Zoopy stops local hosting

In September 2008 local video hosting website Zoopy announced that Vodacom has invested in the website, and that they have moved their servers to South Africa to improve the user experience of local broadband users.

“We [now] have servers in South Africa that will deliver Zoopy content using local bandwidth for South Africans. The significantly slower international speeds and low bandwidth caps in SA have left us as frustrated as any other internet user in the country. So we’re prepared to do what it takes to deliver our media at amazing speeds, whether viewed on Zoopy.com or embedded on other sites or blogs,” Zoopy said at the time.

Barely a year later and the cost of bandwidth in South Africa caught up with the video hosting website.  In November last year Zoopy announced that it was moving its servers overseas again. 

“Given the vast and increasing amounts of bandwidth we’re using on a daily basis, it doesn’t make sense for us to continue absorbing the exorbitant cost of local hosting in South Africa when international pricing is exponentially more affordable,” Zoopy said.  “We will continue to monitor the local bandwidth options as pricing and speeds hopefully catch up to international norms, and look forward to one day being able to again host in our home country.”

Zoopy lead developer Neil Garb explains that the website consume ‘Terabytes’ of traffic each month, and despite the preferential bandwidth rate which they received from Vodacom Business – their local hosting provider – it was simply not sustainable to continue to host the website in SA.

Garb said that the servers have been moved to Germany, and that their monthly hosting bill is now significantly less than what it was when it was hosted in South Africa.  The lower hosting costs, Garb said, makes their business far more sustainable.

Garb added that they are planning to have a local mirror of the Zoopy front end in South Africa soon, and that they hope that it will be more sustainable in future to bring Zoopy back to the country.

Zoopy is not the only prominent website which moved its servers overseas.  Towards the end of 2009 Webmail moved their servers to France, something which may have resulted in the drop of traffic the website experienced in November and December last year.

Zoopy moving overseas – comments and views