Webhosting Pakistan has its ups and downs both for the users and the services providers The recent changes in Broadband connectivity in Pakistan has brought about positive changes which may be en-cashed. The competition is cut-throat.
Till the recent upsurge of broadband connectivity in Pakistan, the web hosting industry here was based mainly on reseller hosting of USA and UK based firms / individuals (Pakistani settled abroad) with only few local hosting companies having their own servers (Local hosting companies mean such companies which have their offices in Pakistan,owned by Pakistanis and have their own servers i.e. are not working as resellers).
The webhosting industry in Pakistan did not make a quantum progress due to poor IT infrastructure in the country. However, the rapid growth of broadband internet during recent years has given a boost to web hosting industry in Pakistan. Higher internet speed means faster browsing, use of audio video contents and hence more interest of the user. The back end resources of the local hosting companies in Pakistan, are however, still based in USA, UK or Germany etc. In most cases the owners of these companies are Pakistanis settled abroad.
Problems of webhosting Companies in Pakistan: Some of the key areas which webhosting companies in Pakistan are facing are as under :-
- General lack of IT Culture and little understanding of the people about web based business, resulting slow growth of business which in turn means slower growth of web hosting industry. There is very little awareness in serious business community in Pakistan on how to make use of web as a source of sales and marketing. Most of the small business use websites only for having it mentioned on their visiting cards or broachers Much of it has also to do with lack of real time online transaction / delivery mechanisms. Also due to poor quality control and lengthy legal systems, customers do not tend to consider online purchase as an option.
High internet fraud rate, no / little understanding of copy right laws and high rates of spamming makes life of the companies hard.
Bulk of internet users in Pakistan are young students who devote time to social networks like facebook etc. Very few people in Pakistan spend time in creating web based personal profile website. Also creation and placement of research material on the net is normally not a income generating option.
Pakistani customers tend to be lazy in their payments. As per culture prevailing in Pakistan, discontinuation of service due to delayed / nonpayment is symbolized as breach of TRUST by which hosting company. Customers here often demand to create hosting account without payment on the name of TRUST (why don't you trust me, I am old customer and will make payments tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes in most cases).
Lack of facilities for real time online transactions and ebanking makes transactions time consuming as well as costly. The Pakistani webhosting companies have to resort to yearly payments compared with monthly payments generally prevailing in the rest of world.
Non availability of data centers in Pakistan due to which the webhosting companies have to collocate servers at data centers in Europe and USA.
Unless the company has some foreign connections in terms of Pakistani settled abroad, payments to foreign vendors is difficult for a completely Pakistan based business.
Problem Areas of Customers: The problems being faced by Pakistani customers can be summarized as under:-
- Cost has to be kept very low as its to be paid from pocket money of the above customers
- The young customers need to use web hosting for personal profiles, web development projects etc needing high space, bandwidth and CPU resources.
- Due to above reasons, the customers often fall prey to unlimited, low cost and high resources offers and thus invariably land in poor quality services.
- Web hosting being primarily a distant / online business, it becomes difficult to get to know about correct credentials of a web hosting company from a website. Also one gets number of options from online browsing and gets confused on which of the companies to prefer. You can learn more about how to check about authenticity of a web hosting company and thus find Cheap web hosting in Pakistan by clicking in the link.
- Quality of online operators of the webhosting companies is rather poor. This is a global issue wherein the lowest support level persons who can barely record complaint and having very little understanding of the issues are the one directly contacted by the customer. The customer thus wastes lot of time and energy in making them understand as to what is the issue.
- Some of the web hosting companies register the domain in the name of the web hosting company's employee rather than the customer's / actual owner's name. The domain owners thus run in issues when they have to transfer the domain.
- The payment procedures are difficult and cumbersome. Some of the payment methods and the issue of the customers in each are as under:-
Cash: This is probably most popular method in customers, however, most impractical when it comes to web hosting. A web hosting company cannot have an office in every City else its overhead costs would become too high to offer low cost services.
Direct Deposit in Banks: Though sending money to web hosting company would not need a bank account, people are normally not comfortable going to banks.
Ebanking and ATM Cards: Very few people have ATM cards / ebanking accounts to make online transactions. At present most of the Pakistani Banks offer e-transactions only to branches of the same bank.
Easy Paisa: This by far is the best transaction method. Its simple, modern (sms based), instant and secure, meaning having all ingredients of real time fast online payment.
Money Order: This is time consuming and hence has little validity for web hosting industry.
Check / Demand Draft: Sending checks / demand drafts is at time consuming particularly when web hosting company is on other cities. In case of checks, the hosting company also has to wait it to be cleared which is not an ideal way to go about web hosting.
Despite, the issue above, the growth of web hosting industry has been considerable in Pakistan and its seems its there to stay for longer.
For futher details on how to correctly indentify and correct company and get a cheap web hosting in Pakistan visit our related section for details. Click here.
