Does is really matter where you host your website? is one question so many web designers or website owners often ask.
In this article therefore, I am going to help you understand why I prefer using a web hosting company in my country Nigeria. But before I do so let me first and foremost help you understand the best server location for wen hosting.
The best server location for web hosting.
To get the best server location for your web hosting, you must ensure that the server you are choosing is located as close as possible to your target audience so you can have a fast loading website that will enhance a good user experience.
Why I prefer using a web hosting company in Nigeria.
I once used an international web hosting provider, but the main problem I faced was a lack of good customer service, ever since I settled for using a web hosting company based here in Nigeria, I am not having that issue, or any other for over 2 years now.
Am saying this because lots of bloggers in Nigeria write against using a web hosting company in Nigeria. But I believe bloggers should not choose web hosting based on its location; but rather on how good and reliable they are experiencing its services.
And having been convinced of the customer service and reliability of the 2 web hosting providers am using in Nigeria, I can perfectly say that I made a good choice in leaving the foreign web hosting company I used before.
Why I abandoned my foreign web hosting company.
When I began my profession as a blogger, I was using a foreign web hosting company; where I hosted like 6 to 7 domains on their unlimited hosting plan.
A year later when my billing cycle was due for payment, the hosting provider had changed their payment method; which made it difficult for me to make payments with my master card as I used to.
I approached them about the issue, and they told me to look for another hosting service provider. And the painful part of it is that it took them like 3 days to give me a response.
While the worst part of it is that they never responded again when I told them to set a payment method that will favor me here in Nigeria.
They refused to chat with me back or reply to my support tickets.
So in desperation; since my service had a few days to expire, I purchased a web hosting plan in Nigeria so I could move my domains, but I was only able to move 3 domains before my service was suspended.
This particular domain was one I was able to move, but the painful part of it is that I was unable to restore the backup I made from the other service.
And as a result of that, I lost all my files and had to install the blog afresh and start blogging all over again.
Why web hosting in Nigeria is good, even though it may seem cheap.
There are several articles online that condemn using a web hosting company in Nigeria, simply because they are cheap.
Many of them claim that the domains hosted on these services are slow. In other words, they are not optimized for speed; and they blame it on the web hosting providers.
But as a web engineer managing so many blogs and sites hosted by a Nigerian web hosting company, I want to let you know that the speed of a blog or website does not necessarily depend on the hosting provider, but on how the particular blog or website is optimized.
There are several measures you need to implement to make your blog or website load as quickly as possible, and also make it mobile-friendly; since a good percentage of traffic is nowadays generated on mobile devices.
So if you are running a blog or website built and managed by someone else where you lack access to the C-Panel where it is hosted; never blame the slowness of your blog on your hosting provider.
Often times most of the caching and backup plugins you are using are slowing your WordPress blog down so horribly.
Conclusion.
Finally, I want to recommend; based on the good service I experience daily, the 2 cheap web hosting providers I am using here in Nigeria; and are Domainking NG and TrueHost.
And if you run into any issues using them, feel free to let me know in the comment sec