I intend to start a particular website and host it on a web server outside US jurisdiction. Which Taiwanese Web Host Servers are pretty reliable and yet allow people living in the American and European continents to have speedy access to my website?
To be honest, the hosting solution are not as attractive as in America or Europe here in Taiwan.
Expensive and not so powerful.
(I even prefer to host my own server@home)
But, first of all, may we know which kind of services you’d like ? VPS ? Dedicated server? Just a small web hosting solution ?
And will the visitors in America and Europe or Taiwan mainly ?
No idea how reliably and fast Taiwanese webservers can be accessed from the US or Europe - when accessing north American or European sites from here i encounter at times serious slow-downs that i call “traffic jams on the transpacific data highways” 
, so i would think if your target audience is in Europe and northern America but you don’t want to use a provider in the US, you would be much better off contracting with a provider in, either Canada or Europe (say, Holland, the UK, or Germany).
Anyway, for websites targeting Taiwan i use twnoc.com/ (in Taiwan),
for sites targeting north America islandnet.com/ (in Canada)
and namecheap.com/web-hosting/ (in the US),
and for sites targeting Europe domainunion.de/ (in Germany).
Agree as well !
And for France + UK, I’ll recommand you www.ovh.com
I just noticed that in addition to the UK branch ovh.de/ - and they have been around since 1999, so it looks like a solid company…
No idea how reliably and fast Taiwanese webservers can be accessed from the US or Europe - when accessing north American or European sites from here i encounter at times serious slow-downs that i call “traffic jams on the transpacific data highways” , so I would think if your target audience is in Europe and northern America but you don’t want to use a provider in the US, you would be much better off contracting with a provider in, either Canada or Europe (say, Holland, the UK, or Germany).
Anyway, for websites targeting Taiwan i use twnoc.com/ (in Taiwan),
for sites targeting North America islandnet.com/ (in Canada)
and namecheap.com/web-hosting/ (in the US),
and for sites targeting Europe domainunion.de/ (in Germany).[/quote]
i AM targetting both American and European web-surfers but I have no interest in tangling with their internet law enforcement agencies. those suckers are pretty draconian nowadays even though I am not running a scam or business website.
If by “their” you mean just “US”, then a western European provider might be a good choice, if by “their” you mean “US and European”, then you may want to consider Russia for web hosting…
OVH German part sound good indeed !
I didn’t know they have an office there.
I’ve used their services (FR and UK) for several years and I really like them.
If you want an Asian web hosting service, I’d suggest Malaysia rather than Taiwan, for several reasons…
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Cheaper. In Malaysia, Linux servers are common, with low prices to match. The Taiwanese are enthralled with Microsoft, also with prices to match. That said, twnoc.com (suggested by Yuli above) is running on Linux. But it suffers from the second problem, which is…
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Malaysians speak English. In Taiwan, little effort is made to offer English web pages - it’s almost as if they don’t want foreigner’s business. So you’ll wind up having to navigate your web host’s site in Chinese. Not sure if you’re OK with that.
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Malaysia is less inclined to kowtow to American pressure to rat out their customers over software patents, DMCA violations, and other so-called “intellectual property” issues. Taiwan does not have software patents (yet), but they caved on the DMCA (though it’s not well-enforced). The trend here is to reluctantly but eventually kiss America’s ass when pressured. The Malaysians seem more willing to give Uncle Sam the finger.
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Reliability. Not that Taiwan is unreliable. But among Asian countries, infrastructure in Malaysia is pretty good. If you hosted in some place like Indonesia, India or the Philippines, I don’t know what you’d encounter, but downtime might be an issue. Brownouts and blackouts are common in less developed countries, though ISPs are supposed to have backup power for their servers. Again, Taiwan is fine for reliability, but less so for many other countries in Asia.
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Liability. There was a recent case where a Taiwanese blogger posted a negative review of a restaurant and got sued for libel, and had to serve prison time as well. It was stupid, and smacks of corruption (I wonder if the judge wasn’t bribed or related to the plaintiff). Anyway, I’m just guessing that you, Hualienmonk, live in Taiwan, or spend some time here. So if somebody takes exception to something on your web site, the long arm of the law can reach you. There are good legal reasons for locating your web site outside the country where you live or hold citizenship, which has no extradition treaties with the country you do live in. Of course, you may want to keep your true identity secret when registering your site, though that might be hard when you’re paying via credit card. Anyway, just one more thing to keep in mind.
I don’t have any particular Malaysian companies to recommend. Just do a Google search on “Malaysia web hosting” (without the quotes) and you’ll find plenty, all in English.
Let us know if you find a good one, because I have a plan to soon set up a site myself and will be considering Malaysia for hosting, even though I’m located in Taiwan.
cheers,
DB
[quote=“Dog’s_Breakfast”]The Taiwanese are enthralled with Microsoft, also with prices to match. That said, twnoc.com (suggested by Yuli above) is running on Linux. But it suffers from the second problem, which is…
Secondly, Malaysians speak English. In Taiwan, little effort is made to offer English web pages - it’s almost as if they don’t want foreigner’s business.[/quote]
Interesting that you mention that: it’s true that TWNOC - as a system - is not specifically set up for foreign business (the registration form is only available in Mandarin, and i was unable to pay for the service contract via a Japanese credit card), 
but the staff i dealt with was most helpful and in no way unprepared to accept my registration (i ended up paying them by the time-honored method “cash via mail”), and on one occasion (in March, after the big earthquakein Japan) they called me to find out how they could help, and, since nobody in the office there spoke Japanese, they used English to talk to me - so if anybody in Taiwan who cannot use Mandarin wants to deal with that company it can be done. 
Perhaps the difference in language attitude can be explained with the fact that Malaysia, unlike Taiwan, has a historic connection with England and a long-standing tourism connection with the “western” market…
If you’re looking for a VPS, we offer them in Taiwan: cogini.com/virtual-private-serve … aiwan.html
Ours bandwidth costs aren’t particularly cheap, though.
I’ve just checked Malaysian offer, hardware part is not bad for the price however, the bandwidth…damn a lot of offer with 1M only !!! very few with 2M.
And It seems impossible to find better than 10M for outside connection…
I’m actually looking for an affordable dedicated server in Asia, but not sure where to look at. Any hints?
[quote=“Brendon”]If you’re looking for a VPS, we offer them in Taiwan: cogini.com/virtual-private-serve … aiwan.html
Ours bandwidth costs aren’t particularly cheap, though.[/quote]
Why the need to have 60gb limits when bandwidth here is uncapped? I host streaming servers and when you are streaming at 5mb/s or 10mb/s then a 60gb cap would dissapear in a matter of a few hours. Which is why we host with uncapped limits for all our clients.
[quote=“dudumomo”]I’ve just checked Malaysian offer, hardware part is not bad for the price however, the bandwidth…damn a lot of offer with 1M only !!! very few with 2M.
And It seems impossible to find better than 10M for outside connection…
I’m actually looking for an affordable dedicated server in Asia, but not sure where to look at. Any hints?[/quote]
What do you mean an affordable dedicated server? I host dedicated servers for clients. Dedicated means they have their own server which is on a fixed IP dedicated to them alone.
20mb/s up unlimited use is not a problem and we are hosted on an external backbone line as our clients are based overseas.
Hints, build your own server which you maintain and have us host it with the appropriate uncapped bandwdith and 24/7 tech support. That way you have your own harddrive space and ram not shared to others.
[quote=“dudumomo”]I’ve just checked Malaysian offer, hardware part is not bad for the price however, the bandwidth…damn a lot of offer with 1M only !!! very few with 2M.
And It seems impossible to find better than 10M for outside connection…
I’m actually looking for an affordable dedicated server in Asia, but not sure where to look at. Any hints?[/quote]
I googled for “web hosting Malaysia” and found several that give much more than that at rock-bottom prices:
webhostingmalaysia.com/
300 GB transfer
10GB hard disk space
US$3.99/month | US$47.88/year
mesrahosting.net/product/linuxhosting.shtml
50GB transfer
20GB hard disk space
US$33.18/year
[quote=“Dog’s_Breakfast”][quote=“dudumomo”]I’ve just checked Malaysian offer, hardware part is not bad for the price however, the bandwidth…damn a lot of offer with 1M only !!! very few with 2M.
And It seems impossible to find better than 10M for outside connection…
I’m actually looking for an affordable dedicated server in Asia, but not sure where to look at. Any hints?[/quote]
I googled for “web hosting Malaysia” and found several that give much more than that at rock-bottom prices:
webhostingmalaysia.com/
300 GB transfer
10GB hard disk space
US$3.99/month | US$47.88/year
mesrahosting.net/product/linuxhosting.shtml
50GB transfer
20GB hard disk space
US$33.18/year[/quote]
Dudumomo wants to have 10mb or 20mb uploads. They would need to not have capped limits and what you are linking are not dedicated servers they are shared drives with hundreds of others users on the same drive. Why don’t you ask those providers what upload speeds they have. Slower than what you get with a standard ADSL package in Taiwan might as well just host your own server from your own home if you don’t need fast (10mb - 20mb ) uploads.
Indeed,
I’m looking for a dedicated server (No need for a lot of power, neither bandwidth. Just want 10M or 20M for burst time, or even better of course)
At 5M, I’m already struggling during peak time.
Your websites got dedicated offer, but no mention about bandwidth…
What are your prices Satellite TV?
Ummm… just thought this might come in useful ; Malaysia’s broadband backbone is not ideal for transmissions between North America and East Asia ( Taiwan ) because of distance factors and others. Ping is higher and speeds will naturally decrease. For this reason, Taiwanese hosting would be better. However, if transmission between Europe and East Asia is a priority, then you’ve made the right choice. Malaysia is in range for a reasonable 180 - 200ms ping to Europe ( Taiwan = 240 - 280ms ). The lower ping will allow for faster speeds. I learned of this from personal experience in the past. Good luck with the website ! 
Can anyone offer advice here? I want to operate an ecommerce site in Taiwan. Hosting solutions in Taiwan for a Dedicated Windows server are really expensive for what you get. So I’m thinking about hosting it in the US. But even if I went with a really solid solution in the US, is the bottleneck still with the Pacific pipeline, and would I see a significant speed loss?
Having looked around, it seems that hosting options in Taiwan are very limited. Where are the majority of companies in Taiwan hosting their websites?
It is indeed expensive in TW compare to US or Europe.
(In fact I haven’t find any Asian provider with similar US/EU offer for a affordable price)
If you take something in US, you will indeed have a bad ping (200-300ms) which can be troublesome in some case.
However, it might not be a big issue for ecommerce website. Just from a TW connection, check a local US website. No big bottleneck.