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You can buy hosting from anywhere today: the global giants compete with European providers through heavy marketing, discounted first-year prices and well-known brand names. Yet a business or an individual gains many practical advantages by choosing a provider based in the European Union, and there are also situations where a global provider is the better choice.
In this article we look at how a European hosting provider differs from a global one, and what to watch out for, whichever you choose.
Accessible, expert support
A technical problem is at its most frustrating when you can’t get a meaningful answer for hours, or the answer isn’t even about your problem. With a smaller European provider:
- your question goes straight to a specialist, not to a call centre working from a script that sends a template reply and passes the ticket on,
- the support team knows the European environment: the rules of European domain endings, EU VAT invoicing, European payment methods and what the GDPR requires,
- they work in a similar time zone to you, so replies don’t follow office hours on another continent,
- and you don’t have to fight your way through a multi-tier support system before someone actually looks at your server.
aWh’s expert support team is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via chat, ticket and email, and your questions are answered by experienced system administrators. For common settings, the hundreds of articles in our knowledge base can help.
Invoicing, payment, contract
For a business, these matter at least as much as the technology:
- EU invoice under EU VAT rules: an EU provider invoices under EU VAT rules, its invoices are straightforward to enter in your accounts, and a business registered in another member state with an EU VAT number receives them without VAT under the reverse charge. With an invoice from a provider outside the EU, bookkeeping and VAT handling can be more complicated, and exchange rates come into play as well. aWh invoices its international customers in euros.
- Payment methods: card payment as well as bank transfer (SEPA, for example).
- Contract and disputes: an EU provider’s contract is governed by the law of an EU member state and by EU consumer protection rules, and any dispute can be settled within the Union.
- Predictable renewal: many global providers give a big discount for the first year, but the renewal costs several times as much. Compare the renewal prices too, not just the starting price.
Data protection
From a GDPR point of view, it is simplest if both the provider and its servers are in the European Union, as there is then no transfer of data outside the EU that would need a separate legal basis. With a US provider, data transfers typically rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework; its two predecessors (Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield) were invalidated by the Court of Justice of the European Union, so in the long term this is not an entirely secure basis either. A US company can also receive requests from US authorities for data stored in the EU (CLOUD Act). An EU provider signs a data processing agreement with you under the GDPR and is supervised by an EU data protection authority. Our data protection guide covers the topic in detail.
Ask where the servers and the backups are. Even a European provider doesn’t necessarily keep its servers in its own country, and that in itself is not a problem as long as the data centre is in the EU. aWh’s web hosting and cPanel servers run in several EU locations, and its KVM VPS and dedicated cPanel servers in one EU data centre, with redundant power; you’ll find the details on our data centres page.
Speed: how much does distance matter?
The physical distance between the server and the visitor affects the response time (ping). Between a visitor in Europe and a nearby European data centre, this is typically a few tens of milliseconds, which is barely noticeable when a website loads. With a server overseas, however, it can be 100–200 milliseconds for every single request, which adds up on a page that loads many files.
In practice, the quality of the hosting matters more for speed than distance: the storage type (NVMe SSD), the processor, the resource limits and the software environment. An overcrowded server is slow even next door, and a good server is fast even a few hundred kilometres away. We explain why fast hosting matters in a separate article.
SEO: Google no longer uses the server location as a meaningful ranking signal; for the target country, the domain ending (for example .co.uk or .ie), the language of the content and the links are what count, and the server location has an effect at most through speed.
When is a global provider the better choice?
- If your visitors are on another continent and the provider has a data centre there too.
- If you need a specialised service that only the big cloud providers offer (such as global load balancing, managed database clusters or AI services).
- If your development is built on the ecosystem of a large cloud provider (developer tools, automation, integrations).
A server outside Europe doesn’t necessarily call for a global giant: aWh can also provide custom cloud, VPS or dedicated server solutions in North America, Asia and Australia. For most small and medium-sized businesses, blogs and online shops, the points above don’t matter, whereas accessible support, orderly invoicing and an EU contract matter every day.
What should you look out for when making your choice?
European or global, ask these questions:
- Where are the servers and the backups?
- What storage (NVMe SSD?) and what CPU and memory limits does the plan have?
- How often are backups taken, how long are they kept, and can you restore them yourself?
- Do they commit to an uptime level in an SLA?
- What is the renewal price, and does it include VAT?
- Is there a money-back guarantee and free migration?
- Through which channels, and how quickly, can you reach support?
You’ll find the full checklist in our guide to what to check before buying hosting.
aWh in brief
Since 2022, aWh has been run by CSB IT Hosting & Consulting Bt., an EU company registered in Hungary; each member of our team has 20 years of operations experience.
- Web hosting, cPanel and WordPress hosting on NVMe SSD in EU data centres, with free Let’s Encrypt SSL, daily backups and 99.9% uptime
- KVM VPS and Windows VPS, dedicated cPanel and dedicated servers
- Domain registration, including .eu, .co.uk and .ie
- Expert support 24/7 via chat, ticket and email
- EU invoice, payment by card or bank transfer
- Free migration and a 14-day money-back guarantee on hosting plans
Take a look at our hosting plans
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a European provider more expensive than a global one?
Not necessarily. The discounted first-year prices of global providers are often lower, but the renewal is frequently more expensive. Compare the renewal price, the VAT and what the price includes (backups, SSL, migration, support).
Does the server location affect your Google ranking?
Not directly in any meaningful way; for the target country, the domain ending, the language of the content and the links are what count. The server location can have an effect through loading speed.
My target audience is international, but my company is in Europe. What should I choose?
If your visitors are mainly in Europe, a provider with EU data centres is a good choice, even one from your own country. If you also have many visitors on other continents, a CDN helps by serving the static files closer to them.
How can I move to aWh?
At aWh, every hosting plan comes with free migration: order your new hosting, open a ticket with your old hosting details, and we’ll move your website, database and emails.
Is it worth keeping your domain and hosting in one place?
It’s more convenient: you manage everything in one place, receive one invoice and need fewer DNS settings. It isn’t compulsory, though: your domain can be registered anywhere as long as its DNS points to your hosting.