Polar55 Review: Excellent Danish Web Hosting
Polar55 is a Danish hosting company that has recently ventured into the wider European hosting market. Is their hosting worth considering?
Polar55 review overview
Speed
NVMe storage and LiteSpeed for super fast hosting
Uptime
Status pages are showing no downtime at all.
Support
Capable support but not 24/7 as they promise.
Ease of use
cPanel is good, but not very user-friendly for beginners.
Features
WordPress toolkit inc. 1-click WP install and staging.
Costs
Exceptionally competitive pricing, given the specs.
Our score:
4 out of 5
Pros
Cons
I have a soft spot for all things Scandinavian. So when I heard about a new Danish hosting provider called Polar55, I was curious to see what this company has in store for us.
Looking at today's hosting market, the most interesting question for me when considering a new provider is what their added value is. Competition in the hosting industry is absolutely cutthroat. From massive companies serving millions of customers to small independent players with a boutique approach – every niche seems to be filled by now.
One significant way Polar55 sets itself apart is by not imposing any limits on website installations. They also claim to offer unlimited traffic and 24/7 support.
Their support doesn't deserve the “24/7” label, and I'm fairly certain that if I were to direct a million visitors to my site, everything would crash with their hosting plan that costs just a few euros per month. But aside from these slightly over-enthusiastic marketing claims, I'm very satisfied with Polar55.
Polar55 at a glance
| Uptime guarantee | ✓ |
| Customer Service | Email/ticket support (7 days a week) |
| Managed WordPress | ✓ |
| Types of Hosting | Shared |
| Basic features | 10-100 GB storage, connect unlimited domains and install websites, webmail, WordPress toolkit |
| Most suitable for | Small to medium-sized websites |
| Server Locations | Germany |
| Starting price | Visit website |
A Polar55 introduction
Polar55 was founded in 2024 by Michael Storm and Thomas Iversen. The team behind the provider consists of 5 people in total, including support staff and a server administrator.
With such a small team, you can naturally expect a personalized approach.
In Denmark, they've already proven their worth with hosting company NordicWay, a provider serving more than 10,000 customers. Under the brand name Polar55, they now aim to conquer the European hosting market, starting with the Netherlands, Sweden, and Finland.
The company offers just one hosting type (shared hosting) and prominently promotes only a single hosting plan. However, you can upgrade this hosting package if you start reaching the storage space limit.
With this hosting plan you can connect as many domains and websites as you want (until you run out of disk space, of course). This is a unique approach in a market where many hosting companies seem to restrict the number of sites you can host on a single plan.
Polar55 uses the cPanel hosting panel, which is rarely seen among European hosting providers (as it's quite expensive for hosting providers to implement).
Provider speed, uptime, and customer service
Speed, uptime, and support form the foundation of any hosting provider. How does Polar55 fare in these areas?
Speed
Many hosting providers these days use LiteSpeed servers. Polar55 is no exception. It's fast and efficient, allowing providers to fit more websites on a single server (which helps reduce costs).
To test Polar55's speed, I evaluated their PLUS package (which costs €3.46 per month after renewal). I installed a WordPress website on this package with the following specifications:
- WordPress theme: Kadence (we use this for Start24)
- Plugins: Block Navigation, Kadence Blocks, Post Duplicator
- SSL Certificate (Let's Encrypt)
- No speed or caching optimizations (for a clear comparison with other hosting services)
It is a site that contains multiple images, text paragraphs and headings, and graphic elements. This makes the site representative of a simple business website or blog.
The GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed test results (these are the most popular tools for measuring a website's speed) look as follows:
Green is the predominant color. That said, the site is well-coded and lightweight. That's why it's more interesting to look at the TTFB (Time to First Byte). This refers to the server response time. For Polar55, this comes in at 180ms.
This places Polar55 among the fastest hosting providers in the Netherlands.
Also keep in mind that I tested everything without optimization plugins like LiteSpeed Cache. If you use this, your site will become even faster.
Uptime
The best way to gauge a hosting provider's uptime is by checking user reviews and looking at status pages. If downtime isn't mentioned in the reviews and the status pages don't show many incidents, then the uptime is good.
Everything is completely in order with Polar55's server status page.
The online user reviews also don't mention anything about downtime.
That's nice, but it's important to mention that Polar55 is still a new, small provider. This makes it much easier to maintain good uptime compared to when there are a large number of customers.
Customer service
Polar55 claims to offer 24/7 support. This claim is somewhat dubious given the small size of their team (5 people) and the lack of live chat. I didn't try contacting the provider at 3 AM to test this 24/7 claim myself. However, when I asked about it, they did admit that if you contact them during such ungodly hours, you can only expect a response starting at 8 AM.
Typically, you'll receive a response within 30 to 60 minutes on weekdays. On weekends, you can expect a wait time of two to 3 hours.
Here's what my own experience with their support team looked like. When I asked a question, it took just over 30 minutes to get a response. Answers to follow-up questions took a few minutes to arrive.
The content of my questions was handled quite well. Although it was clear they were using a translation tool rather than a native Dutch representative. Not a major issue in itself, though it does make their support feel somewhat less polished compared to more established hosting providers.
The lack of live chat support and the waiting times are unfortunate, but understandable given the competitive pricing.
Polar55 also has a knowledge base where many of the articles include instructional videos.
The knowledge base still feels somewhat limited compared to more established hosting providers. This is understandable: building a truly comprehensive, high-quality knowledge base simply takes time.
Additionally, I didn't find every knowledge base article equally beginner-friendly. For example, looking at their article about connecting an external domain name, a beginner wouldn't be able to figure it out right away.
In fact, even as a seasoned website developer and hosting tester, I had to scratch my head for a moment. I eventually had to enlist the help of an LLM to guide me through the process.
Given that the support team is happy to help and many issues can be resolved through other resources, this isn't really a big problem. However, it would be nice if they made some improvements in this area in the future.
Ease of use and features
Polar55 is simple to use and includes all the essential hosting features you would expect.
Dashboard
Polar55 offers a user-friendly, custom-designed dashboard that allows you to manage your domain names and hosting packages.
For their hosting panel, they use cPanel. You don't see cPanel that much anymore among European hosting providers. Not because it's bad, but because it's on the expensive side compared to systems like Plesk and DirectAdmin.
cPanel looked prehistoric until a few years ago, but it has gotten a facelift that gives it a more modern appearance. Initially, it might take some time to figure out where everything is located, but it definitely contains all the functionality you need.
With just a few clicks, you can add new websites, install web apps like WordPress, set up SSL certificates, and manage your email. Advanced functionality is also available, such as adjusting your PHP version.
Because it's so comprehensive, it's not the most intuitive hosting panel on the market. However, even beginners should be able to get the hang of it. And there's plenty of documentation available to help you get started if needed.
Hosting features and add-ons
In terms of hosting features and extras, Polar55 performs admirably.
- Automatic backups stored for 14 days (the standard is 7 days)
- WordPress toolkit (including WordPress staging)
- Expandable storage space
- You can install as many sites as you want on a single package
One thing that's missing is a free migration service. However, you can pay to have your websites migrated from another provider.
Costs & plans
One of Polar55's greatest strengths is their pricing. The introductory rate for their Plus+ package is €0.80 per month. After renewal, you'll pay €3.46 per month.
The costs are remarkably low. Especially when you consider that you can install as many sites as you want on your package, and unlimited traffic is promised.
The skeptic in me says this pricing model is hardly sustainable. And that sooner or later either the prices will go up, or the package will be stripped down (think of a limit to the number of sites you can install).
Well, we'll just have to wait and see.
Hosting provider's response after reading the paragraph above: “We've actually been using the same structure and pricing in Denmark for 5 years already, and we want to maintain this in the rest of Europe as well. Feel free to add this as a comment 😉
You can add disk space and processing power to this package – up to 100GB in total. The most expensive version of the package costs €34.60 per month.
What do users think of Polar55?
Polar55 is a new company, which means there are very few customer reviews available online at the time of writing.
On TrustPilot, the service currently has a score of 4.7/5 based on 34 reviews.
Positive points that are particularly emphasized are the support and speed.
Conclusion
Polar55 is an excellent hosting company that approaches things just a bit differently than most other providers.
Being able to install as many websites as you want on a single package is truly unique. It's incredibly convenient when you're running a bunch of smaller sites but don't want to purchase separate plans for each one or switch to an unmanaged VPS.
Polar55's decision to promote a single package has its advantages: it eliminates decision fatigue, and if you ever reach the package's limits, you can always upgrade.
Although they don't rank among the absolute fastest in the Netherlands, they nevertheless score well above average in terms of speed.
The service is less than ideal for larger businesses or power users who need a VPS or expect more comprehensive support. You shouldn't count on perks like free migration services either, which is less convenient for non-technical people. That said, they do offer a paid migration service.
Polar55 is new and still needs to establish itself in the European hosting market. Nevertheless, they already have my recommendation.
