Why is web hosting so expensive in South Africa?

[Mr.CookieMonster]

Why do you think web hosting is expensive in South Africa?

[koeksGHT]

Have you seen the price of a line that has enough bandwidth to supply to multiple website?

And the redundancy needed to promise clients at least 99.5% up time?

[Pr⊕phet]

IPC costs for one.

[mc721221]

Why do you think web hosting is expensive in South Africa?

What is expensive?

[cbrunsdonza]

Yeah, whats your definition of expensive and what are you comparing to?

[Mr.CookieMonster]

I use Godaddy hosting in America its like just above R300 with a .NET domain. When I look for a plan similar to the plan im using on godaddy, it was way more than R300

[kwaggawerner]

I'm with a company in the states, love them... I have never had downtime, and I'm burning through bandwidth, no questions asked. They have no limits on databases, sub-domains, email accounts, disk space, etc etc, the list goes on, unlike most local ISP's, which only give you one SQL DB, *cough* Afrihost *cough*... Check my signature for details... I have a two year deal with them, and it costs me around R35 a month, and it includes a domain of my choice! Premium, thy name is "Hosting Overseas"...

[Pr⊕phet]

I'm with a company in the states, love them... I have never had downtime, and I'm burning through bandwidth, no questions asked. They have no limits on databases, sub-domains, email accounts, disk space, etc etc, the list goes on, unlike most local ISP's, which only give you one SQL DB, *cough* Afrihost *cough*... Check my signature for details... I have a two year deal with them, and it costs me around R35 a month, and it includes a domain of my choice! Premium, thy name is "Hosting Overseas"...

no paypal feature ?

[ambo]

There are a few reasons why hosting is so cheap overseas.

Firstly - they do hosting in massive bulk. When you host 100000 websites there are economies of scale. From our legacy of high prices together with low Internet penetration there just isn't a market that big locally.

Secondly - there is a lot of competition and a lot of margin squeeze. ISPs sell cheap services in a continuous price war and eventually everyone is selling at or below cost. This results in lots of bankruptcy and is unsustainable.

The other thing I've noticed is that many of these ISPs are cheap because they simply have no staff. An automated billing system that creates your account and takes your money but the moment there is a problem, no one can help you. It's often in their fine print: limited support or email only support.

South African ISPs still care about providing a good service. Most locals wouldn't buy from a site that doesn't list a phone number. Yet they will gladly buy from an overseas provider with no contact details cause its cheaper.

[koffiejunkie]

Cheap usually means one of two things:

1. Not many people work there, i.e. support, if there is any, will be limited.

2. It's shared hosting. Sometimes on a massive scale.

Where I work we provide hosting (hardware, OS and bandwidth, basically) to companies that does this type of shared hosting. It's not uncommon to see 500-1000 database driven websites running on a single box that's 5 years old and probably less powerful than your laptop. This works, as long as nothing goes wrong. But if one site gets a mention on the radio or gets a link from a reasonably busy site, it's downtime for 500 sites.

[koffiejunkie]

I use Godaddy hosting in America its like just above R300 with a .NET domain. When I look for a plan similar to the plan im using on godaddy, it was way more than R300

I used to use godaddy, not for hosting, but for domains and SSL certs. No more. I let an SSL certificate expire because it wasn't needed any more. godaddy sent me several e-mails saying that the certificate is about to expire and this requires action from me to renew, i.e. it will not be renewed automatically. I ignored these because I did not want a new one. But when the expiry date came, they billed me anyway for it, and then refused to refund me.

I took the decision to move away from godaddy, and removed my credit card details, thankfully because they're still trying to bill me for the SSL certificates that I don't intend to renew, and sending me angry billing failure messages. In fact, I got one a few minutes ago. Again.

[ghoti]

Why do you think web hosting is expensive in South Africa?

Telkom

[noxibox]

There are a few reasons why hosting is so cheap overseas.

Firstly - they do hosting in massive bulk. When you host 100000 websites there are economies of scale. From our legacy of high prices together with low Internet penetration there just isn't a market that big locally.

Secondly - there is a lot of competition and a lot of margin squeeze. ISPs sell cheap services in a continuous price war and eventually everyone is selling at or below cost. This results in lots of bankruptcy and is unsustainable.

The other thing I've noticed is that many of these ISPs are cheap because they simply have no staff. An automated billing system that creates your account and takes your money but the moment there is a problem, no one can help you. It's often in their fine print: limited support or email only support.

South African ISPs still care about providing a good service. Most locals wouldn't buy from a site that doesn't list a phone number. Yet they will gladly buy from an overseas provider with no contact details cause its cheaper.

You'd be wrong on pretty much all counts for a number of known and well-regarded overseas hosting services. They typically have people who handle billing and support, they respond promptly and are knowledgeable.

Cheap usually means one of two things:

1. Not many people work there, i.e. support, if there is any, will be limited.

2. It's shared hosting. Some-times on a massive scale.

Where I work we provide hosting (hardware, OS and bandwidth, basically) to companies that does this type of shared hosting. It's not uncommon to see 500-1000 database driven websites running on a single box that's 5 years old and probably less powerful than your laptop. This works, as long as nothing goes wrong. But if one site gets a mention on the radio or gets a link from a reasonably busy site, it's downtime for 500 sites.

Shared hosting is pretty much normal for anyone who cannot afford their own dedicated server. It's hardly like the local companies are providing anything more robust.

[koffiejunkie]

You'd be wrong on pretty much all counts for a number of known and well-regarded overseas hosting services. They typically have people who handle billing and support, they respond promptly and are knowledgeable.

Care to name a few? Given that the only prices mentioned here so far is R35 and R300 - so in that range?

Shared hosting is pretty much normal for anyone who cannot afford their own dedicated server. It's hardly like the local companies are providing anything more robust.

Sure. But you have to question the business model if you can't spend more than R300 a month on the most crucial part of your business.

[koffiejunkie]

Sure. But you have to question the business model if you can't spend more than R300 a month on the most crucial part of your business.

And barely had I written the words, and someone provides a beautiful example: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...frihost-issues

Sorry mate, you get what you paid for.