Large hosting providers of the Russian Federation are increasing the prices of their services.
Large hosting providers of the Russian Federation, including Timeweb, “Masterhost” and Ru-Center (from November 12, it will be called “Rucentr”), announced price increases for their services by the end of 2024. According to experts, following the market leaders, other hosting companies will also increase tariffs. The reason for the tariff increase: the increase in the cost of servers and software, the increase in the tax burden and the increase in the key rate, as well as regulatory requirements, according to which hosters must install equipment for the access of special services and RKN to filter Internet traffic.
According to the mass media, “Masterhost” has raised prices by 20% since October 4, Ru-Center has been raising prices for services for individuals since November 12, and prices for legal entities have not changed significantly. Timeweb raised prices by an average of 30% back in June, according to data on the company’s website.
Experts explained that the hosting market in Russia is highly fragmented and divided between hundreds of players. The largest share is in Reg.ru, which accounts for 33.4% of customers, in Masterhost another 8.93% of customers, in Ru-Center – 8.04% (in the same group of companies with Reg.ru), in Timeweb – 5 .16% comes from the data of the Hostings.info resource, which considers hosting providers by the number of customers.
This year, Reg.ru limited itself to a spot price increase of approximately 20% on one of the tariff lines, Serhiy Ryzhkov, the head of the company’s hosting and professional services department, explained to the mass media. “We manage and will continue to manage the massive increase due to the fact that investment in information security and infrastructure protection was a mandatory process for Reg.ru every year, and new expenses were covered by our usual budget planning of limits. However, sometimes new launches had to be postponed due to this,” Ryzhkov added.
According to Ryzhkov, the implementation of the hosting registry and the refinement of services to meet its requirements certainly cost companies money. “For a business of our size, these costs are about 100 million rubles, for small hosts – 10-20 million rubles,” he estimated. Another factor that influenced the price increase was the “almost monthly increase in equipment prices” — by 20-30% annually.
Prices for software are also increasing, Ryzhkov noted. “Suppliers once raised their prices by one and a half to two times against the background of the departure of competitors, especially in the field of information security, and now we see an average increase of 20-30% in next year’s budgeting and asking prices. Also, the necessary updating of the infrastructure to cover IT risks is being carried out, the key rate is increasing, the cost of personnel is increasing – all this affects our costs for the product. It is always impossible to cover the growth of these costs at the expense of marginality,” said Ryzhkov.
“The reasons for the price increase are related to the change in the economic situation, the increase in the cost of components, as well as the need to update software and equipment to meet modern requirements for safety and work efficiency,” the media commented on the situation in “Maisterkhosta”.
From February 1, 2024, the work of hosting providers and organizations in the field of communication, which are not included in the special register of Roskomnadzor, has been banned in Russia. Now the activity of companies not from the RKN register is considered illegal, they cannot legally provide their hosting services to current and new customers near the Russian Federation. All non-registered hosting providers must submit a notification of the start of their activity to the RKN before they start providing services in the Russian Federation.
On December 8, 2023, Hetzner announced its decision to stop serving customers from Russia. The Company will notify affected customers of the termination of all products and services on Friday, December 15, 2023, effective January 31, 2024.
Last December 12, Godaddy announced that users or contacts located in the Russian Federation would face termination of their accounts and/or related products with a certain company until December 31, 2023. This decision applies to various hosting services, including domain registration and other products.