Great news for Starter Hosting customers! We have revamped our Starter Hosting features and pricing so that you can now enjoy more disk space and lower renewal cost for the Starter 40 and Starter 60 packages.
 
Check out the comparison below:


In addition, we have implemented upgrades to all our Starter hosting servers over the past few months. These are ALREADY ACTIVE for all customers and come at NO ADDITIONAL COSTS.
 
• Upgraded all servers from regular spinning drives to NVME SSDs (faster email and website retrieval)
• Upgraded all servers from E3 Xeon CPUs to E5 Xeon CPUs (faster website processing)
• Email SSL connections enabled on server level to accept SSL connections from email clients.

Secure Website (HTTPS) – New Solution with Lower Fees
 
Previously, websites only need to be secured if they were handling sensitive information such as personal or financial data. But now that browsers such as Google Chrome have started labeling websites as “Not Secure” on the address bar, it might be time to consider securing your website. What’s more when Google Search Engine has announced that websites with HTTPS will enjoy higher ranking on Google Search!
 
Past technical limitations posed some drawbacks in securing your site (HTTPS) previously:

• Have to subscribe for a Dedicated IP address (S$10/month)
• Have to obtain an AlphaSSL certificate (S$50/year)
• The above covers only 1 url, not including subdomains.
• High costs to secure the entire site,including subdomains.
 
Compare this to our new cost-effective solution that allows you to secure your website at a much lower cost:
 
• Shared IP address that includes the SSL certificate. Only an additional S$5/month (S$60/year).
• Covers both the main website and all subdomains.
 
Current customers who wish to add this service to their package may contact us for further discussion.
 
Existing customers who is currently subscribed to our Dedicated IP + AlphaSSL add-on will be contacted separately to check if you wish to downgrade to this lower-cost solution upon renewal of your service.

Our “Budget Hosting”, a cPanel based shared hosting package, has since been replaced with our Starter Hosting packages. If you are still on the Budget Hosting packages, you should consider upgrading to Starter Hosting due to:
 
• New disk space upgrades—a huge improvement from 5GB/10GB/15GB Budget Hosting plans.
• Newer PHP version for websites, especially if your website requires them.
 
Here’s our explanation why:
 
Technical limitations of Budget Hosting servers meant that each of our Budget Hosting servers can only have 1 version of PHP installed which each customer on this server will use. Unfortunately, you may encounter issues with outdated PHP versions if you are trying to perform upgrades that require newer version of PHP (e.g. WordPress 5.2 requires PHP 5.6). The reason? Many of our customers do not upgrade their website software after their website is launched, so we have to keep older PHP versions on the servers as upgrading it would mean that the websites of these customers using older PHP versions would be rendered unusable after the upgrade.
 
If you are running websites that require newer versions of PHP, it would be advisable to upgrade to a Starter Hosting. Our Starter Hosting supports PHP 5.6 and above, and also has a PHP version selector which allows you to select which PHP version (5.6, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3) you would like to use for your website. This will allow you to have more control over the PHP version required for your website.
 
Please contact us if you have any queries about upgrading from Budget Hosting to Starter Hosting. We will gladly assist with the server/package migration process (free during office hours) after performing some technical checks on your Budget Hosting account.

Business Hosting will be refreshed in Apr 2020 with new plans based on our new Cloud infrastructure. With improvements in technology, we are now able to offer Business Cloud Hosting again at even more competitive pricing than our current Business Hosting VPS, while at the same time being able to offer customers scalable resources (CPU/RAM or Storage) depending on customer needs. More information will be provided in our Apr 2020 newsletter, please stay tuned! 

Due to the ever-changing global business environment, it has become increasingly important to have your website load quickly not just in Singapore, where our hosting servers are located, but also globally, where your new business opportunities may originate.
 
HostSG has been working on building our own Content Delivery Network (CDN) in order to improve our customers’ website performance globally. While there are numerous CDN providers in the market, many require our customers to make complex changes to their Domain Name Server (DNS) records or otherwise require major changes in order to integrate with customers’ website. As your hosting provider, HostSG would be in the best position to provide a transparent CDN solution that requires minimal or no action on your end to enable. We plan to announce beta testing of our CDN sometime in Q2 2020, please stay tuned!