Local hosting prices: How low can it go?
Over the last couple of weeks two local hosting providers – Afrihost and Gridhost – slashed the price of their entry level hosting packages to below R5 per month.
Both Afrihost and Gridhost currently have 50% discount promotions on their hosting offerings which mean that their R9/month and R8.95/month entry level hosting packages are now priced at R4.50 and R4.48 respectively.
These are however not the cheapest hosting offerings in the country. In December last year Internet Service Provider (ISP) Cybersmart launched their free hosting service, offering all South African consumers a free entry level hosting package.
Hosting Unlimited followed suit a few weeks ago by also offering consumers free hosting which includes database access and PHP support.
These low cost shared hosting options are a welcome addition to the local telecoms market, but it is not clear what service and support levels consumers can expect. Speed, uptime and support are often crucial for webmasters, and with free or low cost services these facets may take a back seat in some cases.
Free and low cost hosting can however be of great value to consumers who don’t require high end hosting services, and the following table provides an overview of the entry level hosting services on offer from some of the prominent web hosting companies in SA.
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Entry level hosting packages
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| Afrihost | Gridhost | Hetzner | Host4Africa | |
| Web Traffic | 300 MB (SA) | Unlimited (Int) | 300 MB (SA), 5 GB (DE) | Unlimited (Int) |
| Disk Space | 300 MB | 70 MB | 50 MB | 50 MB |
| Databases | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| eMail accounts | 5 | 15 | 20 | 5 |
| Price | R9.00 | R8.95 | R19.00 | R9.99 |
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Free hosting packages
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| Cybersmart | Hosting Unlimited | |
| Web Traffic | 300 MB | 300 MB |
| Disk Space | 50 MB | 55 MB |
| Databases | 1 | 1 |
| eMail accounts | 20 | 3 |
| Price | Free | Free |
Hosting in South Africa << How low can prices go?
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