Reviews On Alibaba Cloud: Experts Verdict, Plans, Prices, Ease of Use and Support

Alibaba Cloud, previously known as Aliyun, is a Chinese web hosting supplier that specializes in cloud computing and it has been in the business since 2009. They exist as a branch of Alibaba Group and are headquartered in Singapore, and have data facilities in over 20 areas and more than 60 availability zones around the world. At current, they declare to have extra data centers and CDN nodes in Asia-Pacific area than another cloud service supplier. Likewise, they take nice pride in having over three million prospects at this time and in more than 300 nations and areas, because of their numerous cross-industry options. As well as, they consider themselves to be the number one in China, Asia-Pacific and the third greatest cloud hosting provider in the world.

Their main website is in English by default, but it’s available in multiple languages as well, among them, as anticipated, Mandarin and some other Chinese dialects, adopted by German, French, Central Thai, Indonesian and Vietnamese. Though the site could appear a bit overwhelming at first, we had no hassle navigating around and finding all the related information. Places of all their data facilities, inside and outside the mainland China, are marked on the map, in addition to the areas of all of their world offices.

In 2019 Alibaba Cloud started a global initiative named “Tech for Change” which requires potential partners, both individuals and organizations, to work together using technology for the betterment of the world in the area of education, socio-economic and environmental growth and sustainability.

A few articles are highlighted at the bottom of Alibaba Cloud’s webpage and from there you will be able to entry their weblog. There, you’ll be literally bombarded with articles, top-ten lists for posts, bloggers for the last week and the last month and the most popular bloggers basically. Articles are mechanically sorted by date, but you have the choice to vary the order by selecting certainly one of given classes, a few of which include Tutorials, Safety, Trends, Huge Data and A.I. The weblog seems to be up to date with nice enthusiasm judged by the variety of articles which have been published just within the last couple of days.

Plans and pricing

Alibaba Cloud offers a wide and diverse range of enterprise-level cloud-related services such as elastic computing, relational databases, big-data processing, storage hosting, content supply networks, anti-DDoS protection, domain solutions and more.

All cloud services are available on a pay-as-you-go basis and pricing system is transparent and rather easy, which is refreshing to see.

As for paying method, they accept credit/debit cards, PayPal, Paytm (completely for the Indian prospects) and Alipay (for the Chinese customers), which you’re probably familiar with if you’ve been ordering stuff from China over the past few years.

Thankfully, Alibaba Cloud provides its buyer with a free trial on a plan value as much as $1300, however only for these which were registered for less than a year, which appears cheap enough. As well as, you’ll be capable to select from greater than 20 products which are permanently free-of-charge.

Ease of use

If you have any doubts about how to create your Alibaba Cloud account, there’s a thorough how-to video proper next to the hosting plan presentation. To start the process although, you’ll have to enter a number of private information but most of the questions are fairly standard. Your password has to comprise 7 to 20 characters and for the correct energy the mixture of letters, numbers and symbols is suggested. You may choose if you want to obtain the verification code by email or mobile phone, and it should be there in a few seconds.

After this, you’ll have to decide on the kind of account, and if you’re a person and never an organization, you’ll be getting a free trial of considerable value together with a 12-month trial of versatile compute service with one core 1GB memory and over 40 different associated products. Further identity verification is required to be done via mobile phone.

The interface of Alibaba Cloud console seems quite intimidating at first, since it’s designed to supply skilled users with an quick access to all of Alibaba Cloud’s numerous services. After clicking on a webhosting icon below the “Domains & Web sites” part, you may select to buy a internet hosting plan and everything will start to clear up for you. There is no such thing as a one-click installer, so if you’d like WordPress or Joomla, you’ll in all probability have to seek the advice of a how-to assist page, because trial-and-error methods may take a while.

Alibaba Cloud uses a non-standard cPanel which doesn’t present a user-friendly method for the much less tech-savvy users. Additionally, there is no website builder nor anything analogous to cPanel’s file supervisor and putting in extra purposes would require you to add files through FTP, enter the required information to allow a fast join and increase files to a folder of your alternative upon the affirmation. If all of it sounds unnecessarily complicated and a bit intimidating, it is because it truly is, however on the intense aspect, each step of the method has a fitting guide to supply a serving to hand.

Speed and experience

When it comes to speed, the GTmetrix test we ran on Alibaba Cloud’s main web site didn’t precisely present the results we were hoping for. While a median result’s usually around 8.four seconds, it took 10.2 seconds to fully load the page, and 130 requests in comparison to the average of 89. Nevertheless, the overall page dimension is 2.39MB, which is well under average and deserving of moderate reward.

On the other hand, an uptime test running on their main page for a whole month showed nothing however a satisfactory performance. Although it sounds unlikely, the check showed no downtime in any respect and merely one vital spike in response nearing the tip, which suggests 100% uptime. Admittedly, one month doesn’t equal a full year, however since Alibaba Cloud affords a free trial, you may at all times change your mind without any consequences.

Support

When support is concerned, Alibaba Cloud offers various types of self-service as well as help through live chat, ticket system and toll-free telephone.

In addition to the recently created yet first-rate knowledgebase, they supply a doc middle, a weblog, a useful FAQ part, discussion board and fairly detailed step-by-step tutorials, all with photos. These tutorials are divided into teams by different sections, such as “For New Users”, “Website Deployment”, “App Development” and more, which demonstrates a very user-friendly approach.

In addition, they’ve recently created a so-called “Video Center” with a variety of self-promotional movies. Extra importantly, it also features numerous video tutorials and demos covering the most related topics.

Alibaba Cloud has also launched an e-magazine, a free-of-charge bi-monthly publication which goals to current the latest news, stories, and technologies and, to quote, “give insight into how technology is altering the world and shaping the longer term as exemplified by our endeavors.” Whether their efforts yield outcomes or not, it’s a commendable goal, by all means.

The Alibaba Cloud’s support forum seems to be lively and we couldn’t find a single question left without at least one reply, supplied either by users or the company’s employees.

The competition

Both Alibaba Cloud and Gandi are good choices for barely extra experienced users. Each offer free trials (though Gandi’s doesn’t require credit score/debit card information), clear and flexible pricing and budget-friendly plans for freshmen. Nevertheless, that is where the similarities finish. Considering that Gandi affords fundamental shared, email and WordPress hosting along with cloud hosting, Gandi may be a better choice if that is what you want.

Hostgator is one of the hottest hosting choices in the world and Alibaba Cloud’s fame is rising slowly however steadily. If we exclude geography and a number of hosting choices, the key distinction is that Hostgator affords a web site builder, standardized cPanel as well as newbie-friendly approach, which could be a defining issue for many.

In contrast with Alibaba Cloud, Bluehost affords a considerably wider vary of hosting choices and every little thing a newbie wants without the necessity to really feel intimidated. However, if one is particularly on the lookout for a cloud internet hosting solution and is a relatively skilled consumer, Alibaba Cloud will match the invoice.

Baget and Alibaba Cloud offer equally competitive costs, a lot of features and competent 24/7 buyer assist. Nevertheless, whereas Alibaba Cloud affords everything in English (and some extra languages), Beget is much less geared towards the international market and extra in direction of the shoppers from Russia.

Final verdict

Although Alibaba Cloud provides a myriad of enterprise-level cloud-based products and applied sciences and affords a variety of quality companies to most businesses, their website hosting plans are somewhat limited, and extra so in comparison with a number of opponents. The companies they do provide are first-rate and costs are budget-friendly, but Alibaba Cloud is currently hardly a match to world’s prime providers such as Hostgator or Bluehost.