If you have experience or have some knowledge in web hosting industry, you might heard about hosting the website or web server in Europe.

Some companies hosted their dedicated server in Europe, mostly in Netherlands- a founding member of the European Union. Netherlands is known as a very tolerant country, laws that might restrict affect your website in other countries may not apply if your site is hosted from the Netherlands, because Netherlands has liberal Internet laws and privacy policies.

In addition, the Netherlands’ capital- Amsterdam is a city with multiple web hosting companies, as well as a secure electricity supply and good Internet connectivity. Good deal of web hosting packages are available because of competitive market.

You might wonder who would wants to host the website in Netherlands, website in these categories will do:
- Gambling (online casino)
- Adult content (Pornography)
- Illegal activities (in other countries) such as foot ball betting
- Software (cracked software, hacker website)
- Web hosting (storage, web space)
- Forum/Community (government’s opposition or website banned by the government)

The state above is based on my personal experience and research, not all website hosted in Netherlands are fall in those categories. To know a website is whether hosted in Netherlands, we can check the Host Name Whois database or lookup the IP address.

Do you know some web hosting companies have expended its web hosting facilities to the Netherlands? Because there’s a market demand such as adult content hosting. Although Malaysia laws restricted Web hosting companies within the country offers adult content hosting service, but in the new era of globalisation, Malaysians are still able to host ‘anything’ outside the country. Those can supply the demand, will have the opportunities to share the rest of the cake.

P/S: If you are looking for web hosting companies/providers from the Netherlands, there is a popular hosting forum in Netherlands – www.webhostingtalk.nl. Most of the Dutch web hosts are there. You can also search in www.Google.nl on keywords that would bring the result you need.

I have conducted a few tests between Exabytes (exabytes.com) and Shinjiru (shinjiru.com) Web hosting. Results turned out Exabytes’ web hosting speed is slightly faster than Shinjiru by about 20% to 25%.

Method of test:

1. I subscribed 2 shared hosting accounts- one with Exabytes and another one with Shinjiru.
2. Both website with the same content running on PHP connect to MySQL.
3. Tests conducted from 1st to 31st October 2008, each day have 2 tests at anytime from 11am to 6pm (working hours) and 9pm to 12am (non-working hours), Malaysia time.
4. I used a computer with Intel Processor 1.20 GHz and 1024MB RAM and connected to Internet using leased line by TMnet, 3G Mobile Connect by Celcom, Dial-up by Jaring and Streamyx by TMnet.
5. Run 2 website – to test out the script execution and response time.
6. Upload files to website by FTP – to test out the uploading speed.
7. Download files from website – to test out the downloading speed.

However, the tests above were conducted in KL Malaysia, it can’t justified the speed performance from overseas access.

More to considered beside the loading speed

Selecting a web hosting service can’t just based on loading speed evaluation, I believe most of us want a good service and lowest price hosting plan too. I can’t say Exabytes and Shinjiru are the best in Malaysia but so far with my experience with a few of web hosting companies like Emerge, Exabytes, Shinjiru, Webserver (ACME), e-Globalhosting and HileyTech, Exabytes and Shinjiru’s web hosting packages are considered the most competitive among all. Beside that, IPserverone is catching up as well.

Why Shinjiru?

In fact, I personally preferred Shinjiru. They offer the cheapest domain names registration either TLD or ccTLD (country code top-level domain ie. .com.my) and very affordable web hosting plans in Malaysia.  Furthermore, their web hosting overall rating is compatible with Exabytes or Emerge and this company is well established since 1998. However, 2 things I believe they should improve- customer service response time (email enquiries) and technical issues solving duration time.

If you have only one domain name want to be hosted and especially if you are new to web hosting, I advice you go to Shinjiru’s Mini Pack (RM99/year as on 2008-11-11) while Exabytes’ cheapest package is far ahead from this price (RM269/year as on 2008-11-11).

Why Exabytes?

To me, the attractive point of Exabytes is their web hosting speed and customer service response time. As for their Web hosting plan, it is not as attractive as Shinjiru’s Disk Space and Monthly Data Transfer rate (Exabytes is serious in server and data transfer utility, in order to provide best server performance to all hosted accounts, they offer strict and low usage hosting condition.)

If you are looking for an optimised server environment and ‘slightly’ faster web hosting, Exabytes might be your choice. However, it depends on your luck too, as you know shared hosting accounts is hosted on a sharing server, so hope that you do not have busy neighbours (You can checkout who is your domain name neighbours at www.myipneighbors.com, entered your domain name at the search field)

I am currently hosted this website (kenny.my) with Exabytes’ Linux EBiz Plus hosting plan. The reason is simple, I have 8 add-on domains (website) want to be hosted; I need faster speed; and my total website data transfer rate still below the allocated 50GB.

Tips

1. Switching the web hosting service is troublesome when you have already configured and running website, tasks like backup/restore database, web applications re-configuration and testing will give you a tons of work to do when you switching the web hosting service. Hence, selecting a right web hosting service can avoid all these.
   I am in considering of Shinjiru’s Shared Hosting Business Plan, because I need a larger disk space and data transfer rate. But there’s more to do- I have to transfer all 8 website of mine and re-configure all the applications.
2. You can register the domain name with Shinjiru and hosted the website with Exabytes. Take the best deal from two side (Exabytes’ domain name registration fee is more expensive than Shinjiru.)
3. If you are looking for a package that covered the domain name and web hosting, you may consider Shinjiru. Their Shared hosting Standard Plan is come with a free domain registration. (RM190/year as on 2008-11-11)

Both Exabytes and Shinjiru are good at different area, selecting anyone of them is depend on your budget and need.

Godaddy.com- My favourite domain registrar and web hosting provider has raised their Economy Plan hosting fee from USD3.99/month to USD4.99/month effective October 2008. This rise made me consider whether should I look for alternative web hosting providers to sustain my business revenue.

Godaddy.com has adjusted their Economy Plan hosting fee in yearly basis for the past 3 years, the fee changed from 2006 to 2008 as USD3.19/month, USD3.99/month and USD4.99/month. It has raised at least 55% compare the fee of 2006, eventually it creased my cost on the web hosting. I have many web hosting accounts with Godaddy.com, here “I” means my business clients. Our website hosted on Godaddy.com servers for years and so far we are satisfy with its service.

With this raised, I conducted a change impact and conditions & cost study, summarised that there will be a hassle changed if we switch the web hosting provider. The changed will affect many operations processes and new environment might not able to deliver the same result, to ensure my client’s website operations and best results, I have decided to stay with Godaddy.com.

By the way, a web hosting fee adjustment to my clients might need to be conducted, but not in this year.

My field is web related. A few of my clients with IT knowledge asked me a similar question- Which country do you recommend to host my website? Malaysia or US?

“It depends on your target audience and market- local or international and; what features/plan that you want to have in your web hosting package. There are advantages and disadvantages for website hosted in either Malaysia or US. This is why I am here to assist you to understand your need, and to provide a right solution…” this is my formal biz conversation.

Many people think that US web service is more expensive than Malaysia. In actual fact, not really.

US market is very competitive, thousands of web hosting service providers offer the best-deal-in-town packages with low prices to attract potential customers, this is how we consumer get benefits from their “price war”. But choosing the right and reliable web hosting provider needed some experience in this web industry.

Domain Name (Website name ie. whoiskenny.com)

When I first step into this field 11 years ago, I bought my first domain name from NetSol (NetworkSolutions.com) at the cost of USD35. It was costly for me to buy a domain name at the cost of USD35/RM133 when I just earning a peanut. (NetSol was the only appointed registrar by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that could process domain name registrations for .com, .net, and .org before 1999. During Malaysia economy crisis in 1997, Malaysian Ringgit is fixed at the static exchange rate by USD1.00 = RM3.80)

There are more than thousands of website offering domain name registration nowadays, the domain name registration fee is much cheaper compre to last time.

There’s something Malaysia Web Hosting providers/domain registrar still can’t beat- the price war in US. For an example, a domain name registration package, it come with more features and cost only USD9/RM28.80 (exchange rate by USD1.00 = RM3.20). Honestly, I still haven’t find any local providers can offer this price, I even compared the local dealer/reseller price.

Another reason I would prefer to buy the domain names from US is because they can provide better domain name features like free private registration, free parked page, free POP3 email, domain locking, free blog, free hosting (with banner ad), website forwarding / masking and etc. This is a good plan for website starter, which they just need an email contact and a few pages of website.

With the above attractive features, why not? Of cause, regardless it is a reliable company.

If you are interested to view the list of ICANN accredited domain name registrar, below is the URL:

http://www.internic.net/alpha.html

For .my country-code top level domain (ccTLD), the Malaysia Network Information Center (MYNIC) domain name registrar list is available here:

http://www.mynic.net/reseller.php

Web Hosting (Where you host your website content)

With my experience, I usually recommended local hosting (hosted in Malaysia) for my SME or small entity client. Beside the website response time (speed) faster, the hosting plan/feature offer by local web hosting service providers are sufficient enough to meet my client’s need.

Budget does not come to primary in this decision, the website response time, provider service, data centre infrastructure and server performance is my main concern. Malaysia web hosting providers can now provide the standard requirement for a normal website need at the reasonable price, hence there’s no reason why should I seek for oversee solution, unless special requirement which local provider can’t deliver such as bound by Law restriction or demand higher bandwidth allocation.

And most of my client’s website also target the local market, the e-commerce website’s payment method is another concern. Hosted the website with local provider with payment gateway enabled is an advantage, at least they can process Ringgit Malaysia transaction and easy on billing issue. You may not know, out of 50 in 100 credit card online transactions have problems. 50% could be fraud cases, authorisation failure, process issue, connection issue, insufficient credit card information for verification, credit card blocked by the issuing bank for some reasons and etc. So, it may need to walk-in the payment gateway solution provider office for further discussion or need to call for clarification on case-by-case basis. Don’t you hope their office is just next to yours?

Another reason, some of the reliable and low-risk payment gateway solution providers from over sea do not accept RM payment/ Malaysia merchant account or charge a higher transaction commission.

If you are looking for payment gateway to process your website’s e-commerce transaction with Malsyian Ringgit, there’s few I would recommend:

International:
- www.worldpay.com
- www.2checkout.com
- www.paypal.com (problem to withdraw money from local bank, unless you have US bank account such as etrade)

Malaysia:
- www.maybank2u.com (transfer money from own account to third party account)
- www.ipay88.com

Well, the worry for Malaysia web hosting is the unreliable country backbone infrastructure, but it is ISP (Internet Service Provider) issues.

It can be easy to setup a website, regardless you have domain name, web hosting knowledge and experience and programming skill. Otherwise, I will suggest you engage a web specialist to do it for you. As I always told my clients- don’t worried, please leave the task to us, we will let you concentrate on your biz!

I welcome your comment if you have a different point of view.