The Product is All that Matters

When researching the shared hosting market of Europe, the Site.pro team made a trip to Hungary, where we met with George Egri, CEO of BitNina and Web-server.ru. Web-server is a company with 20 years of history, founded by George in his dorm, with his PC used as a server. Since then, the company has come a long way, establishing itself as one of the most recognizable hosting names in the country. BitNina, a cybersecurity company, came to be later and offers solutions to local and international clients.
In the video interview below, George and our CEO Filip Borcov talk about shared hosting, the importance of the right product features, the crucial role of support, business success and failures, and more. Scroll down to watch and read!

Hungarian shared hosting market: facts and numbers

Hungary is a country with a population of 10 million people, with 1 million registered domain names. The local domain, .hu, is the most popular domain name in the country. Most local businesses and SMBs use the local extension, with very few going for other TLDs. Many companies strategically buy different domains for the same trademark to protect their brand. Some companies also buy domains just to sell them later, but apart from that, in the country, each hosting client usually has one domain.

Customer support is critical

Web-server is a Hungarian company, mainly serving local clients. For them, George mentions, Hungarian support operating during working hours is all that’s needed. The company gets English requests very rarely and if they do, there is always someone to answer them.

For BitNinja, which is an international company, it’s a bit different. Because the company has customers in different time zones, the requirements are higher, and the company is offering 24/7 support in different languages. 24/7 support is tricky in the sense that many companies, although the offer round-the-clock support, still reply late to queries, which is the most significant part. For many, it takes a few days to solve the issue; others send automatic replies that aren’t that helpful. “People are okay with getting a reply within a day, anything longer is problematic. Automatic replies or similar tactics are not well-loved. What’s important is the solution time. The rest is “muda.” mentions George. That’s why the company tries to solve the issues on average in 6 hours, not longer.

Payment and financial solutions

George notes that for payment options, they usually go with local bank gateways. When the company first introduced credit card payments, other payment gateways weren’t that known. Currently, BrainTree and Stripe are two of the more popular payment gateways. There is also a PayPal integration for BitNinja, to simplify the payment process. The companies send email reminders before the payments, specifying the amount and the date of the payment, to make sure people have enough funds in their accounts.
Cryptocurrency payments are discussed between the company and the clients, as some of them request the introducion of cryptocurrency payment methods. These discussions happen more in regards to BitNinja, as it’s based in the USA. “Working in a country, have legal laws that can affect you, crypto makes it easier. However, this is a discussion for the future,” mentions George.

Website builders, product features, and more

Website builder popularity in the country is growing, making it easier for companies to create websites. They are also “killing” the companies providing website security services, and BitNinja happens to be one of them. In the case of WordPress websites, for example, which are more susceptible to online attacks, ensuring security is critical. In the case of website builders, the cloud provider is the one ensuring the website’s security, making them less vulnerable.
When it comes to website builders, George thinks that it’s all about the features. “If you develop good features that solve problems, customers will be happy. But also the opposite is true when the customers don’t know about those features. And it’s true for website builders and your website import feature: people need to know about the features to be able to use them. Product is what matters.”

Wrapping up

As the discussion went on about different ranges of topics, it became clear that the Hungarian hosting market is without a doubt a well-developed one. However, there are still areas to learn and grow. Taking a deeper look into the market of the country, it will further improve the understanding of the business market of the country, but we believe that this interview was a good place to start.