For many years, the great firewall program in China has made it rare for businesses with operations or sales in China to market their services in the middle Kingdom, due to the various restrictions when it comes to hosting a website locally. Many global providers in the United States or Europe have their servers blocked or extremely slow to access from China. Due to that reason, it is of critical importance for big businesses as well as entrepreneurs of all sizes to find a web hosting firm that has services targeting web traffic from China, especially when such businesses do not have the local presence in China to obtain the various licenses for hosting content locally.
At MyChinaHosting, we have reviewed the existing solutions available in the market today and have come up with a shortlist of 3 great web hosts that can provide China targeted web hosting for global businesses, but also local companies in China that do not want to go through all the paperwork. Some of them have already been mentioned on our blog in the past.
#1: China Hoster
Among the three hosts selected, ChinaHoster is the newest. It comes with the crown however due to the fact that it has been developped with China Optimization in mind. ChinaHoster effectively solves the problem of not being able to host in China while most of one’s clients are based there. Operating from servers at China Telecom datacenters in Hong Kong, ChinaHoster has built a custom solution that combines using dedicated China bandwidth from Hong Kong with the use of DNS servers by Aliyun in China. Even the IP addresses used are registered in China so this is especially useful for Baidu SEO or optimizing websites for Chinese search engines. Ping times from China are excellent and very close to native China hosting in Shanghai or Beijing. The fact that ChinaHoster has among its clients foreign companies operating in China as well as local Chinese firms is a testimonial to the excellence of their service.
ChinaHoster is a Weebly Authorized Partner so if you are used to using this worldclass Sitebuilder platform, this will give you the opportunity to host your weebly-built website in Hong Kong and ensure fast access for your website visitors based in China or elsewhere in Asia.
ChinaHoster offers Personal Hosting, Business Hosting, Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Hosting all using the same model. The cloud and dedicated hosting servers all come with cPanel included.
This link on ChinaHoster website helps you to compare this company with the other alternatives in China, Hong Kong and the US.
-Pros: low pings+fast speed from China, SLA Guarantee, Weebly Support, 21 Days moneyback guarantee, 10-Day Free trial
-Cons: More expensive than alternative hosts
#2: Sino Hosting
SinoHosting has been around since 2007 and is considered the go-to-company when it comes to hosting for foreign companies operating in China. It is a true multi-location web hosts as it has servers in mainland China (Shanghai & Beijing), Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States and Europe.
SinoHosting offers shared hosting, VPS, dedicated servers and server locations at various locations.
Companies registered in China can apply for an ICP license and host their websites on Chinese servers through SinoHosting. During the ICP license application, SinoHosting can host your website temporarily on their Hong Kong servers.
-Pros: Affordable, Multiple locations, Niche market leaders
-Cons: No free trial
#3: Aliyun
Aliyun (or Ali Cloud) is Alibaba’s cloud and hosting arm. If you are looking for a cloud server this is probably your best option. Aliyun offers cloud servers at various locations in mainland China, Hong Kong and the USA, among others.
-Pros: Large, Self-Owned Infrastructure, International Company
-Cons: No free trial, Targets primarily Chinese companies, Lack of English Support
We hope you will find this review useful. If you have other companies that you would like to recommend, please do so in the comments.