Find the Best Hosting Companies In South Africa
For the best hosting in South Africa there are a few excellent web hosting companies to choose from.
After having experienced the trauma of having a few web hosts go out of business overnight, I’ve had to apply some serious research & investigation before choosing a web host since then.
So using my experience in selecting hosting companies that provide affordability as well as dependability, I’ve waded through many options and narrowed it down to five of the best.
Top 5 Web Hosting Companies in South Africa Compared
1. Bluehost
- Plans from $2.65 per month
- 50 GB Disc space
- 24/7 Technical support
- 1 Domain name included
- Free SSL Certificate (https://www.)
- Unlimited traffic (bandwidth)
2. A2 Web Hosting
- Plans from R30 ~ R40 per month
- Unlimited SSD Storage & Transfer
- 24/7 Support: eMail, phone, live chat, ticket
- Easy website builder with great themes
- Free SSL certificate (https://www.)
- eCommerce: OpenCart 1-click setup
- 1-Click optimized WordPress install & setup
3. Xneelo (formerly Hetzner)
- Plans from R99 per month
- 5 GB Disc space (R5/10MB thereafter))
- Unlimited traffic (bandwidth)
- 24/7 Technical support
- Multiple domains (10)
- Free SSL Certificate (https://www.)
4. Domains SA
- Plans from R69 per month
- 2 GB Disc space; 5GB Bandwidth
- 24/7 Technical support
- 1 Domain name
- Servers located in Johannesburg, South Africa
- 60 Day Money Back
5. HostGator
- Hosting plans from $2.75 per month
- Unlimited disc space & unmetered bandwidth
- 24/7 Responsive support
- Many awesome features, incl a Website Builder
- Free domain & SSL certificate (https://www.)
- 45-day money back guarantee
While HostGator’s servers are based in Texas, their service, uptime, high tech servers combined with all their awesome features made them deserving of a top spot.
Criteria Used To Choose The Top Web Hosts
Our top web hosts were measured on the following criteria to assess their overall value.
- Performance – Uptime (most are around the 99.9% mark), page loading speeds, server optimization, etc.
- Features – The quality & number of free features, special tools, web builders, image library, etc.
- Ease of Use – Speed & usability in terms of signing up and using the cPanel platform.
- Support – How responsive & effective is the support & channels used (most offer 24/7 support times).
- Pricing – Fair prices backed up with a quality service packed with useful features & benefits as well as money-back guarantees.
Furthermore, this comparison is based on each company’s cheapest shared hosting option as this is the most popular hosting plan.
Speeds & Server Location
You’ll notice that the companies that provide the best value, in terms of price, disc space, bandwidth and other features, have their servers based in the USA.
While their hosting fees are cheaper, the trade off is that connection speeds for site visitors based in SA will be slower.
On the other hand take HostGator, for example, whose servers (in multiple data centers in Texas, USA) are powerful state of the art machines that deliver speed & efficiency even on the shared plans.
Slow page loading speeds are often more to do with website issues than server location
Therefore, South African websites hosted on overseas servers, are able to experience fast connection & loading speeds.
Furthermore, most reputable hosting companies like HostGator, offer a free CDN (content delivery network).
A CDN is a network of distributed servers that will deliver your site’s pages and other web content to the server closest to the user’s geographic locations so that speed will not be compromised no matter where the origin server is.
To illustrate this point, this Cape Town based website is hosted with HostGator (on a shared hosting plan) and delivers these speeds…
This Website's Speed On HostGator Shared Hosting
This is a relatively new website but already returns an excellent page speed score illustrated in the above screenshot taken from GTmetrix speed analyser
As you can see, all of the speed indicators return scores well above average which isn’t bad for a South African website hosted on servers located at HostGator’s top tier data centers in Houston, Texas, USA.
How Do the Top SA Hosting Companies Measure Up?
Interestingly, Xneelo and Domains.co.za which are 2 of the most popular and highly rated web hosts in SA, did not return very high speed stats on GTmetrix speed analyser.
Xneelo GTmetrix Website Speed Results
Domains.co.za GTmetrix Website Speed Results
While their speeds don’t look that impressive, it does not mean that your sites hosted on their servers would be slow.
In fact quite the contrary, if your site is optimised correctly, built with a light-weight fast theme and a whole host of other things, you could have the fastest loading webpage this side of the Limpopo.
The Final Word On Choosing the Best Web Hosting In South Africa
All of these hosting companies provide high uptime stats & performance, however the SA based companies come in slightly more expensive together with limited features such as storage & bandwidth.
On the other hand, the US based hosts all offer tons of features with free web builders and more.
The SA hosting companies however offer faster connection speeds for websites located in South Africa.
Overall, having all the features & benefits that the US based companies offer is a big advantage even if it means sacrificing a bit in speed which can be mitigated by having efficient, lean & fast websites.