Iceland: Shared Hosting and the Ideal Environment for Data Centers

The next destination of the Shared Hosting Tips series is Iceland. This small Northern country is notable for multiple things — including volcanoes, amazing sceneries, and notoriously high prices.

Filip Borcov explored the digital landscape of Iceland and shared new insights regarding SEO and link building.

Site.pro in Iceland

Where the Cold War Ended

One of the less obvious facts about Iceland is that the major advance of stopping the Cold War happened here, in Reykjavik. President Reagan and general secretary Gorbachev met on this neutral territory in Höfði House, October 11, 1986. The meeting became a turning point that led to real arms-control agreements and symbolically marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

Now, Höfði House represents safety. Who knows, maybe in the future more leaders will come here to resolve political conflicts.

The Digital Landscape and Economy

Iceland is considered to be one of the safest countries of the modern world; and the economy here is highly developed.

The domainity level is very high. There are 400,000 people and 100,000 domains. So, if you meet four people in the street, one of them will definitely have a local domain name.

.IS ccTLD’s price is around $50. That is quite high for domains, but it is normal for Iceland — the country is expensive. Domains can be registered directly in the official registry, hence, there aren’t many registrars reselling domains.

Icelanders cherish their language and culture, and it spreads on domain zone preference as well. .IS is more popular than alternatives.

Ideal place for data centers

People host their website both on local and foreign servers, but the local ones are much more popular despite their high price.

However, Iceland is ideal for data centres because electricity is very cheap. Cooling, too, is very cheap here as well because the temperature is very low. The internet cables are also quite well developed. Iceland connects to the global net via multiple submarine (undersea) fibre-optic cables, which carry international data traffic. These cables link Iceland to Europe and North America and support very high-capacity connections. There even are telecom industry plans about extending Arctic-route cables that would eventually create more direct connections between Iceland and North America.

Overall, it is a best place for digital development and data storage, more hosting companies should consider Iceland for their servers. The only big downside — you have to pay your employees Icelandic-level wages.

Local hosting preferences and support

Usually Icelandic hosting companies prefer to have servers locally. Icelanders love their country, and they want to support local service. That’s why Icelanders give their support to local providers when they have a choice. They prefer local domains, local hosting providers, etc.

Global providers are also present, but they don’t target Iceland in particular since the market is very small, much smaller than in other European counties.

When it comes to customer support, the local language and English are used. 90% of tickets are in Icelandic, but because there are lots of expats — many people from other countries — English is also popular.

The problem with the market size

Local registrars are motivated but disappointed with the market size. With 400,000 people it could be only a few dozen thousand companies. So the country doesn’t have a lot of active businesses. It is too difficult to build a big business here.

Iceland? More Like Rainland

Iceland got its name from early settlers who reached this island around the 9th century. They saw enormous glaciers, snowy mountains, and, of course, a lot of ice.

Now, it could be more appropriate to call Iceland “Rainland”, or maybe “Windland”. “Nightland” would also be appropriate. Days in Iceland are short, nights are long, and there aren’t many sunny days. Sometimes you look in the sky and can’t really tell if what you see is the sun or the moon.

Parking Culture

Some would say Iceland could as well be called “Parkland”. Parking is paid, always, and costs more or less €100 a day. Even in mountains and close to waterfalls parking has its price.

Even if you’re completely alone in the middle of nowhere — you’ll have to pay for your parking lot, that’s the local culture. Parking is everywhere.

If you park in the city, it is usually like everywhere in Europe, and sometimes you need to pay at night.

Payment Gateways

In Iceland, everybody pays by card. Icelanders use global solutions like PayPal, Stripe, etc. Nobody uses cash and nobody tips. Fun fact: Filip has been in Iceland for three weeks, and hasn’t seen anyone paying by cash even once.

The population density is very low. In some regions you will not see people; you will see only paid parking lots and self-service gas stations.

Lifehack: SEO Research

The main recent takeaway is that now SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and GEO (Generative AI Engine Optimisation) follow the same logic. Over the years algorithms of SEO have changed a lot.

People write text with AI to optimise it better for AI, which doesn’t necessarily lead to great results. Still, we need to focus not only on robots, but on people as well — create nice usable websites, conduct research, and never stop learning.

You can only get better at SEO by constantly studying — look for information yourself, ask professionals, test know-hows. The learning process must never end.

Fail: Postponed Linkbuilding

One of the biggest fails of Site.pro SEO strategy is that we started building backlinks very late. When we compare how many links have market leaders vs us, their portfolios, the gap is massive. Some companies spend six or seven digits to build their linking portfolio.

It doesn’t mean it’s impossible to compete with them, but it does make it a lot more difficult. The sooner you start building a backlink profile, writing about your business on high DR resources — the better.

Domain Quality

Usually, one person in Iceland has only one domain and one website. Icelanders are precious about everything surrounding them, so websites built here are professional and beautiful. Besides, outside of Iceland the local ccTLD is not popular, that’s why a lot of cool and short domains are available, like “travel dot is”, or “parkdot is”. You rarely get to see such domain names.

Website Builders in Iceland

What’s the leading website builder in Iceland? Well, you already know the answer.

White label solutions aren’t very popular, and, as mentioned before, there aren’t many hosting companies overall. Hence, website builders as a whole aren’t a big thing here — no hosting companies to upsell website builders with hosting plans.

Icelanders value quality over price — they are ready to pay more if it means a higher quality service. They tend to choose the best options for building websites (like our software, of course).

Long Nights, Beautiful Sunsets

You rarely see the sun in Iceland, but it’s so beautiful that it’s worth going. If you see a volcano erupt — be sure to have your phone ready to stream it!