintained branch, compatible with your plugins (why avoid end-of-life versions).
4. Install WordPress with N0C WP (CMS / Applications), checking “Use HTTPS”, with an administrator username that is not “admin”.
5. Enable the web application firewall on the domain (Security, Web App Firewall) and watch its history during the first days to spot a false positive.
6. Organize backups: find the per-day restore in N0C, then keep a copy outside PlanetHoster following the 3-2-1 rule.
7. Close XML-RPC if you do not use it (why) and turn on automatic updates for the plugins that allow it, after a trial on a copy of the site (staging).
8. Enable caching with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin and, if needed, Redis or Memcached.

Nom de domaine, site web, e-mails : comment démarrer facilement avec The World?Clicking loads the video from youtube-nocookie.com (YouTube, Google). Nothing loads until you click.

WP Masquerade on PlanetHoster

Based on how WP Masquerade works, on a LiteSpeed server that reads .htaccess files, as PlanetHoster’s do according to its documentation, the plugin folders return 404 without any setting. 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 chosen server type (LiteSpeed Enterprise or Apache 2.4); the presence of LiteSpeed Cache does not prove that type, so confirm it with support. Paste the block at the top of the .htaccess file at the root of the domain, before # BEGIN LSCACHE and # BEGIN WordPress, then click “Check and activate”. See file addresses.
• Cache: the plugin purges LiteSpeed Cache through its API; exclude your new login address (Cache, Excludes, Do Not Cache URIs). If in doubt, also purge the domain in N0C.
• Firewall: ModSecurity acts before WordPress and remains useful; WP Masquerade is not a firewall. If a settings page is blocked, the N0C firewall history shows the rule involved.
• Real visitor address: behind Cloudflare, Pro restores the visitor’s address; see WP Masquerade and Cloudflare. PlanetHoster’s Cloudflare guide does not cover this point.
• Two-factor authentication: N0C’s protects the panel, not WordPress; WP Masquerade Pro’s (or another plugin’s, only one) protects the site’s admin area.

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 ModSecurity, does not look for malware and does not make backups. Test it first on a copy of the site.

Our take on PlanetHoster

PlanetHoster stands out for the isolation of each project, the choice of data center between Paris, Lausanne and Montreal, 24/7 human support in French and displayed renewal prices. Its limits: an in-house panel that takes some getting used to, prices without stating excl. or incl. VAT, a contract under Quebec law and a “one primary domain per project” model to calculate carefully when you manage several sites. A relevant choice for a French-language site that wants isolation and support, and for agencies ready to adopt N0C. To see where it stands, check our comparison of web hosts for WordPress and, for the application layer, our selection of the best WordPress security plugins.

Sources

• N0C KB: two-factor authentication (external link, opens in a new tab)
• N0C KB: web application firewall (WAF) and history (external link, opens in a new tab)
• N0C KB: restoring files and databases (external link, opens in a new tab)

Other sources consulted: official pages of the hosting provider.