Web hosting reviews for India

While researching for a dedicated web host for myself, I stumbled upon several threads (thread1, thread2, thread3 & numerous others) on WebHostingTalk related to web hosting in India. After researching further and reading some additional posts on the forum, I dont know which is better - opting for a dedicated web host located in the US or located in India.

From the WHT forum, it seems that following are the common problems with web hosts located in India

- Very expensive
- Poor customer service
- Uptime issues

However, if majority of your website visitors are going to be from India, opting for a host located in US can lead to increased latency and very high ping times (at times 300 ms) — which translates to slow website responses. On the forums, some even suggested opting for website hosting in a country which has geographical proximity to India and multiple hosting options (eg - Singapore, Hong Kong, UK etc.)
I got intrigued by the issue and decided to research on how many web hosting providers in India actually have their own data centers.

After a lot of digging and numerous Google queries, I found the following data centers in India:

1) TATA VSNL Data Center (website): They seem to have data centers located in various cities in India. Basic hosting costs Rs/- 550. Here’s their price chart.
2) Reliance Data Center (website): Again, data centers across various cities in India. Basic plan starts from Rs/- 9000. Here’s their price chart.

3) Sify hosting (website): Couldnt find details about price plans and such on their website. There’s a chance I overlooked - if so, please correct me.

4) Net4India (website): Enterprise plans start at Rs/- 12000 and basic plans start at Rs/- 1500. Here’s their price chart.

5) Palcom (website): Wide variety of hosting plans. Here’s their price chart.

6) Spectranet (website): Several hosting plans to choose from.

7) AirTel (website): Couldnt locate a pricing chart and neither could find a way to purchase online - please correct me if I overlooked.

Note: I make no claims that the above list is comprehensive. If I missed out any, please let me know, I’ll add them to the list.

The quest did not end there. I decided to find out where the Indian startups choose to host their site. So, I did a ‘tracert‘ and IP-to-country lookup for a small subset of Indian startups and below are the results:

Minglebox — Rackspace, USA
Onyomo - Delhi, India
Picsquare - go daddy, usa
Guruji - terrawiz, usa
Carwale - mumbai,india
Seventymm - sify hosting
Yatra - vsnl, mumbai

Hmm..Interesting findings. Feel free to provide your input about hosting related experiences in the comments. Your input may be valuable to the entire community.

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This entry was written by pranav and posted on February 10, 2007 at 11:37 pm and filed under Default. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

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29 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. Rackspace is a proven player in this space. Although I can’t say the same about VSNL. If their customer service for broadband is anything to go buy…I would think and think and think and think and then decide on another provider. VSNL’s call center is one big dev null center.

    kamla

    1. kamla on February 11th, 2007 at 2:03 pm

  2. Thnx Kamla for your valuable input. Other established US players who provide great customer support & amazing service are thePlanet.com, mediatemple, lunarpages, layeredtech etc..I’ve heard similar nightmares about VSNL from my friends.

    -pranav.

    2. pranav on February 11th, 2007 at 2:58 pm

  3. You missed one of the big daddies of Indian telecom: BSNL

    Prices at http://www.bsnl.co.in/newsdetailed.php?news_id=353#webcolocation

    3. Deepak Shenoy on February 13th, 2007 at 6:32 am

  4. I would like to recommend NettiGritty.com(bangalore based) for Web Hosting. I am not sure how big is this company but they have an excellent service and prompt customer support. They never took more than 10 mins to respond to any service ticket. From the price perspective also they seems to be reasonable. http://www.nettigritty.com

    In past we hosted our website at IndiaTimes Hosting. I don’t have words to express my frustration due to their pathetic customer support. Many times the server use to go down on weekend.. which get fixed only on monday morning.

    -Praveen
    http://www.allindiadeals.com

    4. Praveen Modi on February 17th, 2007 at 5:45 am

  5. Thanks Praveen for your valuable input.

    -pranav.

    5. Pranav on February 19th, 2007 at 10:56 am

  6. Hi

    Yes the web hosting in India is very expensive. The main problem is that Bandwidth is very costly in India. The best datacenter and network in India are from Satyam, VSNL.

    We use VSNL ’s Mumbai and Bangalore datacenter. If the customers are from India , then hosting in India will definetly provide benefits over USA based hosting. VSNL’s global network reach is very good and unmatched by any other provider.

    6. Jitesh Ghushe on March 7th, 2007 at 11:31 am

  7. Rediff - VSNL Mumbai / Reliance Mumbai

    7. Arun on March 23rd, 2007 at 3:07 am

  8. The Cheapest web hosting as far as i know is http://www.manashosting.com located in bangalore. Check it out.

    -
    Mahesh

    8. Mahesh on March 29th, 2007 at 1:45 am

  9. Mahesh,

    Cheap is seldom better. I (and pretty sure several others too) wouldnt mind paying a few extra bucks for better service and reliable hosting.

    -pranav.

    9. pranav on March 29th, 2007 at 1:56 am

  10. Pranav,

    It has 360 dgree of service: cheap, reliability, BEST service, robust, servers are up all the time.

    [./.]
    Mahesh

    10. Mahesh on March 30th, 2007 at 1:19 am

  11. Hi,

    Very valuable input and Here in coimbatore a very well known group known as ABT Group of Sakthi sugars doing fantastic works on the side of webhosting services with very fantastic support.
    you can check with them for the services. visit them at http://www.abtinfo.net

    With regards,

    Srijith.

    11. srijith on April 20th, 2007 at 3:47 am

  12. When I was planning to start a web 2.0 site targetted at Indian audience, I called up, Relliance, Sify and few other. Finally I thought its better never to buy a dedicated server in India because of the high costs and not so good customer service.
    I really suggest to go for RackForce Dedicated Servers for their technical expertise, lesser cost, perfect customer service.
    If you wanna go for hosting for a personal blog go for MediaTemple which I use for my blog and business web sites.
    I still really feel there is no world class web hosting , mainly dedicated server hosting, available in India at an affordable price.
    I might be some what harsh in saying that, but thats the realty I experienced when I was searching for a good dedicated server host which has its servers located in India.

    12. Chandra on April 24th, 2007 at 5:29 am

  13. It is true in India dedicated server is costly but hosting is not now a days hosting is getting cheaper as they have dedicated server from US. When i was searching dedicated server i also end up finding US based. As it is fast and service is good.
    It is really unfortunate but have no other choice.

    13. Amrita Walia on May 22nd, 2007 at 1:59 pm

  14. After hitting around many walls i found this

    http://www.netmagicsolutions.com

    a bit costly but very reliable. All depends on SLA.

    Arun

    14. Arun on June 9th, 2007 at 11:45 am

  15. thanks arun..appreciate the input.

    15. pranav on June 11th, 2007 at 5:20 pm

  16. Hello

    We have started operation at Netmagic datacenter in mumbai and will be booking a rack at their Bangalore datacenter also which is comming up in few months.

    We also operate at VSNL datacenter in Mumbai and Banagalore.

    17. Dedicated server India on June 30th, 2007 at 2:16 am

  17. RackSpace in USA is really good data center for server hosting or web site hosting. I have visited to their US data center and also I am working with one of their venture company.

    So if you want to host a server or a web site in USA the best choice is RackSpace.

    Thanks,
    ~V

    18. Vaibhav on July 4th, 2007 at 7:39 am

  18. plz dont go through manashosting.com.Very very pooor customer support.The whole money will be waste if you host on it.I hav enough experience in that.

    19. rahul on July 24th, 2007 at 8:14 am

  19. Thats right, manashosting.com are overselling a lot, hence the low prices. They rely upon the fact that users won’t consume the whole space/bandwidth that they buy, but things would get messy once the server is overloaded. Haven’t heard good things about their support either. I have my websites hosted at http://www.SpriteHost.com , their prices are good, and so is the service & support. They are based in Trivandrum, get in touch with Arun (09387662000) for details.

    20. Anit on July 27th, 2007 at 4:44 pm

  20. i use web space from manashosting. they are very good. because i like thire tech support and thire server uptime and speed. they are real top hosting company of india.

    21. aksha on July 31st, 2007 at 9:54 am

  21. manashosting is absolutely waste. Once your site would go down, there would be no one to even bring it up. I have contacted customer support as well but no response.

    22. Manish on July 31st, 2007 at 1:36 pm

  22. Manashosting people are pathetic - i don’t know what is the problem , but seems they have a very big problem communicating in english and don’t seem to understand what u are trying to tell them for atleast 3 days. Hopeless and pathetic sometimes they resemble the call center guys from india - don’t grasp what the customer is trying to say….

    23. Saj on August 1st, 2007 at 1:47 am

  23. Manashosting is one of the leading webhosting companies.I am really getting good support from them and i have 65 domains with them .previously i was with other hosting companies but they cheated so much that i switched to Manashosting and i am really enjoying my space at 1500/ year

    24. Travelsdesk on August 7th, 2007 at 9:44 am

  24. Travelsdesk, Care to update us with the hosting companies that cheated you? - I would like to stay away from them. Please provide as many names as possible.

    25. Ashwin on August 7th, 2007 at 11:41 am

  25. Hi,
    we are facing the same problem . our website uttarparamunicipality.org is not running properly.

    26. debasis on August 21st, 2007 at 7:05 am

  26. nettigritty.com does not have server is India i think.

    27. Kannan on August 22nd, 2007 at 2:53 am

  27. I was with manashosting.com for sometime but that was the worse decision that I taken ever. They are just useless guys. After having too many issues I signed up with http://www.realvaluehosting.com about six months ago. They have good support and uptime is too good. I would recommend real value hosting to everybody who require reliable and good tech. support company.

    28. Jitender Mathur on August 29th, 2007 at 7:04 am

  28. So which is best the best website hosting provider..???

    still this question has not been answered.

    29. Bhishm on August 29th, 2007 at 8:47 am

  29. I have tried around 30 odd hosts and I find Bluehost to be the best in the shared server sector and Wiredtree as far as VPS and Dedicated Servers go

    30. Pravin on September 2nd, 2007 at 5:57 am

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