Considering the fact that thousands of Nigerians are taking their businesses online, many want to know which web hosting company is the best in the country. Many Nigerian bloggers and entrepreneurs have hosted their business websites on several web companies in Nigeria and gotten their fingers burnt in the process, but it doesn’t have to be this way anymore. It is now time to switch to a new web company setting up shop in the country and enjoy the best of internet possibilities with ease.
HUB8 is the latest entrant into the Nigerian web space. It is a global web hosting company that has just launched in the country. HUB8 is an international web company in major countries of the world and recently launched in Nigeria with a dedicated website for Nigerian customers. Reliable and fast with 99.9% uptime, TechCabal caught up with HUB8’s Regional Manager for Emerging Markets, Dmitry Deniskin, for a brief chat and the following interview tells it all.
Can we meet you?
Yes. My name is Dmitry Deniskin. I am the regional manager for HUB8, the global web hosting brand that just opened shop in Nigeria. I am Russian, but considering that Russia and Nigeria have a lot in common in terms of population and the entrepreneurial movement, my team has decided to launch in Nigeria and be the Growth Partner we’ve always been to online entrepreneurs everywhere.
Can you tell us about HUB8, your web hosting company?
HUB8 is a Growth Partner for businesses all over the world. We are as real in Nigeria as we are in Russia and other parts of the world. We are basically into domains, hosting, and websites. Our core business is putting individuals and businesses on the internet, and giving online presence and visibility to businesses everywhere.
How is HUB8 different from the existing web companies in Nigeria?
Our web hosting experience, powerful resources and distinctive products set us apart from the pack. We are launching with major web offerings that no businesses can resist or do without. For instance, we have a domains registration product that enables you to register your domains for cheap; we have an intuitive visual website builder that helps you with website creations; we have hundreds of premium designed interactive WordPress themes to give you elegant website themes from Themify.net; and our cPanel web hosting infrastructure is powered by SSDs and fully compatible with CMSs such as Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Magento and several others in the industry.
How much does each of these web package cost?
That is where we are different from the others. You can obtain almost all of our products for FREE under our Free Plan offerings; and to sweeten the deal, you can enjoy free website backups, ultra-fast SSD disks, and non-existent ads under our FREE HOSTING PLAN. You may however have to pay a token as low as N350 for domain registration under our domain promos or even use your own domain with our free hosting without any initial fees.
And for how long will your Free Hosting Plans remain free?
As your Growth Partner, we intend to keep our free hosting plans free forever to enable you run your internet businesses with ease and more profits! But things might change in the future and new users may be restricted from accessing several features of our offerings – that is why it is BEST for every serious person to register with us right away. And then, as your business grows, you can switch to any of our paid plans.
But what is the catch if you offer Nigerians free website plans?
There is no catch at all. It is our way of encouraging people to bring their businesses online. As your Growth Partner, our business model is that we must grow together with our customers. So we are committed to our “No ads. 100% Free Hosting” vow. The storage space under the free plans offer is however limited to 500 MB per website and bandwidth is limited to 100 GB per month. The truth is that these parameters are even more than enough for e-commerce websites, not to mention personal blogs and corporate websites.
What are the domain extensions you have for Nigerian businesses?
We have over 500 domain extensions for all business names. Our domain product caters to all niche categories across all industries – technology, business, news, sports, health, science, government, politics, arts, and blogs among others.We have .com, .xyz, .pw, .online, and .site among several others; and we are looking into adding domain extensions such as .ng and .com.ng to our portfolio. In fact, we have registered hub8.ng for our Nigerian users in adherence to NiRA’s efforts to promote national domain for Nigerians.The .ng and .com.ng domain extensions tell search engines that websites are domiciled within the country and this boosts SEO for the websites.
What payment options do you have for those who want to switch to a paid service?
If anyone wants to switch from our free plans to our paid plans in order to access more dynamic features, you can use your VISA and Mastercard to make payments. And to prove that we are actually on ground for Nigerian customers, we have partnered with Flutterwave to accept payments from Nigerian banks such as Access Bank, Diamond Bank, GTBank, Zenith and UBA. You can equally use your Verve cards to make payments for domains and hosting among other products we have on offer.
Do you have an office in Nigeria?
Yes, we have a staff on ground in Lagos and we look forward to setting up offices in other Nigerian cities as soon as we have more customers from within Nigeria. However, our core team at HUB8 works as a distributed team and with the aids of technology and digital innovations, we are able to provide local support to every customer anywhere in the world within minutes of getting in touch with us.
What is your last word for Nigerians?
We want to encourage all Nigerians to tap into the potentials of the internet by moving their businesses online. With an average of about 190 million people, Nigerians have the education and the technological resources and the digital innovation to make more money online. You only need to partner with us at HUB8 as your Growth Partner to get you where you want to be in the internet world. We are cheap, we are fast, and we are globally reliable. Thank you!
