Posted on March 25th, 2010With the seemingly infinite of hosting companies around, you’d think that it would be impossible for any problems to appear, and if they did, you’d immediately find a hosting company that would solve them.
Well, apparently quite a few people are having trouble finding hosting companies that have the actual servers in countries different than the big two: USA and UK.
These countries contain more than 70% of all servers in the world, with the US having more than three fourths of that. That is understandable, as these countries were the first to adopt and use the Internet.
But what if you need to host your site or files in another country? You might need to do that for a lot of reasons: giving faster access to your site for local citizens, having sensitive data and documents outside the country where they can be seized at any time (and I’m pointing the finger at UK now), hosting files for which you do not have any copyright arrangements (but do have in other countries; in the case of foreign singers, for example), and other things.
Well, for those people, I have a list of hosting companies which have their servers in various countries around the world and that work with international customers at acceptable rates (not like those $100 per GB or space offshore hosting providers you might’ve seen online).
1und1.de (Germany). 1and1 has datacenters in the USA and UK, but they started out and are still operating in Germany. Thanks to the country’s national fiber network, 1and1 can offer truly unlimited (as in never ending) traffic on an 100mbps connection to all of their clients. So if you have a very data-intensive site, it’ll be a lot cheaper to host it in Germany. The country also has different, more lax copyright laws, so you wouldn’t have problems running, for example, torrent trackers, video sharing sites and other similar services with 3rd party content. The prices are very cheap and are comparable to any other hosting in the US. They offer web, VPS and dedicated hosting.
Ovh.fr (France). This hosting company’s datacenter is located in France, and they operate all over Europe, including UK. They also accept clients from any other country in the world, including Japan, US and Canada, as long as the users can speak English and preferably French. They have slightly higher prices than other providers, but their offers are worth it. They offer 200mbps connection ports (2 ports) and unlimited monthly traffic, which is possible thanks to France’s top-notch, new national broadband network, which is even better than Germany’s. OVH and other French hosting providers are probably the best choice for the most data-intensive applications, although the country’s new copyright and security laws make it less desirable, due to the possibility of the government to intrude into anyone’s personal and corporate data.
Hosting.ua (Ukraine). This hosting provider is located in Ukraine and provides quite cheap shared web hosting and dedicated servers, which are much cheaper for their power. They also offer a few different connection speeds: 1Gbps with a 2000GB/month limit, 10Mbps unlimited and 100Mbps with automatic switch to 10Mbps after 3000GB are used, the latter of which I think is the best choice. The site is in Russian, but you can select an English Control Panel and opt to receive everything in English, which is great. Now, you might think that Ukraine (along with Russia and several East European countries) are not safe and have slow Internet connections. You couldn’t be more wrong. They, in fact have some of the cheapest connections in the world (how does $20 a month for a real 20Mbps/1Mbps unlimited ADSL or $50 for a 100/100Mbps fiber connection sound? You can host your own server at home at this speed). I’m sure that’ll change when more people will start using the Internet and more datacenters will appear, but until then, this country is great for speedy hosting.
eName.ro (Romania). This hosting company has a bit higher prices for what they offer, but at least your data is safe in a first-class, new datacenter in the center of Romania. They offer shared, reseller, VPS and dedicated hosting to anyone. Their site also has an English version, which is simply great for international customers.
Serverboost.com (Netherlands). One of the many hosting companies with servers in Netherlands (a popular choice for offshore hosting), Serverboost has better offers and lower prices than most of them. They offer shared, VPS and dedicated hosting to anyone with a Paypal account (the only good way for international users to pay). Their site is in English, and it’s no different than other hosting sites online. Check it out for yourself.
As you can see, there are plenty of companies that can help you if you need international hosting. You just have to have an accepted method of payment, and know how to use Google Translate, for those websites that do not have versions in your language (whether it’s English or any other language).
Of Course there are many other great companies that not listed here. If you do a little searching around i’m sure you will find a company that suits you well.
If you know of any other great Off-shore Hosting Company, Please feel free to share it with us, by leaving your comment below.