Ukraine: Understanding the Growing Shared Hosting and Domain Market

HostIq.ua is a company offering several brands (HostIq.ua, VS.ua, SSL.com.ua) in the Ukrainian market, offering hosting and related services to their customers. Operating in the field for a few years, HostIq has made a name for itself as an innovative and reliable company offering high-quality services.

Max Mukhin, the head of product at HostIq, sat with us to talk a little about the Ukrainian hosting market and their experience, which we were really excited about.

Ukraine and Marketing Tips

Domains in Ukraine

In the country, the main TLDs are .ua (around 20,000 domains) and .com.ua (with 300,000 domains.) In total, there are around 540,000 domains registered in the country, indicating that people have a preference for local domains. There are also regional domains like kiev.ua and kharkiv.ua.

Some companies, for personal reasons, sometimes choose to go with .com, .net, and .org. This happens often because Ukraine is a hub for software engineering outsourcing, so when IT companies create websites for their clients, they try to host them as close to the client as possible. Apart from that, preference is given to local hostings.

Shared Hosting in Ukraine

When it comes to the growth rates, in the past few years they slowed down because of the economic crisis. However, Max believes that there is still potential for them to speed up. 'Today there is a global trend of digitalisation. Even small businesses want to go digital, so there is a big potential for the market to grow.'

The decision to limit the number of Russian companies in the country has affected the hosting market: people, who were hosting their websites in Russia came back to Ukraine.

Money and Payments

As the representation of Russian companies declined, the payment methods changed as well. Before, WebMoney and YandexPay were two of the most popular payment options in the country, but now they are not used as much. Instead, Ukrainians prefer to go for LiqPay, PrivatBank, and other local payment gateways.

When deciding on which provider to choose, the price remains a very important factor for Ukrainians. However, the quality of support and technical characteristics of packages become more and more important. The average price for virtual hosting is $2-8/month, on average people are ready to pay around $5/month for fast and high-quality service.

Customer Support and Language Preferences

Much like the price vs. quality preference is shifting, the same is the preference for customer support. Max mentions that before, people didn’t care about 24/7 support, but now it becomes increasingly important for them. HostIq and a few other companies offer 24/7 support to slowly introduce the culture to the Ukrainian market, and it’s been working. 'We often do surveys to understand what customers want, and round-the-clock support is becoming more and more important.'

When it comes to languages, people prefer to have support available in Russian and Ukrainian. It’s one of the main reasons they choose local companies. Support is more popular in Russian because everyone in the country speaks the language, but support in both languages is available on HostIq, alongside English.

Website Builders in Ukraine

Ukraine is one of the most popular countries for website builders. 'The number of people who need a website is larger than the number of people who only need hosting. So, if people come needing a website, offering them a website builder is a good solution,' mentioned Max. In his words, people often think that website builders are hard to use, which is not true. 'We show them how to use website builders to make websites, and if they like it, they stay with us and start paying.'

Business Development Tips

'Our main approach is support and care in everything. We care about our customers. We care about the team. We always try to be honest and transparent with them, even in crises.' The company also does what Max describes as 'weird marketing.' 'We make short hilarious videos on daily stuff and try to connect them with our services. People like it, and videos often go viral, associating them with our brand.'

The company puts a lot of effort into being innovative and forward-looking, but it’s also important to know how to market yourself, mentions Max. 'A few years back we realized that tech is developing, and cloud services are the future, so we need to develop cloud technologies. We put a lot of effort and time into creating our cloud product and created a great product where companies can create virtual infrastructures, but don’t really know how to sell them yet. We have a few big clients, but it would be nice to have more.' As a growth strategy, the company also provides free migration services. The analysts study current resources used by clients, and offer them free migration and packages with the same pricing and better features, to attract them to join HostIq.

Final Words

Similar to all newly-growing tech hubs, Ukraine is a country of many opportunities, exploring which was fun and exciting. As the IT sector of the country is growing, it remains a great place for shared hosting businesses to try and grab their share of the market, so if you are looking for a market to enter, Ukraine may be one of the best options!