Evidence library, checked 17 July 2026
Hosting research that shows its working.
Official prices, long-term cost traps, regional access, independent tests and user-reported themes, separated by evidence type and linked to the original source.
Official factIndependent findingCommunity anecdoteEditorial interpretation
Provider pricing
Never compare the first monthly number alone.
ProviderIntroductory priceRenewalTerm and inclusions
Prices are snapshots, promotions can change without notice. Local tax, checkout currency and optional products must be captured again before publication.
Eight-country launch map
Local access is part of product quality.
India
Hostinger Premium, ₹139/month for 48 months, renewal ₹449/monthUPI and card-friendly global choices, compare tax and renewal at checkout
View primary source ↗Nepal
Nest Nepal, from NPR 90/month on a three-year term, 13% Value Added Tax (VAT) excludedLocal billing, eSewa and Khalti availability can outweigh a small headline-price gap
View primary source ↗Bangladesh
Hostever Advance Linux, BDT 2,800/yearCheck Bangladesh Internet Exchange (BDIX) routing, backups and inode limits
View primary source ↗Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka Hosting, from LKR 504.40/monthCompare .lk domain package cost separately from hosting
View primary source ↗Pakistan
Local plan verification in progressRequire Pakistani rupee checkout evidence, payment confirmation and renewal capture before ranking
View primary source ↗Cambodia
Host Cambodia, hosting from USD 32/yearUnited States dollar billing is common, check .kh registration assistance and server location
View primary source ↗Mongolia
iTools single-domain hosting, MNT 180,000/yearIncludes 10 gigabytes NVMe storage, 30-day backups and refund policy
View primary source ↗Bhutan
Bhutan Telecom Bronze, Nu 2,250/yearIncludes a .bt domain, but ordering requires identity or organisation documents
View primary source ↗Feedback and testing
What the evidence says, and what it cannot say.
SiteGround publishes its Singapore origin and backup arrangement
SiteGround lists Singapore as an origin location and says Singapore sites are backed up on different machines in Singapore. Separate machines reduce server-level risk, but are not geographic separation.
Read source ↗Kinsta lists six relevant Asian locations
Kinsta’s February 2026 documentation lists Mumbai, Batam, Singapore, Osaka, Seoul and Tokyo among 28 selectable data centres. Plan restrictions can still limit the choices visible at site creation.
Read source ↗WP Engine location access can depend on plan
WP Engine documents Singapore and several other Asia-Pacific locations, while marking some Google, Amazon Web Services and Azure locations as premium or conditional. A location list is not proof that every entry plan can select every region.
Read source ↗SiteGround performance
TechRadar reported 100% uptime during its 14-day shared-plan test, an average response time of 0.207 seconds and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) of 0.735 seconds. This is one test configuration, not a universal guarantee.
Read source ↗Namecheap trade-off
TechRadar found attractive pricing and support access, but its WordPress benchmark scored 4.7 out of 10. Treat one benchmark as directional evidence and retest by region.
Read source ↗Migration fees and friction
A small, nonrepresentative Reddit sample includes reports of a USD 199 Bluehost migration quote and difficult control-panel or Domain Name System (DNS) changes. These are anecdotes, not measured failure rates.
Read source ↗Renewal and add-on surprises
Some Bluehost and Namecheap users report unexpected renewal or add-on costs. We use these reports to choose what to verify in checkout captures, never to assign a score by themselves.
Read source ↗Nepal performance caution
One Nepal community contributor described Nest Nepal as slow despite its low price. The claim requires repeatable regional speed tests before it can affect a recommendation.
Read source ↗Backup cost can be separate
Cloudways documents configurable server backups, while its DigitalOcean pricing page lists backup storage separately. A plan marked ‘backups included’ still needs frequency, retention and restore-cost checks.
Read source ↗HostGator performance requires configuration-level context
TechRadar’s disclosed short test found very fast Largest Contentful Paint but weaker uptime, while Hostingstep’s longer dataset reports acceptable United States response and weak global Time to First Byte. We retain both methods rather than average incompatible tests.
Read source ↗Contract intelligence
The details most comparison sites bury.
These findings come from provider agreements, plan documentation and official support material, not marketing summaries.
A backup label is not a recovery plan
Hostinger’s June 2026 hosting agreement says weekly backups overwrite previous backups and two weeks are stored remotely. Daily backups, where included, add the last week of daily copies. Buyers still need an independent copy.
Read primary source ↗An uptime guarantee usually means credits
Namecheap’s shared-hosting guarantee offers one day of service-cycle extension for each hour of qualifying unscheduled downtime. It is not a promise that downtime cannot occur.
Read primary source ↗Refund scope matters more than the headline
Namecheap’s 30-day guarantee applies to eligible first-time shared-hosting customers, while domains, certificates, renewals and several third-party products are excluded.
Read primary source ↗Bhutan ordering can be partly offline
Bhutan Telecom lists identity or organisation documentation and submission at a telecom exchange counter. Friction at purchase is therefore part of the product comparison.
Read primary source ↗Non-payment can become data loss
Drukhost’s terms describe a 30-day renewal grace period, after which the account and files may be deleted. Renewal reminders do not replace independent backups.
Read primary source ↗A cheap plan may intentionally omit backups
Hostever distinguishes a budget Bangladesh Internet Exchange (BDIX) tier without backup from its professional plans. A lower price can represent a materially different risk profile.
Read primary source ↗Local server claims need route tests
iTools states that its servers are in Mongolia, which is relevant for local users, but our ranking still requires repeatable measurements from the target audience network.
Read primary source ↗Static hosting is not WordPress hosting
LankaHost’s lowest basic cPanel plans explicitly exclude database-backed Content Management System (CMS) scripts. Comparing them with WordPress plans would be misleading.
Read primary source ↗Courtesy backup is not guaranteed recovery
HostGator’s policy calls automatic backups a courtesy, limits eligibility by account size and inode count, and lists a US$49 assisted restore or courtesy-copy fee. Buyers should create and test an independent cPanel backup.
Read primary source ↗Editorial coverage
Twenty fields every review should verify.
This becomes the Content Management System (CMS) review template, so editors cannot publish a thin affiliate page by accident.
- 01Promotional monthly price and total due today
- 02Minimum term and cancellation conditions
- 03Renewal price and renewal billing period
- 04Taxes, currency conversion and foreign-card fees
- 05Domain registration and year-two renewal
- 06Email mailbox price after any free period
- 07Backup frequency, retention and restore cost
- 08Storage type, processor, memory and inode limits
- 09Website, database and traffic limits
- 10Server or data-centre region and Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- 11Migration method, fee and downtime risk
- 12SSL coverage and renewal cost
- 13Security scans, firewall and malware cleanup
- 14Support channels, hours and escalation path
- 15Uptime promise, exclusions and service credits
- 16Refund window and excluded products
- 17Payment methods available in the buyer’s country
- 18Independent performance test date and location
- 19User-feedback themes and sample limitations
- 20Affiliate relationship, source link and verification date
Plain-language glossary
Know what the plan table is saying.
The amount of data transferred, not the speed of the server.
Content Delivery Network, cached copies closer to visitors.
A commercial control panel for sites, email and databases.
Central Processing Unit allocation, a frequent shared-hosting limit.
Domain Name System, records directing a domain to services.
File and directory count, often restrictive despite ample storage.
Largest Contentful Paint, a user-experience loading metric.
Non-Volatile Memory Express, a fast storage interface.
Random Access Memory available to active processes.
Service Level Agreement, including promise, exclusions and remedy.
Secure Sockets Layer, commonly used to mean a TLS certificate.
Web Application Firewall, filtering malicious web requests.
Publication rule
A provider cannot be called “best” until its price, renewal, tax, payment access, resource limits, backup policy, refund terms and regional suitability are current. Community reports can trigger verification, but cannot independently change a score.
See the scoring model →