Ethical hosting for our global website

International Community
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We are in the middle of our Global website overhaul. In one of our conversations we thought that the hosting of our global website should be aligned with our values. Hosting our website is a bit different to hosting an OFN app. We can use shared hosting which is cheaper and needs less maintenance. Choosing a hosting provider, we can consider several factors:

  • environmentally friendly operations
  • supporting open source and transparency
  • offering a central location with quick access from all over the world
  • affordable prices

Here is a summary of some providers I found.

Bluehost

This one came to mind because they are cheap and specialise in Wordpress hosting. They run their own data centre in the US and are therefore independent from Google and Amazon. I didn’t find any information about green hosting though.
https://www.bluehost.com/

GreenGeeks

They claim to offset carbon emissions by 300%, are very affordable and specialise in Wordpress hosting. They have locations in the US and Europe.
https://www.greengeeks.com/

Rimu Hosting

A New Zealand company offering servers in many data centres. Their data centre in NZ is hydro-powered but NZ doesn’t have the fastest connections to the rest of the world. Pricing isn’t cheap either.
https://rimuhosting.com/

Hetzner

This German provider uses hydro and wind power for their data centres. Locations are very central as well and prices are good.
https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/?country=us

???

Do you know another provider that could be better than one of the above? Please suggest more.

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Hello Maikel!

I would just add that if the global website will store personal data from users (because they subscribe to a mailing list for example), we should avoid hosting it in the US (Patriot Act).

If not, then I think we are fine :wink:

In Europe, Infomaniak is the most well known “sustainable” hoster: https://www.infomaniak.com/en/hosting/datacenter-housing

In my previous company we worked with Ikoula: https://www.ikoula.com/en/web-environmental-hosting but we had to change because our needs were getting bigger. But I guess that for a simple Wordpress hosting there are still good.

OVH is also paying attention to it, but I think it is a less structured approach than Infomaniak : https://www.ovh.com/world/about-us/green-it.xml

All three are not specialized in Wordpress, but offer wordpress hosting.

Then there is another one that I found searching (but I never heard of them before): https://www.planethoster.com/en/Datacenter

The others that I know don’t offer their website in English, so I guess it will be hard to work with them globally.

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Great, thank you @Rachel. Privacy is very important. It’s unlikely that we will be storing user data on the website though. It’s mainly our usage pattern. Let’s condense the list a bit with hosts ticking most boxes:

  1. Infomaniak: 100% renewable energy + 200% carbon offset sounds like the greenest option here. Based in Switzerland means really good privacy as well. 5.75 € /month
  2. GreenGeeks: 300% carbon offset. Even though they host in Canada and Europe as well, they are under US law and they don’t care about other privacy laws. 2.61 Euro per month.
  3. Hetzner: 100% renewable energy. German privacy laws are good but the US has their secret services in there as well. 1.60 Euro per month.
  4. Ikoula: 100% renewable energy. French privacy. 0.99 Euro per month.

My favourite is Infomaniak but it’s the most expensive.

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Decision made, we’re going with this one. They fit in well with our desire to be ethical and green and the privacy factor is great!

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Please if you are in France, host locally: https://chatons.org/fr

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