Scala Hosting is an expanding host from the US. Its plans support a variety of popular PHP-based CMSs, Joomla included.
Here’s what its Joomla pricing plans get you:
Scala Hosting Performance
Scala’s uptime sits steadily at 99.99%. This essentially means the infrastructure works perfectly, and there are no outages to speak of.
Of course, the provider extends the expected 99.9% uptime guarantee. Quite reassuring.
Scala Hosting has the average response time of 0.29 seconds and time till fully loaded of 0.76 seconds. The results are excellent and put Scala Hosting as one of the fastest Joomla hosting companies out there.
Unfortunately, the backend testing ran into some trouble. It is unclear what is the issue, and the support wasn’t able to help, but some aspect of the service was scrambling the test results.
The plans perform splendidly as far as the available test results go. But there’s no way to tell how the Joomla servers handle heavier traffic without the backend test.
Scala Hosting Support
Scala’s support team gets a ton of praise from the customers, so I wanted to see what the fuss is all about.
You get 24/7 phone, email, and live chat support. I tried the live chat a few times and each time got almost instantly connected to a courteous and knowledgeable support representative.
The agents do an exceptional job answering complex questions and resolving issues. The only thing the provider failed to fix were the issues with the backend test. To be fair, the issue is highly unusual, but it’s worth mentioning.
The knowledge base is not that comprehensive. There are only a few helpful guides, and none of them are exactly about Joomla web hosting.
Still, the lack of articles is only a tiny issue when you take the excellent support service into account.
Scala Hosting Features
For starters, Scala’s shared plans run on the LiteSpeed web server. This is a premium software widely regarded as one of the fastest and most lightweight web servers you can use.
Joomla users can take advantage of this by using the LiteSpeed Cache extension. Once the plugin does its magic, the Joomla servers can deliver content faster and handle way more traffic.
From there, Scala offers all the standard cPanel hosting advantages—SSD storage, free SSL, emailing, a CDN service, etc.
The plans get you daily backups, which is your safety net in case something goes wrong. Scala keeps backup versions for a week, which is fine.
Scala Hosting also handles Joomla updates for you. This is optional, but it can save you a lot of effort checking for new versions and updating everything manually.
Scala can handle a Joomla migration for you as well. It’s a handy Joomla hosting site if you already have a web app set up.
The starter plan comes with enough resources to handle about 30,000 monthly visitors, and each subsequent plan doubles the resources. This is only a ballpark number, however, so the actual mileage you can get depends on your website and its optimization.
One complaint is that the in-house SShield security isn’t available on the starter plan. This is one of Scala’s flagship tools, so it’s a shame many users miss out on it from the get-go. There are other solutions to help, like antivirus software and brute-force protection tools. Still, you can never really have enough security.
More technical users will enjoy access to cron and git support.
Scala’s offer is reasonably extensive, even for one of the best Joomla hosting sites. Most of Scala’s main advantages aren’t included in the starter plan, though.
Scala Hosting User Reviews
Scala gets lots of love from its clients, which is no surprise. The host promises robust proprietary tools and guarantees absolute customer satisfaction. While these might seem like big promises, Scala absolutely delivers.
The negative reviews are rare. One comment worth pointing out is that Scala’s plans don’t necessarily support the number of monthly visitors stated on the product page. It’s important to keep in mind these numbers are just the averages.
The traffic your plan can support actually depends on your website. Heavier sites with more extensions spend more resources, so you naturally can’t serve as many visitors. It’s not really a negative since Scala explains all of the above, but it’s a vital aspect of the service.
All things considered, Scala Hosting does a marvelous job with web hosting for Joomla. It gets you everything you need to run a Joomla site and then some.