Special
Report
The Truth Of Singapore Web Hosting Industry
Update Dec 2003: We're Fighting Back !
This is our story.
This web site was up on Aug 1st, 2003 and
was listed on Aug 7th, at 21th position for "Singapore
web hosting" in Google and Yahoo. We did some SEO tweaking
to the site and it climbed to No.4 in 15 days. Further SEO
made it to No.1 spot on Sep 10, 2003 for all our target
keywords: "Singapore web hosting", "Singapore
web design", "Singapore web promotion", among
some others.
Then we noticed something. One of the major
players of web hosting industry in Singapore set up a new
site applying our search engine optimization techniques,
even some mistakes, and was doing quite well in Google.
It's perfectly ok for us. Actually we sent them a short
friendly email to say congratulations.
They ignored our message surprisingly. Many
of our competitors are really our good friends. We do not
become enemies just because we're competitors. So we thought
it's alright to say "congratulations" and "thank
you" between competitors like what we do with others...
Anyway, we're ok if they regards us as pure competitor.
One day, when I surf around their site, there's
one page that drew my attention. On that page they say:
"However,
there are others who may be dishonest with you claiming
they have nothing to do with the parent hosting company
and is only providing their own services. You may find it
even more ironical when someone claimed to be selling web
hosting services in Singapore but had their web hosting
package pricing rate in USD. Even worse, the site may just
be a promotion site for that particular web hosting company
he is reselling for, where he is earning money through you
as you are act as a referral to them."
Well, this is simply not true.
Let me put these two points up front:
- We're not sure if they're referring to this web site,
but it's possible
- Please anyone let us know if it's against copyright
law to quote a paragraph from other's web site to explain
something. We'll correct it immediately. We don't think
so though.
Now let me explain why their statement is
not true.
The first sentence we agree. When we start,
we state it clearly on this web site, in the special
report, on FAQ page, that
we're not providing hosting service. We're only recommending
an excellent hosting company in US. End users will be their
customers, not ours.
Now what's wrong to have hosting price in
US$? Some Singapore hosting service providers have or rent
servers in US and quote price directly in US$. Most credit
card processing companies only process transactions in US$
and anyone using these services would rather let customers
know what's the exact charges. In some cases, like what
we do on this site, customers are dealing with a US provider
directly. There's nothing dishonest. There's nothing wrong.
If you've ever tried to pay to get listed
in Yahoo Singapore, you should know they charge US$299 for
reviewing. Anyone ever suspects Yahoo Singapore is being
dishonest?
Now comes to "earning money" part.
What's wrong with promoting another company, a good company,
in exchange for some benefit? I'm sure everyone's heard
of a thing called "advertising". You pay another
party - cash or some sort of benefit - to promote your own
products or services. Why it's worse? Or why it's bad in
the first place?
Again, we state clearly on FAQ
page, we recommend the hosting company we ourselves use
and trust, in exchange they give us free hosting accounts.
Will this hurt end users? No, customers get the same price
- whether you go there through this web site or not. You
get the same service, same price. This is truly win-win-win
situation.
Anyone claiming this is not right, does not
really understand e-commerce. You can learn how affiliate
programs work on the Internet by reading
this article.
Finally, and most importantly, is this an
valid excuse for them to charge TEN
TIMES MORE for the same services?
The web
hosting service we recommend charges US$7.95 (less than
S$14) flat fee per month for 800MB storage/40G bandwidth.
And guess how much that Singapore big boy charges? S$45
for 200MB or S$108 for 600MB ! It's a reasonable estimate
then they're charging around S$145 for 800MB. You do the
calculation.
Of course, I've to admit, they have every
right to choose their own pricing structure. That's not
the problem. But it does not mean others that provide cheaper
services are bad or worse. Don't you think that's actually
whole lot better? You may find the cheaper ones directly
or through third party. It does not matter. You have the
same price and service.
We don't think it's logical to say this: "We
have to charge much higher because you come direct to us."
If advertising or promoting other's businesses
is bad, MediaCorp can close down. SPH should not exist.
Come back to the topic. We,
Small Fish, Are Fighting Back!
We did careful research. We got our own local
server. And we found that we can offer hosting services
at much better price. We're offering 100MB for S$6.97, up
to 500MB for S$24.97 here.
Not as good as the US provider but we are trying our best
to provide cheap
and reliable web hosting services.
Actually we also found a couple of other smaller
local hosts offering good values. Things are changing. 100
bucks per month is way too expensive in our opinion.
This is the beauty of competition, isn't it?
:-)
Or check out our new
hosting service site :-)
|
