Shared Hosting Tips in Madagascar

When you Google search for ‘Madagascar’, one of the first things you’ll notice on the search page is the variety of images of lemurs that are endemic to the island. Indeed, the original and charming computer-animated jungle movie named after the country, made it impossible for people not to think of these furry creatures, but, as noted by computer scientist Randimbisoa Mahera, Madagascar is not about lemurs. In this regard, Site.pro team decided to travel and meet with Mr Mahera, the owner of ‘Home Made Software’ and CEO of Dot.mg, to find out more about the shared hosting market in the country and what Madagascar is really about.

Madagascar in Numbers

Madagascar, island country located off the southeastern coast of Africa, is the fourth largest island in the world with a population of around 23 million people. With about 2 million people connected to the web, the country has only 10% Internet penetration rate and people mostly use it for communicating and sharing information on social media.

Hosting and Domains

When asked about domains, Randimbisoa Mahera proudly claims that his Madagascan hosting provider Dot.mg is one of the top 5 .mg domain name sellers that has about 300 domain names. As a matter of fact, when speaking about domains, locals would rather choose a .mg extension rather than .com.
On the other hand, there aren’t a lot of websites created in Madagascar, as they are mostly created and hosted outside the country. Why? People can’t host websites in Madagascar because of the power outages. Indeed, power failures in an electricity network force providers to host outside the country, and if providers do want to have servers in Madagascar, they have to have power generators and backups, which is actually a luxury that not everybody can afford.

Support, Pricing and Payments

Support at Dot.mg is available only during regular business hours and communication with the clients usually takes place in the form of emails. There are two official languages in Madagascar, which are also used for support: French and Malagasy. Technically, though, it is easier for the provider and customer to exchange in French than in Malagasy, as the majority of websites are also mostly in French, with few being in Malagasy or English.
The shared hosting price in Madagascar is not quite cheap — about ~$8/month. Accordingly, when people are in need for a solution, they don’t invest much time in searching, but usually pick one of the first providers that appear in the Google search. That is why you need to position yourself in the good light and offer a combination of price and quality. Finally, in terms of payment gateways — customers use all methods of payment. They can come to your office and pay for services by cash, complete payments using airtime, or do a bank transfer.

Website Builder Market

Currently, website builders are not very popular in Madagascar. People prefer to create websites by themselves with the use of different tools or hire small companies or teams to build websites for them. For example, now, people tend to create websites with the help of “Wordpress”, but in reality, “Wordpress” is not easy for users without IT knowledge. Before using it, people would need to invest in learning to use it, which is not an option for some.
In the future, there is a possibility that the attitude towards website builders may change and they will gain popularity, because people do want to have the opportunity to update and maintain websites themselves. Nevertheless, website builders must be easy to use and not require additional trainings or courses for people to want to use them.

Wrapping up

Sadly, but true — people in the town are not really concerned about wildlife. Therefore, as the guest of today’s discussion had already mentioned, Madagascar is not about lemurs. It’s about everything you see. It’s about Malagasy people, who prefer to think of something that is close to them, who think about good, fast, cheap and do-it-yourself solutions that would help their businesses grow, flourish and attain their objectives.