Qatar: Filip Borcov, Site.pro CEO Getting to Know the Hosting and Domain Market in Qatar

Since Qatar’s declaration of independence from Britain in 1971, the country has immediately set the bar high. Currently, it is one of the world’s most important producers of oil and gas, the biggest LNG producer in the world, and has the fourth-highest GDP per capita in the world. With Qatar being able to boast about its accomplishments and success in almost every sphere, Site.pro team was all tingling with eagerness and excitement to know about the shared hosting market and it indeed came out as a surprise and a shock. Though not in the way we expected!

Qatar and its Issues

About Numbers

Qatar is a country that grows by leaps and bounds and during the period of 25 years GDP grew 25 times! There are two languages spoken in Qatar: Arabic is the official one, while the second language that can be frequently heard and is widely used is English. The population of Qatar is about 3M people, its form of government is hereditary monarchy, which means that it’s ruled by a Sheikh.

Qatar strives for quality and lives by the principle of 'Time to go big or go home.' It’s not surprisingly, therefore, that internet penetration is almost perfect — 99.7%.

Technically, the conditions for local business are really good! There are no problems with the speed of the internet (Qatar is ranked third in the rankings for world’s cities, while it’s also ranked first in terms of mobile internet speed). The price for the local domain ccTLD .qa, .com.qa, net.qa is quite cheap, being ~$15 per year.

Payment Gateways

With so much business matters happening in Qatar, it is not surprising that there should be ways to collect payments on the website and online locally and internationally. In addition to using cash, some of the payment gateways used in Qatar are: Ooredoo, QPay, Fatora, CBQ Mobile, etc. What is more, the country took everything a step further by launching a new facial biometric payment acceptance.

After carrying out some necessary steps in advance (creating a profile, taking a selfie, linking card details to the facial biometric system), the innovation allows customers to pay for their goods and/or services through facial verification without having to use their cards or mobile phones. Really convenient!

If's and But's

With reference to the above-mentioned principle, it becomes obvious that not everything is that smooth. There are many small businesses in the United Arab Emirates, because big money provides big infrastructure, while small companies support this infrastructure. In Qatar things are not like that. If you want to establish a business in Qatar, be prepared that 51% of the shares will belong to the government (Sheikh). Accordingly, shared hosting does not exist in Qatar. Well it exists, but is not on demand. There are some tiny companies, but they mostly focus on government projects, because they need to get money from somewhere.

Finally, the domainity level is low, because of the same already-mentioned reason: there are almost no small businesses and thus, nobody needs websites.

The Bigger, the Better

After familiarising with both facts and rumors related to business matters, I myself tried to become a local register and see how the process works. Given this I wrote emails, made phone calls to register offices to make an appointment. My assistants wrote emails, made phone calls to register offices to make an appointment. The result was the same: we didn’t get any answer. They never replied. Having found the address online, I decided to go directly to them.

The reality was that there was a huge building, which you won’t even be able to enter if you didn’t make an appointment in advance. A vicious circle, a sad experience, and the bitter truth — nobody cares about small businesses. I’m their reseller, but they don’t even care to communicate. Larger slice of the pie is more attractive.

Conclusion

Qatar is a golden city, a diamond mine, and a dream come true. When watching TV or browsing through the internet you come across Qatar and your imagination immediately conjures up perfect pictures where you’d be definitely walking in golden slippers. Nonetheless, a well-known proverb says that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence; thus, always try to find all pieces of information, facts and data that might greatly influence your decision. And our Site.pro team is always here to help you with that!