Do you own a Malaysian website? Is your page taking forever to load because your site is hosted on a server halfway across the globe?
Hive Hosting debuted in 2000 as basic shared hosting resellers on the Internet. A year later, the company branched out with their very own server–related services and have since proclaimed themselves as the number one web hosting company in East Malaysia. The company is managed by Filuren Network, another local corporation that specializes in web solutions and services in Kuching, Sarawak.
True to their local roots, Hive Hosting both own and manage their servers strategically located in Netmyne Telekom Datacenter (Kuala Lumpur) and Anjung Jaring (Kuching, Sarawak) to cater to Malaysian websites.
An offshore datacentre is also present in the Savvis (Texas, USA) to accommodate overseas clients. These servers are said to be self-managed with daily backup to ensure that your files, database and emails are protected around the clock.
At this point of writing, Hive Hosting offers a wide array of services from e-mail and web hosting to dedicated servers.
Hosting Packages
Hive Hosting offers eight distinctive web hosting packages on their website. These eight plans can be divided into two categories – the Web and the Whiz plans.
The Four Web Plans
There are four types of web hosting plans under the Web plan individually known as SmallWeb, MediumWeb, LargeWeb and QueenWeb. SmallWeb offers the smallest amount of data space (10GB), the smallest amount of bandwidth (100GB) and is also the cheapest at a mere RM150 per year subscription.
The disk space and bandwidth space is subsequently doubled, tripled and quadrupled for the MediumWeb, LargeWeb and QueenWeb packages. Subsequently, the cost of hosting also increases in increments of RM100. Both the SmallWeb and MediumWeb plan offers the option of five domain hosting whereas the LargeWeb and QueenWeb can host up to a maximum capacity of fifteen and twenty domains each.
The Four Whiz Plans
If you do not require domain add-ons or domain name parking features, then consider opting for the whiz plan instead. The Whiz plans can similarly be divided into the SmallWhiz, MediumWhiz, LargeWhiz and QueenWhiz plans that offer the exact same services as the Web counterparts.
Is Hive Hosting Good?
Regardless of the package you select, all Hive Hosting users will enjoy access to an unlimited number of e-mail accounts, FTP accounts, sub-domains and MS SQL databases. The server is also compatible with plenty of the common programming languages including Microsoft ASP, ASP.NET, .NET Framework 1.1, XML, PHP5, Python, Perl and even Cold Fusion. Yes, this one of the few web hosting companies in Malaysia who support Cold Fusion.
Users will also enjoy one domain name free of charge and zero setup fees.
24/7 Customer Support
According to their website, the company implements state-of-the-art support and a ticketing system which operates around the clock. Hive Hosting also guarantees that all queries are replied within 24 hours, although it is highly unlikely that you will need it since their server boasts a 99.81% uptime.
What’s the Catch?
On paper, the hosting plans offered by Hive Hosting sounds like a pretty good deal. Hive Hosting probably offers the cheapest server hosting services for .NET and MS SQL features. The thing is that there really isn’t any point to having plenty of powerful features at your disposal when the server is down all the time.
The Mystery of the Missing Support Team
Ironically enough, the company’s 24-Hours-per-day customer support system comes with a phone line that you can call, except that there is perpetually no one on the other end to talk to. You could also opt for the Live Chat option on their website, but do note that their Live Chat is perpetually in offline mode.
If you really, really, really have to use Hive Hosting, use the open ticket system on their website instead – but don’t hold your breath as these guys take hours to reply a query. On top of that, the latest news and discussion available on their customer support forum is backdated to 2008 with no further updates since then.
Risk of Data Loss and Prolonged Downtime
If you’ve been with Hive Hosting for at least one year, you would’ve remembered the hard disk failure of Hive Hosting on January 1st, 2010. It took the company 5 days to get the server back online. Far worse than that is the fact that two hard disks failing at the same time also meant that users lost ten days of data at the same time!
Who Should Join the Hive?
It is undeniable that Hive Hosting has potential as it offers pretty interesting features for a very cheap price. However, we wouldn’t recommend that you put up your official website on its server just yet. For the moment, Hive Hosting seems to be a small company with limited staff, resources and technical knowledge and it really needs to evolve so much more if it is to compete on a global scale.
I would recommend Hive Hosting for those who are looking for a site testing ground before they subscribe to a better web hosting provider.
The Other Malaysian Web Hosting Companies
If you are looking for a much more reliable Malaysian-based web hosting company, may we suggest Exabytes instead? While Hive Hosting has a 99.81% server uptime, Exabytes records a consistent 99.99% server uptime in comparison.
Exabytes services over 32,000 active customers around the globe and hosts plenty of popular Malaysian companies on their servers including big corporations such as 988 Radio Station and Celebrity Fitness Centre.
Lately, the award-winning company has been promoting their .ORG domain registration promotion which is the cheapest not only in East Malaysia, but across the entire country. Exabytes is also currently campaigning for a greener world by pledging to plant a tree for every domain name registered or renewed through them.
Economical, reliable and feature-packed – log on to the Exabytes official website to find out about ongoing promotions and great deals such as the RM174.85 per year subscription for the E-Biz Plus hosting plan.
I have not hosted with Hive hosting before, but I am happy with Exabytes. I think they are really good, love their quick support also.
Hello Sessy,
Yes, Exabytes is the largest web hosting company in Malaysia. They are more well known than Hive Hosting. However, Hive Hosting is doing pretty well in East Malaysia, especially in Kuching. Another good Malaysia web hosting is ServerFreak for their cheap shared web hosting, and Shinjiru for dedicated servers.
I host my website at hive hosting, honestly speaking, i can’t wait for the term to expired… need to host somewhere else.. not satisfied..
Hello Nicky,
You can check out ServerFreak. Read more about them on our ServerFreak review – http://www.100webhosting.com/malaysia-web-hosting-serverfreak-review/
Hive is very strong in Kuching, Sarawak.
Hi Vivek,
Yes, you are right. Hive Hosting mainly focuses in East Malaysia, especially Kuching, Sibu, Bintulu and the other major cities in Sarawak. Anyway, I think, recent years they are also slowly losing grounds to the bigger web hosting companies in Malaysia, such as Exabytes and ServerFreak.
There is no question that Exabytes is the biggest web host in Malaysia.
i’m just wonder doing online shop as conventional shop need more time n capital to run. Thinking of setting up of a website for display item. Does web hosting also do web designing package? Thanks !
Hello Ivy,
It is definitely much cheaper to create, setup and maintain an online shop, as compared to a conventional brick and mortar shop. The setup capital should be much much cheaper as compared to the renovation of a physical shop. There is no question about this, online shop is definitely much cheaper to run and maintain.
You can setup a website to showcase and sell your items. It will be much easier than doing this on Facebook. This will look more professional and easier to maintain too. Most web hosting companies do not have web design services, but most of them do have the tools readily available so that you can do this yourself provided you have some knowledge in setting up open source scripts. Anyway, if you need more help, do let us know.