Fig. 01 · Provider Brief
Krystal
UK and EU sites that want one price, no intro games, and a phone number
Prices verified: · Researched by W. Miller and the Digital Hosting editorial team — how we review providers
Disclosure: We earn a commission if you buy Krystal through our link. It does not affect the rating, which is set before any link is added.
Our take
Krystal publishes a single price per plan and has done since it dropped intro discounts — the honest way to sell hosting. You pay for it: £7/mo is roughly 2× a US budget host's promo, and roughly what those hosts charge at renewal.
Best for
Starting price
Ease of use
Performance
Support
Free migration
Email included
Domain included
Pros
- No introductory pricing — the listed price is the renewal price
- LiteSpeed + LSCache on triple-replicated NVMe; UK, Amsterdam, and New Jersey locations
- 60-day money-back guarantee; UK phone and chat support on weekdays, tickets 24/7
Cons
- Sterling billing only — US buyers pay card FX
- Live chat and phone are weekday-hours; 24/7 phone only on Sapphire and above
Fig. 02 · The deep dive
Krystal, beyond the scorecard
Plan details as published on krystal.io (prices include UK VAT), September 25, 2026 — verify with the vendor before you buy.
Plans, as published
Krystal's web hosting runs six tiers, priced in sterling with VAT included and no introductory rate: Amethyst £7/mo (1 CPU, 2 GB RAM, 1 site, 10 GB NVMe), Ruby £11/mo (2 CPU, 4 GB, 5 sites, 25 GB, free domain), Emerald £19/mo (3 CPU, 6 GB, unlimited sites and NVMe), then Sapphire £37, Diamond £67, and Tanzanite £97. Annual billing saves 16% and biennial 25% — about £5.88/mo and £5.25/mo respectively on Amethyst, our arithmetic from the stated discounts. Every plan runs LiteSpeed with LSCache on triple-replicated NVMe under CloudLinux, with cPanel, 2 Tbps DDoS protection, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Onyx, the managed WordPress line, is £15/mo (1 site, 20,000 visits), £35/mo (1 site, 50,000 visits, hourly backups), and £50/mo (5 sites), with a free first 30 days. At £1 = $1.32 on September 25, 2026, Amethyst is roughly $9.24/mo — Krystal bills only in sterling, so a US card pays FX.
The renewal math
Krystal publishes one price per plan and no 'renews at' line because there is nothing to disclose: the terms say the contract 'will renew automatically for the same term as the previous Contract at the Price', and the only reduced prices are trials for new clients. That makes Krystal flat in the sense our Renewal-Transparent badge measures — the number you see is the number on the renewal invoice.
Flat is not frozen. Krystal's own pricing-change notice moved Amethyst from £4.99 to £7 and Sapphire from £34.99 to £37 'effective on your next renewal on or after October 1st 2023' (Diamond and Tanzanite went down). New-customer changes 'will not affect any order which we have confirmed' until the following renewal. So budget on the published price and expect it to be honest; don't expect it to be permanent.
Renewal figures come from our Hosting Renewal Price Index — intro vs renewal pricing for every provider we cover, verified on vendor sites and dated.
Choose Krystal if
- UK and EU sites that want sterling billing, London hosting, and a support team on UK hours
- Owners who would rather pay one honest price than manage a renewal cliff
- Sites that care about sustainability claims with evidence behind them — B Corp, Green Web Foundation verified, 100% renewable-matched
Look elsewhere if
- US-audience sites on a budget — £7 (~$9.24) buys a US host's renewal-tier price, and Krystal's only US location is New Jersey
- You need 24/7 phone or chat — tickets are 24/7, but live chat is Mon–Fri 9–5:30 and phone 9–8, with a 24/7 emergency line only on Sapphire and above
- You need many non-cPanel sites moved for free — the free migration covers unlimited cPanel accounts but only the first three non-cPanel sites (£10 + VAT each after)
Migration notes
Inbound: free migrations requested within 30 days of signup — unlimited cPanel-to-cPanel via cpMove, first three non-cPanel or Onyx sites free, £10 + VAT per site beyond that; multiple cPanel accounts are not merged into one. Outbound is standard cPanel. Domains and their renewals are non-refundable, and a free domain's cost is deducted if you refund the hosting.
Honest limitations
The marketing pages say 99.99% uptime while the hosting SLA (updated April 2026) commits to 100% network availability with 5% credits per 30 minutes — credits only, never refunds. The 'UK's largest independent hosting company' line is Krystal's own claim; a commenter in the r/webhosting thread challenged it and we found no external source, so we don't repeat it. Tree-planting counters disagree across Krystal's own pages (5.2 million on one, 'over 4M' on another). Krystal Hosting Ltd is 94% owned by founder Simon Blackler per the company's 2024 CEO announcement.
Reported by customers
Dated, attributed accounts from public forums. These are what customers said, not something we verified — we include them because renewal surprises rarely appear on a pricing page. Each carries a status label saying how far we could check it.
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Unverified customer accountr/webhosting
The r/webhosting moderators' pinned shortlist 'Best Web Hosting Providers in 2026' (last updated July 15, 2026) names Krystal as one of five hosts the mod team has personally used and would use again, citing UK-based support, a LiteSpeed + LSCache stack, and 100% renewable power. Context that matters: the list is curated by volunteer moderators, not an independent test lab; the mods say they 'occasionally secret-shop support' rather than run load tests; and every listed host keeps a representative active in the subreddit. It is a strong practitioner endorsement — treat it as that, not as a benchmark. One customer in the thread reports Krystal has been 'flawless'. Another commenter disputed the guide's description of Krystal as the UK's largest independent host and asked for a source; none was given in the thread.
Vendor response: No Krystal representative posted in the thread when we read it.
What we could check: A single positive account plus an unresolved factual challenge. We reproduce neither as fact. Krystal is a Cohort 2 monitor in our uptime study as of September 25, 2026.
Testing status: we haven't load-tested Krystal ourselves yet. This profile is built from vendor documentation, published plan specs and SLAs, and long-running community reports — and the pricing above is verified on the vendor's site, not copied from marketing. See how we test for exactly what that means.
If Krystal isn't right
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Deeper comparisons
Where Krystal fits
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