SA (Linux) Hosting Costs Driving Customers Abroad
2 Months ago I started evaluating hosting packages to start my online adventures, and being a firm believer in supporting my own country I analyzed a lot of local hosting providers to discovered that it’s not really feasible to host apps locally.
Below you’ll find a few hosting packages found locally and then finally the last column indicates the US provider i ended up choosing. The parameters for the report are quite basic, see what you can get for Linux based web hosting on shared infrastructure for roughly R50 per month.
| Provider | afriHost.com | edisc | snowball | Visual Hosting | IX Webhosting |
| Package | Option C | LZAR059 | Silver | Standard | Business Plus |
| Disk space | 100MB | 60MB | 200MB | 20MB | 400GB |
| Data Transfer (Monthly) |
25MB | Unlimited | 1500MB | 150MB | 2500GB |
| Domains | Unspecified | Unspecified | Unspecified | Unspecified | 8 |
| Subdomains | 25 | Unlimited | 5 | Unspecified | 300 |
| Free Domain Reg (first year) |
No | No | No | No | 3 |
| PHP | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| MySQL DB | 0 | Unlimited | 1 | 0 | 100 |
| pgSQL DB | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| POP 3 accounts | 1 | Unlimited | 25 | 5 | 5000 |
| Once-off Setup Fee | R 250 | Free | R 199 | R 59 | Free |
| Monthly Cost | R 65 | R 59 | R 99 | R 49 | $ 6.45 for 24 months or $7.95 for 12 months |
So edisc looks pretty good as well, but clearly it’s one of the few in SA that does provide reasonable value. IX Web Hosting is one of the best in the top 5 in the USA, but personally I found their packages very good, and their service has been impeccable, with most things completely automated from your own control panel.
Disclaimer: This is by no means a comprehensive study and therefore there are many variables and providers excluded. The above companies were all discovered through Google and the result coincide greatly with a previous informal evaluation I performed. This post is intended as an indication only
