If you are considering offshore dedicated hosting for your project, you probably know that you can choose the country in which you would like to host, the network and other important features which may make a big difference in your hosting experience.

Hosting Location

There are mainly four leading offshore jurisdictions with a good network reach and acceptable ping times. These are Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Panama, and Costa Rica. The first four are well known for good service quality, and more liberal laws that allow high-risk and venture business projects.

There are still some minor differences among these countires in terms of the kind of sites you can host. A good piece of advice here is to choose an offshore hosting company that offers servers in more than one of these countries. In this way you will be able not only to diversify your hosting locations if needed but also request to transfer your project to a different jurisdiction if issues arise.

You should note that, overall, the pings for offshore servers are longer compared to mainland hosting providers (e.g. UK) which implies that your site’s pages will take longer to load for most visitors in developed countires.

Technical Support And Servers

It is no secret that some offshore hosting providers may use old servers or have no technical support standing by if you need help. Don’t fall for cheap deals as these most likely lack some essential features or service quality you are looking for. The basic server configurations also vary. I would recommend a server with at least 4GB RAM for your site(s) to run smoothly.

Enhanced Privacy

Offshore hosting is generally more expensive because it comes with an enhanced level of privacy protection. Some companies like YoHOST.ORG offer anonymous offshore hosting services. Others ensure full confidentiality of your sensitive information.

Prices, Setup Fees, Payment Systems

You will find that most offshore hosting companies do have set-up fees in place for new server installations. You will also likely have to pay for the control panel license (e.g. CPanel, DirectAdmin, etc.) Still, some  providers have all-inclusive deals to make your shopping for an offshore server easier.

Andrew Slick is an Internet Privacy Analyst and web hosting blogger.

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