Afrihost killing cheapest hosting packages
Afrihost is shutting down its R9-per-month Bronze hosting service, the company said in an e-mail to clients.
“These packages were always loss-leaders for us,” said Afrihost.
“It was always our hope that over time our clients would either upgrade their hosting accounts to larger packages or our overall input costs would decrease and the R9 price point would become sustainable.”
It said this has not happened for a number of reasons:
- The weakness of the rand against the US dollar. “Our shared hosting platforms are all built around dollar-based software and hardware costs.”
- Eskom has increased the price of electricity over the last 6 years, which is a core input cost.
- Clients did not upgrade from Bronze to Silver. “The small hosting packages gave so much value… that the majority of our clients never had the need to upgrade.”
- As times grew tougher in South Africa, the cheap packages grew more popular.
- Help requests on cheap packages swamped Afrihost’s support team. “We are already losing a significant amount on each package before other support costs are taken into account.”
Clients were warned about the change in March, and given until 24 April to decide whether to upgrade or cancel.
Should clients not cancel by 24 April, they will be upgraded to Silver hosting at R29 per month.
“I understand this is not good news, and I am sincerely sorry that we have to do this,” said Afrihost CEO Gian Visser.
He said they have beefed up their Silver hosting service, and don’t foresee any price increases on other products.
More on Afrihost
Watch out for this Afrihost Mobile fine print
Why Afrihost’s mobile service rocks
Best answers from “Ask Afrihost CEO Gian Visser Anything”
Afrihost ADSL data rollover launched
Loading ...