What makes a good Nigerian web hosting platform?

What makes a good Nigerian web hosting platform?


Web Hosting in Nigeria – The best companies for site or blog hosting
So you have finally decided to upgrade your story about Lagos life, from an Instagram story, to a properly hosted blog. Perhaps you want to upgrade your business website, from the free sub domain of WordPress you use now, to a site with your own domain name, hosted on a professional web hosting platform.

This blog post looks at some of the best web hosting companies in Nigeria. It will guide you towards selecting the best web hosting platform for your project Some of the metrics used to decide which web hosting is best includes balancing server performance, affordability, ease of payment in Naira and the efficiency of technical support from the Nigerian web hosting companies we look at.

“The Best Web Hosting in Nigeria 2020 guide, will help you make your new year resolution to host your website or blog on your own domain name a reality”

1. Server speed

The speed at which your website is served to your visitor, is what is meant by server speed. If visitors type your website address into their browser, and they have to wait a few seconds for your website to load, that is not good. A good server speed or page load time is considered to be around 200 milliseconds or less.

2. Guaranteed uptime

This is the amount of time your hosting company guarantees that your site will be online. You should not settle for a Nigerian hosting company that promises anything less than 99.99% uptime. These days, hosting companies that use cloud servers can promise 100% uptime. See some of the advantages of hosting your site on an SSD cloud hosting platform here.

3. Security for site and server

So that your blog or business website is online for your visitors at all times, your hosting company must be able to guarantee the security of your site. Good web hosting providers apply automatic server patches, to ensure your site is secure. Most of them regularly scan the contents of your website, to ensure malware has not been uploaded.

4. Customer service

Most hosting providers have 24-7 customer support for technical issues. Their billing department tends to be available Monday to Friday only. It is the area of customer service that a web hosting company that is actually based in Nigeria trumps those based abroad. You will be able to speak with a Nigerian hosting company support team, on a local telephone number. They will also be based in the same time zone. If your host is based abroad, the cost of making an international call and the difference in time zone could be a problem. Most of the time, people use a chat app to communicate with their host, this can minimise the need for a telephone call.

5. Backups

Though you should have the contents of your site on your computer, your hosting provider should back it up as well. This is part of the service with most hosting companies, other hosting providers charge additional fee to back your site up.

6. Web space and bandwidth

Web space, also known as storage space is the amount of storage space you are allowed on the server. Bandwidth is the amount of traffic your site is allowed to use in a given time. The more storage and bandwidth the better. Some hosting companies promise unlimited storage space, most of the time there is a caveat to this, which translates that you are actually not able to use unlimited web space.

7. Pricing

We Nigerian love things to be cheap. You should know that if you buy cheap web hosting, you will get poor service. That is not to say that all cheap web hosting is bad. You should beware that when anything, including a web hosting service is too cheap, it is highly unlikely to be of good quality. Companies whose web hosting offerings are too cheap, have been known to go out of business, leaving your website stranded.

8. SSL certificate

Lets Encrypt Free SSL Certificate

Lets Encrypt Free SSL Certificate


If you want your site to be taken seriously, and rank well in search engines, you should ensure it has an SSL certificate. SSL certificate, is basically a certificate from an organisation trusted by third parties. An SSL certificate vouches for the identity of your site. Basically saying it is not a fraudulent site. May web hosting providers in Nigeria will give you at least one free SSL certificate, with your hosting package. You can also buy an SSL certificate. If you are technically minded and want to save money on SSL certificates, you can use Let’s Encrypt certificate, which is a free SSL certificate.

9. Network or cloud hosting

Network hosting is the traditional web hosting that has been around forever. Cloud hosting is the more advanced, more recent type of hosting, where you site is hosted on webspace in the cloud. When choosing a hosting for your website in Nigeria, you should favour cloud hosting over network hosting, as it has a slight edge over network hosting.

Control panel solution

This is the interface from which you can login to your hosting, manage stuff, view stats, create email addresses and stuff like that. The two most popular control panel software offered by web hosting companies in Nigeria are cPanel and Plesk. Other hosting providers do have their own custom control panel. Most website owners seem to favour cPanel over other control panels. The main thing to consider when choosing a hosting control panel is that, should you move your site from one provider to another, moving to the same control panel as the one you are moving away from will make your life much easier.