Who is the best web hosting for Malaysia websites 2020? (Price, spec & guarantee compared!)

Today, we’re taking a look at the best-value hosts for Malaysian websites.

With a title like the above, you might first be wondering how location affects your choice of host.

Do I Need To Check Out A Local Host?

Good question. Yes, and no.

The first thing to know is, it’s not really about whether your host brand is Malaysia-made. What’s more important is that your host has a data centre in close proximity to your audience.

Still, this criteria leaves you with… hundreds of international and local providers to pick from.

Many host websites run abound with confusing sales-speak and jargon. It can be hard to identify which really offer Malaysian sites a true value-buy!

Today, we’re taking a look at which hosts we think deliver the best offerings at the best prices. Jom.

International Host, Or Go Local?

As we’ve mentioned, there are two ways to go.

You can either select a Malaysian/Singaporean host brand, or opt for an international provider with data centres within the region.

Ultimately, the deciding factor should be the location of your audience.

Why? Because server performance can vary greatly across different regions.

A host that is lightning-quick in Malaysia might perform slow in London. Not very useful if your site is targeted to a UK audience!

Simply put, you need to be sure your chosen host responds well in whatever region your audience is situated. Whether it’s a distant continent, or right here in the region.

Which Datacentre Is Best For Malaysian Audiences?

For those of you who’s audience is based in Malaysia – you might assume that a data centre in Malaysia would be the most ideal situation,

However, we’d strongly suggest heading further south.

Yup, a Singapore-based data centre is probably a much better idea.

Despite its size, Singapore, has been coined by many as the hosting capital of the Asian region.

Even the biggest tech giants like Netflix and IBM have their headquarters in Singapore, no doubt drawn to its world-class infrastructure, relative safety from natural disasters and fantastic connectivity.

Just take a look at this diagram of subsea cables in the area:

But, truth is, even today 95% of internet traffic is still delivered in some part through a network of subsea fibre-optic cables.

These are hundreds of physical lines cross-crossing the panet, no thicker than a garden hose.

These cables also risk damage from weather and natural disasters and it’s not uncommon that one goes down.

You can see by the diagram above that Singapore is much better connected through these cables than Malaysia.

What’s All This Mean For You?

Well, having your data centre in Singapore is a better way to insulate your site from downtime. If one cable goes down, there are multiple backups to keep your site up and running.

In a widely-cited Cushman & Wakefield study, Singapore was found the #1 most robust location for data centres in the region.

No wonder that Singapore hosts 54% data centre capacity in the whole of south-East Asia.

In short, Singapore’s the smarter location to host your site from.

 

5 Best Web Hosting for Malaysian Websites

Now that we’ve talked about that, let’s get into the hosts! Starting with our top pick…

1. Hostinger Malaysia

Hostinger is an international company, spread across 6 regions. For sites with a Malaysian audience, your best bet is definitely to host from their Singapore data centre.

The first thing most people usually notice is that Hostinger offers a crazy intro price. Crazy low that is!

This cements Hostinger as one of the cheapest hosts on the market, and our top pick for best value-for-money host. No wonder they’ve served 29,000,000+ clients to date.

Does a low price mean a cheap-and-nasty deal?

Not at all! Hostinger users can still expect a guaranteed 99.9% uptime, thanks to Hostinger’s Bitninja security suite, and super impressive customer support.

Whilst Hostinger has worldwide coverage, they still offer very localized customer service across 4 customer centres (the closest for Malaysians being Yogyakarta, Indonesia). They currently speak 20 languages, including Indonesian.

Their super low prices also deliver a superb user-experience!

All thanks to their own custom version of cPanel, called hPanel. It’s a clean and modern dashboard that’s much easier on the eyes and makes it very simple to manage your site all from one space.

Hostinger also accepts a wide range of payment options, from your usual credit card options, to Paypal and even Bitcoin! They even throw in one one free domain registration – something many other more expensive hosts don’t provide.

Sure, it doesn’t come with EVERY bell and whistle, (you won’t be getting any CDN allowance). But Hostinger is an definitely ultra cheap option with localised support; Malaysians are sure to appreciate both.

2. A2 Hosting Singapore

A2 is another international company with servers across Europe, Asia and the USA. For Malaysian audiences, we’d again recommend hosting from their server in Singapore.

Whilst not as cheap as Hostinger, A2 is still very reasonable, with shared hosting plans starting from $3.92 (RM16), and VPS hosting plans starting from $5.00 (RM20).

A2 is a brand that knows how to offer great value for what you’re paying.

All shared hosting plans come with speed-enhancing SSD storage, Cloudflare CDN, Hackscan protection, and Optimized apps (ensuring the apps you install are as speedy and secure as they can be).

Their cheapest Lite plan is a little limited, so we think it’s worth getting at least their Swift $4.90/mo (RM20) plan, which will unlock an impressive list of ‘unlimiteds’ Think unlimited websites, email addresses, total databases, storage, transfers and more!

You won’t even need to pay for SSL – all shared plans include a free Let’s Encrypt SSL option.

If you have the cash to splurge – consider their most popular ‘Turbo’ plan. At a steeper $9.31/mo (RM38.02) you’ll run on Turbo web hosting servers (said to load sites up to 20x quicker) and enjoy 3 levels of caching.

All this, at a reasonable price, makes A2 a very feature-rich solution that’s great for small to medium websites, whether your audience is in Malaysia or beyond.

3. SiteGround Singapore

Third on our list is the international brand SiteGround. Their headquarters are in Bulgaria, but you’re going to more interested in their datacenter in Singapore.

Their other state-of-the-art data centres are located in Chicago, Amsterdam and London.

Founded in 2004, SiteGround is a reputable host brand that offers a premium all-inclusive buy.

Bear with us – let’s break that down!

Whilst it’s definitely not as cheap as the first two on this list (keeping in mind their renewal price), SiteGround’s strength is that it delivers excellent quality offerings.

Particularly in the realms of speed, security and support – where it matters most!

For first timers, SiteGround’s cheapest plan starts from a very $3.95/mo (RM16). Just bear in mind that this jumps up to $11.95/mo (RM49) upon renewal.

If it’s any consolation, you will get a few free features that other hosts fail to offer – e.g. Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates, and email hosting (and as many email addresses as you want!)

At the end of the day, if you consider what you’re getting, SiteGround’s prices are really quite competitive.

Expect a solid set of quality features, peace of mind and excellent worldwide speeds.

4. Exabytes Malaysia

Exabytes is a Malaysian-born company that’s made a name for itself as a reliable local host.

They have a US data center location, but definitely have a greater focus in Asia with data centres in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. For Asian audiences, we’d recommend hosting from their Singapore base.

Exabytes is definitely our top pick out of local companies!

Not only have they won a lot of local awards, they’re big on serving their local community and even started the Malaysia Website Awards (MWA). It’s safe to consider them Malaysia’s biggest hosts.

Their plans are very reasonable, starting at RM14.99/mo for their EBiz Lite plan. Shared plans also come with a 100-day money back guarantee, so you can try them out for size.

We’d argue that Exabytes is a pretty good option for Malaysian e-commerce sites in particular. They offer e-commerce design services (at higher prices) with benefits like premium business email accounts and credit card & local bank transfer gateway integration.

In terms of support, they have a local team based in Suntech @ Penang Cybercity who serve in multiple local languages. They can be reached by phone, helpdesk, livechat or email, 24 hours a day.

They pride themselves on getting sites up and running quickly. If you go for their website-building package, your site should be up and running in 7 days. They also claim migrations only take a couple of hours!

What other value do you get? Well, a SEO-friendly domain, free domain privacy protection (worth RM60/year), a free SSL certificate option, and daily backups just to name a few.

In all, Exabytes are definitely a great option for small/medium sites with an audience based in Malaysia, and if you prefer a local support team.

5. Shinjiru

Whilst based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Shinjiru have a total of 8 offshore locations worldwide (and this number just keeps growing!)

In short, you have a good chance of finding a datacenter near your visitors, wherever you are.

We’re ending our list of our top hosts with another local company, Shinjiru. They’re certainly a reputable company, and are one of Malaysia’s oldest host brands.

They claim to be one of the most experienced offshore web hosting companies in the world. No wonder – they’ve been providing offshore and anonymous web hosting since 2000!

Shinjiru offer a very wide range of services, with a STRONG focus on protecting users’ privacy and anti-website shutdown. They’re another of the few hosts that offer Bitcoin hosting. Meaning you can pay for your hosting account totally anonymously.

In terms of shared hosting, their ECO STARTUP plan starts from a low RM9.90/mo (with a 36month commitment). It’s a bargain that gets you 10GB web space, unmetered bandwidth and unlimited email addresses. Not bad!

You’ll even get SSL and data backups thrown in for free.

Users can enjoy a 99.99% uptime guarantee, thanks to their scalable hardware that is said to meet international quality standards.

On top of privacy and peace-of-mind, the user experience is one that’s also excellent. Their shared hosting is built on a customised cPanel that they’ve enhanced to make it even easier to manage your websites, domains, files, etc. The result is pretty neat!

In all, if you’re a personal website or business startup and privacy is your priority, Shinijru may be the one for you.

Conclusions

In all, for Malaysian sites, we’d definitely recommend picking a reputable international host with fast response times all over the world.

To recap the 3 international brands we love most:

Whilst we Malaysians love a good bargain, it’s impossible to make an wholly informed decision purely on price. What’s important is to do your research, and pick out your priorities.

From there, you can identify which hosts can offer you and your audience the most value.

Good luck!