Deutsche Telekom is moving to take on hosting leader OVH on their home turf, France. Deutsche Telekom’s hosting unit Strato has just launched its first offer in France with 25k .fr domain names free for one year, with no engagement and hosting services starting 1,19€/month, beating OVH’s entry-level pricepoint of 1,99€ . At the entry level their offer looks pretty competitive versus OVH’s, including 15 email addresses with 3Go space, 150Go data memory and stockage, and unlimited traffic. According to Strato, this deal is the best out there on the market at the moment. After a year, however, the price per month jumps almost 1€/month to 2,14€.
As for service, those super concerned about data sovereignty may not be too happy to learn that all of Strato’s datacenters hosting its French customers will continue to remain in Germany (although Germany is known to be one of the best places in terms of data security). However, the tech support team will be based in France.
Incidentally, this is Strato’s second effort to crack the French market. Back in 2006 Strato, who hadn’t yet at that point been bought by Deutsche Telekom, attempted to launch in France but perhaps due to their soft launch approach with little client support on the ground in France, their first effort didn’t result in success. Perhaps with the resources of mighty Deutsche Telekom behind them, they’ll be able to crack the market this time around.