Need to create a website for a local Taiwanese business.
Thank you. :discodance:
If you can, you should host in Japan, prices are cheaper and connection between Japan and Taiwan is really fast, customers won’t see the difference.
Japan, good idea. I’ll be looking for a web host in a few months.
I’ll respectfully disagree. Not that hosting in Japan is the worst idea, but for max speed and low cost, I can recommend Twnoc:
twnoc.com/
email: twnoc@twnoc.com
Their website is unfortunately all in Chinese, but if you email them in English they’ll respond in English, and they seem fluent enough. Their techie - a woman named Shirley - is very knowledgeable and responds quickly to any queries. They offer different packages, but I find the minimal one for NT$200/month quite sufficient. This page has their prices and specs:
As the above link indicates, they do Linux hosting.
The main problem with hosting in Japan or anywhere outside of Taiwan is that on occasion there have been problems with the sea cable link. Mostly it’s fine, but it’s been known to get damaged (earthquakes? typhoons?). In that case, you don’t necessary lose the ability to connect, but the traffic gets rerouted - I remember some years ago they were routing through satellites and everything was real slow for a month. That issue has been improved, as there are now more cables (to Hong Kong, Philippines, etc) - I guess the more routes there are, the less chance of things going awry when a single cable fails. If you have an interest in undersea cables, here’s a map:
Here’s a story about a cable failure in 2010:
pcworld.com/article/190887/article.html
The bigger problem with hosting in Taiwan is actually not hosting, but rather registering the web site. I think there are about 10 different registrars, the only one I know of that is English-friendly is Seednet, and it’s the one I used:
If you decide not to go with Taiwan, I can recommend Malaysia. I had an older web site which I registered and hosted in Malaysia. It was actually very fast, and cheap, and definitely more English user-friendly than anything in Taiwan. So if you want to explore that possibility, I give a thumbs-up to Exabytes:
Good luck. And please let us know your experience after you’ve actually done something, I’m always interested to hear what works for others.
Hold your horses folks…I’ve been in the Taiwan Internet space since it began and I can assure you that at least 95% of all consumer net connections got through the Hinet system. Think of an upside down xmas tree - Hinet controls the lines by charging outrages overseas cable connections thereby maintaining the monopoly on the system.
The main question to be answered here is WHERE are the majority of customers coming from. If they’re from the States - host in the States. If they’re from Japan host there, etc. Another thing to consider is shared versus dedicated hosting (Google it if you don’t know the difference). Linux vs MS servers - go with Linux. If the hosting service does not offer an English version of their website - run in the opposite direction! They obviously are not operating on global level. FIY, Hinet outsources all their hosting services - you can save yourself at least 50% by hosting off Taiwan.
Good luck!