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Hosting market in Serbia
CloudxtnyHost
Member, Host Rep
in General
Anyone have any experience of hosting companies in Serbia curious to know what the market is like. An opportunity to partner in a small company in Serbian has come up and I wanted to know if any one has any experience dealing with companies and clients out there?
thanks
Comments
Yes, Let users got scammed before a year or two from a serbian company selling hetzner servers. Stay away.
It is a good opportunity I think, I have a good experience with hosting companies in Serbia generally. The only issue you'll have is that clients there mostly will pay via bank transfer, no paypal and no credit card so if you are fine with that then go ahead - having said that the local clients are very loyal.
Other than that the language will is mostly in Serbian including support.
So, because one scammer from Serbia fooled LET users two years ago, people should avoid companies from this country? Really?
Then, we should ban all companies from US, UK, Germany, France or any other country that there was once an individual who appeared and scammed people...
Local, not too much hosting needs, most ISPs are either owned by foreign companies and backhaul (Austrian, Croatian) or have their own path from the major (post-Yugoslav/Socialist) fiber owner (via Hungary mostly) so quality is mostly EU blend and OVH/Hetzner work well.
Most ISPs are present on VIX (Vienna) and DECIX (Fra), larger ones as usual all across Europe - BIX (Budapest) has by % a pretty high Serbian amount as well.
Yes, some host local and pricing in general (compared to like Croatia and Albania) is better for BW/power but the fiber path goes up to Italy/Austria and on to Germany, so yea Hetzner mostly.
Power and BW is stable, quality is ok, the large carriers are either backhauled or have semi-pops, Gov stability/trust... well, no comment, but they are not easy to startle at least, somewhere between Belarus and Ukraine on the "will they reply to foreign inquiries" list and that jazz.
International, mostly for cybercrime but that moves to Bosnia in the last years (there is this notorious cable ISP there...), not too much legitimate need for a Serbian server and many customers/idiots will assume Serbian = BP/warez/etc ok.
We have servers in Serbia and were providing VPS. The whole IP block got blacklisted in SpamHaus because people think "everything" is allowed in Serbia. We tried our best to mitigate and monitor what kind of websites/content was being served via our VPS but ultimately it was too much to tackle.
So better stay out. Serbia location will attack malicious people.
We are having the same problem too, many customers think that's Albania is offshore and allow everything unfortunately, however we are not in any blacklist since we take care fast to stop customers with illegal activities and dealing with anyone to stop any cybercrime.
Kddyp*rn not allowed?
Well, some people think that Albania, Serbia or even Greece (when I am from and live) are "exotic" countries were anyone can do anything they want. Especially for countries like yours or Serbia, they think that there are no laws there, no international rules nor global agreements. Yes, DMCA cannot have law impacts in our area, because it is an US law and all of us have our own law system. But there are similar rules for most of things, not allowing a provider to allow everything in his network.
Spamhaus policy is extremely strict and they are willing to be the "internet police" and grabbing by their will much more power than they should allowed to. Banning an entire ip block because of 2-3 ips doing illegal activities, is just a poor behavior. It's like arresting all the people living in a block of flats because in 2 or 3 apartments are living mobs, accusing the super that did not took action.
But if this is a poor behavior, so is your "advice": stop doing business because some people saying Serbia is tolerating more than other countries illegal internet behavior.
I am not saying anything bad about the country. But our whole /22 is in SpamHaus because it was getting blacklisted very frequently.
@AlbaHost, even we regulating everything to a point where it became too much of a headache. We have people using our Serbia VPS but they are just handful now. Also getting the IPs removed from SpamHaus is not a problem but still it lowers the reputation of a host (my personal thought).
@webcraft,
Definitely ! We do not allow those stuff.
Well, granted, there are not very much laws in Serbia or Albania and their enforcement varies very much... parts near Kosovo are essentially dead space, neither country governs much there.
Albania supplies so much weed to the EU one has to wonder what that gov does all day, then realise it is fairly poor as well and can't govern much of it's area.
Greece has pretty far control (mhm, yea your islands have some specialities like lots of guns, but still, the general authority of Athens is not too much in doubt) compared to this.
This question has lead to some. Great insight. Thanks guys. Looking to hear more.
Only Creta and only in certain areas there, but still, they are much more under control as time goes by. Aegean and Ionian islands have absolutely no relationship with guns.
As of laws, there are strict rules here as of national law system and, of course, the european law system, so, yes, it is more strict than Albania or Serbia.
But there are laws there, too. In Albania, year to year, authorities are in more control of the crime and illegal activities. Still, much has to be done in NE Albania for the weed...
Serbia has laws and the authorities enforce them. As of Kosovo, you are right. It is a semi-autonomous "grey" area, typically belonging to Serbia but in reality, more close to Albania and not controlled by either government.
P.S. In Greece, there is a fully organized dpt. in the Police, called "Cyber Crime Unit" with a lot of specialized employees and in the lead of technology. They are hunting the "big fishes" mostly (economic crime, pedophilia, blackmailing, bullying, major copyright crimes like pay tv video sharing etc.). Minor violations like downloading a torrent, are not in their target...