January 25th 2023

Can cloud hosting be used for a web hosting business?

It looks like one of WHT's newest members is interested in starting a hosting business because he's asking if it's advisable to use cloud servers like DigitalOcean for his web hosting business. He's already purchased his first DO droplet and completed set up only to discover that DO doesn't support port 25 and so is blocking outgoing email from cPanel. He'd like to know if there's any way around this, and how does he explain to customers that his hosting service does not allow them to send email? Obviously he'd also appreciate any recommendations of alternatives. What would you suggest? Switch provider, set up a third party SMTP gateway, or something else?

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Looking for an email host

Bibb2 wants to know if an email host is the same as a webhost? The email hosting he uses will expire at the end of January 2023 so he's looking for recommendations of a commercial Roundcube email host. He would also like email migration from MS Outlook but that's not essential. He has 2 domain names that he needs to transfer within a year. What are his options here, bearing in mind that he will need detailed advice on what type of hosting to transfer to and how to perform the move. Just use a regular web hosting account, or go for a specialist offering, or even self host on a VPS?

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News from around the hosting industry

Our Industry News section is the place to find current headlines from around the world of hosting and infrastructure, but other general interest threads pop up in other sections of the forum, especially The Lounge. Here we we highlight just some of the interesting news items from around the forum:

• Hurricane Electric and Digital Realty partner in APAC - DR have announced that HE has deployed points of presence (PoPs) at its data centers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney, providing DR's customers with access to HE's high-speed IP transit network. They can connect directly to Hurricane Electric's extensive IPv4 and IPv6 network through 100GE, 10GE and GigE ports, and gain access to a connected data community with over 4,000 customers in 53 metros across 27 countries on six continents without the need to upgrade their last mile network connection.
• New data center association announced in Italy - The Italian Data Centre Association (IDA) has officially launched in Italy, formed by eight operators - Microsoft, Equinix, Rai Way, Data4, STACK Infrastructure, Digital Realty, Vantage Data Centres and CBRE Data Centres. There are 190 data centers in the country with a €3bn turnover and 9% share of the global market, consuming a total installed power of 300MW, and expected to grow to 204 centers by 2025.
• New data center expands Nairobi to 15MW - Cassava's Africa Data Centres (ADC) has broken ground on a new 15MW data center in Nairobi, Kenya. It will start with 5MW of IT load and will be built using ADC's modular design prefabricated off-site. The development is a step forward in the company's expansion plans seeing ADC investing $500 million into building hyperscale data centers across the Africa region. Cassava's CEO said Kenya is a leader in the adoption of digital technologies in Africa.
• Asia Direct Cable lands in Hong Kong - China Telecom Global and SUNeVision announced that the Asia Direct Cable (ADC) has landed its Hong Kong segment at SUNeVision's HKIS-1 cable landing station (CLS). HKIS-1 is located in southern Hong Kong and marks the addition of a new point of presence (PoP) at SUNeVision's hyperscale data center MEGA Plus. The ADC subsea cable system features "the highest number of fibre pairs and system transmission capacity in Asia" according to the company. It will transmit over 140Tbps of traffic with enough capacity to support bandwidth-intensive applications such as 5G networks, IoT, AI, cloud and video streaming.

Got some news of your own to share? If it's news from your own company it belongs in Web Hosting Industry Announcements (no ads please!). If you've scooped some news about something else going on in the hosting industry we'd love for you to share it in our Industry News section!

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