Website hosting: Local or international?

We are currently paying R800-00 p/a for a 50MB static website that is hosted locally.

The first chance I get I'm moving international with Texo.
 
apogeeza said:
for R27/month: unlimted MySQL dB's+ 1G space + 12.5G traffic + unlimted POP/SMTP emails and much, much more.
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I assume you refer to international hosting. Or at least international hosting resold locally. No ways you'd get proper local bandwidth at that price! Thats 0.216c/meg!!
 
Shake&Bake said:
I'll be watching this thread with interest as I'm going to need a domain soon.
But really more of a blog, per say.
Nothing really intense.
Some pics here and there.
But if there is room for discussion - I'd rather have a forum discussion here on the issues.
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The question is, what if you settle for a small cap website hosting and trhe response is greater than what you expect? Can it be changed easily?

davemc said:
I hope MyBroadband gets some free hosting for punting Hetzner like that.
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Is MyBroadband at Hetzer? What kind of package do they have to run a site like this?

SpoOkie said:
Well you can find some pretty awesome local hosting if you look for it(R120 pm, 50GB transfer limit) ;) much better than the webafrica and imaginet crap you see everywhere.
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Is that a International based company reselling it locally?
 
mmsimanga said:
With respect to the starter Hertner offer the author says, "The package, however, does not include a relational database or PHP access, so the sites run off the package are mostly limited to static HTML sites with occasional Javascript for limited interactivity."

Now I correct me if I am wrong but for most CMS systems in use today, the bare minimum you need is PHP and MySQL. So while I am proudly South African I am afraid when it comes to hosting I use Hostmonster.
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Clearly I've not the brains to question your post but your nick intrigues me.... my zulu skills are pretty dismal.... simanga? heheh... :)
 
mmsimanga said:
Gee an opinion is now spam. Let me rephrase, I would not be able to use the low end Hetzner offer because I tend to use Drupal, Joomla or one of the other content management systems to create my sites. They all require PHP and MySQL. Thats my choice and opinion, you are not obliged to agree.
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You said correct me if I am wrong, you are wrong. Your stated what the article stated and then listed a hosting company name, just like a spammer would.

The very next line in the article is:
To build a database-driven website, Hetzner's Basic package at R99 a month includes one database and offers a 1.5GB bandwidth limit as well as PHP scripting.
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Now, what exactly was your opinion again?
Spammers! :mad:
 
Originally Posted by mmsimanga
Gee an opinion is now spam. Let me rephrase, I would not be able to use the low end Hetzner offer because I tend to use Drupal, Joomla or one of the other content management systems to create my sites. They all require PHP and MySQL. Thats my choice and opinion, you are not obliged to agree.
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I agree mmsimanga, while Hetzner offers top quality services, having only one database on their small packages, makes it unpractical to host with them when you want to do CMS related websites for SME. I enjoyed their service, but it was easy to find value elsewhere with providers that offer unlimited databases.

The writer of this article could of done better in representing cost vs services and taking into account more hosting providers to give a fair overview of what exactly "R39 bucks " gets you, instead of just punting the company...
 
SpoOkie said:
Nope. it's local :)
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Its is being subsidized by something/someone then cause the base OPEX just just powering a server is about that... never mind the costs of bandwidth. Either that or you being told a lie by your provider about where their servers are located. Paste us a traceroute to your site... Pictures or it didn't happen :D
 
'IS - 50MB a month in bandwidth allocation'

It could all only happen in South Africa. This has to be the most minimal amount of bandwidth on a hosting package in the known world and others that might even still yet be discovered. They'll - no doubt - blame SA and the costs. I blame greed. Wonder how many poor customers on this package got nailed in a month with additional fees.
 
Gennath said:
I get the best of both worlds: International hosting, local support: www.host4africa.com
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Can try www.wickedbox.net too. Cape Town based support and much more clued up than Hetzner. There are many more out there doing this too. Why? Cos there are no bandwidth limits and renting a massive amount of fast server space is cheap. When it's all quite the opposite within our sunny lands of misappropriation.
 
SpoOkie said:
Well you can find some pretty awesome local hosting if you look for it(R120 pm, 50GB transfer limit) ;) much better than the webafrica and imaginet crap you see everywhere.
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whoever that is , it may be a local company, but it is hosted overseas. You need to ask your hosting company where there servers are located.

Hetzner for instance offer there services both here and in germany. So does webafrica but they use servers in the US.

The the writer of the article seems to think that all overseas hosting is done in the US, what about Europe! They are also on a similar timezone to us, so calls during business hours are possible, and sometimes latency is a little less than US.
 
kiepie said:
Is MyBroadband at Hetzer? What kind of package do they have to run a site like this?
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I'm not sure if they are, but if that is the case they will probably have the Managed Dedicated Hosting with an additional 15GB added. Thats my guess and not based on hard facts.
 
Well I am a web host myself, generally the cheapest prices for local server bandwidth is R90/gig. This makes it very hard for web hosts to offer local hosting when the market is dominated by a few small companies (with big infrastructure).

Generally business sites (that are targeted at the South African market) are better off being hosted locally, as more visitors will be able to access the site.

That being said, the more personal type of sites (blogs, picture galleries) are better off being hosted internationally due to the high cost of local bandwidth.

The only way local hosting will get cheaper is if IS, SAIX, Vodacom, Neotel and Verizon (or now MTN Business, I think) drop the local bandwidth prices, doesn't look promising though as they're loving the oligopoly that they have created, raking in the profits :/
 
$20 for a VPS from Slice Host (owned by RackSpace so you know they are good) Vanilla Linux install and I am the support :D
 
it really is time for SA to come out of the dark ages... like 5megs for your own site with a addey that no can remember - there needs to be someone to push this issue hard, before the prices kill off the business, and Telkom do not seem to realise this - like getting fullhouse hosting for 26 Rand a month
 
I am a reseller for an international hosting provider. I specialise in CMS setups for clients who want to learn how to avoid the local rip offs from both hosting providers and site designers.

I charge US$100 a year for 1GB of disk space, 5GB's of monthly bandwidth and I include the domain for free for the first year. They get the full business with cPanel and Fantastico. Plus they get me on call too for any support related issues.

I don't have a huge amount of clients and I'll probably keep it that way as it remains manageable. It's all word of mouth. If I ever decide to expand this type of thing I'd probably go with a dedicated Linux box at my US provider's data centre which will cost in the region of $200 a month.
 
As a small host and website designer, it is tough to get established with the cost of local hosting. I need to attract my customers with value and offering them 25Mb just doesnt do that. With an international host that sits in a huge data center you can do that s they offer you oodles of space and bandwidth. Maybe once I have a decent amount of customers I can do what MyBroadband did and move to SA. I have a server at HostGator for the last 3 years now, and I have never had any issues, support response is fast and you can get them on Live Chat. The performance of the sites are comparable to SA and I have a few heavy traffic sites. (you just hope your target audience is not capped ADSL customers).

For a small business looking for a web presence, I suggest a cheap international host with a reputable company. You can get away with R50 - R100 bucks a month and have MySQL, PHP, blogs etc...
 
Lusion Technologies now offers an exciting reseller system unlike anything seen in South Africa. This system is 100% custom and already used by a few of the larger design and development companies in our country (system is perfect for freelancers and established businesses). We have opened the system to the public.

Won't use any more of this thread to spam you with details, but might be worth a look since we on the topic of hosting.
 
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