And the conversation goes like this. Where is your customer, visitors located, and the answer is India. And next, I ask where your server is located, and the response is either I don’t know or the USA. You can guess my response… Why do you host your site in the USA when your targeted customers are in India? Most of them respond because it’s cheaper. I get it. But is that cost differentiation between USA and India hosting worth slowing down the site? To me – it’s NO. A fast-loading site is essential for better search engine ranking and user experience. And if you are running an eCommerce store, then the slow site can impact the revenue. So what’s the solution? Simple – host your site with the provider who got a data center in India or the nearest country. Hosting your site near to your targeted users will reduce the latency and serve content faster. Always pick a hosting platform that got lower latency (preferably less than 100 ms). To find out, you can perform a latency test on the hosting provider and choose whatever is best. Let’s take a look at the following shared and cloud hosting. I’ve included respective latency information at the end of this post. The latency test is done from Bangalore using ping to the respective hosting server.
Google Cloud Platform
Lately, Google Cloud has announced a data center in Delhi, Mumbai, and probably one of the best regarding latency, security, and cost. GCP offers a broad range of cloud services to meet almost all types of modern application technology requirements. You can provision a VM, host data in object storage, database, cloud functions, container, etc. Based on the ping test, Mumbai & Singapore data center location looks better for India traffic. If not familiar with the platform, then Google gives you $300 credit to be spent over 12 months.
Kinsta
Looking for premium WordPress hosting? Kinsta leverage Google Cloud’s low latency platform to offer the best WordPress hosting for small to enterprise business. When your target audience is in India, then you can consider adding your site to the Mumbai or Delhi data center. Kinsta is managed Google Cloud Platform, so you don’t have to worry about setting up WP; instead, they will take care of everything, including performance optimization and securing from DDoS.
ScalaHosting
Adding to the list of best hosting for the Indian Markets, ScalaHosting is a powerful option with flexible subscription options. This highly rated host is ideal for shared web hosting and managed WordPress hosting. And with the Indian data centers in Mumbai, you shouldn’t worry about slow-downs for the regional audience. ScalaHosting provides a free custom domain for the first year and free SSLs with auto-renewals. In addition, there is no limit to the database and bandwidth. Besides, you can take higher-tier plans and enjoy SShield to keep tabs on cyber threats in real-time. Similarly, the top subscriptions have spam protection and free SEO analysis of the website. And all plans come with support to HTTP/2 for better security and speed. In the never-ending list of useful features, there are automatic daily backups, Gzip compression, brute-force attack protection, Free CDN, a lot more to keep your website optimized. Conclusively, this is one of the worthy web hosts to look out for that supports scaling as your online presence grows.
Hostinger
Hostinger platform allows you to get your website live with a simple click of a button. You can search for the perfect domain name from many available options and make your website ready to go in a few clicks. It also enables you to make your customers or visitors feel comfortable while checking your website with lightning-fast speed. With Hostinger, you can install WordPress with a single click and start your website. The backend is working for you, which is powered by advanced optimization and LiteSpeed caching that ensures your websites are secure, reliable, and fast. Hostinger understands that different businesses need different technologies; that’s why it comes with a variety of plans and allows you to upgrade when you grow more. Its control panel is user-friendly and can be used by almost anyone. The control panel also comes with a wide range of tools to fulfill website developer and user needs. Additionally, you can get the best performance across the globe with a guaranteed uptime of 99.9% and superior performance. Furthermore, Hostinger offers dedicated resources and IP, instant setup, the latest technologies, data backups, and more. Hostinger has data centers in Mumbai, which is perfect for Indian visitors.
SiteGround
Did you know SiteGround got a data center in Singapore? One of the best shared hosting platforms with solid uptime, performance, and security. SiteGround got different types of hosting, so choose based on budget and requirements. Shared – perfect if you don’t want to manage the server and to look to set up your site quickly. You can install your favorite website platform like WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal, etc. with one click. Some of the benefits of SiteGround shared hosting are:
A FREE SSL certificate, domain, email accountsDaily backupSSD storageIntegrate with Cloudflare CDN in one clickHTTP/2 enabledFriendly user interfaceExcellent caching plugin for WordPress30-days money back
Cloud & Dedicated – fully managed a server with preinstalled OS and essential software to get your project started from day one. WHM (web host manager) and cPanel are included for easy server management. Get 60% OFF on SiteGround’s shared hosting plan. SiteGround recently announced moving its data center to the Google Cloud Platform. This is great news!
AccuWebHosting
AccuWebHosting is a good choice for shared and cloud hosting as it is fast, secure, and reliable. Their colocation facilities are secure and offer a redundant network in India in Mumbai, Maharashtra. These facilities are built to provide better network performance, robust infrastructure, power backups, cooling, and hardware, with their dedicated servers offering almost 100% uptime. You can also choose some add-ons, including firewall, customizable network, backup server, managed services, dedicated service engineers, load balancer, and more. AccuWebHosting offers different kinds of hosting services starting from Web Hosting and WordPress Hosting to Cloud Hosting.
Web Hosting: You can experience hassle-free and super fast hosting services with pure SSD-based storage, LiteSpeed server, FREE SSL, and CloudLinux without overselling. Web Hosting includes Shared Hosting and Windows hosting.WordPress Hosting: It is fully managed, highly secure, and powered by lightning-fast SSDs. You can find features like SSL, cPanel, generous storage space, 99.9% uptime, DDoS protection, and more.Cloud Hosting: It offers incredible performance and stores your data in a fully managed, highly available, and easily scalable infrastructure. It has features like 10 GB cloud storage, WHM and cPanel support, 1-click app installs, and more. It offers hosting services like Windows Cloud Hosting, Windows VPS Cloud, Linux Cloud Hosting, and Linux VPS Cloud.
Apart from these, they offer application hosting, VPS hosting, and reseller hosting. They also provide VPS and private clouds for Windows and Linux, and their experts manage everything. You can choose from 1GB to 128GB of storage, 36+ OS, Failover Protection, and no downtime for hardware. Other than India, they have data centers in the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Japan, Poland, South Korea, Canada, Australia, and the US. Choose from various hosting plans starting from $3.09/month.
DigitalOcean
Do you want to get your server at $5 a month? Get DigitalOcean (FREE $10 credit) Growing cloud platform, DO offer compute, storage, firewall, load balancing, monitoring solution. Lately, DO has announced a data center in Bangalore. Creating a droplet (VM) is straightforward with a beautiful UI. DigitalOcean is loved by thousands of businesses, including docker, Redhat, Akamai, Zendesk, Flipkart, etc.
AWS
If you don’t want to get into server management but still want to host on AWS, then try Cloudways. Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform for AWS, GCP, DigitalOcean, Linode, and Kyup.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is known for its turbo and A2 optimized server. They got a data center in Singapore which looks suitable for traffic from India. A2 has optimized its server and configuration for the best WordPress, Joomla, Drupal hosting experience. You can either choose to host on Linux or Windows.
HostGator
One of the famous shared hosting providers got a data center in Mumbai, and the entire operation payment is accepted in Indian currency (INR). HostGator offers 45-days money back and offers shared, cloud, VPS, reseller, and dedicated hosting. HostGator is used by one of the leading WP resources sites – WPBeginner. Does it give you the confidence to host with them? Every web hosting plan includes the FREE domain, unlimited storage/transfer/emails, one-click software installation, cPanel, 99.9% uptime.
Azure
Microsoft Azure got more location coverage than Google and AWS in India. Currently, Azure is available in the following three cities in India.
PuneChennaiMumbai
Azure offers everything you need to host and build applications in the cloud. If not familiar with the platform, you can get it started with a FREE account worth $200 for 30 days.
BigRock
BigRock is powered by GPX, a tier-IV data center located in Mumbai. You can get it started from as low as INR 89 per month, which includes the following.
One website20GB storage100GB transferVarnish web acceleration
Latency information
The following tests are done from Bangalore. Note: I couldn’t find testing IP for HostGator, BigRock, Azure, AccuWebhosting so I couldn’t do a test. I hope the above helps you to choose the hosting for your business in India.
