Why might you want to use an offshore hosting provider? Though tropical vacations and glamorous shopping sprees might draw you to shores away from home, there are more practical reasons to consider an offshore web hosting service. Some of the most common reasons users seek an offshore web host include anonymous web hosting, privacy, the ability to use alternative payment methods (including Bitcoin), legal advantages, and cost savings.
One critical consideration when filtering hosting services and selecting a server location is the location of your target audience. Are you selling koi fish in Japan? Offshore hosting services in Asia will provide better speeds and an overall better experience for your clients.
OK, but I have a hard time finding a shoe store in my own neighborhood. How am I supposed to narrow down all the offshore web hosting options across the globe to find the right offshore host? Don’t worry, we’ve got the list of our best picks right here!
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Our Expert Pick: Hostinger
Our team members have many (many!) years of experience with offshore web hosting under their belts. So when we tell you we’ve selected Hostinger as the best offshore hosting provider, it means a lot.
With server locations in France, the Netherlands, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, Singapore, India, the United States, and Brazil, this offshore web hosting provider offers a wide variety of options sure to cover your needs. You can also enable Cloudflare and store copies of your website on servers around the world.
Hostinger’s headquarters reside in Lithuania and Cyprus. These locations provide added flexibility for its users who wish to avoid data and censorship regulations in place in their own countries.
Since censored and sensitive content can sometimes be controversial, users looking for offshore hosting for their websites may want anonymity. On this front, Hostinger is the full package. It offers variable payment methods (including credit card, cryptocurrencies, Google Play, and PayPal) and requires minimal registration information for a genuinely anonymous hosting experience.
 | ★★★★★ /5.0 |
- Unlimited everything, from storage to databases
- FREE site builder & WP performance upgrades
- FREE daily or weekly backups
- Custom control panel and auto-installation scripts
- SSH access & unlimited FREE SSL certificates
- Get started on Hostinger now.
| Starting Price/Mo. | $2.49 |
| Money Back Guarantee | 30 days |
| Disk Space | 50 GB SSD – 200 GB SSD |
| Domain Name | FREE (1 year) |
As the shared hosting market becomes increasingly saturated, unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email accounts have become surprisingly average. Hostinger, however, extends the routine, expected metrics to greater lengths — the number of websites, databases, FTP users, subdomains, and parked domains are all unrestricted for most customers.
Go to full review »Hostinger is also easy to use for everyone from the seasoned developer to the beginners and provides unlimited bandwidth without sacrificing any of its security measures. If you’re looking for good prices and you don’t want to make any sacrifices, this service provider is the way to go.
Best for Growth: HostGator
Alligators live in many areas, and HostGator does too. Some of them even overlap, like the datacenter in Atlanta, Georgia. HostGator’s primary servers are currently located domestically, but it does support Cloudflare, which offers an offshore hosting service that provides access to 23 datacenters across the globe.
With the scalable plans that HostGator offers, you can grow from a tiny hatchling to a burgeoning baby and all the way up to a monstrous business plan with ease. HostGator also offers plans featuring a virtual private server or a dedicated server for users who need more than a shared hosting plan.
 | ★★★★★ /5.0 |
- Host up to unlimited websites on a single plan
- FREE SSL certificate included on all plans
- Unlimited bandwidth & email addresses
- 1-click WordPress installs & FREE blog tools
- Get 74% OFF by buying 36 months upfront
- Get started on HostGator now.
| Starting Price/Mo. | $2.64 |
| Money Back Guarantee | 30 days |
| Disk Space | 10 GB SSD – 40 GB SSD |
| Domain Name | FREE (1 year) |
HostGator is a great compromise between performance and price. The company offers unlimited emails, MySQL databases, disk space, and bandwidth, plus one-click installs of popular open-source projects, in addition to a 99.
Go to full review »HostGator is quick and easy to set up. The hatchling plan gives you everything you need to get started, including 10GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, simple integration with WordPress hosting, emails, and a free domain name for the first year for only $2.75/ month.
Best for Customer Support: SiteGround
SiteGround’s server locations across seven countries (US, UK, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Singapore) don’t impede its unified service approach. Good customer service is the pinnacle of good business. Offshore hosting providers such as SiteGround recognize the importance of customer support and have put in the effort to refine the craft. The service provider can be reached via live chat, phone, and tickets.
This offshore web host offers a wide variety of accessible plans that all include email, unmetered traffic, daily backups stored in separate data centers for additional protection, a free SSL certificate, DDOS protection, WordPress hosting, and more.
 | ★★★★★ /5.0 |
- FREE website transfer service to get started
- 99.9% uptime guarantee and unlimited traffic
- User-friendly WordPress installation
- 24/7 support featuring custom systems
- 4 caching options plus staging and Git
- Get started on SiteGround now.
| Starting Price/Mo. | $2.99 |
| Money Back Guarantee | 30 days |
| Disk Space | 10 GB SSD – 40 GB SSD |
| Domain Name | New or Transfer |
Providing hosting with the perfect balance of technological innovation and superior customer support, SiteGround offers a range of affordable hosting services to meet your needs. In addition to the expected cheap web hosting perks — a free website builder and unlimited bandwidth — the company specializes in custom-built tools to deliver strong and positive user experiences.
Go to full review »SiteGround is a perfect choice when a website owner needs direction or expects to have a few questions along the line.
Best for Small Business: HostPapa
HostPapa’s offshore-friendly features include broad security precautions, a wide variety of plans (including multiple tiers of business plans), and affordable pricing.
The small but mighty offshore hosting company has server locations in the US, Canada, and Europe. If you select the server in the Netherlands, you will be afforded all the protections offered by the country’s robust privacy regulations.
You can rest well knowing your small business is protected by HostPapa’s server-level firewall and continuous server monitoring as well as the SSL certificate, ModSecurity, DDoS protection, and brute force detection.
4. HostPapa.com
 | ★★★★★ /5.0 |
- FREE drag-and-drop HostPapa website builder
- Host unlimited WordPress sites on one account
- 24/7 support via phone, email, and live chat
- FREE domain registration and email accounts
- 99.9% uptime guarantee and unlimited bandwidth
- Get started on HostPapa now.
| Starting Price/Mo. | $2.95 |
| Money Back Guarantee | 30 days |
| Disk Space | 100 GB SSD – Unlimited SSD |
| Domain Name | FREE (1 year) |
Where HostPapa shines is with shared hosting, which offers affordable and feature-rich plans geared toward helping both website and small business owners grow their online presence. HostPapa wants to be more than just a web host, according to CEO Jamie Opalchuck, who told us that the company aims to be a 1-stop shop for small businesses looking for a seamless and simple experience to help them grow.
Go to full review »Is shared hosting not enough for your business? Check out the offshore VPS hosting options. A VPS will offer your website more scalability and bandwidth than a shared hosting plan.
Affordable Offshore VPS: Ultahost
If you’re looking for affordable offshore hosting providers with a bit more magnitude than the typical shared hosting plan, Ultahost has an excellent VPS hosting option for you. With VPS hosting plans starting as low as $5.50 per month, you’ll be sure to find something that fits your budget.
Ultahost currently has 12 datacenter locations spanning eight countries on four continents, with new locations opening regularly. This offshore hosting provider takes extreme pride in the quality of their servers, and the evidence is in the latency, with even the farthest offshore server responding in less than one second.
But what is good hardware if it can’t be leveraged properly? Ultahost’s web hosting service team is trained to solve technical issues and help with all aspects of getting online. It also offers additional server support packages for those wanting extra features with their VPS hosting.
See what Ultahost has to offer >>
What Is Offshore Hosting?
Put simply, a web hosting service can be labeled as onshore or offshore. Offshore hosting refers to the practice of using international servers (as opposed to domestic servers) to host a website.
Offshore hosting is typically a deliberate practice in which users select remote servers in countries with regulations and pricing structures that meet their needs. Countries vary widely in the ways they approach security, privacy, taxes, censorship, criminalization, and freedom of speech, among other web hosting considerations. Using offshore hosting locations can leverage the unique attitudes of places around the world.
Which Country Is Best for Offshore Hosting?
This is an important question because your hosted site is governed by the rules and regulations in the country where its server is located. Which country is best for offshore hosting will depend on your specific needs.
If you want an offshore server because you want to find the cheapest offshore hosting options, your choices will be different from hosts that offer increased privacy through anonymous web hosting or hosts that aim to avoid censorship. You may simply be looking for a datacenter near your target audience to reduce the latency period of your site.
Countries that combine hosting with limited censorship and increased privacy are popular choices for a range of users seeking offshore hosting providers or an anonymous hosting provider. On the flip side, countries with high censorship (like China) and unstable countries (like those in war-torn areas) are easy to weed out of the mix.
Countries with strong privacy laws and regulations include the Netherlands, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Germany.
A website owner trying to avoid getting a pesky DMCA notice should try an offshore hosting company with servers in Singapore, Russia, or Bulgaria.
Whatever your web hosting needs, an offshore hosting service has the potential to check off some of your boxes.
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