Russia: Looking at Shared Hosting, Domain and Builder Market

For this episode of our 'Shared Hosting Tips' series, we’ve decided to uncover the hosting and domain market of Russia. For this, we’ve met for an interview with Andrey Kuzmichev, deputy general director of Ru-Center. Ru-center is the #1 domain (-37%) and #2 shared hosting providers in Russia. The company is also a founder of unique predictive technology, with which, based on existing domains of the customers, Ru-Center offers them safe and secure domains they might be interested in.

During the years of its operations, the company has amassed quite a bit of understanding of the local market, and in this video interview, Andrey has gladly shared them with us. Watch and read on to learn!

Russia and Digital Market

Russian Hosting Market

In Russia, there are two ccTLD (country code top-level domains): .ru in Latin, and .рф (rf) in Cyrillic. .ru domain is more widely used, with 5 million domains registered in the country. Under the .рф domain, which is the largest IDN domain (internationalised domain name) in the world, around 800,000 websites are registered. The total number of end-users of both domains is 2 million, meaning each end-user buys on average 3 domains and domainity level in the country is on a quite high level. Russian people like to stay local, with websites in Russian, and Russian support available. This also explains the success of the .рф domain.

Slowing market growth

According to Kuzmichev, the Russian hosting market has been growing slowly recently. There have been several reasons for this, but the most prominent one was the rise of pricing for the .ru domain. Notwithstanding this, Russia still remains the most affordable registration zone in the world. However, the online presence of businesses is still low, and as companies look to join the digital world more, the country is an undiscovered land in terms of hostings.

Laws and regulations

According to the law of the Russian Federation, personal data of the citizens of the country should be kept in the territory of Russia. In other words, the hosting of Russian websites should be in Russia. This is similar to GDPR in Europe. However, due to the law somehow being “neglected” yet, Andrey mentioned that they’ve been noticing a movement of international hosting organisations to Russia. The difference in price also has a role in this, as companies get to increase their profit.

Hosting Providers in Russia

The Russian hosting market is an untapped resource, and many international companies have noticed that. The web hosting giant, GoDaddy, opened an office in Russia a few years ago, actively advertising itself. However, this became more complicated because of the law about data privacy.

Other big names in the Russian market are Wix and Weebly, popular website builders. Initially, the companies have been heavily advertising their services, but the number of ads went down over time.

Improving Connnection

For a country with such a huge territory, a good connection everywhere is important. In Russia, the main telecommunication company has been investing a lot in improving its services in the country, ensuring a good connection with a very low ping available in the furthest part of the country.

Advertising in Russia

In terms of advertising, the Russian market is unique. There are very few formulas on what types of ads will or won’t work. For example, Wix and Weebly, when entering the Russian market, relied significantly on TV ads, educating a significant part of the population on website builders. From the experience of Ru-center, in the Russian advertisement space, the more aggressive pricing, the better it works.

Final Thoughts

That’s it! It was very interesting for us to talk with Andrey Kuzmichev, and learn from his experience in the Russian market, and we hope you’ve found it interesting as well. Due to its affordable pricing and good connection, Russia is a powerful, yet untapped hosting market worth exploring. And although it does have its unique features and specificities, with the right website builder and hosting tools, navigating your way through it will be significantly easier.