Commercial web hosting service providers
With the discontinuation of the FH Aachen web hosting service, websites that cannot be hosted in the central CMS of RWTH Aachen University must be hosted by external providers in the future. To facilitate the transition and to provide users with guidance when selecting a provider, the IT Center has evaluated several providers. Particular attention was paid to the following criteria:
- GDPR-compliant hosting
- Primarily German server locations
- Acceptance of the RWTH's Data Processing Agreement (DPA) by the provider
or - Review of the DPA by RWTH
- Various technical aspects
A summary of the criteria and the results for the various providers are compiled in the following table (as of February 2026).
Webhosting_Provider_2025_01_16
| Category | Criterion | Hetzner | hosting.de | dogado | netcup | mittwald. | ConnectingBytes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organizational | Accepts our DPA | X | X | X | Could be reviewed for additional costs | X | ✓ |
| DPA reviewed by RWTH | ✓ | Not reviewed yet | Not reviewed yet | Not reviewed yet | Not reviewed yet | Not reviewed yet | |
| GDPR-compliant web hosting | ✓ Choose DE server location | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Invoicing to public institution | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Annual instead of monthly invoicing | X (inquired by phone) | ✓ (inquired by phone) | ✓ (according to website) | ✓ (according to website) | ✓ (according to website) | ✓ (inquired by phone) | |
| Company headquarters | Hetzner Online GmbH Industriestr. 25 91710 Gunzenhausen Germany info@hetzner.com Tel.: +49 (0)9831 505-0 | hosting.de GmbH Franzstr. 51 52064 Aachen Germany info@hosting.de Tel.: +49 (0)241 46314480 | dogado GmbH Antonio-Segni-Straße 11 D-44263 Dortmund Germany support@dogado.de Tel.: +49 (0) 231 / 28 66 20 0 | netcup GmbH Emmy-Noether-Straße 10 D-76131 Karlsruhe Germany mail@netcup.de Tel.: +49 (0) 721 / 7540755 - 0 | Mittwald CM Service GmbH & Co. KG Königsberger Straße 4-6 32339 Espelkamp Germany support@mittwald.de Tel.: +49-(0)5772-293-100 | ConnectingBytes GmbH www.full-managed.de In der Steele 35 40599 Düsseldorf Germany info@full-managed.de Tel.: +49 (0)211-6887837 | |
| Server locations | Falkenstein / Nuremberg / EU / Worldwide | Aachen | ? Germany | Nuremberg / Vienna / Manassas (USA) | Espelkamp / Frankfurt / Hanover | Düsseldorf | |
| Technical | |||||||
| Packages | Package name | Webhosting M | Medium | Web S 5.0 | Webhosting 2000 NUE | 1 vCPU 1GB RAM 40GB Storage space | Managed Webhosting Start |
| Costs (gross) | 4,90 € / month | 4,90 € / month | 5,99 € / month | 3,25 € / month | 14,28 € / month | 15,95 € / month | |
| Information online | https://www.hetzner.com/de/webhosting/ https://docs.hetzner.com/konsoleh/general/webhosting/overview/ | https://www.hosting.de/webhosting/ | https://www.dogado.de/website/hosting#products | https://www.netcup.com/de/hosting https://helpcenter.netcup.com/de/wiki/webhosting | https://www.mittwald.de/webhosting | https://www.full-managed.de/webhosting/ | |
| Storage space | 50 GB | 30 GB | 75 GB | 75 GB | 40 GB | ∞ | |
| 1-click installer for | Wordpress | Wordpress, Joomla, Typo3 | Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, etc. | Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, etc. | Wordpress, Typo3, Joomla, etc. | ||
| Offers for managed Wordpress hosting | X | X | X | X | Managed Apps: incl. Wordpress | Managed addons for Wordpress Link | |
| Databases | Number of databases | 5 | 5 | 10 | 10 | ? | ∞ |
| Web server | Apache | Apache / Nginx | ? | ? | Apache | Apache | |
| Databases | MariaDB / Postgres | MariaDB | MySQL 8.0, MySQL 5.7 | MySQL | MySQL 8.4 / 8.0 / 5.7 / 5.6 | MariaDB 10.11.14 | |
| Database size | Limited only by storage space | 512 MB | ? | ? | ? | ∞ | |
| PHP | phpMyAdmin | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Own product | ✓ | ✓ |
| PHP Versions | 5.6 / 7.3 / 7.4 / 8.0 / 8.1 / 8.2 / 8.3 / 8.4 / 8.5 | 8.0 / 8.1 / 8.2 / 8.3 / 8.4 / 8.5 | 8.1 / 8.2 / 8.3 | 7.2-7.4 / 8.0 / 8.1 / 8.2 / 8.3 / 8.4 / 8.5 | 8.4 / 8.3 / 8.2 / 8.1 | 5.6 / 7.0 / 7.1 / 7.2 / 7.3 / 7.4 / 8.0 / 8.1 / 8.2 / 8.3 / 8.4 / 8.5 | |
| PHP Extended Support | 5.3 / 5.4 / 5.5 / 5.6 / 7.0 / 7.1 / 7.2 / 7.3 / 7.4 Fee-based | 5.2 / 5.3 / 5.4 / 5.5 / 5.6 / 7.0 / 7.1 / 7.2 / 7.3 / 7.4 and 8.0 from 3,99 € / month to 13,99 € / month Link | 8.0 / 7.4 / 7.3 / 7.2 / 7.1 / 7.0 / 5.6 Fee-based Link | Free of charge as long as we still receive corresponding packages for our administration software for the version. | |||
| PHP memory_limit | 256 MB | 256 MB | 256 MB | 512 MB | 256 MB | 512 MB | |
| PHP max_execution_time | 180 seconds | 60 seconds | 300 seconds | 180 seconds | 240 seconds | 300 seconds | |
| PHP Modules | './configure' '--prefix=/usr/local/php85' '--with-config-file-path=/etc/php85/cgi' '--enable-fpm' '--with-fpm-systemd' '--enable-gd' '--with-jpeg' '--with-freetype' '--with-webp' '--with-xpm' '--with-zip' '--with-zlib' '--enable-ftp' '--with-db4' '--with-ldap' '--enable-bcmath' '--enable-calendar' '--with-imap' '--with-bz2' '--enable-sockets' '--with-kerberos' '--with-imap-ssl' '--with-curl' '--with-mhash' '--with-gdbm' '--with-pgsql' '--with-gettext' '--with-openssl' '--with-pear=/usr/local/lib/php' '--enable-exif' '--disable-cli' '--enable-soap' '--enable-mbstring' '--with-xsl' '--with-mysqli' '--with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd' '--with-pdo-pgsql' '--enable-sysvshm' '--enable-shmop' '--enable-pcntl' '--enable-htscanner' '--with-tidy' '--enable-intl' '--enable-sysvsem' '--enable-sysvmsg' '--with-mysql-sock=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' '--with-pdo-odbc=unixODBC,/usr' '--with-pdo-dblib' '--with-gmp' '--with-mcrypt' '--with-sodium' '--with-password-argon2' '--with-readline' '--with-pdo-firebird' '--enable-timezonedb' '--with-avif' | apcu bcmath bz2 calendar Core ctype curl date dom exif fileinfo filter ftp gd gettext gmp hash iconv imagick intl json ldap libxml mbstring memcached mysqli mysqlnd OAuth odbc openssl pcre PDO pdo_mysql pdo_sqlite Phar posix random readline redis Reflection session SimpleXML soap sockets sodium SPL sqlite3 standard tokenizer xml xmlreader xmlwriter xsl zip zlib | ? | bcmath bz2 calendar Core ctype curl date dba dom exif fileinfo filter ftp gd gettext gmp hash iconv igbinary imagick imap intl ionCube Loader json ldap libxml mbstring mysqli mysqlnd openssl pcntl pcre PDO pdo_mysql pdo_pgsql pdo_sqlite Phar posix random readline redis Reflection session shmop SimpleXML soap sockets sodium SPL sqlite3 standard sysvmsg sysvsem sysvshm tidy tokenizer xml xmlreader xmlwriter xsl Zend OPcache zip zlib | ? | /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/20-session.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/apcu.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/bcmath.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/bz2.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/calendar.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/ctype.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/curl.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/dba.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/dom.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/exif.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/fileinfo.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/ftp.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/gd.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/gettext.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/gmp.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/iconv.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/imagick.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/intl.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/ldap.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/memcached.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/mysql.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/mysqli.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/opcache.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/pcntl.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/pdo.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/pdo_mysql.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/pdo_pgsql.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/pdo_sqlite.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/pgsql.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/phar.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/posix.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/readline.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/shmop.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/simplexml.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/snmp.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/soap.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/sockets.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/sodium.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/sqlite3.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/sysvmsg.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/sysvsem.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/sysvshm.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/tidy.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/tokenizer.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/xmlreader.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/xmlwriter.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/xsl.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/zip.ini, /opt/php-8.4/etc/conf.d/zz_18_igbinary.ini | |
| Mail addresses | ∞ | 20 | 1 | 500 | ∞ | ∞ | |
| POP3/IMAP/SMTP | POP3/IMAP/SMTP | POP3/IMAP/SMTP | POP3/IMAP/SMTP | POP3/IMAP/SMTP | POP3/IMAP/SMTP | ||
| Webmail | ✓ | ✓ Roundcube | ✓ Roundcube | ✓ | ✓ Roundcube | ✓ Roundcube | |
| Other | SSL certificates | ✓ Basic and Let's encrypt | ✓ Let's encrypt | ✓ Let's encrypt | ✓ Let's encrypt | ✓ Let's encrypt | ✓ Let's encrypt |
| Use of the RWTH name servers for DNS management | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | on request | |
| SSH | X only from Webhosting L | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | on demand | |
| SFTP | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | on demand | |
| Domain incl. | X | 1 x .de | 1 x .de | 3 x .de | X | 1 x .de .com .net .org .eu .at .ch .info |
