W3hobbyist

[Note: This review is about hosting at Indian datacenters, and not about Indian resellers of U.S./other datacenters.]

After having hosted several of my websites with U.S. based datacenters, I had to decide where to host my another website-one which primarily had Indian visitors. With the aim of finding an Indian based datacenter, I first turned to Google. Google was helpful in finding me links to various amateur reviews of Indian hosts and a handful of Indian hosts.

While I was going through the links and websites, I noticed few things prominetly:

1. The cost of bandwidth is exorbitant. For a very basic plan, such as 25 MB disk space and 1 GB monthly data-transfer, you could spend between Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 12,000 yearly. With U.S. based hosts, the same can be availed under Rs. 3,00/- per year.
2. The server software is a recipe for disaster. Server software such Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. is not kept up-to-date. This alone opens up a source of bugs and security holes. Unless you love using ‘retarded’ versions of softwares, you will hate them.
3. Only FTP access in most cases. If you have used cPanel or equivalent control panel software, you know how easy it is to administer a website. In many cases, FTP access cannot help much.
4. Meager resources is another drawback. The standard packages provide no or just 1 MySQL database, 1 or a couple of email accounts, etc.
5. The customer service part is OK, but far off from what is available in the U.S.
6. The uptime part has not been measured as I dropped all my plans and discontinued my hosting following serious issues(read below).

Some of the major corporations that own datacenters or servers are:

1. VSNL
2. BSNL
3. Reliance Integrated Data Center
4. MTNL(not functional anymore)
5. Cyquator-An Essel Group Company(the popular Zee TV group)
6. More at StartupDunia

None of them speak about cron jobs, apache handlers, MIME types, statistic logs, PHP extensions, etc.

Most of the other websites returned by Google were resellers of the above, esp. VSNL. If you look at the websites of most resellers, you can confidently figure out that most are either out-of-business, or they are managed by ‘business’ guy who knows just the ABC of the web.

A quick review of Cyquator:

Cyquator is a part of the Essel Group. I unsuccessfully attempted to host my website with them. The sales team is quite acceptable. They are ready to cut deals as per your requirements. I purchased 11 MB(only eleven MB) disk-space and 256 MB montly data-transfer for yearly price of Rs. 1700/-. After making the payments, my account was activated within 24 hrs, as promised by the sales team. I was given only FTP access. There is no cPanel, cron jobs, etc. The account provisioning email was incomplete and I had to bother them twice, once for the DNS server and then for PhpMyAdmin(PMA) details. I was happy when I realized that they do provide PMA. But hell broke loose when I logged into PMA. It was version 1.5-something, where as the latest version was 2.6-something. With only FTP access, I felt handicap. As a result, that account was never used optimally. Infact, I developed a fear due to thoroughly out-dated server softwares.–End of Cyquator review

From this experience, I have dropped all my plans to host any of my or clients’ website at any Indian datacenter. The reason I was looking for an Indian datacenter in the first place was because of very low ping times, near 10 ms(as compared to 300 ms in U.S.). But, looking at the trade-offs involved, I am willing sacrifice ping times for a better infrastructure.

If you have any experiences about hosting at Indian datacenters, please let me know. If you want to know some specific details which has not been included here, please ask through comments. I would be glad to help you out.

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Cheap Website Hosting
- $7.95 / month
Cheap hosting plan:
- 1500,000 MB of storage
- 15000 GB of transfer
- e-Commerce Software
- CGI, Ruby, Perl
- $30 Google AdWords
Included: Free Domain

If you ever Google’d for web-hosting, you will come accross many such too good to be true offers. Lets try to analyze them:

Yearly expenditure = 7.95 x 12= 95.4 USD (Thus, the host earns 95.4 USD from your account yearly)

Google Adwords coupon = 30 USD. That leaves 65.4 USD with your host

One domain(.com, .net, .org) = 9 USD. That leaves 56.4 USD with your host.

Others like ecommerce software, perl, cgi, PHP, MySQL, etc. open source products are free of cost.

So where is the THE catch? The catch is that any website that require so many GB’s of disk-space storage and monthly data transfer will also require considerable resources like CPU time and RAM that your host will send you a ‘Too big for a shared hosting package’ email and ask you to move your site to a VPS or dedicated server.

Apart from this, a site that requires 10 GB disk space and 10 TB monthly transfer will be such a popular one that they must opt for the security of a VPS or a dedicated server!

And above all this, it still leaves $ 56.4(less other shared expenses) with your webhost. Yes, you can argue for the ‘quality of customer support’. But a person who manages websites with GBs of disk-space and TBs of data-transfer already has such ample experience that he will rarely need to ask for support, except in serious issues.

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