Daniel Ayantoye writes on how what should be a simple task, renewing a website hosting subscription locally, has become a source of frustration and financial loss for Nigerian businesses. As confidence in local providers erodes due to frequent downtime, data loss, poor customer support and rising infrastructure costs, developers and organisations are increasingly turning to foreign alternatives that promise reliability, better technical support and uninterrupted access, a shift with far-reaching economic implications for business continuity, digital innovation and the growth of the digital economy
When a website developer, Chancery Giwa, renewed two sites in July this year, he expected nothing more than the routine process that keeps digital businesses online and running. What followed instead was a nightmare.
The first website went offline on August 13. The second followed on August 24. Each time Giwa reached out to the hosting company, HostNowNow, the response was the same: Please be patient.
“The sites never came back,” he recalled. “I kept sending messages, and they kept repeating the same thing. Then they logged me out of my account and refused to refund my money. August to September was very tough. These were high-profile websites. The clients were on my neck. We had built those platforms for about eight years. Watching them collapse like that was painful.”
Giwa provided screenshots of messages and payment receipts to support his claims.
According to him, the crisis meant sleepless nights migrating content to new servers, registering fresh domains with another hosting provider and covering the costs from his own pocket, as he could not demand more money from already furious clients. The damage went far beyond finances.
“I had to change thenationalpilot.ng to thenationalpilot.com.ng for a popular newspaper, while highprofile.com.ng became highprofilenews.com.ng. It affected me psychologically. I became depressed. It also affected my clients because they had to rebuild the platforms’ feasibility from scratch.”
As of December 6, Giwa told our correspondent that he had not received any refund from HostNowNow, while the original websites remained inaccessible.
A similar experience played out at Triple F Media Consult and Publishing Company, a media and IT firm.
The Managing Director, Deborah Odekola, alleged that the firm paid HostNowNow on October 1, 2025, to renew a church website, www.peculiarministry.org, and a receipt was issued.
“We gave the client one week to deliver,” she claimed. “But one week passed, and we couldn’t deliver. The client began to pressure us. Despite several promises and assurances from HostNowNow that they were working on it, the site has not been accessible till now.”
Sunday PUNCH gathered that Triple F eventually registered a new domain and hosting plan with another company.
However, because the original domain name was still locked, the team could not use it and was forced to change the suffix from .org to .com.
The company said it has since requested a refund from HostNowNow but has not received any positive response.
Checks on the three affected websites between December 15 and 16, 2025, showed that all were still down and displaying the error message: “This site can’t be reached.”
Critical backbone
Website hosting has become a critical backbone of Nigeria’s digital economy, powering news platforms, churches, online stores, small businesses and other professional services.
As more Nigerians migrate operations online, local hosting companies have positioned themselves as cheaper alternatives to foreign providers, promising convenience, local support and easier payment options.
For developers and business owners, renewing hosting subscriptions is meant to be a routine task, one that ensures continuity, data security and uninterrupted access for users.
However, beneath this growing dependence lies a largely unregulated industry with weak consumer protection and limited technical oversight.
Unlike banks or telecommunications operators, hosting companies operate with minimal scrutiny, even though their services directly affect livelihoods.
When websites go down, businesses lose visibility, credibility and revenue, and in some cases, years of digital assets.
Developers interviewed for this report pointed to a recurring set of problems: unexplained downtime, prolonged server outages, broken or unresponsive support channels, locked accounts and domains, withheld refunds and, in some cases, total data loss.
For many, these experiences have become enough reason to avoid local hosting providers altogether.
“We have lost trust in Nigerian hosting companies. I don’t trust any Nigerian hosting company again,” said Joshua Sunday, a web developer, in a telephone interview with our correspondent.
He recounted working on an online bookshop project where, despite payment, the website failed to go live during the client’s book launch.
“The client was already launching his book, and people could not access the website. It took several months before the site appeared. Their phone number wasn’t going through. Their social media pages were silent. If they had downtime, they should have informed their customers. Instead, they collected money and kept telling us to be patient.”
Another developer, Olajire Gbolu, alleged that following repeated downtimes, some of his websites were completely wiped, with customers later asking him to recreate their platforms from scratch.
He recalled an incident in which a Nigerian hosting company suffered a prolonged outage that lasted nearly two weeks, during which it stopped responding to customers’ enquiries.
“When they eventually came back online, they told customers to start rebuilding everything,” Gbolu said. “Imagine running a website for 10 years and being told that everything is gone and you have to start all over again. It was a bitter pill to swallow.”
He lamented the absence of accountability in such situations, noting that customers are often left helpless when things go wrong.
Gbolu advised anyone hosting with such companies to constantly monitor their websites and maintain external backups, warning that services can be withdrawn without notice.
“Once your site develops issues and you try to contact them, they just go mute. They behave as if there is no authority that can hold them accountable,” he added.
Clients at the receiving end
Beyond developers, clients whose businesses depend on a stable online presence have borne the brunt of hosting failures.
One such client, Isiaq Babatunde, said he lost a website he had operated for about eight years after it was abruptly taken offline without notice.
He explained that he only became aware of the problem when he attempted to publish a report.
“That was when I realised the site was down. I contacted the developer, and he told me the hosting company had wiped the entire website, including all the data I had built since July 2017,” Babatunde lamented.
Forced to start afresh, the distraught client said he had to launch a new website with a different address, a process he described as both stressful and frustrating.
Similarly, Oyedunmola Olakunle, former General Manager of National Telescope, an online news platform, said persistent service failures and eventual data loss from a platform’s hosting provider crippled the organisation, leaving it with no choice but to register a new business name and relaunch on a fresh platform.
He described the experience as distressing, noting that frequent downtime had been a recurring problem from the site’s early days.
“We could be preparing to publish a report and suddenly discover that the website was offline. When we complained, it often took a day or two before the site came back up,” Olakunle said.
He added that the situation worsened between 2024 and early 2025, when the platform went down again.
“We assumed it was the usual outage, but when we followed up, we were told that someone else had laid claim to the name. No details were given. They just said a complaint had been made, and that was the end of it,” Olakunle explained.
Eroding trust
The crisis of unstable hosting services is steadily eroding trust in Nigeria’s digital ecosystem, despite the rapid expansion of internet usage and online businesses.
Available data show that Nigeria still hosts only a small fraction of its own websites, a trend largely driven by persistent service failures, frequent downtime and weak customer support from local hosting providers.
A 2017 HUB8 survey published by IT News Nigeria revealed that only 2.3 per cent of .ng websites were hosted locally, with most businesses opting for foreign servers perceived to be more reliable.
Even government agencies reflected this lack of confidence. By 2018, the Nigeria Internet Registration Association reported that about 70 per cent of government websites were hosted outside the country, citing instability and poor service delivery by local hosting companies.
Ironically, this loss of trust comes at a significant economic cost.
A 2020 report by the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria estimated that local hosting saved the country about N15bn annually in international bandwidth spending, highlighting the economic gains Nigeria stands to make if confidence in local infrastructure improves.
Instead of increased patronage, concerns over frequent service disruptions have pushed more organisations offshore.
A 2023 Tech Graph report showed that data centre underutilisation remains a major challenge, with about 55 per cent of ministries, departments and agencies still hosting their data outside Nigeria, despite existing data localisation policies. The report directly linked this trend to unstable hosting services, which many institutions view as a risk to operations and data security.
This distrust persists even as Nigeria’s data centre capacity continues to grow.
The Nigeria Colocation Data Centre Portfolio Analysis Report 2025 indicates that installed capacity is rising steadily and could expand many-fold by 2030 as new facilities come on stream.
Similarly, a third-quarter 2025 market analysis by Data Centres Africa points to a strong pipeline of new data centres and increased investment, driven by cloud adoption, fintech growth and expanding digital services.
However, capacity growth has not translated into confidence, as utilisation remains low and businesses continue to “vote with their feet” by hosting offshore, according to IT expert Segun Adewuyi.
The situation is particularly troubling given Nigeria’s robust data localisation framework, including the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation 2019, the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, NITDA’s data protection guidelines, NCC cloud hosting rules, CBN data localisation directives and the National Cybersecurity Policy.
These regulations are designed to keep sensitive data within the country and strengthen digital sovereignty. Instead, unstable hosting services are undermining these efforts, contributing to business disruptions, capital flight and a growing loss of trust in local providers.
“Until reliability, uptime, and customer support improve, Nigeria’s hosting companies may continue to lose relevance,” Adewuyi said.
High infrastructure costs hurting hosting firms – NiRA president
Amid growing concerns, the President of the Nigeria Internet Registration Association, Adesola Akinsanya, said deeper structural challenges, particularly rising infrastructure costs, are straining the industry.
He said the cost of running data centres has risen sharply in the past two years, driven by higher electricity tariffs, soaring diesel prices and escalating operational expenses.
According to him, powering data centres has become increasingly expensive, forcing many providers to struggle to break even, with the burden often passed on to customers.
Akinsanya called on the government to reduce the cost of critical infrastructure that supports the digital economy, noting that high operating expenses inevitably affect service pricing.
He explained that while several hosting companies in Nigeria operate efficiently, reliable and quality services do not come cheap, raising the question of whether customers are able and willing to pay for dependable hosting.
The NiRA president also urged developers and businesses to exercise caution when selecting hosting providers.
He advised customers to conduct proper due diligence by asking questions, checking online reviews, and carefully reading terms and conditions before making payments.
Akinsanya noted that many disputes arise from a lack of understanding of service agreements, adding that while some complaints are genuine, technical failures such as server downtime can occur.
In such situations, he said, hosting companies have a responsibility to promptly inform clients, apologise, and clearly explain the cause of the disruption.
Worrisome public reviews
A check of public complaints posted on Trustpilot, an online review platform, revealed a mixed picture of local hosting companies.
While some reviews awarded five stars and praised the services of some hosting platforms, others exposed a troubling pattern of dissatisfaction.
One reviewer, Ndu Levi, wrote this about a particular platform: “The worst hosting provider. I almost lost all my clients because of this company. The worst of it all is that their support service never responds to tickets or messages.”
Another reviewer, Johnkennedy Nnawuihe, said that immediately he paid for a particular domain, the host went offline, describing the experience as “a scam”.
Carno Alejo, on his part, wrote: “This site is a scam. They charge you money in advance and then suspend your site. I hired the service a month ago. First of all, it worked very slowly; their servers are excessively slow. I paid for one month, about four dollars. Not even 15 days passed before they charged me for two more months. When I complained, they said it was a system issue and promised to credit me. The next day, they suspended my site, claiming I exceeded storage limits despite advertising unlimited storage. They stole my money.”
In another review posted on April 5, 2025, Joshua Okodugha wrote:
“Terrible service, poor customer support and poor technical support. Cheap hosting and domain plans that will frustrate you and even delete your entire work without backup. There should be zero or minus five stars for this kind of company.”
In its response to Okodugha’s review, the hosting company apologised but stated that he no longer had any active service with it.
It also alleged that his previous hosting account had been used for spam-related activities, which violated its Acceptable Use Policy.
It added: “It is important to clarify that we did not delete your website or files. You personally requested the cancellation of your hosting service, and it was processed accordingly.”
Similarly, Paul John, in a Trustpilot review posted on March 26, 2025, expressed frustration over two hosting companies, alleging that five-star reviews were posted by friends of the firms.
“They are pure scammers. They advertise what they don’t offer. Their IP is blacklisted. You buy a domain, and it is never registered. Customer support is slow to respond. I hardly drop reviews, but for me to write this, people should know to avoid them.”
In their responses, the two hosting companies denied the allegations, noting that the complaints “do not reflect a genuine experience” and reiterating their available support channels.
They maintained that records showed the customer had requested cancellation and that the hosted website violated anti-spam rules.
These rebuttals underscore the murky space between genuine service failures, misunderstandings and alleged misconduct.
Reactions
A review of a hosting site, Naijawebhost’s Facebook page, showed that its last post, dated July 22, 2024, announced that the company had officially merged with a South Africa-based hosting firm, HostAfrica.
Speaking to Sunday PUNCH, the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Naijawebhost, Dennis Zaman, confirmed that the company was sold about two years ago to the South African firm.
He said the decision was largely driven by persistent challenges linked to cybercriminal activities carried out on the company’s servers.
Zaman disclosed that he personally shut down more than 100 websites linked to scamming operations.
“Even though we sent emails to customers, not all of them received them, which is why some were unaware of the acquisition. We also posted notices on our social media platforms weeks before the sale,” he said.
According to him, customers were given about 60 days to back up and migrate their websites. Hosting services, he added, continued on the old servers for about three to four months before the new owners migrated operations to their own infrastructure.
Zaman acknowledged complaints about poor customer service, explaining that the company operated only two support channels, while its social media platforms were mainly used for publications and advertisements.
He said cybercrime remained the biggest challenge the company faced before it was sold, noting that the data centres used were located in Germany and frequently issued fraud alerts.
“There were days I personally took down over 100 websites being used for scamming,” he said.
“One month you are paying about N800,000 for server maintenance, the next month it jumps to N2m. It was discouraging,” he added, noting that electricity costs and unstable power supply further strained operations.
Explaining downtime incidents, Zaman said servers were sometimes shut down by data centres when there was a surge in scam-related activities.
Affected customers to be refunded – HostNowNow
Reacting to the allegations levelled against it, HostNowNow’s Senior Technical Officer, Kemi Oladeji, in a WhatsApp call with our correspondent on Thursday, attributed the complaints raised by customers to internal operational challenges that affected the company’s response time.
“Based on the two reports, we had some issues that affected our response time. Basically, our systems are automated, but because of those issues, we had to switch to manual processes. I have seen the name Giwa before, and there was communication. But the other person, because of the manual process, we have not gotten to him yet. I guess he got impatient, which is understandable, and then it escalated. But we are working to resolve it as soon as possible,” she said.
Oladeji assured that the affected customers would be refunded and issued formal letters of apology.
“We will make refunds and send them emails apologising. I know the apology may not fully remedy the situation, but we will reach out to them and explain why there was no response. If it is still possible to amend it, which I am very hopeful about, we will go ahead with the domain if they still want it,” she added.
Also speaking, a supervisory officer at HostNowNow, Mrs Bosede Obasa, acknowledged the frustration experienced by customers but maintained that the incident was not reflective of the company’s track record.
“We feel the hurt and pain of the customers, but this brand has been in existence for 10 years. This is the first time we have had this kind of issue. If we had been that bad, issues like this would have come up a long time ago,” she said.
According to her, the problem stemmed from backend challenges, stressing that customers should not be left waiting indefinitely.
“It is something we have been battling at the backend, but our customers do not have to wait indefinitely. Whatever the customers want, we are willing to hold their brief and address their concerns,” Obasa said.
Trend damning for the economy – Experts
An economist, Professor Sheriffdeen Tella, warned that the growing reliance on foreign hosting services poses serious risks to Nigeria’s economy, particularly through increased foreign exchange losses.
He explained that the more businesses depend on offshore hosting, the more foreign currency flows out of the country, worsening pressure on the already fragile forex market.
According to him, funds that should support local infrastructure and job creation instead end up benefiting foreign firms.
Tella called for intervention by the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, urging stronger regulation, enforcement and support for local digital infrastructure.
“If there is more foreign hosting, that means more foreign exchange loss. There is a clear need for government intervention,” he said.
A tech expert, Bayo Adekunle, also warned that unless infrastructure challenges are addressed, the sector will continue to struggle.
He attributed many of the problems to poor infrastructure, weak enforcement of guidelines and clients’ reluctance to pay the true cost of standard hosting services.
“There is no constant power supply here, and building the required infrastructure is expensive. Servers need uninterrupted electricity. Many clients want cheap hosting, and cheap hosting often leads to downtime and data loss,” Adekunle said.
He urged the government to provide an enabling environment, noting that the sector has significant potential to contribute to the economy if properly supported.
‘Service not delivered after payment punishable by law’
A legal practitioner, Simon Nwangwa, said service providers who collect payment and fail to deliver as agreed are liable under the law.
He explained that going silent after receiving payment, without rendering the agreed service or issuing a refund, suggests a deliberate act and a troubling pattern of conduct.
Nwangwa said that where parties agree for a service to be delivered within a specific period, failure to meet that obligation amounts to a breach of contract.
“When you have an agreement for a service within a specific period, and you fail to deliver within the stipulated time, it is a breach of contract. Once you enter into a contract, you are bound by its terms and must adhere to the agreement,” he said.
The lawyer added that affected customers are entitled to seek legal redress, noting that any individual or company found to have breached a contract can be sued and compelled by a court to account for its actions.
Govt can’t control individual hosting – NITDA spokesperson
On regulation, the Director of Corporate Communications and Media Relations at the National Information Technology Development Agency, Mrs Hadiza Umar, said the government lacks the power to compel private individuals or organisations to host their websites locally.
“The government cannot force an individual to host a website in Nigeria if they do not wish to do so. However, there are controls for government ministries, departments and agencies. It is mandatory for all MDAs to host their websites in Nigeria, and such websites must operate under the .gov.ng domain,” she said.
Umar explained that the requirement is aimed at strengthening data sovereignty, improving regulatory oversight and ensuring better protection of government digital infrastructure.
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