We are pleased to pre-announce that we will be adding soon Hong Kong to the list of server locations available from SinoHosting. We expect it to go live in the first quarter of 2009. Subscribe to our newsletter or to this blog to receive updates when this comes into effect.
If you find that you are not receiving anymore visits from China, or have Chinese customers complain about not being able to visit your website, it might be because the site has been blocked by the Great Firewall. Below are some online tools that you can use to find out the truth:
1-Website Pulse: A great tool to ping websites from Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong. You also have the option to choose a non-China location (Seattle, Munich or Brisbane)
www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html
2-Just Ping: Over 30 locations available worldwide (including Shanghai), you can ping either a website or an IP address
3-Watchmouse: Also offering pinging from 30 locations including Shanghai in China:
After two months of trial period, we are now pleased to announce that Linux OS is now fully available for hosting in China. When signing up you will have the option to choose between Windows and Linux. The Linux hosting comes with Plesk control panel for easy server administration, with the interface available in both English and Chinese. Plans resources are the same as previously for the Windows hosting.
For clients already subscribed to Windows hosting unfortunately it won’t be possible to move your account to Linux hosting. However when your current contract expires you will be able to change it to Linux OS. If you need to purchase now a new Linux hosting account for a domain that was previously on Windows, you will get a 10% discount on the yearly price.
We are pleased to announce the upgrade of our web hosting plans starting immediately:
-Basic Plan: from 100MB to 200MB web space (2GB monthly bandwidth)
-Business Plan: from 300MB to 1,000MB web space (10GB monthly bandwidth)
-Corporate Plan: from 1GB to 5GB web space (25GB monthly bandwidth)
As previously, all the above plans come with free domain name registration.
Prices remain unchanged. We will manually upgrade current clients accounts over the course of the week, if by May 1st your account hasn’t been upgraded, make sure to contact us by email or open a support ticket on our website to get it done.
Please note that the service upgrade applies only to our international/overseas web hosting plans (Singapore, US and UK servers). There is no change for China hosting plans.
To learn more about our web hosting plans, or place an order, please go to our Web Hosting service page.
We are working on expanding our current web hosting product line in the coming weeks with the addition of China dedicated servers and China VPS (Windows OS). We will keep you updated through this blog and our newsletter when these products are launched.
One of the main worries our new clients have when signing up with us is whether their site will not be blocked from access. If you have or expect traffic from China, there is nothing worse than finding out that web visitors are unable to connect to your website.
Although most people know about wikipedia, blogspot blogs, BBC etc., well-known sites that are not accessible from China, the fact is there are thousands and thousands of unknown sites that also are out of reach from Chinese visitors. Most of them are not specifically banned because of their “improper” content, but rather victim of random blocking by the GFW (“great firewall”), or because they share the same IP (shared hosting) with a site that has been blocked.
Many clients that we have, both in China and overseas, were previously hosted by well-known overseas hosting companies (such as Godaddy, Hostgator and the like) but found out that their sites couldn’t be accessed in China. Other sites hosted by the same hosting companies did not suffer the same problem…
The fact is, no hosting company can guarantee a site to be unblocked in China. I would even say that no hosting company, at least the overseas ones, can guarantee its own website(s) to be unblocked here. However, here are six ways that will increase your site chances from not being cut from visitors located in mainland China:
1-Do not publish politically sensitive content (in Beijing’s standards), adult material or the like on your site, otherwise you will risk to trigger the automatic block from the GFW (which will affect by the way all the other sites on the same IP address).
2-If you host overseas, make sure that your host can move your site to a new server/IP address within a minimum time in case it happened that your site was blocked. As a reference, for our overseas-hosted accounts, SinoHosting.net has a system in place to move accounts to a new location in case an IP is found to be blocked, within 30mn after blocking is confirmed.
3-Choose a host who has a no-adult material policy. It will be more difficult however to find a host who will guarantee not hosting sites related to issues Beijing dislikes (Tian An Men, Taiwan, Falungong, Tibet etc.).
4-Get a dedicated IP. If you can afford it and if it makes sense for your site (in terms of potential revenue loss in case of site blocking), you should get a dedicated IP since it will reduce the risks of having your site blocked because of someone else wrongdoings.
5-Host in China. Chinese hosts are less likely to be blocked; downtime can happen only in case of server failure or the hosting company is found to be operating without proper licenses. However if the server is found to host adult or other forbidden materials, the authorities will have the server shut down pending further investigation, and it can take days for your site to be back live.
6-Make regular backups of your site, and make sure you retain your domain name servers (DNS) access. In case the worst was to happen, you will need to have the option to move rapidly to a new host without losing your site and files, within the shortest period of time.
Do you have your own opinion or more advices on keeping your site unblocked in China? Feel free to share.
Our corporate web hosting plan now can be used for up to 5 domains. If you plan to create multiple sites for your company or organization, this is probably the most suitable option. The total web space (1GB), bandwidth (20GB), and e-mail accounts (500) will be shared between the five sub-hosting accounts, and each account will have its own control panel.
The current price of your corporate web hosting package is RMB1,450 per year. Furthermore, you can take advantage of our January promotion and have a 10% discount if you order this package before January 31st, 2008. For more details please visit our web hosting packages page.
Should I host my site in China or overseas? This question is often asked when considering establishing an online presence for the Chinese market. We offer both China (Shanghai, Shenzhen) and overseas (Singapore, UK, USA) hosting, and we have clients coming to us for advice about the best location. At the same time, many do not clearly understand the issues involved and the differences between both choices.
Although making in China seems to be the way to go, we will see through this article that it makes sometimes sense to consider alternative locations.
Speed of access is the main reason why sites serving mainly a (mainland) Chinese audience should be hosted on servers physically located in China. Due to what is usually referred as the “Great Firewall”, overseas traffic to China is filtered, reducing substantially the speed of sites hosted in other countries. Especially when your site is in a shared hosting environment, it can make a huge difference. Clients and potential prospects may not have the time and patience to wait tens of seconds for your site to load, or to go from one page to another.
The second strong point for hosting in China is avoiding to have your site blocked in China. Whole blocks or specific IP addresses are randomly blocked from access in China (when for instance that IP is shared by a politically-“unfriendly”, adult or other types of sites judged not suitable for the Chinese audience, which can trigger the block). Locally-hosted sites are less susceptible of being blocked (unless your hosting company goes into trouble and servers are shut down). Many companies which got tired of having to move from host to host due to their sites being blocked in China ended up setting up an account with a domestic Chinese hosting company.
Now, what is negative about hosting in China and why should you consider hosting overseas instead? Here is a list of six factors that can be critical for your business:
1-ICP license. All sites hosted in China are required to apply for an ICP (internet content provider) license. The process can take from two weeks to a couple of months. The ICP can be applied as an individual, but for a corporate website your business license will be needed. You can sure operate your website prior to obtaining the ICP license (or not apply for one at all), but at any time the relevant authorities may ask your web hosting company to shut down your account.
2-Censorship: Hosting in China will force you to self-censor your website, as any sensitive content (especially if in Chinese language) may mean trouble for you and your host. If your site has blogs and forums in Chinese language, you will need to be very careful and you may even be required to apply for additional licenses.
3-Data security and copyright: There has been many cases of Chinese datacenters selling data hosted on their servers to third parties. The likelihood of having your site copied and your pages contents or confidential information stolen is definitely higher when hosted on Chinese servers. Rule of law in the hosting industry is almost inexistent, and for copyright infringement issues you will have all the trouble to get any assistance from law enforcement organizations.
4-Cost: hosting in China is more expensive when compared to overseas (especially the US), especially for larger space plans. It can make a real difference over a couple of years.
5-Technical support: English-language technical support is in most cases not available from most of the Chinese web hosting companies and datacenters. On the other hand, if you were used to a 24/7 support from your host overseas, in China you will have to settle for business hours only. If your site happens to go down or have problems on Saturday, your only option would be to wait till Monday for a technician to get it resolved. You can imagine the impact on your holiday sales.
6-Email: if email is an important part of your business, then you should definitely not host in China. Or, as we recommend to most of our clients, even if your web hosting is in China, keep the email hosting overseas. Many shared Chinese IP addresses are heavily used by spammers, ending up in blacklists, meaning your sent emails will in most cases find themselves in spam boxes of the recipients. It is true that European and US mail servers can be very slow when used in China (both for POP and SMTP servers), so alternative locations in south east Asia should be considered instead.
As we have seen, many factors need to be taken in account when deciding of where to host your website. If only part of your site is in Chinese or your site audience is shared between China and overseas, it makes sense to keep your main site overseas and get a sub-domain or a new .cn domain hosted in China for that specific market. From our own experience, Hong Kong and Singapore make excellent alternative choices if your site is to serve mainly visitors from mainland China, avoiding you the troubles of hosting in China while offering decent access speed.
The prospect of moving an existing site to a new hosting account is often a daunting one. Whether you are planning the move because of poor service/performance of current host, or because of other reasons, including better price/value of the new host, location (moving your site to China for faster access within the country) etc., good planning and preparation is the key to ensure full success.
Depending of the complexity of your site (html vs database-driven, existing email accounts etc.), the move can be done from less than an hour to several hours or even days. It is therefore important to start the process well before your current account is due, and not to close that account until completion to ensure full access to your source files.
We have clients moving to us all the time so we are providing this quick guide that can help them in the process.
1) Create a new account: with your new host, and make sure that it has all the technical capabilities your site requires to function.
2) Back up your files: to your hard drive, through FTP. Depending of your site configuration you may need to back up existing databases from your old hosting control panel. If you have mails not yet downloaded to your computer, do it using your preferred email program (Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, Foxmail etc.)
3) Check your files and links: your new host may provide you with a temporarily url/subdomain. If not, you can use another site your own or create a sub-domain just for this purpose.
4) Create new email accounts: with your new host, from the Control Panel and matching your old email accounts.
5) Transfer your domain by pointing your DNS to the new host: to change the domain name servers values, you will need access to the control panel of your domain name. This can be a problem if the domain is with your old host, or worse, if the domain came for free with your existing account. Many Chinese hosting providers keep tight control over their clients DNS in order to force them to stay in business with them.
After DNS modification it might take several hours to a couple of days for them to propagate over the Internet.
6) Closing your old account: or letting it expire, once the switch is successful, your site working fine on the new hosting account and the email resolving well.
If your domain is with your old host or came for free, you might also consider transferring the domain altogether but the process is much more complicated. To keep things simple you might even consider keeping your domain name with your old host and continue paying them the yearly registration fees (usually less than $10 a year).
If you have a very active database-driven site, it is advised to temporarily stop your website at step 2 until the DNS are updated, since any change to the website will be reflected on the old database and not on the new one from the back up.
We hope this guide will be useful in migrating your hosting account. As you should find out, switching host is less difficult than usually thought if preparation is done well. If you require professional assistance feel free to contact us.
We host over 60% of our clients sites in Singapore, against 20% in China and 20% shared between UK and the US. Singapore is our first recommendation to new clients when it comes to choosing their server location, and here are our five main reasons:
1-Although out of the Great Firewall (meaning slower access speed from mainland China), Singapore is geographically closer and under the same server conditions, sites hosted in Singapore are comparable in terms of speed to those hosted in Hong Kong, and relatively faster than those hosted in Europe and the United States.
2-By hosting in Singapore one is not required to register for an ICP license with the Chinese government-backed relevant organization (it is a must if you host in China though).
3-Singapore-based email servers carry more trust than Chinese ones (email from Chinese IPs have higher chances to be classifieds as spam).
4-Hong Kong seems to be the best alternative location, but hosting in Singapore is substantially cheaper than Hong Kong for almost the same benefits.
5-Singapore has world-class hosting infrastructure, which can not be compared to the options available in mainland China.
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