Hosting Business in Pakistan – Still a Dilemma

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Websites in Pakistan are doubling up, no doubt about it. More websites mean more opportunity for hosting companies. But when I look around, at my friends, friends of friends I don’t see them trusting much on local hosting companies.

As a matter of fact, ProPakistani would love to do business with a local company, for instance our servers are locally hosted – it would give us a pleasant feeling along with some technical advantages, for instance shorter route for severing audience in Pakistan (as 95 percent of traffic on this website comes from Pakistan).

But this is too expensive, as of now, due to extremely high bandwidth rates. For instance, one average P4 server is offered at Rs. 25,000-Rs. 35,000. Then there comes issues like electricity backups, and so many others.We won’t get into those details regarding dedicated solutions, instead we will focus on hosting companies that are offering shared hosting accounts.

Question arises, why Pakistani Hosts are not considered reliable? And why do they end up getting low-profiled websites or the starters only (who don’t own a credit card)?

For the purpose we spoke to few webmasters and to those doing hosting business in Pakistan.

But first, let’s look at the structure of Pakistan hosting companies (for most of them, if not all). I won’t get into much technicalities, but in layman terms, Hosting companies lease a dedicated server or even a VPS (from another hosting company) at a remote location (let’s say in US). Now the technical guys look after the administration of this VPS (of course remotely), while the sales team (with help of a website) tries to sell their hosting packages. There can be chances that total of 2 persons are managing all the operations, sales, support and the administration.

Now, as a curse, price war is here too, meaning that they will have to offer one year hosting for as low as Rs. 2,000 that is 2$ a month (or even lower), even worst – domain name is included in it. Hosts keep accommodating hundreds of websites (customers) with the same server until resources overflow and server starts crashing down.

I want to clear one thing, that this doesn’t happen with every hosting company of Pakistan, but for most of them, this story can be termed true.

On other hands, customers with no-credit cards end up closing a deal with one of such local hosting company; however, soon customers withdraw the deal or he gets used to of server down times.

As a conclusion, if customer is running a critical website with a demand for 100 percent up-time, he may preach so many others to not to buy a hosting account from local company.

Even worst has happened with few customers, one of them is Shahzad of Apnay.PK, a newly launched social network for Pakistan.

Just a little story, before we conclude this topic, Shahzad got this social network website developed from a local company and paid hefty amount. He got a hosting account with Nexus, and kicked off his business. He says that he advertised his website online and offline through banners and brochures. He had 4,000 registered users when suddenly his website went off-air. Repetitive calls to Nexus didn’t resolve his issue, instead after 3 days he was told that it was a hard disk crash and nothing can be done to bring his data back.

In short he lost 4000 registered users, database, tons of image files and all that stuff which social media users upload with their profiles.

Shazad told us that when he bought this hosting Nexus had confirmed him that they take backups every minute. It was going to be impressive if they had fulfilled the commitment, but it never happened.

And there would lot of other such stories, but let’s jump to our recommendations

Recommendations for Hosting Businesses:

Like you can’t setup a cellular company, reason: it requires huge money, similarly, hosting business can’t be run with only couple of thousand dollars. You need to have trained staff to handle critical situation – and believe me trained people are expensive.

For instance, a highly trained server admin, who is offering his services at 40$ an hour to an offshore company may not come to you for PKR 100,000 per month.

Solution for this situation can be, or say a short cut method for offering hosting services (with not much investment), get a reseller account that comes with end-user support. All you need is to re-sell their packages and keep your commission.

Recommendations for Webmasters:

Keep your backups, as recent as you can. Ask your friends/family for recommendations before going live with a local company. Don’t save PKR 1,000 or 2,000 if you want to save down times.

Recommendations for Authorities:

We don’t have regulation for hosting companies, for instance, Shahzad had not many options to follow when his data was lost (a direct financial loss to his business). Though he has filed a case with FIA, but I am afraid we don’t have protocols to follow in such situations.

If PTA is considerably working on ICT promotion, here is another door open to work at.

Update:

Nexus has responded to the this posts here and here.

Regarding Shahzad (apnay.pk) case, Nexus claims that his ticket was answered in hours, records of which are available, and his account was restored from backups. Comment further said that most of his files were restored without issue.

Dissimilar: ProPakistani had a hosting project (reseller account), which we didn’t continue due to in-availability of credit cards with local customers.

Tech and telecom reporter for over 15 years


  • Hi,

    Thanks for your informative information and i am agree with you for that kind of business, especially in Pakistan. Nexus is not a small company but i think they have too customers and very small tech staff so that’s the reason they are not taking backups but they increase their customers even server has full over loaded etc don’t worry for this because you are just paying Rs. 2000/yearly with Domain and not paying 2000/m.

    Actually, first when you read the TOS of the hosting company they clearly mention that Hosting Company will not responsible any data loss but when we talk US companies they are taking backups on their same server or another location if you face any issue then you can easily restore that backups.

    I am attached with Hosting Business since 2003 and our all servers are located in USA – ThePlanet data center, but we take backups regularly on the server.

    So kindly i will suggest all of them if you need UPTIME then you must have to invest some more money like 4000/y etc to go to USA companies.

  • Nice Article Aamir!

    And as much as I ‘m sad for Shahzad, its also a clear reason why even local people never believe local companies.

  • Congratulation on providing such detailed information.

    In past, many small web hosting companies disappeared without handing over domain information to clients and clients lost their data and domain name. For domain name, it is better to register a domain directly.

    Managing database is still a big issue for local hosting companies, usually they offer packages with 0 or 1 mysql database, and in case of any problem (like database crash), they are not able to help at all.

    I always register domain with some international company like godaddy and hosting for busy sites from hosting companies offering 99.99% guaranteed uptime and realtime databackups.

    Regards,

  • Hey guys , i am selling offshore hosting plans , if any one is interested kindly let me know. The packages can be seen here

    [Comment edited – No adverts pls]

  • Hmm Nice article.
    There are many hosting companies in Pakistan you can easily find them but to be honest not all of them looks serious in their business.
    Some hosting sites have ugly layout with prices touching the sky.Some of the other hosting sites in dont have their local office they just got an internet identity.
    I have purchased a domain once from Nexus they are not a bad hosting company but the problem is they have too many customers.
    We got the problem of Loadshedding also so it would be very expensive for hosting companies in Pakistan to have their own Data Centers,Servers etc and backing them up.
    I would prefer Hosting outside Pakistan or an affiliated hosting.

  • PTCL is providing web hosting at very high prices as one can buy VPS with dedicated ips in that prices look at the last package of PTCL its about 35000 RS :o / Year in that budget you can buy vps for 1 year with more than 80 GB disk space.

  • Well, I have so soo much to talk about when it comes to hosting in Pak. I actually considered starting hosting company in Pakistan but it didn’t work out. (And there are so many reasons for that)

    Personally, I dont like any host in Pak and I have solid reasons for that (Like the example you quoted). Hosts dont have any standard/values here. Customer service is similar to ISPs and you all know how that works.

    There is nothing wrong in providing hosting with VPS (US/UK based) if you know what you are doing. But if you are considering hosts that have servers within Pakistan, then you have to wait at least 10 more years to consider them as your hosting providers.

    I might write a detailed article on that for ProPakistani. (Because there is a lot more that you haven’t covered here)

    • I would comment/criticize your growth rate / estimation of 10 years is too much for that,not to mention bandwidth charges for 1 mb before 2 years were above 50,000 and now you can get it for about 1200 rupees only.

      Altough, it will remain a tough question for pakistani hosting companies about the data to remain intact, we do know that mobilink,telenor, ufone and other companies data are not that secured that much,as it should be.

  • Dear all

    i am running web hosting company when i started work i search in pakistan that is there any affiliation or organization in which we affiliate our business so we can build confidence of the local costomers first i registered business name with fbr and got ntn number and then i open bank account in the name of company. then i call software association of pakistan to register my company in hosting business they said we are not registering these kinds of companies so is there any body know that where i find regulations and affiliation so we can registered our business as web hosting providers.

    Because there are many peoples work from home and try to sell hosting from reseller hosting packages as long as they getting clients they are happy to provide but when they are not getting clients they pack there luggage and start new hosting company with different name and bank account i have many examples as i am also selling reseller accounts

    regards

    Amir Bashir

  • Nearly all hosting companies thorough out the world don’t provide 100% data guarantee and it is usually mentioned in the “terms of service” that user must keep backup copy. You may loose your data due to equipment failure, hacking attempts and numerous other reasons. So it may not be fair to blame a hosting company for data loss that is due to your irresponsible work behavior/ neglegance. Users must take the backups.

    In recent past ProPakistani site was victum of hacking attempts and they recovered their work/site through the backup.

    We are in the habit of blaming local/Pakistani products and services. We want free or dirt cheap rates for a quality service/ product. Stop day dreaming and be Realistic.

    I my opinion a decent business hosting account should be offered for $15 per month (around Pak Rs 1500 per month). It is not hardware/bandwidth but the people who run a service.

    If we purchase around $5 per month hosting accounts then we should be prepared for down times and hardware crashes. People when purchase cheap Chineese stuff they know it is without any guarantee/ warranty. Same applies for hosting services.

    It is pertinent to mention here the real cause behind the hosting dilemma and dirty price war. It is all due to an Indian company http://www.resellerclub.com/ and http://directi.com/ . Many hosting companies in Pakistan are knowingly or unknowingly reselling the services offered by these Indian Companies. (and PTA is unaware of this fact)

    Think that thousands of Pakstani Businesses are using emails services hosted by Indian company resellerclub.com. So by offering cheap rates these companies may be harvesting our business intelligence.

    Through this post I request the Pakistani Hosting Companies to take this point seriously. Also PTA should take some measures in this regard. Some sort of legislation or licensing should be there ues. PTA should formalize this sector for sake of national interest not for milking money and there should be no or very little licensing fee.

    We learn from experiences and all web masters need take backups regularly!

    • College, i disagree with you in rates matter/ at $6 /month, you have quality service with real time backups. I can provide you the information with real proof. Maximum $7/month is the highest amount for a quality service.
      Secondly, i want to say that Nexus is very cheap in terms of quality of service. I also became a victim of them, they have 3rd class hardware and other stuff. They have hosted a lot of customers and even didn’t bothered to look at server limitation. Due to some false signs, i selected Nexus and now screwed.

      • .
        A women in modern dress roaming in Islamabad Super Market is considered as Fashionable Lady, but back in her home town people will consider her dress not according to fashion but indecent. So Fashion is a Relative Term.

        I think Quality is also a relative term and business/serious hosting users have their specific needs. Apart from quality network and equipment we need quality phone support etc.

        Now the companies providing hosting in $5-7 range lack in these areas. Email service of such companies is not so good and not suitable for Business users.

        There is a saying “sasta royee baar baar mangha royee aik baar”

        .

        • Dear college sb, hostgator and bluehost are providing 24×7 live chat and phone support besides e-mail support for all hosting plans.

          http://support.hostgator.com/

          Sir ya real life ha, is ko hypothesis (a theory in stat subject) na banain.
          You supposed that companies offering service in range of $5-7 are not good in e-mail, just pay visit to my posted link and see yourself their service quality.
          There is also another saying “suni sunai baat pr yaqin mat karo”.

          • I think we are discussing here hosting options for “Pakistani Users” and “Pakistani Hosting Companies”.

            I think that hostgator staff don’t speak our regional languages e.g Urdu, Pushtoo, Baluchi etc. Do they?

            There is another concept “Economy of Scale”. With small user base and price range of Rs: 500 ($5-7) per month there is only one option for Pakistani Hosting Companies to compromise on service quality.

            Unless we, the Pakistani hosting consumers are willing to pay reasonable hosting fee how can we expect a good Pakistani hosting provider with international standard setup?

  • Well this is all about concern, opportunities are always there. Though not hosted in Pakistan, yet people can take initiative of making reliable hosting in Pakistan.
    Sharing my own experience, i have many servers in USA and running my hosting business here in Pakistan. I agree that people do not believe in local companies yet you have to take initiative.

    At HostLambda.com i have almost 95% foreign customers and currently my customer count is around 78.

    Though main problem for Pakistani customers is PayPal and Credit Cards but still bank transfers can be initiated if we have to make it common.

    Whatsoever is the case at local, being in Pakistan, i am enjoying managing servers and clients.

    And HostLambda.com has a name now :-)

  • a Big LOL @ Topic

    It is even impossible for a “Professional” working on International Level to think of a Nightmare of Hosting his website in Pakistan.

    Yes, there would be many Pakistani’s who may host their websites on their own servers for sake of Nationalism.

    Thing is WHY WOULD ANYONE HOST his website in an Out Dated country like Pakistan, when there are serveral other countries offering unbeatable Services plus Unbeatable Costs.

    Reasons why Hosting in Pakistan cannot compete for atleast next 10 years:

    1. Electricity, power outages (Generators would add extra costs, thus increasing overall costs).
    2. Way too expensive.
    3. Un-Professional nature of Pakistani’s. (sorry, but people are simply untrustable, they can copy your content without your knowledge and recreate their own website).
    4. Country’s insecure image (why would someone from U.K,China,Iraq or Turkey would host a site in Pakistan where so many Security risks like terror & govt’s & un professionalism and Non-Serious image.
    5. Why would someone sacrifise their Freedom of rights, with the too Conservative policies of a Pakistani Host/Service Provider.
    6. Can they provide Auto Backup systems with 24x7x365 support to customers ?
    7. Can they create Automated Signup Systems, with auto account setup feature without even calling company’s sales team.
    8. No support for Universally accepted Payment methods like Paypal,Moneybookers & Credit Cards. (they will always consider Bank Transfers (1980s) fasion way.
    9. Who from 21st century would choose to host his Data in a country with Technologically outdated Social Infracture.
    10. Last but not the least, would the customer feel “Hassle Free”, “Safe & Secure” & “Instantly Setup” hosting account. Can they be assued with 99% uptime gurantee ?

    When you are able to make sure of all above facts and create an Impressive image for a Customer, only than Hosting in Pakistan can be thoughtful.

  • Don’t you get hosting from Slicehost (a part of rackspace)?But you quoted you are getting from Pakistan.

  • I would like to clarify on a few statements made here regarding Nexus and our procedures;

    1. Nexus has its own hardware in our US colocation facilities. It is one of the few hosting companies (if not the only) to actually own the hardware it used.

    2. Kindly refer to our TOS on http://nexus.pk/aup.php and in particular point 5.

    Nevertheless, Nexus takes weekly and monthly backups of all of our accounts. As was the case in this customers account his account was restored using a backup which was made on the 19th of Jan 2010. The customer did loose data after the backups but his account was restored!

    4. The Customer contacted us regarding the site being down on 03 Feb 2010 02:07 PM. The customers site was restored and the customer was informed about it with in hours, i.e. 03 Feb 2010 09:17 PM. I am sure these are acceptable time frames for a response/restore ?

    5. A representative of Propakistani requested a comment form us on a users account over the phone which we declined to do so since Nexus has a strong Privacy Policy (http://nexus.pk/privacy.php) and we cannot divulge information specially over the phone and that too with out authorization from the actual customer. Usually this is not the case here in Pakistan, but Nexus has policies it strongly adheres to, due to which even now we cannot commend on the exact customer details/data. I would suggest that comments should be requested via email, so they are on record and can be authenticated.

    6. All I will say is that the customer is using one of our Personal Hosting Accounts which costs less then Rs. 170/month. In this price we are including backups. Dont you think this package is value for money considering everything is included in such a low price!

    7. We have always clarified and informed customers as is mentioned on our site that the Personal hosting packages are for individual websites. Not for commercial websites. At the end of the day, the customers should know what there site is for and choose there hosting accordingly.

    8. Nexus hosts customers from across the world and hosts quite a few famous websites. The statement that Pakistani Companies are not reliable is untrue. Nexus monitors our servers from 3rd party servers to ensure our uptime SLA is enforced. Our uptime for this month is 99.9% aggregate and 98.8% for the server in question due to the downtime.

    You will find Nexus to be operating on SOP’s second to none. As an young company, we are evolving on a daily basis and improving our operations. I am sure there are areas we need improvement in, but as a whole, we are the best at what we do and will take steps to ensure our customers get reliable service and customer service.

    If you need further clarification, please do let me know.

    Regards,

    • Arsalan thanks for your comment, appreciate it.

      Two things i want to mention,

      1 – If you are offering inexpensive hosting packages, it does not give you an excuse to offer inferior services, or say not up to mark services.

      You can alternately introduce process scaling system (just like hostgator) and tell customers in advance that company can suspend their accounts if CPU usage exceeds a level.

      I don’t find it a good excuse that as they are paying very little, so your liability decreases in same proportion.

      In simple words, price cannot be associated in any manner with the down time/service quality.

      Your customer very clearly told me that your sales team had verbally committed per min backups – though, he confirmed that he didn’t read the TOS.

      2 – If Nexus had asked me to email the query, i would had done the same. But the guy said he won’t comment on it.

    • 1- maine new ebiste 19th january ko launch ki thi. aur 19th wale backup ko main kia karon yar?
      2-aur suport pe call ki mane tho ek larki ne kha k ap fikar na karo, hum har mint ka backup rakty hain. ap ko 5 mint ka answer karty hain. ek ghanty bdh cal ki tho phir us ne kha k ap mail kar dein aur ap ko 10 mint tal reply aye ga. wo 10 mint ka reply muje next day aya.jab main dobara call ki support team ko.
      2-phir muje kha gea k ap ka data recover ho jae ga 2 din pehly wala. ap hum ko 3 din ka time dein. maine 3 din tak koi rabta nhe kia phir. kyun k support team k bandy ne muje baton se satisfy kar dia tha k ap ka data recover ho jae ga.
      3 din badh phir call ki mane. par agay se jawab mila k ap ka data recover nhe ho sakta. mane kha k ye bat 3 din pehly b keh sakty thy ap. is ka wo koi jawab na de saka.aur ager 19th wale data ki bat kar rhy hain tho wo tho jab meri sate down hui thi us k ek ghanty bdh he ap ne upload kar dia tha. phir mera ek hafta kyun zaya kia. lary lagae rakha.
      in baton k jawab main support wala larka kuch na keh saka. maine kha k ab main kia karon, mera loss kon pora kary ga. etc. wo bola k jo karna ha kar lo. mian ekha k What? esa support ha ap ki compnay ki. us ne phone band kar dia. maine dobara call ki aur kha k ap ki report karta hon main FIA main. wo bola k thek ha jo karna ha karo. mane kha k ksi manager ya responsble bandy se bat karwao. wo bola k compnay ka head main he hon.

      Phir maine FIA main report ki.

  • Dear Admin,

    As I said, we do not offer inferior services, neither will you find we did in this case as well. I mearely pointed out that we are offering good value for money considering the service which is provided.

    No where on our site or any of our staff members have ever committed to a backup being created every minute. This is never the case anywhere, and you can verify it by contacting each of our staff members directly as well.

    As far as the query to us is concerned. I remember this specifically that we will not comment on this till the customer gave us authorization which he did not.

    I still appreciate you taking this matter up. Perhaps this is how we can educate the customer since they do not read the terms of conditions which are interestingly even mentioned on the back of the invoice that they receive.

  • Hello,
    My name is Riaz Shah, I am working with Nexus from last 5 years and hosting many websites.

    I never faced any issue like the one you mentioned Mr. Admin, when I bought hosting from them the Sales Rep. clearly mentioned that in Personal Hosting Packages they only take Monthly Backups and on Business Hosting Packages they maintain Weekly and Monthly Backups, my websites are of Business Catagory and thats why I buy Business Hosting packages.

    I am amazed by this post/article that if a person knows the importance of his website and has 4000 registered users (doesnt seems to be) then why he/she did not invest to buy the bsiness package? or he/she was so lazy that even did not take the mysql backups on local machine?

    160/- per month is not a very big amount I think for which he/she is demanding Dialy/Weekly/Monthly backups.

    Cheers!

    • They didn’t told me any thing like this. i aslo told then that i want to start a social networking webiste and want unlimited hosting package. but on that time one of their member said that initialy work on 2000MB hositng and after getting success you can extend your hostting to Unlimited.
      thats y i started a new website and 60% of my space was filled on damage time. and i was going to extend my hosting.
      but now. no one want to belive on my webiste. because people think that i used a Hacking trick to get their emails and password.

  • I have just gone through Terms of Service at http://nexus.pk/aup.php

    The hosting company clearly states that


    5. Backups and Data Loss
    Your use of this service is at your sole risk. Our backup service is provided to you as a courtesy. Nexus is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on Nexus servers.

    7. Excessive CPU/Memory Usage

    Client agrees to take all responsibility for all programs including CGI/PHP/ASP/ASPX scripts executed under their account. Client may not Use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds…….

    8. Limited Liability

    a. Client expressly agrees that use of Nexus’ Network’s Server is at Client’s sole risk. Neither Nexus, its employees, agents, resellers, third party information providers, merchants licensers or the like, warrant that Nexus’ Server service will not be interrupted or be error free ….

    In my opinion they are working in a transparent manner and should not be blamed. The rates are clearly mentioned. TOS and Privacy Policy is there.

    I further 2nd / appreciate the privacy policy being exercised. If they refused to provide information of their client to ProPakistani.com rep they have done according to their privacy policy

    Lets be honest to our own responsibilities and try to exercise pragmatic approach (opposite to purist approach )

    • By the way, this article was in general, and not in particular about Nexus. I mentioned one example, that came my way.

      You can’t over rule the fact that the impression about Pakistani hosting companies have earned, which i mentioned in the article, is not good.

      About Nexus, I have other first hand experiences that i won’t share (don’t want to drag the main topic side way).

      Guys, you tell me if I own a business website, would i care working in these situations?

      Moreover, Terms of Services are supposed to defend legal matters. No ISP in the world will guarantee you data or money loss. But does that mean they don’t offer solid proof hostings?

      • Think of a small consultant office monthly expense

        Office Rent 20,000
        Employee Salary 30,000
        Telephone 5,000
        Electricity 10,000
        Other Expense 20,000
        Newspapers 1500
        Hosting Bill 170

        So we get what you pay. We know that we need better service but won’t like to pay Rs:1500 per month hosting bill. So there is no serious capital investment in this sector

        What we need

        – Every Tom an Harry should not be permitted by regulatory bodies to sell hosting.

        – Get rid of chain of Resellers of Indian Companies viz (http://www.resellerclub.com/ , http://publicdomainregistry.com http://directi.com/ ) .

        – Formalize the Hosting Business Sector. There will be healthy competition not the price war. And we will get local capable companies providing us the desired service level

        The major role can be played by PTA.

  • I would strongly suggest you edit/modify the following statements from your post which are completely false. In particular;

    1. Repetitive calls to Nexus didn’t resolve his issue, instead after 3 days he was told that it was a hard disk crash and nothing can be done to bring his data back.

    >> His ticket was answered in hours, records of which are available, and his account was restored from backups.

    2. In short he lost 4000 registered users, database, tons of image files and all that stuff which social media users upload with their profiles.

    >> This is also incorrect. Most of his files were restored with out issue.

    If you are naming a company like ours, the record should be verified. The customer has emails from us timestamps of which should be the same as that mentioned above.

    • I have quoted Shahzad, while writing up mentioned lines.

      I can update your viewpoint in the post – let me do that in a moment. I would had asked exactly the same thing when we Called Nexus in first place.

    • Arsalan Sb,

      Will you please tell me one thing,

      You are offering Basic hosting package and offering a lot disk space and bandwidth.

      Why you are not maintaining a balance in value for money. Your customers are facing continuous server down and overloaded CPU. so whats the fun of offering such a list of features without server up time. Why you are spoiling your image in market? Do you consider your clarification will remove all these objections?

      One thing i do know, you people will never ever admit your poor quality of service.

      • Imran,

        Let me address both of your concerns below

        1. Server down/Uptime : Totally untrue. Our servers do not have frequent stability issues. Almost 99% of our servers have had 100% uptime for the last year. The servers which do run into problems still have 100% uptime 11 out of 12 months of the year. If they do go down, its due to either a hardware or software issue beyond out control. Pick a server, I will send you 3rd party links for its uptime. Uptime is something we take very seriously!

        2. CPU Usage : Shared hosting is called shared for a reason. Various customers are using the same server resources so at times they do overload the server, but we do keep a check on that and take corrective action once a customer uses more then 25% CPU usage for an extended period of time. Usually CPU usage issues are there due to scripts being exploited or due to the customers own faulty programming. There isent much we can do before hand to prevent it, so we use a continuous monitoring system to ensure scripts are caught before they cause downtime or stability issues.

        Our SLA’s are available on our site for your review. In short, we can offer 3rd party, independent confirmation that our servers are available beyond our uptime guarantee and that SLA is followed and enforced at all times.

        3. Other hosting companies : Pick a company, you will always have some negative feedback for it. Google webhosts mentioned on this page and you will find each one of them has gone through downtimes.

        At the end of the day, the customers need to understand and cooperate. 80% of the times, customers would rather blame us then admit issues/problems caused due to there own scripts.

        This is not a perfect world, neither are we, but we have taken steps to ensure we act according to a code and ensure customer satisfaction. If you are a current customer and are not satisfied, kindly file a claim under our SLA and get a full refund. You can contact billing in this regard. I am sure you will find we actually follow our policies.

        Customer suggestions are always welcomed, and you can email them to me directly on [email protected].

        Thanks.

        • Dear Arsalan,
          I already lodged a request for claim to your support department. I am running two websites at time. And i need a host to host my website so don’t think i am blaming you for no reason. No this is not the case. This is very long debate what to do what not to do. I know one thing. Website owner will be screwed if Google page rank decreases due to server down time. I shooted atleast three mails regarding server performance with solid proof.I shall be thankful if i get refund.

    • ask nexus to tell truth about this issue. they asked me to wait for 3 days. and also told me that your data will be recovered.
      and they didn’t recovered anything in that weak.
      i saw my webiste on 1 Am and next morinig when i opened my webiste i saw previous version, which was before 23 january.
      and last time wehn they asked me that they can’t recover, they didn’t recover a single file.
      how you can say that they are telling truth?

  • College, you are not getting my point. I am saying that in price range of $5-7 you have best of best hosting service for your personal/business needs. Gone are the days when hosting package were sky rocketed.
    Further more, if some one needs hosting service, he must have a web site. 99.9999% websites are in English not in urdu, pashto or punjabi. So what to do with these local languages with hostgator while you are able to speak or at least write english.

    • Your point is well understood and it applies only if we buy hosting from US/Foreign Companies….and this is not a news. I again reiterate that we are here discussing “Hosting Companies in Pakistan”

      Not to offend you will you please tell us :

      Why you are mentioning the names of those hosting companies if you are affiliate of these companies? You have placed banners of these companies on your site

      http://secure.hostgator.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=iyousaf

      http://www.bluehost.com/track/imranyousaf/CODE41

      If you are a power and knowledgeable user then why you bought account from Nexus?

      Is it an effort to defame them or it is after thought?

      • College Sb,
        Now I have doubt that you are on payroll of Nexus. But first let me clear your obligations,
        1) If i put their banner on my site, did I make committed some sin?
        2) If my aim was to promote hostgator and bluehost then i should be reviewing their product in my some article or at least in my article “Web Hosts’ Claim – A hidden Reality” where i tried to create awareness regarding webhosts’ claim and ground was prepared for their promotion. But no I haven’t reviewed their any product. My that article is not against Nexus, but addressed to all webhosts who exercise malpractice.
        3) My ability of “Power user and knowledge” directed me to select Nexus as webhost. How do comes? Let me explain.
        I was in need of a good local webhost. I am aware of many Pakistani websites so I tried page load test of all of them and found pakgamers.com with excellent page load time. I probed “whois” of pakgamers and found that website was hosted by Nexus.com.pk.
        I visited their website and after reading their package features I selected nexus. But I forgot to check one more thing. Pakgamers is hosted on dedicated server that’s why they have excellent page load time. From there I am mistaken and thought that the company with such sophisticated system (ticketing) will definitely offer at least up to par service for shared server. Because I am also running another website on some other shared host with excellent uptime and response, and he is an individual from Islamabad.
        This was the total story Mr. Unknown College.
        Another reason why I selected Nexus.
        Because they are offering packages in international standard currency Dollar.
        Because they are charging according to international standard for hosting.
        Because they are offering features according to international standards.
        If all these things in international standards, then why service in so poor.
        Why not compare them with international webshost and why to limit this topicto “ discussing Hosting Companies in Pakistan” while all other things they offer and charge in international standard.
        They have servers in US, they have same cost as others bear.
        4) as far as your last obligation is concerned, in reply to Mr. Arsalan, I said that your customers. Read my full reply in the same post. I shoot many mails to them with graphic evidence regarding the service problem. I was issued a ticket and their representative admitted that there is problem with server. I am not going to disclose the correspondence further.
        Mr. Unknown college, mera tu mun saaf tha, ma ne apna naam, apni site aur apna mail sb kuch disclose kia ha. Tusi koon ho, kari website da malik ho ya aiwain he hawa ich fire mar rahe ho.
        My advice to you, never speak without proof or research.
        Any further clarification you need Mr. Unknown college boy. Do contact me.

        • I appreciate your knowledge and analytical skills but over expectations from a cheaper service does not make any sense.

          You have yourself acknowledged that you made selections after making tests on a dedicated server (you realized afterwards I think). That means for Power Users like you Cheap Shared Hosting is not a solution.

          Same applies for business users who are not hobbyist but they need web email presence for running their business seriously.

          I was just wondering how come a knowledgeable user like you, over expected from a very low cost service.

          Regarding writing on this topic, it is an open forum, everybody has right to express him/herself, and only Moderator of forum has the right to decide what content goes on line.

          Hope you understand and peace prevails!

          • Yes college, the tests i made were targetting their dedicated servers. Thats why i received awesome page load results.
            What i have analyzed, Nexus have not properly designed their product.They are offering 2GB disk space and 100GB bandwidth. Thats wrong in that price range. They should reduce these numbers but must maintain server uptime. I have a web site hosted on unique-links.com.pk. They have awesome server uptime and person is managing his server very effectively. I am now impressed by the services he offer in less price (1300PKR/Year only) as comared to Nexus. he has designed his product very cleverly and managing uptime. I am not mentioning the downtime error i receive for my website from a website monitoring service, i am not pasting any cpu overload image here because google will make a cache and index of it.Google will index all these things and propakistani has PR of 3. On SERP (search engine result page), it will definitely appear on atleast second page resulting in more reputation loss to nexus. Being client of them, i am considering all these things depiste of continous server down time messages i do receive but the company is not favouring themselves. Just look at the reply from Arsalan, he is saying “Totally untrue. Our servers do not have frequent stabilty issues”.I still claim with proof my website is down or taking long long time due to excessive client hosted on server. Actually most of our nation are exercising “one time selling strategy”. They are not making their customers loyal. I will definitely refer my friends and others to webhost with whome i have good experience. In this way a good host increases his number of clients.
            Now from my end , i will not say anyting more on this topic.I think its too much with them. Let google to do rest of work.

    • this is for your information Mr. Riaz, Majority of web applications offer auto backup (databse file only) and send them via e-mail. If this feature is not available, there are plugins available to do the needful. Just like wordpress, we have long list of plugin that will take complete back-up of database (normally called dump file) and send it via e-mail. But what about pictures, user’s custom configuration etc etc. We are not against any web host including Nexus. In same price rang we have other options off the shore. but we selected our local service providers. Look gentleman, why we are not talking about anyother webhost. We don’t have any personal grievance with nexus. Why one will be lodging fraudulebt complaint? Do he want some financial compensation. no man the person is still running his website. We do need a webhost, but someone from our own country betray us, it hurts, nothing else dude.

    • i m also wrking in Mirpur University of Sciences & technology and also studying in Mphil at Iqra. they are more than 5000 students their. and i invested 15,000 on banner advertisement. i also send some banners to lahore and to different colleges. then i got more than 4000 registered users.
      i have proof. and i also send a request to advertise my webiste on ProPakistani before this issue.

      • Shahzad!
        I am surprised that you spend lots of Money on Advertisment… but you did not buy the business hosting package…

        Nexus Personal Hosting packages are designed for personal website not for commercial websites or sites for profit…

        Brother you spend 15,000 one time on Banners and Spend 1,999/- for one year hosting package i.e 2000 MB webspace and Unlimited e-mail accounts and still expecting more….

        It seems that all of you are against Nexus, is it? Or one of you have Hosting Reseller Package from other company and you business is down due to Nexus’ superb packages? Right?

        Hope you will not mind…

        Cheers!

        • Thnks Riaz Shah.
          But
          They didn’t told me any thing like this. i aslo told then that i want to start a social networking webiste and want unlimited hosting package. but on that time one of their member said that initialy work on 2000MB hositng and after getting success you can extend your hostting to Unlimited.
          thats y i started a new website and 60% of my space was filled on damage time. and i was going to extend my hosting.
          but now. no one want to belive on my webiste. because people think that i used a Hacking trick to get their emails and password.

  • Dear Folks,

    Recently a very reputable name in the Hosting and domain name Business Of Pakistan, Re-launch their website with exciting looks and many services namely

    [Comment Edited: No adverts on this page at least]

  • Hello,
    Very Nice Article Bhaijan..!
    I don’t know is tell this at here is right or danger for our business but i like to tell that..
    Dear Bro Soon We Start Our Hosting Company Not VPS or any other type :) 1st We Registered As A IT Company at Government of Pakistan paying there Fee 8000RS
    2nd We Buy 4 Dell servers Dell’s PowerEdge R710
    making standby electric power 8 hours we know that in pakistan we need that
    2/1 employees day/night for servers, 1/1 operators as network administrator day/night, 4 employees as telephone/chat support for day timing

    we spend 5 lack on on all setup in Pakistan And Good Thing Is That we offer internships our first trainers is from sir syed university karachi as network operator.
    and our package is very low 10GB in only 30000RS/Year with domain currently we not start..!But in next month we start it as hosting company…

  • according to me…

    get some cash in your pocket before planning to beat another social site.. i.e
    we are investing 150$+ per month for our Urdu Forum pak.net and btw same investment with wordpress.pk

    for hosting business i will simply give a smile :)

  • arsalan sb your equipment is not owned by you. those old ebay servers dontt count. you lease and pay monthly. please do not say things which are inaccurate. your company’s hosting has a lot of problem. too many infact. you internally have discussed this many-a-times. support is your biggest headache, alongwith resources to manage your servers.

    you oversell so much and make such stupid financial decisions that it is costing your company financials very heavily.

  • I am agree that hosting business in Pakistan is still in dilemma but now a days its improving day by day. I hope the issue will be resolved soon.

  • Can anyone recommend me the best domain registrar for .com (International) domain in Pakistan, having decent manager and features. I don’t have credit card so it should atleast support bankdraft or something. Also r there any disadvantages of hosting your costum domain with Blogger.

  • there are a lot, you can call/sms me @ 0313-8850080, .com domain price is only Pak Rs.799/-

  • Dear Usman,
    It’s really hard to decide when your are going take a hosting, specially from local market. But there I have personally observed that world best hosting companies sometime fails to give an upto mark services and support to their clients. However, go through this Link, this will help you a lot
    http://www.ehow.com/how_4730334_decide-blogger-hosting-right.html

    Or even otherwise, we are offering good customer support with daily backup of your data.

    Happy browsing

  • I m hosting my sites with a Karachi based hosting company named Ua Communication, they provide cheap hosting and their servers are also good but they offer the worst support. They never give you any email alert or any advance warning when they make changes in their servers and you lose some DB enteries or recent changes you make.
    They never answer phone whenever there servers are down or they will respond in a rude manner to your support tickets or stop responding to your mails.

    • Actually Aamir, running a web host business is not child’s play. If you need worry free hosting solution, my recommendation is go for Hostgator. In $66, you will get state of art hosting for a year.

  • @ Aamir Yousaf,
    I am 100% agree with you that UACommunication support is not good, I am their client since last 3-years, look brother, the only issue involved with them is over selling, as they have many clients and they have no proper team to handle the work, Further being a shared hosting provider, many clients are suffering from site hacking, databse problems, lastly their support and behaviour towards clients is not up to mark, I have a recording of telephonic conversation, which is really shocking, as they never admit their fault and always threat for account termination.

    @Imran Yousaf
    No doubt that Hostgator is the world’s biggest Hosting Company, but look at this before getting their service.

    http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1844891

    Hope this will help many other in getting a good hosting service.

    • I admit that they have now slow servers, but let there is a fact these are shared servers and i bet, no one in shared server are providing flawless services. Some have over sold their servers, some have slow server response, most fatal thing is some have tehir servers down for many hours. Only way is to go with VPS or dedicated. But when site load requirement can easily be fulfilled by shared server, no one will opt VPS. Its expensive.

    • Exactly, over selling is there problem. I check hosting company prices in every spider maagzine issue and uacomm are continuously lowering their prices but only for new customers, infact they have increased prices without any notice for existing customers. They have right to change pricing plans but they should atleast notify via email about price change for existing customers. May be they dont have time coz they are just too much busy in catching new customers. Otherwise there hosting is not bad.

  • We can’t blame the either side for this issue,you can’t open hosting business in Pakistan so trusting Pakistani hosting sites is foolish act.

    The other problem with customers is that they don’t have awareness and they don’t keep their backups,along with that they should chose trusted companies like hostgator and the likes they do accept credit cards and I think everyone now have credit cards.

  • Im more than a decade old websites owner and in my view all of the companies are crap, reason i had to get my own dedicated server, which i run at 100% uptime myself. Had poor experience with Nexsus, Serversea, Creativeon etc.

    Most of the companies are just reseller of some other crap companies and sometimes their own servers get suspended for non payment.

  • Waqas,
    I am agree with you. I have really bad experience with Creativeon and UACommunication.

  • Mr.Amir You are just trying to cheat everyone,the story you are telling is not true so kindly tell every one that you are from which hosting company so every one knows your reason of this _______

  • & by the way mr admin there is no website naming Apnay.pk & i am using nexus services from last 7 years & i dint get any kind of problem there

  • Well ..! well..!
    All bodies which are criticising Nexus, tell me & everybody here one thing just one thing.
    That if you have more knowledge,more efficiecny,more cool services,
    Then why all of yours companies are not ranking no.1/no.2,
    Why Nexus Technologies is there..?
    Answer this question then i would tell you next…..!

  • I never understand why Pakistani pplz pay for MBzzzz for space and bandwidth.
    last day i feel funny experience a hosting client who want to buy hosting call our support line and ask me about Space i told him we give hostings in GBs but he ask me to calculate it in MB. i told him we give 200GB hosting just in 2200PRS include domain but he need in MBs :( hahaha it’s make me confuse.

  • Hi all,

    I want to advise all of by brothers that not to purchase any hosting from nexus. First they will deal with you in a very systematic way and will impress you. Once you will pay them for hosting they will never solve your single problem even. And there servers have very slow response time etc. This is my personal experience.

  • Asad,
    That may be your personal experience, I am one of the happy Nexus customer…

    I am with them since 2005 and I am very happy with support…

  • I foud this article very very informative and i think that it gives good idea about web hosting companies in pakistan. i think most of people have taken reseller hosting and not the VPS so thats not good

  • You have to be keen there is lot of good hosting companies in Pakistan not reseller :)
    its all upto you find the best company see there website :) what they offer Its 2012 so if u seen anyone selling in MB of space forget them try someone new :) or try us :p

  • I am experiencing a local company, Webitech.. The worst experience ever, the owner himself is not responsive while I am directly approaching him.. Made me more than 45 days now and they could not even get a domain name registered for me.. I am just cursing the time when I paid them for most shitiest services I have ever experienced.. All around this owner has spread his american whatsapp number for support but recently he says to me that this is his personal whatsapp number and I should not contact him.. Common… Why have you mentioned this number on your official support page and why your representative herself gave me this very number for support?? I am never going to trust locals again….


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