SinoHosting.net Blog: China Hosting News, Web Hosting Promotions and more

Linux for China hosting

July 6th, 2008 shadmin

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.

Billing system maintenance

June 23rd, 2008 shadmin

We are currently upgrading our billing system (WHCMS), therefore it is not possible to place an order through it for the time being but we hope to get it back online within 24h.

In the meanwhile, all orders will be processed manually through email (support@sinohosting.net)

Singapore server downtime notice

June 20th, 2008 shadmin

Starting from June 15th, one of our Singapore servers had been facing a huge DDOS attack, with the malicious computers found out later to be originating from China. Access to the sites were not possible and we couldn’t move them in the meantime. As a result our own site www.sinohosting.net which was on this server and some of the clients sites that were on the same server were unavailable for a few days while our server admins were resolving the issues.

A temporary solution has been to block access from Chinese IP addresses since the attacks came from China. We are now in the process of moving the sites to new locations and clients will be notified of the new IP addresses soon.

If your site has been affected we do present you our apologies although this was beyond our control. If your site was in another location (China, US or UK) or on one of the other two Singapore servers then you shouldn’t have experienced any issue at all.

Our email server has been affected as well so any support request or email that has been sent in the last 48H has probably been not received. We are working on retrieving the emails and will reply as soon as this is done. For urgent matters please send your emails to sinovantage@gmail.com or directly to Patrick at patrick@sinovantage.cn

China VPS plans debut

May 21st, 2008 shadmin

As announced a few weeks before, we are pleased to launch today our China VPS plans. Both Linux and Windows VPS plans are available. The economy plan starts at RMB350/month (RMB280/mth for a 12 months billing cycle) with 10GB disk space (plus 10GB back up space), 256MB memory, 100GB monthly bandwidth, with Virtuozzo control panel available in English, Chinese and 10+ other languages. For details on all VPS plans available, please check: www.sinohosting.net/china-vps.php

Our dedicated server plans will be available by the end of next month.

Direct credit card payment now available

May 13th, 2008 shadmin

We are pleased to announce that customers worldwide will now be able to pay for our hosting services using their credit cards. In partnership with Payoneer, you will be able to use your Visa or Mastercard credit card (or debit card) to make payments for our web hosting services. If you are based in the United States, you can even pay directly using your bank account.

When placing an order, please choose Credit Card (Mastercard or Visa) as payment method. If you experience any issue or need additional information, please email billing@sinohosting.net

Please note that if you are a Paypal user, you still can use your credit card to fund your payment through Paypal.

Chinese registrars required not to block customers who want to transfer away

April 28th, 2008 shadmin

In a circular notice sent to local registrars, the CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) has sent a reminder that blocking customers who wanted to move to another registrar was unlawful.

Indeed, “domain holding” or “domain ransom” is quite a widespread issue in mainland China, with hosts refusing to release customers domains when they wish to change of company. As a web hosting company, we have been again and again confronted with customers who wanted to move to us from a local Chinese hosting firm (due to poor performance, email delivery issues, high costs etc.), just to find out that the old company is rejecting any assistance in terms of transferring the domain to us. In many cases clients who didn’t want to lose their well-marketed domain names ended up staying with that old company they weren’t satisfied with. The only option in many cases were to keep the domain with the registrar then change the DNS to us only for web hosting/email hosting.

The CNNIC rules are clear in terms of domain transfer: customers CAN freely transfer their domains as long as they are 60 days old and over 15 days away from their expiration date. The domain should not be involved in any dispute and there should not be any outstanding fees to pay to the registrar at the moment the transfer is requested. The registrar is obligated to provide demanding customers with the auth code within three (3) working days. The losing registrar shouldn’t in any case ask for additional fees to authorize the transfer.

If you are about to register a domain name or start a website in China, you should take the following measures in order to avoid finding yourself in such situation: 1. Make sure to use a reputable host who has a clear policy in terms of domain transfer. SinoHosting.net for instance make sure to register all clients domain names under their own names, and they are 100% guaranteed to be able to transfer away if required. 2. If you move a lot, it makes sense to keep your domain registration company different from the actual web hosting company. It might cost a few dollars at most but it may save your business from losing its most important asset.

The litigation process involving the CNNIC or even the Chinese courts for domain names can be very long. Make sure to start from the right foot when you develop an online presence in China.

Web Hosting Plans Upgrade Announcement

April 22nd, 2008 shadmin

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.

Chinese .cn domain names now over 10 millions

March 25th, 2008 shadmin

The dot cn domain names in February have passed the 10 million mark in February this year according to a report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).  This is yet another proof of the booming Internet industry in China, with an estimated 210 million Internet users, and growing.

The dot de (Germany) is the only other ccTLD to have over 10 million registrations. The dot au (Australia) has just passed the one million mark recently, with the dot es (Spain) and dot ca (Canada) expected to make it very soon.

SinoHosting.net offers dot cn domain names at RMB50, or free with most of our hosting plans. Protect your brand or get into the Chinese market by securing your .cn domain name today.

Email Hosting: Small Business Plan now offers 20 accounts

March 10th, 2008 shadmin

Beginning today, SinoHosting.net’s Small Business Email Hosting Plan can be used to set up up to 20 email accounts. Previously, the plan offered a maximum of 5 accounts. The total space remains the same, 1GB. The decision has been made following customer feedback, and we understood that many clients, especially those using Outlook, Thunderbird and other email management softwares, could use more accounts on that space without the need to upgrade to the higher plan (Enterprise Email Hosting, 2GB, 100 email accounts, RMB900/Year)

The package pricing remains the same, RMB500/Year (by the way one of the most competitive in mainland China). We use Singapore-based servers for our email hosting plans. The control panel is in English by default, but available as well in Chinese and over 10 major European languages.

If you are currently a client for on this package, your account should be upgraded automatically. If not, feel free to contact us immediately.

Shanghai server downtime notice

March 4th, 2008 shadmin

As you may have noticed if your site is hosted on our China servers, our Shanghai-hosted sites were down from late Sunday afternoon throughout Monday. This was due to a server suspension notice that came after some user hosted on the same IP range in the China Telecom datacenter (not from our company however), where our server resides, was found to have uploaded some “unauthorized” content. SinoHosting.net apologizes for the downtime caused, but it was beyond our scope of influence.

Sites are back online now, if you continue to experience any problems make sure to contact us immediately.