Expert Overview
Hosting in Japan since 1999
Sakura Internet has been in business since 1999. They are based in Japan and provided their customers with a variety of different hosting options. The site itself is in Japanese and does not have options to translate into English. Even with Google translating for me there was a lot on the page that was displayed in images, which could not be translated. Fortunately, there was enough information to get a good feel for the company and the services they provide. If you don’t speak Japanese, however, you will want to go with another hosting option.
Uptime & Reliability
Excellent Reliability
You’ll get a 99.99% uptime guarantee with this company, which is better than what most hosting providers today can offer. They use good quality hardware and keep it in quality data centers to reduce the risk of outages and other problems. They also have solid state drives, which are very stable so your data is protected.
Features
Good Hosting Features
There are a lot of different hosting options to choose from. They offer shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers and cloud hosting packages. Within each of these categories there are a number of different choices you can make to ensure you’re getting exactly what you need.
They also offer a two week free trial, which is nice. Their hard drives are configured with RAID 1 mirroring for added speed and stability and they also provide good virus checking software to keep your site clean. There really isn’t anything that makes this company stand out from other hosting providers in a significant way, but there isn’t any important features that are missing either so you’ll likely have a good overall experience.
Support
Limited Information
This is one area where I couldn’t find much information about the company. They didn’t have a page on their site that was dedicated to support, or at least not one that was in English. This makes it difficult to evaluate the quality of the support they offer. I did not find any customers complaining about their support teams, but presumably most reviews would be in Japanese anyway so I only was able to find a few. While there is no reason to think this company would have bad support, it would be nice to have more information.
Pricing
Pricing Seems Reasonable
Whenever dealing with companies that sell only in a foreign currency it can be difficult to get a really good feel for the price. Even once converted to dollars there are additional factors that can influence whether it is a good deal or not. As you would expect, this company’s prices are listed in the Japanese Yen.
I found that most people who use this hosting company did not complain about the price at all, and when I converted the currency to dollars it seems like a good price at all levels. They aren’t the cheapest option, but they also aren’t overcharging for what you get.
Summary
Great Overall Hosting in Japan
If you’re looking for hosting in Japan, this is a good company to consider. They have a lot of features and packages to choose from and their prices seem quite reasonable. They are also a very reliable hosting provider so your site will be up and running for your customers at all times.
Pros:
- 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
- SSD Hard Drives
- In Business since 1999
Cons:
- Site can’t easily be translated to English
- Limited Info on Support Teams
