Hugo Barata, PTisp Marketing Manager and Filip Borcov, Incredible at Site.pro
Marketing Manager, PTisp.pt
00:35 PTisp — leading company in Portugal, 23 years on the market
02:10 Population: ~10M+
04:50 Payment methods: Multibanco, MB WAY, classic credit cards
08:00 Website builder popularity is growing
09:25 “Ai Website builder”: +50% registration rate
13:40 Lifehack #1: Portuguese customers prefer Local providers
16:55 Lifehack #3: Operate under one strong brand name
21:10 Google Ads & SEO — the hidden connection
24:50 Always use cross-selling opportunities
Portugal is a thriving country with high Internet penetration and a lot of opportunities for shared hosting businesses.
Hugo Barata, Marketing Manager at PTisp, and Filip Borcov, Incredible at Site.pro, met to discuss the current situation in the hosting market in Portugal, as well as effective ways to increase sales and advertise.
In 2025, the population of Portugal is around 10 million people, and 90% of them are connected to the Internet. PTisp is the leading hosting company in the country with 22 years of experience in the market. It focuses on providing high-quality solutions, domains and free tools that come with them.
In the last 10 years, despite many people having migrated to Portugal, most of the support tickets PTisp receives are in Portuguese. The local Portuguese domain — .pt — is very cheap; however, it is still more expensive than common gTLDs. The .pt ccTLD costs 17€/year. The price of hosting itself fluctuates between 5€ and 10€/month.
In large cities, people use international payment services — PayPal, Mastercard, Visa. But in smaller towns, local services are much more widespread. Portugal has its own payment methods, such as the Multibanco debit card and MB WAY mobile app. MB WAY is especially popular because of its ease of use and integration with bank accounts.
There are still many ways to advertise your business offline, and billboards are particularly popular in Portugal, even among e-commerce companies. However, PTisp as a company prefers online advertising because of how easy it is to measure the results of marketing campaigns with actual statistics.
Estimating the results of traditional offline campaigns is often difficult and unreliable. For example, it’s hard to determine how many people will see a billboard and then buy services from the company, which in turn leads to problems in the marketing department, because it’s not clear how exactly to improve the KPIs.
To determine whether offline ads actually influence sales, Site.pro ran an experiment in Lithuania. The company bought out all the billboards in one small city for the period of two months, and it didn’t have any effect on actual sales. This conclusion reinforced the idea of online advertising being more convenient for collecting data and improving growth.
The popularity of website builders has been growing in recent years. Since the Portuguese market is price-sensitive, people prefer to pay less when they can, therefore making their own websites instead of reaching out to expensive solutions.
Still, website builders don’t completely trivialise the process. Users keep encountering similar issues. Buying a domain is easy, but they struggle when it comes to actually building and finishing the website.
A lot of modern website builders have AI functionality and can generate websites based on users’ prompts. But even the AI-generated website requires further improvement — uploading your own images and logos, changing elements, etc. A lot of users either don’t have time for that, or they don’t find the programme itself easy to understand.
The query for ‘AI Website Builders’ itself is becoming increasingly popular, ranking high on Google Trends. Interestingly, after Site.pro put AI Website Builder on the homepage, the number of registrations skyrocketed by 50%.
The problem is, the functionality of AI website builders clashes with users’ expectations. AI can generate the website, but after that users have to put in all the information, such as contact details, manually, which discourages a lot of them from using the programme. To fight this issue, the dev team introduced the new version of the AI website builder that allows users to fully customise their website with AI through chat.
Here are some valuable lifehacks shared by Hugo Barata and Filip Borcov to navigate the shared hosting landscape in Portugal:
Lifehack #1: Portuguese customers prefer real-life conversations in their native language. That’s where local brands can shine. Global brands often don’t provide customer service in Portuguese, and when they do provide it, they use AI. Customers love to see the people behind the brand and talk in person.
Lifehack #2: Utilise full user analytics, from first touch to purchase and beyond. PTisp put a lot of resources and effort into researching the customer journey. Still, the main conclusion is that having a low entry price is the way to win a customer in Portugal.
Lifehack #3: Operate under one strong brand. The Site.pro team decided to merge its ERP system with the website builder. It’s easier to advertise one brand with multiple services. A brand with a reputation wins the trust of customers with its new products, and people tend to follow the brand.
Lifehack #4: Invest in SEO instead of only relying on classic marketing. When a business comes to a local market, search engines are everything.
Years of experience led the marketing team at PTisp to learn important lessons that Hugo Barata is willing to share:
Lesson#1: Learn from mistakes, from different teams and branches of the company. This approach is relevant for PTisp as they are a part of the largest company.
Lesson#2: Always keep the customer in mind. What a developer might think will work perfectly, won’t always be ideal for the end customer.
Lesson#3: Always use upselling opportunities when they arise. Customers often buy domains but then do not use them, and the company wants them to utilise the product to the fullest: create a website, use email and hosting services. So, a domain is a great starting point for upselling because it’s so cheap.
Portugal’s hosting market presents both challenges and opportunities shaped by a digitally engaged users, local-oriented preferences, and a price-sensitive mindset. While offline advertising still exists, the evidence strongly favors online campaigns for their measurable impact. The rise of AI-driven website builders shows great promise, but user expectations and ease of use remain critical factors.
As Hugo Barata and Filip Borcov highlight, success in Portugal relies on understanding cultural nuances, offering affordable entry points, building strong local brands, and continuously improving customer experiences. With a focus on innovation, SEO, and personalised support, hosting businesses in Portugal can thrive in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.
