Hosting Raja Review 2023
Complete breakdown of Hosting Raja and it's services. How they fare as a web hosting service provider in India.
Not Recommended
Starts at RS 85 per month
Visit Hostinger website, officially recommended by Forrst.me
To date, we have listed our top five web hosting providers in India, wrote in-depth reviews on each one of them, and have written reviews on two not-much-recommended hosting providers- GoDaddy and InMotion.
The commonality between them was all seven compete globally. None of them were India-only providers. With our today’s article, we will break that trend.
In this article, we’ll have a look at Hosting Raja’s offering from a subjective as well as objective standpoint. The primary rating factors will be the same as always, i.e., uptime, speed, support, and value for money.
Want a sneak peek on our verdict? Do not opt for Hosting Raja! There are far better options in the market, in our opinion.
Having said that, let’s start the review to share why we think so.
Overview - Hosting Raja
Our ratings | C | 3/5 |
Average response time | ~320 ms |
Avg. response times in top-targeted countries | US: ~ 240 ms | India: ~ 60 ms |
Uptime | 99.71% (guarantees 99.9%) |
Support | Chat & email ticket |
Site transfer | Free |
Introductory Pricing | Starts at INR 85/mo. (on a 5-year tenure) |
Top features | More than needed space, free emails, free SSL |
Company Information
Hosting Raja (which translates to “Hosting King”) is a fast-growing Indian hosting provider & domain registrar. As of 2018, it boasts of more than 150,000 customers.
Director of OVI Hosting Pvt. Ltd. (which is Hosting Raja’s parent company), Dhanasekar Mani, founded Hosting Raja in 2012. It started with web hosting services, including shared, dedicated, VPS, and Java hosting, to name the primary ones.
By 2016, i.e., within four years, it achieved the 100,000 customers goal. And by 2018, they had over 150,000 growth.
This fast growth led us to think this must be an excellent provider, and we decided to test it. Here’s what we found out:
The 5 Good Elements of Hosting Raja Web Hosting
Contrary to what we thought before testing it, Hosting Raja is only good at a few things — that too are pretty basic or non-essential.
1. Excellent server response time in India
Given the fact that Hosting Raja is an Indian hosting company, i.e., with its servers in India, this one’s no surprise. The server response time of the site hosted with them is outstanding if measured from any place in India. In fact, whenever you visit hostingraja.in, the chatbot literally displays, “Our servers network latency is ONLY 30 milliseconds. This is one of the fastest in India.”
The server response is the amount of time required by a web browser to render the HTML page from the accessed site’s server.
We checked our test site’s response time using Bitcatcha, a server response time measuring tool, and found it to be 57 ms when tested from Banglore.
This is on par with comparatively expensive and our recommended providers like Hostinger and HostGator (which measured ~60 ms and ~3 ms, respectively, in India).
However, it is better than our suggested alternative (due to the price point), i.e., Hostinger’s approx. 210 ms India response time. Not saying Hostinger’s response time is bad by any stretch; just showing Hosting Raja is better from this standpoint.
2. Free emails
Hosting Raja, just like almost every other hosting provider, gives free emails to the users.
These are business emails, i.e., the ‘yourname@yourwebsite.com’ types. Such email addresses help you gain credibility, make you look professional, and help specify the purpose. For example, mailing from ‘sales@yourwebsite.com’ more often than not means it has something to do with getting the user to buy/buy more.
With Hosting Raja’s base plan, you get ten such emails (compared to Hostinger’s one). This number increases with account upgradations.
In short, free emails is one of the few positives Hosting Raja brings to the table.
3. Free site transfer
If you own a site with other hosting providers and are thinking of shifting to Hosting Raja (for some crazy reason), they do offer free site transfer.
This isn’t mentioned in the details of their plans, but on asking them, we found out they do offer free site migration.
It is a great option to have, but we believe you won’t be needing this after reading our review. And just so you know, Hostinger, too, provides free site transfer.
4. Disk space in quantity
Hosting Raja does a great job of providing excessive disk space.
Even on their base plan, Hosting Raja provides 100 GB SSD storage. This is fantastic to have if you just want to store data on their servers, but pretty much useless given the bandwidth they provide (we will discuss bandwidth later in this article).
Additionally, it’s commendable that they give SSD storage and not the cheaper HDD alternative. However, don’t expect it to be super high-performance storage like the ones found with Hostinger or A2 hosting.
5. Free SSL certificate
The last time we updated our HostingRaja review, the cheapest plan didn't come with an SSL certificate. Now, they have removed the then cheapest plan. The current cheapest plan isn's as low-priced as it used to be, but it does offer a free SSL certificate! That's awesome!
6 things Hosting Raja is bad at
The above were the only positives associated with Hosting Raja, according to us. All four elements are good to have but not among the most essential ones or the unique ones.
Why weren’t the crucial ones mentioned there, then? Well, because they are not so good at those. We’ll discuss them this “Cons” section:
1. Poor global average server response time
We already discussed their excellent server response time in India. However, what we didn’t mention — and you probably noticed in the screenshot we attached there — is how terrible they are elsewhere.
Bitcatcha rated our test site’s server response time ‘C’ because the average server response time was approx. 320 ms.
Compared to Google’s recommended 200 ms, it is significantly slower. In real life, this translates to increased bounce rate, inadequate SEO, lesser sales, and numerous other things that defy the purpose of trying to grow a website.
On the other hand, Hostinger (with an average response time of ~180 ms) and other alternatives are way better. In a nutshell, Hosting Raja is a big ‘No’ if you plan to cover more than just the Indian demographic.
2. Slow servers
This one’s crucial — possibly the most vital element in choosing a hosting provider. The loading speed of Hosting Raja hosted sites is slower compared to other options.
Let us first show the significance of loading time with a couple of statistics:
When we tested the speed of our test site with a sample WordPress page, it loaded in around 1.2 seconds. That’s barely in the “should be” margin. Generally, anything under one second is considered good.
809.5 ms + 319.3 ms = 1.15 s
However, when we look at other options like Hostinger(~600 ms), A2 Hosting (~500 ms), and Siteground (~600 ms), Hosting Raja is way slower. Therefore, it’s not at all recommended.
3. Not up-to-mark support
Just like the mediocre speed and response time, you get a mediocre customer support. And for us, the only thing that’s equally important as server speed is the provider’s technical support because that’s where a layman turns to when they are in trouble or don’t understand.
Firstly, let’s talk about the ways you can contact them. You can either communicate through live chat or generate a support ticket.
Our experience was okayish. Can't recommend it, can't not recommend it. Therefore, we looked at other people's experience, and here’s what they have to say:
These are a few of the hundreds of negative reviews people have posted on the internet. Meaning, it’s safe to say the support is not up to mark.
And just if you are wondering, Hostinger’s support was better than Hosting Raja’s in our experience. If you want the best support, Siteground is our choice.
4. Okayish uptime
Okay. So, two of the must-be-good factors are below average. Here comes the third one: Uptime. Simply put, we won't consider HostingRaja particlularly reliable.
Uptime is the time during which a server is in operation.
In our experience, the uptime of Hosting Raja hosted site was 99.71%. In other words, it's more than 2 hours of average downtime per month. They do offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee, though. Therefore, you'll get some compensation. Of course, a potential client/customer could have tried to access the site during that time and returned because of unavailability -- you won't get compensation for that.
Here are a few experiences of other people:
Overall, from ours and mostly from other people’s experiences, we understand their uptime is not good. If compared to Hostinger’s 99.97% uptime, Hosting Raja is not reliable & hence not recommended.
5. Need to buy for at least three years
Hosting Raja’s starter plan, Silver, comes with Rs 85/month price tag. But, this is only applicable if you purchase a five-year plan. The least duration plan of theirs is the three-year plan, which costs Rs 104/month.
In other words, if you purchase the plan and don't like it, you'll have to stick with it or let go the money in drain.
6. No money-back guarantee
Finally, and here’s a shocker: Hosting Raja doesn’t mention any money-back guarantee throughout their site.
Meaning, if you purchase a plan (and you have to buy for a minimum of 3 years, BTW), your money is stuck with them whether you like it or not.
Hostinger, or any hosting provider as of that matter, comes with a 30-day or more money-back guarantee. This provides you a window to test the service.
Hosting Raja Plans & Features
Till now, we gave our subjective review of Hosting Raja’s web hosting/shared plans. They have other types of hosting as well. Let’s have an objective look at everything Hosting Raja provides. We will mention the price and the primary data of each plan
Web Hosting Plans
These are their premium shared plans that offer to host unlimited domains and unlimited FTP users on unlimited storage and bandwidth server. Plus, they offer a free .in or .com domain, drag & drop site builder, weekly & monthly backup, and high priority support.
Technically, the “unlimited” resources are no unlimited because there are limitations to the server. Plus, Hosting Raja is notorious for having multiple concurrent users on their unlimited plans. Anyway, these are the plans.
All of the costs mentioned above apply only if you purchase on a 5-year tenure.
WordPress
These are their WordPress plans that come with 250+ free themes, free SSL certificate, and unlimited SSD disk space and bandwidth:
The costs mentioned are for a 3-year plan.
These three plans come with everything the other plans offer — just they have more & dedicated resources.
The costs mentioned are for a 1-year plan.
VPS
Dedicated
Hosting Raja’s dedicated plans come with a free SSL certificate, 1 dedicated IP address, high priority support, and numerous checkers & optimizers.
Cloud
These are their cloud architecture plans that you can buy on monthly as well as an hourly basis:
Apart from all the mentioned plans, there are plans optimized explicitly for Java, Python, and NodeJS. This quite familiar to Wordpress plans — meaning: the fundamental architecture is one of their other plans, and they have specific optimization for the platform/language.
Overall, Hosting Raja has a myriad of hosting options you can choose from.
Hosting Raja Control Panel
Hosting Raj uses the widespread cPanel, which we love for the all-functionalities-atone-place but dislike for the aesthetics.
Overall, Hosting Raja’s control panel is pretty good and gets the job done.
Conclusion | Do we recommend Hosting Raja?
No, we don't!
Their VPS and Dedicated plans do seem worth recommending, but their web hosting plans have better alternatives in the market.
The only place they are good at includes some non-necessary things like more-than-required storage or some un-unique things such as free emails and site transfers.
However, when it comes to crucial features a hosting service must have, there are better options available. The average global server response time is poor, the server speed isn't that great, the uptime can be better, and the customer support is not recommendable. Plus, they don’t provide freebies but they do seem to have switched to a money-back guarantee.
Here’s what we would suggest: If low-budget is the only reason why you are considering Hosting Raja, go for Hostinger. It cost comparatively lower and is a fantastic value for money.
And, if the budget is not a constrain, any other provider from our top recommended.
That’s it!
starts at $0.99 per month
Starts From
₹79*
monthly
• Best uptime (99.97%)
• Fast, 0.4ms load time as average
• Good & quick customer support