Jordan: A Glance to the Shared Hosting Market with Nour Eddin, CTO, Orlando Busines Solutions

Nour Eddin – CTO of Orlando Business Solutions under the name of Host Jordan. Most of the customers are from Jordan, but they also work with customers around the Gulf region (UAE, KSA, Egypt). In Jordan, they provide hosting for websites, cloud solutions, VPSs dedicated, co-locations, and consultation about image security. In addition to this, they have 24/7 excellent support and extra services as clients' need grow up.

Jordan and Customer Tips

Local Domain Name

The popular domain name in Jordan is .jo, but there are some restrictions.

These challenges created by the government stop the local domain from competing in the market.

Support Language and Service

The company provides 24/7 support in Arabic and English languages. Most of the support happens in the Arabic language because the main base of customers is in Jordan.

Often, when somebody has an issue, the process for getting help is long and takes customers time — call the centre, the call centre creates open ticket and only then gets back to a client. If it is an email service — critical service issues require experts to deal with troubles immediately as they have to know how to solve a problem.

Employees in HostJordan.com answering the phone calls are well educated and they know how to fix it immediately. A customer is talking to the technical person, not to a course on campus.

Pricing and Payments

One of the main challenges was the pricing, as it could not be the same for the different clients and offered packages. Provided services are different, dependently, on the clients’ requirements. However, the company starting to make little discounts to make customers happy, but they do not attract new customers mcuh, but keep the existing ones.

In Jordan, online payments are dominating. People tend to use credit cards more than cash, especially after the pandemic's times. Banks provided a possibility for Jordanians to get virtual money that gave greater opportunities. As Stripe is not working in Jordan, another payment gateway, Meps Network, is used for card payment processing. Their smaller third-party company is operating in Jordan and provides card processing services. According to the statistics, it has boosted the overall possibility of online payments by 300% since 2020.

Hosting Challenges in Jordan

As for hosting costs, local hosting is still high-priced, in comparison, to the US or Europe, as there are too many challenges. Power is a big challenge due to its cost. 60-70% of the cost is the infrastructure cost and maintaining services (like a good data centre, their certification). However, local businesses still prefer local hosting providers, as it is under their control and faster, while European businesses prefer international hosting.

Local Telecoms started providing some shared hosting Solutions but it's always slow, expensive, and inferior quality. On the other hand, they continue to provide such service as it is part of the business plans sold to customers.

Price vs Quality

Clients that are looking for cheaper prices and cheap services are in each country. However, most Jordanian people are looking for excellent quality rather than price as the quality is a concern everyone is looking for. By customising services according to customers' needs, 1 client's need can turn into a newly offered service. If 1 person is ready to pay more for 1 feature, there are more like him. 1 feature for a client turns into huge benefits for oneself. Clients become loyal if service provider goes an extra mile for them.

The Internet in Jordan

Before 4 to 5 years, there were some issues with the Internet as Jordan was using ADSL Services. When Jordan switched from ADSL to Fiber connection, the Internet connection quality improved. 3 DIA services were merged for speedy Internet — 1.5 Gbs. Local data centres provide the Internet and Internet connection with ping time 0-1ms. Domainity level in Jordan is 0.54, meaning less than 1 domain per 1000 people living in a country, huge potential for domain market growth.

Final Word

The discussion covered a wide range of topics, starting from story of development and ending with the lifehacks and fails that can help countries to move forward. Jordan has made major changes and greatly developed over the last few years. Of course, there are still areas to grow and learn. By learning from mistakes, following advice, and being more open to innovation, Jordan will reach a new level in the market.