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If you are new to web hosting in Singapore, let me tell you that three big brand names, Exabytes, Vodien, and HostSG, have survived the last ten years or more in my web developer experience.
Exabytes was established by this Malaysian student (yup, the entrepreneur started young) who resells US hosting packages to local businesses in Malaysia. When I looked into Exabytes, I saw they had just expanded their service to Singapore and bombarded my Gmail and Google search results with their ads (they are still doing it, by the way).
In 2016, I took their ad and paid for the EBiz Plus plan, which covers unlimited website hosting, email hosting, and 50GB space. Sadly, the plan is no longer offered to new subscribers, and the renewal fee is more than triple what I initially paid. Therefore, I have moved into Exabytes EBiz 13 Mini for the few websites I managed. I plan to move more websites into Exabytes once its hosting plan expires.
Besides Exabytes, I used to have plenty of cheap website hosting from other vendors (primarily outside of Singapore). When I said affordable, I really meant it. These vendors offered S$10/year hosting (or even less than that) for 5GB space, unlimited email, unlimited database, and unlimited website. It was a perfect plan for web developers with many pet projects to host.
It sounds too good to be true, and it is. The hosting plan I took was very slow in loading everything, and all that I was doing was simple phpinfo() and routing the URL to the index.php. After discovering that one of my domains was bombarded with DDoS, things became more grim. Logging to the server was very slow; sometimes, I could not even connect (using FTP) to upload my script.
I have had a different experience using Exabytes. The website loading is always predictable. There have been times when my website was down for a few minutes, but this is not critical enough for me to raise a complaint. The hosting backend is always reachable. It reduces my anxiety about losing my server and all its websites.
I have used their cpanel front-end to upload my scripts/website without issues and eliminate the FileZilla FTP client from my work process (fewer steps, fewer software issues to manage, better workflow). Lastly, I have not seen any DDoS attempt in my access.log file in Exabytes. I believe that Exabytes invested in security measures to prevent abuse of its servers and network.
Most people who deal with web hosting know two software programs that are always there: Plesk or CPanel. If you have been shopping around, you will realize that not all vendors use Plesk or CPanel. Wix definitely created its own web host interface, and Hostinger also uses its own web interface. Some of the vendors I have used give me access to a free Webmin panel. In fact, the cost of your hosting most likely relates to which software your vendor uses for the web interface.
I don’t have any preference for the web interface. Still, it is annoying that I must figure out how to do things for every web interface. For example, how do you redirect the www subdomain to the main domain (and vice versa), change from HTTP to HTTPS, or change your PHP settings (maximum uploaded file size, maximum memory, Memcached, strict_types or not, etc.)? I found it easier if the vendors used similar software to manage the hosting. Fortunately, Exabytes uses Plesk for its new business web hosting (EBiz13 Mini).
As a web developer, one particular issue I care about is deploying the website. I was there when it was uploaded using an FTP account and zip files. It is still working now, but the practice is out of favor compared to the git style. Using the git style, I develop the website and push it to the git repo in my development server to track the changes, issues/bugs I have resolved, etc. Then, on the hosting side, I use git to pull the website from my dev server into the website’s document root. This always puts my published website in sync with the latest website that I have developed. It is possible to do this with the latest Plesk in the Exabytes business web hosting plan.
The other deployment potential is to install PHP libraries/components through PHP composer and access the command line (CLI) for web maintenance (such as clearing the web cache in Drupal CMS). This is also possible with the Exabytes business web hosting plan (EBiz13).
The one thing that Exabytes excels at is its technical support. Even today (2024), Exabytes maintains real human technical support to handle requests from its website chat, support requests in the hosting platform, or emails. Many other companies have switched to AI bot technical support, which I found very annoying. It keeps redirecting me to their technical FAQ page, which, more often than not, is not helping at all.
If you are looking for reliable web hosting based in Singapore, I recommend Exabytes. To try it out, use my coupon here.
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