The Best Offshore Web Hosting Services
The concept of diversifying your political risk through internationalization applies to your digital presence just as it does to your savings, yourself, and your income.
You can obtain political diversification benefits for yourself and your business by spreading your digital presence across multiple friendly jurisdictions. One of the most important parts of doing that is internationalizing your website’s server.
The article below is a great overview of such services. But if you’re new to this topic, you must read this article to better understand the basics of internationalizing your website’s server.
However, it is critical to look at digital diversification as part of a complete package, and not a necessarily a sufficient solution in and of itself. Offshoring your web or server hosting for your online business only provides additional protection if the rest of your business is also offshore. Any one piece of the business left in the US or your home country adds jurisdictional risk to your enterprise.
Last, some of the information in this article is based on Streber’s personal experiences and has not been independently verified. As always, do your own due diligence.
Until next time,
Nick Giambruno, Senior Editor
InternationalMan.com
Web hosting is a key aspect of any global business today. Hosting in the right location can be just as important as choosing an offshore jurisdiction for incorporation or banking.
In this article I will go through some web hosts across the globe that I have used and found to be worth mentioning. This article is aimed at entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) looking to place their gambling, ecommerce, websites, customer information, or other data in offshore locations.
This article is not to be construed as a list of services suitable to host copyrighted material, spam, or other potentially illegal content.
Continent8
Locations: London, Paris, Dublin, Montreal, Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Malta, Singapore, Belgium
Services provided: Co-location, DDoS protection, server management
Having worked with many gambling operators, Continent8 is a bit of a gold standard in the business—and rightly so.
Curaçao Webhosting
Location: Curaçao
Services provided: VPS, co-location, dedicated servers
More or less a monopoly holder in Curaçao, Curaçao Webhosting provides superb hosting services for Internet gambling and ecommerce websites. The company is directly related to E-Commerce Park.
EDIS
Locations: Austria, Chile, Germany, France, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, Isle of Man, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA
Services provided: VPS (KVM, vServer, OpenVZ), dedicated servers, web hosting, streaming, SMS
Excellent for smaller VPS, used either for web hosting, mail hosting, or as a VPN/proxy. EDIS offers the cheapest hosting available in several locations, for example being the by far cheapest option in Isle of Man.
New Media Express
Location: Singapore
Services provided: Web hosting, dedicated servers, VPS, email, co-location
An excellent hosting provider in Singapore. Prices are on the higher end, but it is money well spent.
Nine.ch
Location: Switzerland
Services provided: Dedicated servers, VPS, co-location, managed solutions
Great support and network. You can find lower-priced hosts in Switzerland, but not without sacrificing quality.
Offshore Racks
Locations: Panama, Netherlands
Services provided: VPS (OpenVZ and KVM), co-location, web hosting
One of the best-connected providers in Panama. It appears to be a one-man operation and even though this one man runs a tight ship, I would not host anything mission critical here. Excellent for VPN/proxy, DNS redundancy, and non-critical web front-ends.
server.lu (root SA)
Location: Luxembourg
Services: Dedicated server, VPS, co-location, web hosting (under site.lu)
A very well-connected company in Europe, with good multilingual support and fair pricing.
Shinjiru
Location: Malaysia, Singapore, Luxembourg, Russia, Netherlands
Services provided: Dedicated servers, VPS, web hosting, email
Shinjiru has been around for a long time and has always had a very open approach to what is hosted within its network. A few years ago, it made significant improvements to its customer support. Prices are fair. The network is of high quality.
TurkNet
Location: Turkey
Services provided: VPS, web hosting, IP transit, co-location, ISP
After evaluating several Turkish hosts, we ultimately settled for TurkNet. It is a well-connected provider with good support (in English).
Honorable mentions are listed in the table below.
Editor’s Note: Naturally, things can change quickly. New options emerge, while others disappear. This is why it’s so important to have the most up-to-date and accurate information possible. That’s where International Man comes in. Be sure to check out the free IM Communiqué to keep up with the latest on the best international diversification strategies.
Streber works as a consultant and director for a wide range of companies and has broad experience in offshore banking, offshore incorporation (formation and maintenance of offshore companies), taxation, privacy, ecommerce, merchant accounts, online payments, and all other things the privacy-minded entrepreneur might find interesting. You can read Streber’s blog on offshore incorporation and offshore banking.
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