Virtual private servers (VPS) have quickly become the preferred hosting solution for small to medium sized businesses around the world. VPS’s help bridge the gap between the limitations of shared hosting and the scalability of dedicated servers, all without the high price tag.
A few of the benefits that come with using a VPS include: A more stable hosting environment, dedicated resources, faster load times, greater freedom and control, direct root access, higher bandwidth levels, and you can host as many websites as you want without constraint.
Similarly, offshore hosting is another growing trend within the web hosting industry – and for good reason. Offshore hosting providers give you the personal protection and data privacy that mainland companies are unable to provide. Let’s examine the primary benefits of offshore hosting to help you understand why it’s such a smart business decision.
PRICE
Let’s be real. We like to pay the bare minimum for as long as possible. By hosting your website in a country other than your own, usually in a lesser developed country, you’re able to pay significantly less for services that can cost double the price in your own area. This is due to many of these countries paying lower wages, lower taxes, and subsequently lower energy and overhead costs. This translates to offshore host’s not needing as much revenue to sell their services and thus, lower prices for everyone.
LOCAL AUTHORITIES
Many people looking at offshore hosting solutions are doing so to avoid having to pay legal ramifications within their own country. With offshore hosting, the provider does not have to abide by the laws of another country if the law is not in their own. A good example of this is copyright laws. Anyone in the United States selling copyrighted material or trademarked goods can expect to be swiftly slapped with a DMCA notice – or worse. Doing so in the Republic of Maldova or Ukraine, for example, is not technically illegal. So in the end it’s up to the offshore hosting provider to keep a website that contains sensitive or illegal material online.
LOCATION
Assume you’re a businessman looking to sell products online to a predominantly Asian audience. If your web host is based in say, South America or southern Europe, you may run into problems. By targeting an area that’s halfway across the world from your own VPS, you can easily run into connectivity issues and experience latency, which can seriously hamper your business’s reputation and profitability. By choosing to house your VPS in a location that’s near your audience, you can expect to experience higher load speeds, and with that, lower bounce rates and higher conversions.
WINDOWS OS DIS/ADVANTAGES
Unlike Windows, Linux is a free open source version of Unix. Linux has long been the standard in the web hosting industry due to its reliability, stability, and cost-effectiveness. The Windows operating system, on the other hand, is a proprietary solution created by Microsoft which requires a software license to run on a server. A Windows OS license costs money, which forces many hosting providers to raise the price of their Windows hosting plans to cover the added license cost. In turn Windows OS hosting plans, specifically Windows VPS plans, are difficult to find. This can pose of a problem to programmers and designers proficient in .NET, ASP, and SQL Databases, where working with Windows-specific web technology is a must.
But lucky for you, we have you covered. We’ve looked for the best companies providing Windows OS. The result is our list of the top 10 offshore Windows VPS providers on the web.
Now that we’ve defined what offshore hosting means, here’s our brief overview of 10 offshore hosting providers and the services they provide.
