What Are Website Hosting Services?
Website hosting services refer to the plot of internet land that your website storefront sits on. Suppose you have a website, it needs to be on the web, and these hosting services are the landlords that put up your site and keep it running so your customers can access and see it when they type in your URL.
There are different types of web hosting services that cater to the varying types of businesses. Some web hosting companies will build your entire website, while others will just give you the plot of land and the shovel and leave you to it. Depending on your business model and size, you’ll choose a hosting company based on the factors explained below.
How To Choose The Best Web Hosting Services in Malaysia
Regardless of your audience’s location, content creators should still want the best web hosting in Malaysia. But Malaysia isn’t home to many big web hosting brands. Therefore, hosting your website with popular services elsewhere in the world might not work if you need your website to deliver speedy performance with a reasonable uptime for a Malaysian audience.
On the other hand, some of the best hosting services based in Malaysia might not have the technical support you would expect from other web hosting services. Unfortunately, no web hosting service is perfect, so users will have to decide what features they require from the service and find a web host to match those needs.
The requirements you’ll have for your website and web hosting provider will vary based on the type of website you want to host and the content that you will feature on it. For instance, an e-commerce website where consumers can purchase products will have different needs than a cooking blog.
What Constitutes A Good Web Hosting Provider in Malaysia?
When looking for the best web hosting company in Malaysia, content creators should focus on the following seven qualities.
1. Speed
Speed is an essential factor in your decision to use one web hosting service over another. Consider where your target audience is and ensure that your content’s server speed in that location is adequate.
2. Price
While some services cost more than others, they may also be more feature-rich. Higher cost, however, does not necessarily equate to higher-quality service, so be sure to compare each option with your specific needs thoroughly.
3. Storage, Bandwidth, and Backups
If you need to host a lot of content, it’s important to consider storage, bandwidth, and backups. This will allow you to host all the content you need while keeping it safe and secure. It will also help you with scalability if your business grows and needs more online storage space.
4. Security
No one wants the risk associated with becoming exposed to a data breach. Hackers are always on the lookout for weaknesses they can capitalize on, so ensure that your web hosting service protects your information and that of any potential clients.
5. Uptime
Uptime is vital for e-commerce websites. This measurement is the guaranteed time that your website will be accessible. The lower the uptime percentage that a hosting service guarantees, the more likely you will lose sales while your site is down.
6. Global or Local
Whether you should use a global or local web hosting provider depends on your target audience’s location. If your focus is local, a local host should work just fine. If your audience is more extensive, perhaps consider a global service. Content creators in Malaysia may want to consider A2 Hosting for local hosting. With its incredible speeds and reasonable cost, A2 Hosting has earned its spot as one of the best services for web hosting in Malaysia.
7. Cost
The cost associated with hosting a website may vary depending on the features your service offers, but you shouldn’t expect to pay more than RM 110 (USD 27.50) per month for quality service. If you need web hosting on a budget, Hostinger is an excellent all-around option at only RM 22.99 (USD 5.75) per month. However, to help you weigh your options, you can look at the specifications later on for various services with the best web hosting in Malaysia options.
What Types of Web Hosting Are There?
1. Shared hosting
Shared web hosting is exactly what it sounds like. You’ll be sharing server space with a bunch of other users on the same server, with the resources split evenly among everyone.
It’s simple, uncomplicated, perfect for beginners thinking about stepping foot into website building. Most of them are really quite affordable to.
This is by far our most recommended web hosting type, as it’s great for general purpose use, and actually performs surprisingly well if you go for a reliable brand that takes no nonsense from errant users.
The only problem with shared web hosting is that rogue users might (intentionally or not) consume too much resources, causing slowdowns for everyone else sharing that same server.
2. Cloud web hosting
While shared website hosting hosts multiple websites on a single server, with cloud web hosting, your website will exist across multiple servers – a cluster of servers, to be exact, in the cloud.
This means that the provider can literally choose other servers to load up your site from, if a particular one is under stress or is facing performance issues, which ensures stable, consistent, site load speeds!
Users usually upgrade from shared hosting to cloud hosting once they feel that their website has outgrown the resources that shared web hosting provides.
When you’re allocated bandwidth is constantly being used up due to heavy traffic, or if your web hosting provider straight up complains and tells you to upgrade, then it’s time to upgrade.
Aside from it’s obvious speed benefits, cloud web hosting provides users with a whole lot more features than shared hosting, such as balanced load, better security and easy scalability.
However, the downside is the price. Good things don’t come cheap, and cloud web hosting is unmistakably, good.
3. VPS hosting
VPS servers, otherwise known as Virtual Private Servers, are actually quite similar to the aforementioned cloud hosting.
The key difference between these two is that while cloud hosting utilizes several different machines on the cloud, VPS hosting uses one massive physical server which is then partitioned into several different servers.
Each one of these partitions act as a dedicated server on its own with its own resources, but at a much larger scale than what a shared hosting server would provide.
Faster and highly reliable compared to shared hosting servers, VPS hosting is typically very customizable, easily upgradable, and the partitions can be configured however you want to suit your needs.
Since each partition acts as a dedicated server, you’ll enjoy greater privacy and security – you won’t have to worry about resource hogging, traffic surges or privacy breaches from other users.
If you’re experiencing heavy traffic spikes on your ecommerce site, or if the website you’re running is particularly resource heavy, you should consider upgrading to a VPS account from your shared hosting server.
You’ll have to pay quite a bit more nevertheless, but we personally feel that the damage to the wallet is actually worth the trade off in performance, stability, security and resources.
4. Dedicated server hosting
Those wanting complete control over your servers, or if you just have deep pockets and a deep dislike for sharing, you might want to look into dedicated hosting plans.
With dedicated web hosting, you’ll practically be renting an entire server with ALL of its resources, dedicated just for you or your business. That’s the equivalent of booking out an entire restaurant or movie theatre, just for a date.
It is best suited for large enterprises or successful sites with consistently high daily traffic, dedicated web hosting users will have full access to the server, with the ability to configure it to support the exact amount of web traffic required to keep the site running.
Its uses include being able to install alternative operating systems for the webserver, or running performance-enhancing utilities like advanced page caching systems which require specific server hardware that only dedicated servers can provide.
With its superior speeds, reliability, resources, and most importantly, customizability, they are typically used to support extremely high levels of traffic for ecommerce, media, or publishing sites.
However, Dedicated Web Hosting does not come cheap and rightly so, considering you’re literally renting out an entire server for yourself.
It might even come with unexpected expenses too, such as licensing for software that are required to get the server running, i.e. Windows, or maybe even cPanel.
5. Managed WordPress hosting
Managed WordPress hosting is the bees knees of hosting WordPress sites.
If you’re running an enterprise site based on WordPress, we’d always recommend using managed WordPress hosting services. It has all the benefits of WordPress Hosting, but more managed!
First of all, Managed WordPress Hosting isn’t all that much different from regular shared hosting, except that you’ll get to enjoy all of the perks and none of the drawbacks – always fast, backed up, and secured!
All you have to do is sort out the initial set up, and since it’s literally managed, you can just kick back and sip on a cocktail while the experts work on keeping your site well oiled and running smoothly
You won’t need to worry about WordPress updates, because they’ll manage that for you. Security concerns are forgotten because, well, they’ll manage all your security updates. You won’t even need to lose sleep over optimising your site because it’s once again, managed.
If something goes wrong, don’t panic – these services usually will have WordPress experts as support to sort everything out for you because it is once and for all, managed!
The only negative side about managed WordPress hosting is that you might not be able to install the plugins you want, and it’s kind of damaging to your wallet.
The Best Web Hosting Malaysia (2023)
Malaysia may not have stellar performance from big-name web hosting companies; however, there are quite a few companies that offer web hosting at an affordable price while delivering high speeds and uptime and reliable customer service.
1. Hostinger
First, we will take a look at the Hostinger service. This service gives you some of the best web hosting Malaysia has to offer. Hostinger Malaysia is by far the fastest web hosting provider with server response time in Asia that ranges about 50 milliseconds on average.
Users in Singapore will have exceptionally fast server response when accessing your website, with an incredible five milliseconds of server response time. Additionally, Hostinger Malaysia gives customers unlimited bandwidth and storage and a free domain name, cutting your costs for web hosting.
Key Features
One of the best features of Hostinger Malaysia is its commitment to its customer base. Boasting one of the best web hosting services worldwide, they offer customer support in their native language in over 20 different countries, and Hostinger plans to keep growing to add service in more even languages.
Hostinger’s services also come at an affordable cost, considering all of its benefits. For just RM 22.99 (USD 5.75) per month, Hostinger provides its customers with almost any feature that they would need from a service dedicated to web hosting. Malaysia may surprise you with its economical and feature-rich hosting companies if you know where to look.
Downsides
While there are many things to love about the service offered by Hostinger Malaysia, there are drawbacks to almost every service. For Hostinger Malaysia, users may dislike that there is no daily backup for your content. To receive access to daily backups for your website, you will have to sign up for the Business Web Hosting plan.
Some users may find daily backups are necessary for the content that they are hosting. Unless they choose to upgrade their service, these users will, unfortunately, miss out on all of the beneficial key features that Hostinger Malaysia offers.
2. Siteground
For web designers or companies that need to host e-commerce content, Siteground is the service with the best web hosting Malaysia has available. E-commerce websites will need specific requirements from their web hosting service, and Siteground can help ensure that you cover all of your bases.
First, for hosting e-commerce content, your website will require a lot of storage space. You’ll need a bit of wiggle room for your business’s growth while retaining enough space to host the images and product pages for your current stock.
Key Features
The storage capacity, website speed, and server uptime are key features of Siteground’s web hosting service. The large disk space available to users allows for as many product uploads as you need, and the website speed prevents hangups on your site that could drive impatient potential customers away.
Siteground also boasts a 99.99% server uptime, which means that your site will only be unavailable on the rarest occasion. Reliable hosting for your e-commerce site means there is never a moment when you cannot collect revenue due to a loss of sales from website downtime.
Downsides
The downside to this hosting provider is that the service’s retail price is a bit steep. Though at a special price of RM 27.96 (USD 6.99) per month when writing this article, the service’s least expensive package retails for RM 59.96 (USD 14.99) per month. Though more than double the cost of other services available for web hosting, Malaysia websites might need Siteground’s features.
However, websites that are not focused on e-commerce or those that do not have demanding e-commerce needs may find a better value with some of the other web hosting services on this list.
3. Exabytes
Exabytes is an excellent web hosting provider for business owners and web designers looking for local Malaysian hosting. If your website is being hosted mainly for an Asian audience, Exabytes could be the service that’s right for you. The 99.5% uptime isn’t as high as other services, but it is still a reasonable percentage of uptime for sites not oriented for e-commerce.
Hosting your website with Exabytes can bring speedy web response to your site and financial benefits to you. Those who would like to host WordPress content will find a lot to love about Exabytes, as the service comes optimized to work with WordPress and installs with a single click.
Key Features
One of the best features of Exabytes is its customer service, which is available 24/7. Exabytes also gives users 50 gigabytes of disk space for their hosted content. For RM 45.99 (USD 11.50) per month, users can expect to get all of this plus 100 GB disk transfer.
At just over 100 milliseconds server response time in Asia, Exabytes gives local users serviceable and affordable web hosting in Malaysia. The service also offers its customers a 100-day money-back guarantee if they are not satisfied. You can also expect fast account activation with Exabytes, so you can have your website up and running in no time.
Downsides
Typically, websites should try to have an uptime of at least 99.8%. While the 99.5% uptime guarantee from Exabytes is sufficient, it might not serve well for websites that host products for sale. Any time an e-commerce website is down, you cannot make sales, and you begin losing potential revenue.
Additionally, for websites with an audience that extends outside of Asia and farther around the globe, Exabytes service might not fit the bill. Although the website’s speed for Asian audience members should be reasonable, international members of your audience will experience significantly slower response times.
4. Shinjiru
Shinjiru is one of Malaysian bestwebsite hosting hosting services that has been in the industry for 20 years. Shinjiru focuses on helping start-up businesses as well as providing tools and services for web hosting. Shinjiru is a popular global web hosting service and is also great for web hosting in Malaysia.
The service offers domain names, web hosting for businesses, dedicated servers, WordPress hosting, web security, and SSD VPS. Customers who host their websites with Shinjiru appreciate the 99% uptime and the excellent customer support that the service offers Monday through Friday.
Key Features
Shinjiru’s key features are its offerings of eco-shared hosting, business premium hosting, and its virtual private server. This virtual server will be one of many web servers located on an actual hardware server that segments itself to keep all virtual servers separate. By using virtual private servers, Shinjiru offers users higher security.
The services of this local Malaysia web host retail for RM 19.90 (USD 4.98) per month for their Eco Startup plan. You may even be able to find the service at a lower cost since Shinjiru sometimes discounts their web hosting fees. All of this also comes with a satisfaction guaranteed 3-month trial period, or your money back.
Downsides
Though we have given the price breakdown for Shinjiru’s web hosting services as monthly, the service’s packages are run at an annual rate. While this might not be a concern for some users, other users may not have the ability to pay a yearly fee upfront for their website’s hosting service.
Additionally, it is excellent that Shinjiru’s customer support is helpful for its customers and is a useful tool for those who need it. However, limiting the availability of support to weekdays may be an oversight. Unfortunately, internet and web hosting issues aren’t constrained to a Monday to Friday schedule.
5. Kinsta
Since 2013, this Malaysian web hosting service has fought to be the best web hosting in Malaysia. The service has a lot to offer for members willing to pay a premium price for web hosting services. With Kinsta, users have access to global speeds with an average of 117 milliseconds attributed to 24 different data centers worldwide.
Customers who need to host a website with content specifically for an Asian audience should consider using the services data center in Singapore for the highest speeds and best results. Kinsta also offers users a 99.9% guaranteed uptime.
Key Features
Kinsta supports up to 20,000 visits per month while backing up the content on your web page daily. The service offers its users a hack fix guarantee and architecture powered by Google Cloud’s Premium Tier, unlocking speed, security, and performance that users love.
Support is available from Kinsta through WordPress experts who can help users if they find themselves in unfamiliar territory. Additionally, Kinsta gives users a choice between different hosting services and allows for seamless upgrade integration so that your service is never interrupted, no matter your website’s needs.
Downsides
The worst part about Kinsta is that the service is only able to host WordPress. So if you are looking to host WordPress content, you might be hard-pressed to find a better premium service for it than Kinsta. Even some WordPress users may find the price point of RM 102.50 (USD 25.63) to be a little too high, though.
However, if you are using any other platform to create your web content, you will be out of luck with this service. To use Kinsta, you will need to transfer all of your content to WordPress. That isn’t an advisable or straightforward solution, though, so it may be best to move along to a different web hosting service.
6. Hostpapa
Sometimes when you need the best web hosting tools in Malaysia, you might need to look outside the country. Hostpapa is an independently owned web hosting service located in Toronto, Canada. While its servers are in Canada, Amsterdam, and the United States, Hostpapa still keeps a relatively high speed across the globe.
Customers using Hostpapa can expect speeds of 171 milliseconds in Asia. These speeds are nothing to write home about, but your audience will still not have to worry about too much slowdown. Global audience members can expect speeds of around 130 milliseconds.
Key Features
One of the best features of Hostpapa is its utilization of cPanel, which makes the service’s interface very user friendly. While many other services dropped the use of cPanel when their prices rose in 2020, Hostpapa continues to use the popular web hosting tool. Additionally, customers can expect a free domain name and SSL with the WP Business plan from Hostpapa.
If you have multiple sites that you need to host, consider Hostpapa, as its service offers unlimited websites and unlimited SSD. Users have access to these features as well as Hostpapa’s 99.9% uptime guarantee for only RM 24.40 (USD 6.10) per month.
Downsides
Although there is a lot to enjoy about Hostpapa, particularly for cPanel fans, there is a downside for global power users. Hostpapa’s data centers in Canada, Amsterdam, and the United States can’t maintain the same speed in Asia as other services with dedicated Asian servers.
This difference may not be an issue for less demanding websites, but for e-commerce sites and other hosted content that requires high speeds, Hostpapa may not be the service with the best web hosting in Malaysia. But if your website can weather the speeds that Hostpapa allows, there is little else to dislike about the service.
7. Vodien
For over 18 years, Vodien’s service has excelled as the best web hosting in Malaysia. Vodien is another company with data centers located in Singapore, so web sites with primarily Asian audiences can expect high speeds when hosting with Vodien.
Vodien’s service also comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee if you become unsatisfied with the web hosting service that it provides.
Key Features
Vodien offers its users high-quality customer support, along with fast page load times. Customers who host their content with Vodien will also enjoy free SSL certification along with a dedicated IP. They are known to have dependable customer support services, where you can reach them via email, phone, or live chat, making them one of the most reliable web hosting services.
Downsides
Since the data centers for Vodien reside mainly in Singapore, users who have a broad global audience may want to use a different web hosting service. Although Vodien’s global speeds may exceed those of other services for web hosting in Malaysia, their numbers still cannot rival some of the better international services.
8. A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting bills itself as environmentally friendly hosting that offers blazing speeds to those hosting their content in Asia. This provider is another service with its data center based in Singapore, and A2 Hosting’s speeds have few rivals.
The average speed in Asia was just under 80 milliseconds when tested, with speeds in Singapore clocking in at an incredible six milliseconds.
Key Features
Along with A2 Hosting’s phenomenal speeds, users hosting content with them will also receive unlimited SSD and bandwidth. A2 Hosting also offers free site migration, and if at any time you become dissatisfied with their service, you can claim a money-back guarantee.
WordPress users will enjoy A2 Hosting for its dedicated WordPress optimization as well. Power users will love A2 Hosting’s Turbo plan, which kicks the speed up even more. Turbo plan users can expect rates 20x faster than the snappy average speeds A2 Hosting already offers on its Swift plan.
Downsides
Everything seems great about A2 Hosting so far, but as we know, no service is perfect. If you are lucky enough for your entire web hosting process to go smoothly, you likely will find very little fault with A2 Hosting. However, if you are unfortunate enough to have to deal with their customer service, your attitude might change.
A2 Hosting’s customer service chat team is exceptionally difficult to get in contact within a timely manner. If your live chat support isn’t instant, it can’t really be considered a live chat. This area of service is by far A2 Hosting’s biggest pitfall.
9. Bluehost
Bluehost may be a dependable website hosting service for a global audience, but for an Asian-only audience, users may want to look elsewhere for the best web hosting in Malaysia. Bluehost is also the officially recommended web hosting service by WordPress, so some users who need to host content may already be familiar with the name.
With Bluehost’s package, you can get 50 GB SSD storage as well as unlimited bandwidth and free SSL.
Key Features
Bluehost’s services will cost users RM 24.40 (USD 6.10). With this fee, you will receive one website and a free domain. Bluehost also carries the weight of WordPress’s own recommendation, which may give it a bit more authority in some users’ eyes.
Downsides
As already mentioned, Bluehost may not be the best choice for an Asian-only audience, and users may want to look elsewhere for the best web hosting in Malaysia. Speeds with Bluehost were lower in Asia than any other service that we reviewed. Global speeds were decent but still didn’t rival some of the other better services. Even with all of its other benefits, it seems Bluehost and Asia don’t match up.
10. ServerFreak
ServerFreak’s boasts servers that are located in first class data centres with multiple backbone providers. They specialise in providing web hosting solutions for almost all array of purposes – personal blogs, email solutions, corporate websites, databases and the list goes on.
Back in 2011, ServerFreak was recognised by Web Hosting Search as one of the Top Pick Web Hosts with hosting services that are simple, affordable and trustworthy.
Key Features
Being one of local Malaysia web hosting providers on the list, ServerFree possesses only a fraction slower than Exabytes in the Malaysian region, though it ranks A+ across the globe. ServerFreak’s services will cost users Rm 26.60 (US D 6.08) per month. With this amount of money, you are entitled to a 25GB disk space, 100GB disk transfer, 99% uptime guarantee, 1 free domain and a 340+ script.
Downsides
While ServerFreak guarantees 99% uptime, then again, it is slightly lower than our benchmark. Though, it won’t cause too much interruption. Furthermore, it is a little more expensive than Exabytes Malaysia; however, you do get a 30-day money back guarantee. Do also note that it is slower in the rest of the world than most larger hosts.