Top 10 Web Hosting Companies of Pakistan

It’s a good time to discuss the market share of different hosting providers in Pakistan. As the web hosting business in Pakistan is slowly growing with the spread of IT literacy and cheap Internet services.

Internet users are getting mature, their trends and habits are changing. Matured Internet users are building their own websites. It is creating opportunities for more hosting providers to enter the market and the existing hosts to expand their business operations.

But general scenario isn’t good, most service providers doesn’t possess good technical skills. Many are charging hidden fee, hosting services are too costly, customer support isn’t active. All of these problems require complete posts. I’ll discuss these problems later on separately.

These are the charts for Top 10 web hosts of Pakistan by their customer strength. Except CyberNet (correct me if I’m wrong) all of these hosts are resellers.

The host that tops this list is AABCA.com and when I’m writing this blog post their site is down. With every passing day their market share is decreasing, you can see this web hosting report for AABCA.com here at Webhosting.info.

The main problem with resellers is their reliability, the uptime and server performance depend almost entirely on the upstream provider (the host behind the reseller). Considering that the reseller did a good job in finding a great upstream host, these things should be fine, but, unfortunately, in their search to get the best deal out there, many hosting resellers (if not most of them) end up being hosted for just a few bucks a month on highly overcrowded servers with stability and performance problems, frequent downtime etc. which will in turn translate into poor service for the end user.

Getting Started [Part: 1]: What is Web Hosting?

This is the first post of a series for newbies about web hosting. I’m starting from begging so it may help total newbies in web development.

What Is Web Hosting?
Before you working with your plan, take some time to familiarize yourself with your web hosting plan. Let’s start with a few definitions:
Server
A server is a computer attached to a network whose function is to provide (or serve up) data or other resources to client computers. A web server, for example, sends web pages to the Internet when asked for them by a browser. Other kinds of servers you might encounter are email servers (which manage email distribution), application servers (computers that run applications used by other computers), and workgroup servers (which allow multiple users to share data).
Web host
A web host is an interconnected group of web servers containing web site data that other computers can access through the Internet. Web hosts, such as Yahoo!, may also provide technical resources and site maintenance.
web site
A web site is a collection of web pages, usually linked to each other, that are made available on the World Wide Web by an organization or individual.

You might think of a web host as a landlord. A landlord builds and maintains the structure, then rents storefronts to other businesses. Each business designs and operates its store differently and leaves building maintenance to the landlord.

Likewise, a web host such as Dreamhost rents space on a web server to businesses and individuals like you. Each web hosting customer builds his own web site, while Yahoo!, the host, maintains the network of servers. Paying for a web hosting service means you don’t have to invest lots of money or endure technical headaches to create and maintain a world-class network. Your host monitor the network and protect your data so you can focus on your web site.