Published: 13 October 2026
France has two serious hosting cities, and they do different jobs. Paris is where French internet providers meet, so it is the default for anyone whose users are in France, Belgium or Luxembourg. Marseille is where submarine cables from North Africa, the Middle East and Asia come ashore, so it is the better door for audiences on the other side of the Mediterranean. Our dedicated servers are available in France at the same price as everywhere else. This post helps you pick the city and the server.
Paris or Marseille in one table
| Paris | Marseille | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco | North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, southern France |
| Main exchange | France-IX | France-IX Marseille |
| Typical round trips | Brussels 5 to 7 ms, London 8 to 10 ms, Amsterdam and Frankfurt 12 to 15 ms | Milan 12 to 15 ms, Paris 15 to 18 ms, Casablanca 30 to 35 ms |
| Long distance | Strong to Western Europe and the UK | Dubai 120 to 130 ms, Mumbai 115 to 130 ms |
| How to order | Choose France on the order form | Choose France and ask us for Marseille first |
Round trips are the typical figures from our location pages, not a promise for every network. Prices, hardware and ports are identical in both cities.
Choose Paris when your users are in France
Most French households reach the internet through one of four providers: Orange, Free, SFR or Bouygues Telecom. All four connect densely in Paris, and France-IX is the largest exchange in the country. A server in Paris reaches them over short domestic paths, which is what keeps page loads, checkouts and API calls quick for French visitors.
Frankfurt and Amsterdam are good European hubs, but for a French audience they add distance to every request. Our Paris location page puts that penalty at roughly 15 to 20 ms extra per round trip compared with hosting in France. A fresh HTTPS connection needs about three round trips before the first byte arrives, so the gap shows up on every new visitor.
Paris is also the answer for a simpler reason: some contracts, public bodies and customers ask for servers on French soil. France is in the European Union, and our EU data residency guide covers what else to check before you sign.
Choose Marseille when your users are across the Mediterranean
Marseille is one of the main landing points in Europe for submarine cables to North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Traffic from Casablanca, Tunis, Cairo, Dubai or Mumbai that is headed for Europe often enters the continent here before it travels north. If your server sits in Marseille, it meets that traffic at the shore instead of hundreds of kilometres inland.
That matters for a few kinds of project:
- French language services for North Africa. News sites, streaming platforms and apps for audiences in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, served from France's Mediterranean coast.
- Gulf and Middle East audiences that still need an EU server. A European company serving customers in the Gulf keeps its data in the EU and still cuts the distance.
- Europe plus India. Teams with users in both regions use Marseille as the European end of the pair.
- Southern France and the Mediterranean coast. Marseille is 12 to 15 ms from Milan and 20 to 25 ms from Madrid, which makes it a good middle point for a Mediterranean audience.
The order form lists France as a country rather than a city. If you need Marseille specifically, ask us by live chat or ticket before you order, and we will confirm availability and timing.
What a dedicated server in France costs
Every dedicated server includes an unmetered, guaranteed port, 1 Tbps always on DDoS protection (L3/L4) and no setup fee. Prices are monthly, exclude VAT and are the same in Paris, Marseille and our other countries.
| Server | Cores | RAM | 1 Gbps | 10 Gbps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dual Xeon E5 2630 v3 | 16 | 128 GB | €209 | €659 |
| Dual Xeon E5 2690 v4 | 28 | 128 GB | €229 | €679 |
| Dual Xeon E5 2699 v4 | 44 | 256 GB | €299 | €749 |
| Single AMD EPYC 9254 | 24 | 128 GB DDR5 | €449 | €1,169 |
Ports of 2, 5 and 20 Gbps sit between and above those columns, and larger EPYC builds go up to 256 cores. The full list is on the dedicated servers page. Xeon servers in stock are usually online within about an hour, and EPYC builds can take up to 14 days.
Three setups that work in France
| Project | Setup | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| French online shop | Dual E5 2690 v4, 1 Gbps, 2 × 500 GB SSD, Paris | €234 |
| Video platform for North Africa | Dual E5 2699 v4, 10 Gbps, 6 × 2 TB SSD, Marseille | €888 |
| Paris primary with a Marseille standby | Two Dual E5 2630 v3, 1 Gbps each | €418 |
The shop sits next to the French providers its customers use, and the extra €5 buys a second drive for a mirror. The video platform keeps its most popular titles in 256 GB of RAM and serves them over a 10 Gbps port that nobody meters. Our post on viewers per port shows what that port carries. The pair puts a warm standby about 15 to 18 ms from the primary, close enough for replication and far enough apart that a problem in one city leaves the other running.
Looking for a VPS in Paris or Marseille?
We do not sell VPS plans in France. The nearest VPS locations are Amsterdam and Frankfurt, both 12 to 15 ms from Paris. The order page shows which of them is in stock today. If your project is small and your users are in France, a VPS in one of those cities is a fine start, and a dedicated server in Paris is the step up when you need the hardware to yourself.
How to order in France
- Pick a server and a port on the dedicated servers page.
- Choose France as the location at checkout. For Marseille, message us first.
- Add drives and an IPv4 subnet if you need them. A /29 with 5 usable addresses is €8 a month.
- Choose one of our operating system images and pay. Xeon servers in stock usually arrive within about an hour.
Still weighing France against other countries? Our overview of dedicated servers in ten European countries compares them side by side, at one price.