Frequently asked questions

Ateculus is a managed website hosting company for small businesses and the agencies that build their websites. We host WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Laravel and PHP websites on our own servers, look after security, SSL and backups for you, and give you a control panel we built ourselves to manage them.

You can install WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or Laravel automatically when you create a website, or start with a blank PHP website for your own code. Websites run PHP 8.4 or 8.3 with MariaDB databases.

Yes. WordPress is installed for you with its own database and the admin account you choose. See WordPress Hosting.

No. Signing up creates your account and website together, and everyday tasks are handled in the control panel. When you or your developer want more, the deeper tools are there too: SSH and SFTP, scheduled tasks (cron), DNS records, PHP versions and your own SSL certificates.

Moving a WordPress site is free and easy. Download the migration plugin from your new website's page in the control panel, install it on your old site, and it copies itself over. Need a hand, or moving something other than WordPress? Contact us and we will help. Hands-on moves may have a cost, and we will tell you before any work starts.

In New York today. If you'd like your website hosted closer to your customers, tell us where, and we'll bring that region online for you.

Ateculus is currently available to customers in the United States. Prices are in US dollars.

Yes. Every plan includes SSL certificate management. You can issue a free Let’s Encrypt certificate from the control panel, which renews automatically, or upload a certificate of your own.

Yes. You can schedule backups daily, weekly, or monthly. Each plan keeps a set number of backup copies (7 on Launch, 14 on Grow, 30 on Scale and 55 on Pro). That is a count of copies, not a number of days. Backups are encrypted with a passphrase you set, and you can restore a copy yourself. Keep the passphrase safe: a backup cannot be restored without it.

Yes. Enter your domain when you create a website and point it to Ateculus when you are ready (here’s how). Until then, your site is reachable on a temporary preview URL. Ateculus plans do not include domain registration.

No. Ateculus plans do not include email hosting. You can keep using your current email provider with your domain.

Yes, on the Grow, Scale and Pro plans. Your staging copy gets its own password-protected address; when it's ready you make it live, and you can undo that for 7 days. Every website also has a temporary preview URL for viewing the site before your domain is pointed.

Plans are billed monthly or yearly, as you choose, in US dollars to the card you add at checkout. A year costs less than twelve monthly payments, and you can switch at your next renewal. Applicable taxes are calculated from your billing address. Invoices, payment history, and payment methods are available in the control panel.

Yes, from the control panel. Upgrades take effect right away with a prorated charge for the rest of your month or year; downgrades take effect at the end of the current billing period.

Storage is a firm limit: once a website reaches its storage allowance, new uploads will fail until you free up space or upgrade. Your bandwidth usage is shown in the control panel against your allowance; if you are approaching it, upgrading your plan is the simplest fix, and you are welcome to contact us to talk through options.

You can cancel from the Billing section of the control panel. Service continues until the end of the period you have paid for. See our Refund and Cancellation Policy for details.

Yes. Agency plans are designed for it: add clients, create their websites, and manage everything from an agency portal. See Agencies & Resellers.

An agency plan provides one shared pool of storage, bandwidth, databases, and domain aliases, plus a maximum number of client websites. You create your own packages from the pool and assign them to client websites. Allowances are totals for the agency account, not per website.

No. Ateculus bills the agency for its plan. Billing your own clients is handled by you, outside of Ateculus.