Web Hosting in Nigeria
Hosting your website in Nigeria or selecting a good web hosting company can be quite a challenge. Despite the large online community, recently put at about 10 million, the western world has adamantly refused to open up internet access for Nigerians. It is not uncommon to see Nigerians battle daily trying hard to do business online. The greatest challenge of doing business online in Nigeria is the problem of online payment. Unlike some African countries like Benin, Mali, Gambia, Zambia, South Africa, Egypt, Togo and many others that are allowed to use PayPal , Nigerians are neither allowed to send nor receive money with PayPal-so this could be a big challenge.
Choosing a Web Hosting Company in Nigeria
Web masters who want to keep their clients happy or website owners who do not want to have sleepless nights as their subscription expiry date draws near will find this very useful.
1. There is a tendency for many people to start a web hosting business in without having a proper grasp of what it entails and the amateur services you will get is a pointer that you are in for trouble. So always look for experienced web hosting companies. Any company that has been in the business of offering web hosting services for about three years should have enough experience to handle your worries.
2. Except you have a functional PayPal account, do not use web hosting companies that are not run by Nigerians based in Nigeria. The reason is simple. A web hosting website based in Nigeria will accept payment methods that every Nigerian can easily have access to. Examples are Liberty Reserve, direct payment into a Nigerian Bank, Interwsitch ATM Cards, Nigerian Master Cards and Visa Cards and Google Checkout. Avoid websites whose only forms of payment are PayPal, Moneybookers, 2checkout, Alertpay etc. These last four do not allow Nigerians.
3. Domain registration should be handled in such a manner that, you have access to it all times and can move your web site to another web hosting company whenever you so desire without issues.
4. Examine their support system and see how responsive they are. This is very important as you do not want to be saddled with a web hosting company that will take weeks to respond to your queries. A 24 hours response time is acceptable as industry standard.
5. There are so many mushroom websites out there claiming to offer affordable web hosting in Nigeria. Don?t always go for cheap web hosting. Though cheap is not always equivalent to poor services, my advice is that, cost shouldn?t be your only selection criteria. The average cost of webhosting is Nigeria is between N5000-N7000/year ($25-$50/year) for 1GB disk space that could offer as much as 5 GB monthly bandwidth. This will usually include a domain name with unlimited FTP account, unlimited Emails and MYSQL Database etc.
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Emmanuel Ekanem is the author of this article on Webhosting in Nigeria.
Find more information about Hosting in Nigeria here.