With businesses rapidly shifting online, reliable hosting solutions have a significant role to play in your digital journey. One popular web hosting you could consider is Safaricom Web Hosting.
In the last few years, I have reviewed dozens of popular web hosts like CreativeK Cloud, Truehost, Hostpoa, and many more. Today, after 7 months of consistent usage and thorough testing, I’m here with the Safaricom Web Hosting Review.
In this Safaricom Web Hosting Review, we are going to delve into the intricacies of Safaricom Web Hosting.
We will start by exploring its user interface. Then we’ll discuss the results of various performance tests conducted on Safaricom Web Hosting. These include uptime tests, load tests, and more.
Moving on, we will discuss the key features of Safaricom Web Hosting, including data centers, domains, security, support, pricing, website builder, email hosting, etc.
Finally, I’ll reveal potential alternatives to it as well.
So, are you curious to know if Safaricom Web Hosting is as reliable as it claims to be? Let’s dive in to find out.
Table of Contents
Safaricom Web Hosting Review Summary
Safaricom Web Hosting features fast website speeds and reliable uptime along with Mpesa Payment and Ticker Support. It is also budget-friendly and renews at the same price.
The only downsides are its poor backup system and call support limitations.
If you have a Kenyan audience and need an affordable hosting solution, you can look at Safaricom Web Hosting !
In terms of overall rating score i’ll give it 3.9 / 5
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About Safaricom Web Hosting
Safaricom is a leading telecommunications company in Kenya. It first offered cloud services back in 2010. Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya Safaricom Web Hosting is trusted by 50k+ users who have hosted over a million websites on their platform!
Safaricom’s primary aim is is to provide web hosting services to businesses and individuals in Kenya, based on their domain registration focus on the “.co.ke” domain extensions.
Safaricom Web Hosting is famous for its inexpensive pricing plans. You can find a variety of hosting solutions on their platform. These include Shared hosting, Domain Registration, Domain Transfer and SSL Certificates.
Safaricom Web Hosting Review Overview
| Uptime | 99.97% (last 209 days) |
| Pricing | Starting from Ksh. 2900/year |
| Data Centers | 3 Data Centers (Nairobi, Kisumu & Thika) |
| Servers | Apache servers |
| Email Hosting | Available on all plans |
| Support | Email, Tickets & Knowledgebase |
| Payment Options | Lipa na Mpesa |
| Features | Apache Server, cPanel, SSL, ModSecurity, Malware Scanner and SitePad Website Builder. |
| Hosting Plans | Shared hosting |
Safaricom Web Hosting User Interface
The user interface of Safaricom Web Hosting is pretty average. The dashboard features a list of your active products, services, tickets, etc. On the left column, you can check out the different features, like billing, support, services, etc. You can click on any of your active products to manage them.
Talking about the control panel, Safaricom Web Hosting offers web control panel. Its interface is easy to navigate.
Testing Parameters
For testing Safaricom Web Hosting , I have purchased their Bronze Shared Hosting plan, priced at Ksh.1,500/year. Along with that, I have used the following settings on my client’s website.
- Kenyan servers
- Hello Theme (Elementor based)
- Safaricom Web Hosting Speeds
Safaricom Web Hosting employs Apache servers on its hosting plans to ensure faster loading speeds.
Safaricom Web Hosting Uptime Status
Í have been monitoring the uptime of my client website hosted on Safaricom Web Hosting for the last 209 days. For this, I have used the Better Uptime tool. It checks the uptime of my site every 30 seconds.
Safaricom Web Hosting Uptime Status Report (Last 209 Days)
Below is the uptime report for Safaricom Web Hosting ’s Bronze Shared Hosting plan (Kenyan servers) for the last 209 days.
| February 2024 | 99.99% |
| January 2024 | 100% |
| December 2023 | 99.97% |
| November 2023 | 100% |
| October 2023 | 99.98% |
| September 2023 | 99.94% |
| August 2023 | 99.89% |
In the last 30 days, my client website has been up 99.99% of the time, which is pretty good. Whereas, in the last 209 days, my website has been up for 99.97% of the time.
In the entire test duration, the total downtime has been 1 hour and 8 minutes, with the longest incident stretching to 13 mins.
Safaricom Web Hosting also offers a 99.95% uptime SLA on all hosting plans.
However, they have no regulations or policies for the situation when the uptime falls below 99.95%. I hope they introduce proper guidelines for it soon.
Overall, the uptime offered by Safaricom Web Hosting has been appreciable so far.
But if you want an unmatched uptime, you can check out CreativeK Cloud, Truehost or Hostpoa.
Safaricom Web Hosting Load Testing
For evaluating the load testing of my website hosted on Safaricom Web Hosting, I sent 100 virtual users over to it. They made a total of 17.5k requests, out of which none of the requests failed.
The peak requests reached 98 req/sec, which is excellent! The P95 response time (which is the time taken by 95% of the requests to be executed) was surprisingly low at 12 ms. There were no major spikes in the response time either.
Overall, I was highly impressed with the load management capabilities of Safaricom Web Hosting. You can certainly rely on it if you have a medium to high-traffic website.
Safaricom Web Hosting Cache
Safaricom Web Hosting employs the Apache Web Server on its hosting plans. It comes with built-in caching capabilities to enhance your site’s performance.
If you have a WordPress site, I’d recommend using the WP Rocket Cache plugin, which is highly compatible with their servers.
Safaricom Web Hosting Data Centers
Safaricom Web Hosting features 3 data centers spanning the following locations:
- Thika
- Nairobi
- Kisumu
Safaricom Web Hosting Domains
Safaricom Web Hosting offers the following popular domain extensions: .com, .co.ke, .org, .net, .info, .go.ke, .ac.ke, .ke.
If you want to purchase a new domain name, Safaricom Web Hosting offers domain registration services. Following are the domain registration prices for popular TLDs.
TLD Annual Pricing
| .com | Ksh.999 |
| .co,ke | Ksh.1300 |
| .org | Ksh.999 |
| .net | Ksh.999 |
| .info | Ksh.999 |
| .go.ke | Ksh.1300 |
| .ac.ke | Ksh.1300 |
| .ke | Ksh.1300 |
If you’re still in the process of finalizing a domain name for your website, these AI Domain Name Generator called Namelix can offer some fresh ideas!
Safaricom Web Hosting Backup and Restoration
Backups are important security features for any hosting solution. Safaricom Web Hosting offers scheduled weekly backups of files and folders, with a retention period of 1 day.
Whereas, daily backups are performed for databases, and the retention period is 7 days.
All the automated backups are generated on their backup server. Thus, users cannot access them from their end. If you want to restore an automated daily backup, you need to get in touch with their support staff.
On-demand or manual backups are supported on Safaricom Web Hosting. So you can generate backups, access them, and restore them any time you want. However, selective restoration is not available at the moment.
Safaricom Web Hosting Security
Safaricom Web Hosting offers a variety of features to secure your WordPress website from any online threats. The most important ones are mentioned below.
- SSL Certificate: You can protect your domains and subdomains on Safaricom Web Hosting using paid SSL certificates that cost between Ksh.1500 to Ksh 35,200 per yr
- ModSecurity: This is a powerful web application firewall service that detects malicious scripts and programs and prevents them from damaging your website.
- Malware Scanner: This tool monitors your website for malware and offers malware scan reports as well.
Safaricom Web Hosting Customer Support
Safaricom Web Hosting offers customer support via email, tickets and a knowledge-base.
I found their ticket support to be pretty good. They offered swift replies, and the support staff seemed to be quite polite. I received quick replies to general queries. However, technical assistance took a lot of time.
One of my queries almost took an hour to resolve. Overall, I experienced that they were not well-versed in the technical aspects.
They also have an extensive knowledge base with 50+ articles covering all the popular topics around hosting. I liked how the articles were annotated and well-structured to help beginners follow them with ease. The replies to email tickets arrive in under a few hours too.
Overall, I liked the customer service offered by Safaricom Web Hosting but they could do better by offering call support.
Safaricom Web Hosting Pricing
Safaricom Web Hosting offers 6 different shared hosting plans – Bronze, Silver, Gold, Premium, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. I have the Bronze plan of Safaricom Web Hosting . The following table compares the key features of all the shared hosting plans. Let’s check it out.
| Bronze | Silver | Gold | Premium | Enterprise | Enterprise Plus | |
| Pricing (1 year) | Ksh.1500/yr | Ksh.2500/yr | Ksh.4000/yr | Ksh.5000/yr | Ksh.7100/yr | Ksh.9000/yr |
| Renewal Pricing | Ksh.1500/yr | Ksh.2500/yr | Ksh.4000/yr | Ksh.5000/yr | Ksh.7100/yr | Ksh.9000/yr |
| Subdomains | 5 | 50 | 100 | 200 | 400 | 600 |
| Storage | 500 MB Space | 2 GB Space | 10 GB Space | 20 GB Space | 50 GB Space | 100 GB Space |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email Accounts | 10 | 50 | 100 | 200 | 500 | 1000 |
| Free Email Security | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| cPanel | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The pricing plans of Safaricom Web Hosting shared hosting start from insanely cheap pricing of Ksh.1,500/year. But please note it come with an additional cost of buying SSL separately at 1500.
If you are looking to save on hosting I’d recommend buying from CreativeK Cloud, a web hosting company that provides SSL for FREE with a starting hosting package of Ksh. 2900 per year
Latest Safaricom Web Hosting Pricing
I have purchased the Bronze plan of Safaricom Web Hosting for this review. It offers 5 sub domains, 500 MB storage space, and unlimited bandwidth. Along with that, you also get 10 email accounts.
- Best Hosting Plan: I would recommend you go with their Bronze Shared hosting plan for 1 year. If you need to build a WordPress site, this is the perfect option. However, if you need NodeJS support, you can check out their cPanel hosting plans.
- Payment Methods: It supports Mpesa as the only payment method. So, you can use Mpesa App to quickly purchase a hosting plan.
- Safaricom Email Hosting: Safaricom Web Hosting offers 10 email accounts in its bronze shared hosting plan. Whereas, if you go with the Gold plan, you get 100 email accounts.Small and mid-sized teams with a few dozen people can use this feature to assign a separate professional email to their teammates. It’s especially valuable for small businesses and marketing agencies.
Are you a small business owner struggling to find the perfect hosting? You can check out our list of the 16 Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses to decide the perfect fit for you!
Safaricom Web Hosting Pros
1) Swift Speeds: With Safaricom Web Hosting , you can experience swift speeds, especially in the Kenyan regions. Kenyan data centers along with Apache servers ensure an excellent performance.
2) Reliable Uptime: In the last few months of my testing, the overall uptime of Safaricom Web Hosting has been 99.99%. Whereas in the last 30 days, the uptime has been 99.97%, which is really appreciable.
3) Excellent Load Handling: In my experience, Safaricom Web Hosting was able to handle load exceptionally well with no request failures and a stable response time. So, if you have a high-traffic site, Safaricom Web Hosting will be able to handle the load efficiently.
4) Lipa na Mpesa Payment method: Because Safaricom Web Hosting is an Kenyan company, you can find support for Mpesa Payments on this platform. This makes it a convenient option for Kenyan users.
5) Renewal at Same Price: The best thing about Safaricom Web Hosting is, that unlike other hosts, it doesn’t offer elevated renewal rates on its hosting plans. The renewal amount is the same as the purchase amount, which is great!
6) Affordable Pricing: The pricing plans of Safaricom Web Hosting Shared hosting start from a pocket-friendly price of Ksh. 1,500/year. This makes it an affordable hosting solution, even for newbies.
Safaricom Web Hosting Cons
1) Support Inconsistencies: Even though Safaricom Web Hosting offers quick ticket support that’s available 24/7, it didn’t perform exceptionally well for technical queries. They were fairly quick with general queries but took a lot of time to resolve technical queries. I think they can work on improving their tech support.
Safaricom Web Hosting Alternatives
1) CreativeK Cloud
CreativeK Cloud is a popular web hosting provider in Kenya with one of the most affordable pricing structures. Like Safaricom Web Hosting, it features swift speeds, Mpesa payment option, Litespeed servers, advanced security options, and a responsive website builder.
However, unlike Safaricom Web Hosting, you’ll get reliable backups and call support on CreativeK Cloud. Beginners who need budget hosting will find CreativeK Cloud as the most affordable option.
The pricing plans of CreativeK Cloud start at an affordable rate of Ksh. 2900/yr.
2) Truehost
Truehost is a feature-packed web host that offers blazing-fast speeds and good performance. It offers litespeed servers, reliable uptime, Sitepad Site Builder, lots of security tools, and lacks a temporary domain, similar to Safaricom Web Hosting .
The pricing plans for Truehost start from Ksh 208.33/month.
Related: Truehost Review 2024 Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons
3) Hostpinnacle
Hostpinnacle is one of the most established web hosting providers in Kenya. Just like Safaricom Web Hosting, Hostpinnacle features lots of impressive features like fast speeds, NVMe SSD storage, Litespeed servers, good load handling, and excellent security tools.
But unlike Safaricom Web Hosting, it also features a wide range of developer-friendly tools, unmatched uptime and reliable backups. It also doesn’t offer a free domain name and is a bit on the expensive side.
The pricing plans of Hostpinnacle begin from Ksh. 2999/yr.
Related: Hostpinnacle Review: Is it the Best Web Hosting in Kenya?
Why Should You Trust Me?
I’ve been working full-time in the digital industry since 2018. In these years, I’ve used and tested all the popular hosting on my personal and client websites. Kenya Web Experts, CreativeK Cloud, Hostpoa, DeepAfrica, etc, are some notable examples.
For this review, I have been testing the Bronze plan of Safaricom Web Hosting for the last 5 months. I even have an active client subscription to it.
Testing dozens of hosts in the past few years has given me the knowledge and expertise to compare them and recommend the best one for your requirements.
FAQs about Safaricom Web Hosting
1) What are the payment methods supported by Safaricom Web Hosting ?
Safaricom Web Hosting supports Mpesa as the default payment methods
2) Which is the best Safaricom Web Hosting plan?
In my experience, their Bronze Shared hosting plan for 1 year is a value-for-money option if you are working on a WordPress website.
3) How do I host a website on Safaricom?
– To host a website on Safaricom, you can purchase one of their web hosting packages, which typically include storage space, bandwidth, and other features necessary for hosting your website. Once you’ve chosen a package, you’ll need to register a domain name (if you haven’t already) and then upload your website files to Safaricom’s servers using FTP or other methods provided.
4) How do I pay for Safaricom domain in Kenya?
– Safaricom provides various payment options for domain registration in Kenya, including mobile money services like M-Pesa, credit/debit card payments, bank transfers, and sometimes even cash payments at Safaricom retail outlets or authorized agents. You can choose the payment method that is most convenient for you during the domain registration process.
5) Does Safaricom sell domains?
– Yes, Safaricom offers domain registration services, allowing you to purchase domain names for your website. You can search for available domain names through their website and register them for use with Safaricom’s hosting or other services.
6) How do I register my domain with Safaricom?
– To register a domain with Safaricom, you can visit their website and use their domain search tool to check for the availability of your desired domain name. Once you find an available domain, you can follow the prompts to complete the registration process, providing necessary information such as your contact details and payment information. After successful registration, Safaricom will manage your domain and provide you with the necessary DNS settings to point your domain to your hosting account.
7) How much is a domain name in Kenya?
– The cost of a domain name in Kenya can vary depending on factors such as the domain extension (.com, .co.ke, .ke, etc.), the registrar, and any additional services bundled with the domain registration. Safaricom offers competitive pricing for domain registration in Kenya, and you can find their current rates on their website or by contacting their customer support.
Final Thoughts on Safaricom Web Hosting
Safaricom Web Hosting is a good hosting provider with good speeds, uptime and excellent load handling. It is a budget-friendly host that renews at the same price. So, beginners can look at it too.
If you need hosting with local domains such as .co.ke and call support in Kenya, Safaricom Web Hosting is a pretty good option.
The downside is that you don’t get US servers on shared hosting plans. They are limited to n servers only. So, make sure to get a shared hosting plan only if your target audience is Kenyan.
Besides, they don’t have a proper backup management system right now, which is disappointing. I feel good backup options are essential for a web host.
In my opinion, if you prefer human interaction when it comes to live support CreativeK Cloud is a better alternative to consider.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this Safaricom Web Hosting Review. I hope this information will help you decide if Safaricom Web Hosting is the right hosting for your digital journey.
If you don’t want to get lost in the technical aspects of hosting, check out these 16 Best Web Hosting Companies In Kenya
Which hosting are you currently using? How does it compare to Safaricom Web Hosting and would you prefer switching to Safaricom Web Hosting? Let me know your views by getting in touch here
