Azerbaijan: Talking Everything Shared Hosting, Website Builder and Domains

When it comes to learning about online hosting, Azerbaijan was one of the most intriguing experiences so far. The relatively young digital market of the country is growing by leaps and bounds, making it a gold mine for hosting and domain providers.

In an attempt to understand the hosting market of Azerbaijan, we’ve met with Parvin Husyenli, the Executive Director of Hostimul.com. Established in 2017, Hostimul operates both locally and abroad and has already established itself as a leading service provider in Azerbaijan. In a fascinating interview, Husyenli raised the curtain a bit by sharing with us some facts and experiences about the local market. Read on and watch the interview to learn about hosting websites in Azerbaijan and ensuring great customer service.

Azerbaijan and Marketing

Azerbaijan Digital Market

Azerbaijan has a very unique digital market. The country with 10 million population has been seeing incredible market growth during the last several years. In 2010, the Internet penetration was 50%, while in 2019, it was already a whopping 80%! More and more people are getting access to the internet in the country, and as a result, an increasing number of companies and businesses want to have a digital presence, resulting in a booming hosting and domain market that costs around $12 million.

Language and support

Besides the people living in Azerbaijan, there are around 30-50 million people in the world that speak Azerbaijani. So, by adding the Azerbaijani language, businesses can reach around 60 million people. Many of those people don’t know English that well, that’s why it’s important to have Azerbaijani support available. More than that, Parvin mentions that many companies and individuals, who had domains and hosting abroad, are moving them to Azerbaijan, citing support in the local language as one of the primary reasons. Another reason is significantly low latency than if the hosting was abroad.

In the case of Hostimul, the company doesn’t offer support only in Azerbaijani, but also in Russian and English, since the company operates globally. This is also the reason 24/7 is available, so that clients from everywhere in the world could get round-the-clock help whenever they had any issues. “For us, it’s all about the customer-centric approach: it’s not the customer that pays us, but the customer of the customer, so we try to help our customers to grow their sales as much as we can,” mentioned Husyenli.

Buyers and users

Another very interesting thing that Parvin mentioned was that most of the buyers of domain and hosting services in Azerbaijan are developers. “People use the Internet, but they don’t really know how it works. So, most of them hire developers. Developers then buy the hosting, and provide it to end users. This is not so great in terms of market research, as it becomes a bit unmeasurable, and we can’t make statistics with clients. On average, however, it’s one domain per website.”

Pricing and Payments

When it comes to pricing, there are 2 types of companies in Azerbaijan.

The companies for whom hosting or domain services are the main product, like Hostimul Cable service providers, who add hosting as an additional product (e.g. to Internet, cable TV, etc.) They usually charge significant amounts for the hosting as part of the package, which Husyenli thinks is a mistake. Hosting average price should be 1-5 euros per month, and going above it is unfair to customers.

Socioeconomic situation of the country makes the people be attentive to the pricing, but they are looking for high quality services.

Laws and Government Regulations

In Azerbaijan, there are no specific laws and regulations for the hosting market, and in that regard the country is different from many other locations. One of the two regulations concerns government-support companies, for which the government is also a shareholder. These companies are required to have their hostings based in Azerbaijan, for privacy and security easons.

Another rule is that .AZ domain is accessible only for Azerbaijani citizens, residents, or registered businesses. People outside of that circle cannot get an .AZ domain.

Boom of Website Builders

In Azerbaijan, website builders become more and more popular day by day. Interestingly, larger website builders and hosting providers are not popular, or widely used in the country. From website builders people know Wix, but because of its somewhat costly pricing, people don’t use it that much.

Offering the Right Service

'The main mistake we made as a company was at the very beginning. Initially, we chose shared hosting as the main product. However, it wasn’t the right choice for us as a business, and we improved our offers and added new products. So, we have quickly learned that when you sell the wrong product, or limit yourself to one product, it can hurt your business.' The moral is, make sure to know what product or service is right for you, and how you can bundle it up and offer it as a service your customers will love.

Final Words

That’s a wrap! We hope you’ve enjoyed watching the interview and reading this recap as much as we did making them. From the information we got, it seems like the hosting market in Azerbaijan is still growing. And there is a lot to understand and try in the future. Luckily, with the right tools, it won’t be stressful. With the right hosting provider and website builder, you can have your website or hosting service up and running in no time.