I'm considering of building a site on westhost, but first I need to know if WH has any trouble with access from China. With thanks.
Fengs,
We have clients representing over 120 countries at this time. There are no problems with access from China that we have ever learned about. Feel free to give us a shot. We offer a 30-day money back guarantee if you are not satisfied for any reason. Thanks.
Thanks for your quick reply. Further questions: If my site on WH is blocked by "Great China Firewall", can I get my dedicated IP changed to avoid blocking? And is there any fee applied for changing IP? Thanks
Fengs,
When you initially get set up, your dedicated IP and account should work fine. However, if the dedicated IP ever did get blocked, the only way around that is to close the account and create a new one with a new dedicated IP. Unfortunately, an IP cannot be changed on a existing account.
Whoa!!! I have been a WH client for 6 years in Hong Kong and China and I have many documented dialogues with WH about our problems accessing WH from China.
Problems occured just in the past 6 weeks where DNS to Westhost was sporadic. This is largely a problem with the DNS in China not updating that from WH quick enough, but it is still a problem.
Currently, large blocks of users in Shanghai and southern China cannot access one of our sites at WH. Again, it seems to be a problem with accessing the WH server on the China ISP side, but we have it mirrored in Beijing, so this has mitigated the problem.
In the past also we have had problems accessing email, but again this is a problem where over the last 4 years the trans-Pacific cable has broken about 5 times and therefore users in Korea, China, and Hong Kong have *greatly* diminished access to North American servers. Agai, not WH's fault.
Finally, ISC (Internet Society of China), the PSB (Public Security Bureau) and MII (Ministry of INformation Industry) are starting to block domains and IPs, so if your IP is blocked, your domain will probably be blocked as well.
Bottom line; WH is a great outfit and they have provided fantastic service over the years. Many problems with accessing them would be the same problems if you used another host outside of China. However it's always good to plan on website mirrors and backup POP and SMTP in case problems occur.