Shared Hosting Tips in Morocco

Founded in 2006, Hostoweb.com is a Moroccan hosting company that runs its own data center in Morocco and has multiple points of presence in Europe and Asia. The company created the first Moroccan data center in 2009, which was then classified as the top data center in the country in 2014. Currently, there are less than 50 data centers in Africa, and Hostoweb’s is one of them. In 2016, the company started a new product: a VPS platform for low-cost, self-managed VPS. To understand the shared hosting market of Morocco a bit better, we’ve traveled there to meet with Mehdi Tazi, the CEO, and founder of Hostoweb.com

Understanding Moroccan Hosting With Numbers

The population of the country is around 35 million people, with an Internet penetration rate of 50%. Mehdi mentions that there are around 70,000+ .ma ccTLDs registered in the country. Around 10-20% of the businesses have an online presence, but both the internet penetration rate and the digitalisation of businesses are growing rapidly. “The internet sector is kind of new in Morocco. Not every enterprise has a business, and they are not very oriented to the web. However, the mentality is changing, with digitalisation, everyone is tending to go online. The market is growing by leaps and bounds, and there is a huge opportunity for hosting businesses,” says Mehdi.

Customer Support and Localisation

In Morocco, there is a language barrier when it comes to English, that’s why clients and individuals located in Morocco expect support in Darija (Arabic,) and Hostoweb provides 24/7 support over email and phone. For international clients, they have a separate support center, and support agents assist the clients also in English, French, and Spanish. Many French and Spanish clients host their websites in Morocco, using the country mainly as a VPS and proxy to access some restricted content.

Payment Preferences and Solutions in Morocco

Hosting and domain pricing is quite low in Morocco, compared to, for example, Europe, standing at around €9/month. “Human nature is that people always prefer cheaper options, but once they try the premium quality, they never go back.” For payments, the CMI gateway is the more popular one. It is the first solution to make online transactions available in Morocco. According to Mehdi, there are two types of customers in the country: people who prefer to do everything online, and old-school clients preferring cash. Many of them pay via bank transfers, and then send the check to the company to have the service manually activated.

In Morocco, there is a limit to the amount people can spend online buying from abroad. Partially because of this, large international names like Wix or Weebly don’t target the country: people prefer to spend the allocated budget on flight tickets or other essentials. This, coupled with the language barrier, makes people stick to local hosting providers.

Website Builders Enjoy Popularity

“Although the big brands don't come to Morocco, Site.pro entering the market made it considerably easy for people to go digital. It’s considerably easier to have everything done with a website builder. Tools like Joomla, for example, can be hard for newbies, as they need to go through the process of installation first, then maintain their website, add content, etc.”

Marketing and Promotion on Morocco

When it comes to promoting their services in Morocco, after trying several strategies, including outdoor advertising (big fail!,) Hostoweb realised that Facebook Ads and Google Adsense work best for them. In Morocco, the acquisition cost per customer is $30-40, which is considerably cheaper than in Europe (average of €100-200) and the US (average of $300.) However, this largely depends on the targeting and the customer. “We’ve tried many things during the years, and from our experience, the best marketing is the satisfied customer,” mentions Mehdi. “We currently have data centers in Romania, Amsterdam, and Hong Kong. Our own CDN network optimises the performance and latency, which is better for the customers.

Wrapping Up

With a large population and only a fraction of it online yet, Morocco is a hosting market that waits to be explored. People start to recognise the importance of going digital and look for ways to move their businesses online. According to Mehdi, the Moroccan market is yet to reach its potential and is a great place for hosting businesses. It was very interesting for us to learn about the nitty-gritty of the Moroccan market during our insightful and friendly chat with Mehdi, and we hope you enjoyed the interview and this recap just as much.