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Web Hosting Malaysia Under RM200 A Year (A Guide for Beginners)
Web hosting talks. My favorite topic of all time. As an online marketer and serial entrepreneur myself, I had my first real insights on the importance of web hosting in 2014. I was using a cheap web hosting Malaysia and I was having an awesome time in Perth, Australia (7 days trip). Little did I know that my websites were hacked and even after the restoration, there aren’t much things left for me to do, except to start over. From then on, it was game on for getting the best web hosting solution in Malaysia with the cheapest and most affordable pricing.

As a disclaimer, I am the founder of ServerStack.io, Malaysia first web hosting company that focuses entirely on our clients (server performance, pricing etc.) instead of purely profitability. I launched this company because that was exactly what I was looking for myself!

In this article, I will be going through some of the best web hosting Malaysia under RM200 a year.

Running A Business Post Covid-19

Business After Covid-19

I’m not going to lie to you. Running a business post Covid-19 in Malaysia is challenging. Business owners are cutting cost everywhere and they want the best results and fast, minus the large fees.

I totally get it.

However, it doesn’t mean that you should be getting a web hosting that costs under RM100 a year a.k.a cheap web hosting.

I manage a web hosting company mainly for B2B clients (some B2C clients) and trust me, the maintenance for web hosting is high. For starters, you have monitoring tools that you need to pay, staffs salary and above everything, hardware maintenance.

Web hosting companies can offer dirt cheap web hosting price simply because:
- Overselling the hosting servers
- Perform little to no upgrades to their hosting infrastructures
- Super bad in customer support (I know, right?)
Reginald Chan

Find a web hosting company that offers excellent hosting solutions with decent pricing. In Malaysia, you can find a decent web hosting solution anywhere between RM200 to RM500 per year, depending on your website needs.

Top Web Hosting Malaysia Under RM200

I know you can’t wait for this. So, let’s dive in, shall we?

Exabytes Malaysia

Exabytes is one of the longest and oldest web hosting solution in Malaysia. They offer a wide range of hosting plans and if you are looking to have a cheap hosting under RM200 per year, you can sign up for their 5 years plan hosting plan for massive discount.

ServerFreak

When I first started blogging in 2004, ServerFreak was the first web hosting company I worked with. They are awesome people and their customer support is one of the best in Malaysia. You can get web hosting under RM100 with them for a single website without any super long commitments.

ServerStack.io

ServerStack.io is the newest web hosting company in Malaysia. The company consists of 7 team members who provides affordable web hosting services in Malaysia to website owners, WordPress developers and web design agencies. Their VPS hosting plans are the cheapest in Malaysia too.

How To Choose The Best Web Hosting Malaysia Under RM200?

Web Hosting Malaysia Under RM200

Web hosting in Malaysia is competitive and there’s no denial. But, there are some tricks when it comes to choosing the best web hosting in Malaysia under RM200.

Here are some nifty tricks you can use right now (yes, go try them out):
- Ask questions about web hosting and what to expect
- Ask for free migration services
- Ask for free domain name
- Ask for special discounts (especially NGO’s and charity bodies)
- Ask for web hosting SLA (service level agreement)
- Check the duration of refund (some offers 30 days money back guarantee)
- Check how easy it is to scale up (or down) on a specific host
Is web hosting under RM200 worth it?

Well, it depends. There are companies that offers very good web hosting plans under RM200 and some who will charge you for everything to cover back the cost. Well, that’s business to be honest.

So, be careful for what you wished for. A good web hosting solution can varies by far, depending on what you need. Again, I’m bias but ServerStack.io offers one powerful hosting solutions in Malaysia with a fraction of the cost and with 30 days money back guarantee.

And if you need any discount, just ping me up and I’ll be sure to get the team to look at it!
August 3, 2020
GridPane Lifetime Deal: The Deal Breaker In WordPress Hosting Control Panel
I wrote about Gridpane early this year (here’s the article on Gridpane) and I even did a Gridpane comparison on another blog. For the record, I’m a hardcore Gridpane fan which I can be rather proud of to be honest. Last month, I received an email from the Gridpane team on the final Gridpane lifetime deal (Gridpane LTD) and there were only 7 slots left. Now, I was “WOW” and before I knew it, I took our my credit card to pay for the lifetime deal.

Here’s the thing.

There were only 7 slots left and it is based on first come first served basis. Trust me, that was the longest 72 hours of my life as I did not hear any response from the Gridpane team on the LTD except for “we had received your message and we will send an invoice to you soon.”

Reginald Chan

Gridpane is the world’s first WordPress control panel. No, it is not a managed WordPress hosting solution per se. Instead, it is a tool that makes your website loads faster on VPS by allowing you to automatically optimize the server with the best settings, without knowing any server knowledge. More importantly, Gridpane isn’t built for anyone but selected few who know exactly what they are doing and what they need from a VPS solution.

Gridpane Lifetime Deal

Prior to getting Gridpane lifetime deal, I kept asking myself if this is something worth it. I mean, the final Gridpane LTD costs a whopping USD$2,500 and that’s approximately RM10,500 in Malaysia (that’s my conversion rate of 4.2).

Is Gridpane LTD that worth the money?

What’s included in the Gridpane LTD?
- A lifetime deal under the Developer plan ($100 per month without the LTD)
- Unlimited servers
- Advanced security and firewall settings
- Creation of teams or subaccounts (up to 10 slots without charge)
- World class hosting infrastructure
Gridpane LTD: Is Gridpane really worth the money?

The funny thing is that I even get this question on Facebook from some of my peers too. Now, let’s do some quick calculation.

Initial investment: $2,500

Potential charges for hosting (assuming mid-tier hosting plan): $30 per month

Potential charges for addon hosting services: $10 per month

That’s around $40 per client and with around 5 clients a month, I get around $200. A clean profit would be around $150 with the assumption of no manpower cost and $50 goes to a VPS service like Vultr high frequency.

In order to breakeven with the initial investment, I need 16.6 months (rounded to 17 months) before I can make a profit for a lifetime.

Gridpane LTD is best for some (not everyone)

Why I publish this article? Well, for starters, I want to make it straight up clear with everyone who have doubt.
- Gridpane is not a WordPress hosting
- Gridpane LTD is all about the long game
- Gridpane is best for those who cares about website traffic, performance and security
- Gridpane is an excellent tool for website developers and agencies who have clients using WordPress CMS
How to get Gridpane LTD? When will Gridpane LTD comes back?

I’m pretty confident that Gridpane LTD won’t come back anytime soon (their CEO made it a point to emphasize this).

But what if you really need Gridpane LTD? I can’t promise you much, but my WordPress agency do collaborate with several website developers around the world with Gridpane. If this is something you are keen to explore, feel free to reach out to me or my team using the form below.

Contact Form Demo (#2)
First Name
Last Name
Email
Are you interested with Gridpane LTD?
Yes
No
Subject
Your Message
August 3, 2020
Easy How To Make Your Google Analytics CCPA Compliant

I’m not going to lie to you. CCPA compliant can be a tough topic to discuss. Added with WordPress plugins, that’s a pretty tough nut to crack. Nonetheless, today we are going to discuss on how to make your Google Analytics CCPA compliant.

Simple, right?

What is Google Analytics?

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Google Analytics is the most popular analytical tool that’s used by millions of websites. It helps you track your site’s performance and understand your user’s behavior. Now, Google Analytics is powerful because it collects personal data about your visitors and if this is not handled properly, you can get into real trouble.

What is CCPA?

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CCPA is also known as California Consumer Privacy Act. The California Consumer Privacy Act is a state statute intended to enhance privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California, United States. CCPA is also a state-wide privacy law that regulates how businesses can handle the personal information of California residents.

The aim of CCPA is to enhance privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California. It calls for more transparency by organizations about what personal information they collect, how they use it, and whom they share it with.

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Due to the dynamic nature of websites, no single plugin can offer 100% legal compliance. Please consult a specialist internet law attorney to determine if you are in compliance with all applicable laws for your jurisdictions and your use cases. Nothing on this website should be considered legal advice.

Legal Disclaimer

How to easily make Google Analytics and making it compliance?

There are several quick steps you need to take. In this example, we will be using Google Analytics and OptinMonster (the best lead generation software for both WordPress and no WordPress sites).

Step 1: Install OptinMonster and it’s EU compliance addon

As OptinMonster is a paid plugin, click here to get the best OptinMonster deal if you have not gotten yourself an license. Next, download and install it’s EU Compliance Addon to automate different processes to meet CCPA. For instance, you can easily anonymize or disable personal data tracking in Google Analytics with a click of a button.

Step 2: Enable EU compliance tracking options

The second step is to change the settings and disable different tracking features in Google Analytics to comply with CCPA. This can be done here: Insights » Settings » Engagement.

As this is an EU compliance addon for OptinMonster, it is important to enable and disable relevant information to ensure that you are complying to the law/as required by the law.

EU-Compliance-Settings-Panel-Optinmonster

Step 3: Create an out-out consent box

After setting up MonsterInsights and its EU Compliance addon, the next thing you’ll need to do is create an opt-out consent box. That’s because one of the rights in CCPA is that user’s can opt-out from websites sharing their data with third parties.

And a simple way of creating an opt-out consent box is by using free WordPress plugins like CookieBot or Cookie Notice. Both these plugins offer a built-in option to set up an opt-out consent box and they easily integrate with MonsterInsights as well.

For instance, CookieBot scans your site and creates a cookie declaration link that you can place on your website. Not only that, it also creates a Do Not Sell My Personal Information document that you can link to make sure you comply with CCPA requirements.

Recap

CCPA is now enforceable by law from July 1, 2020, and applies to any business that provides web services to the residents of California. You are required to follow the law even when you are running an online business.

I hope you find this article useful and if you need any help, drop me a message!

August 3, 2020
Proven Ways to Market your eCommerce Business

Marketing is an essential growth aspect of eCommerce businesses. Since you operate virtually, your clients will only know of your progress through your marketing efforts. New clients will also learn about your business through the marketing techniques you adopt.

Therefore, you should choose the right channels to market your online business strategically while still saving substantial advertising costs. If you just started an online store, read on to know the best marketing tips you can adopt. You can initiate these strategies on your own, or seek the help of eCommerce marketing experts if necessary.

Use Social Media

Social media has made marketing easy. It connects businesses to a global audience and gives small firms the ability to compete with established firms. Some social media platforms also allow customers to interact with entrepreneurs through live features. The best social media platforms for your eCommerce business could include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Each platform operates differently and exposes you to a different audience. Understand how each platform works, create business accounts, and market your business. Follow the right people and actively interact with them.

Invest in Strategic Relationships

Find the leading players in the industry and connect to them. These could be influencers, established entrepreneurs, or people who have already made it in the industry. Like their posts, follow them, and even retweet their posts. Besides influencers, you might also form a business relationship with reputable marketing sites and agencies. The leading sites use the performance-based advertising model to help you get the best of your eCommerce marketing. You only pay for the results you get, thus allowing you to get the best from the marketing. Find out the best people or sites you can trust, follow them, and find out they can help your business grow.

Start Your Blog

Blogging is an exciting way of interacting with your clients. When you start the blog, you will increase your business visibility and gain a competitive advantage. You will only need to start the right type of blog, choose the content wisely, and write informative articles. You may write the articles yourself, or hire experienced freelancers to help in the blogging. For excellent marketing results on your blog, use the content which provokes your readers to reply. Also, use internal links to direct people to your site. The right content will keep your readers informed and will also help in marketing your eCommerce business.

Invest in a Website

Your online business should have a good looking website. The website should contain all the business information products and services offered. Your website should also include the strategies you use to satisfy your clients. You can create the website on your own, although a web designer would do it better. The designer should add the right features that make the site attractive but also informative as well. If the site is well developed and designed, it will look trustworthy and attract more clients. Don’t forget to include the CTA section to help your clients contact you with ease. The CTA should be short and informative.

Encourage Reviews

Many customers consider the site reviews before they make a buying decision. This means that a business with many reviews gets more traffic compared to those without reviews. A site with reviews also shows that the company is trustworthy, and the products are credible. However, many customers may not leave the reviews, unless you encourage them. When you transact, encourage them to leave their remarks regarding the product and services. Appreciate the positive reviews and reply to the negative reviews well. Also, do not hide negative reviews. Let them stay on your site, provided that you have given the right replies. Learn from the reviews, too, and make the necessary changes.

Improve Your SEO Strategy

SEO improves the visibility of your online store if you use the right keywords. You should find out the standard terms your clients use when searching for products online and add them to your content. For instance, if you sell shoes online, your content should mention your shoe business, location, etc. You might not readily guess the right keywords, and that’s why experts advise entrepreneurs to use the keyword finder apps. When you use the right keywords, you will enhance your visibility, increase your traffic, and boost your eCommerce store’s profitability.

Optimize For Mobile

You should improve the responsiveness of your website if you wish to attract many people. Today, the number of people with smartphones and other mobile devices surpasses those with computers and desktops.

Consumers, therefore, get online by using the handiest tool- which is their mobile phone. Therefore, your site should be easy to access via the mobile phone to win more people. Optimize the right features too to simplify the user experience.

Consider Pay Per Click Advertising

Probably, you are wondering why you need PPC marketing when you have great keywords. The PPC ads support your SEO and make your business more visible. The best way to gain from PPC marketing is by using Google AdWord or the other tools which display the ads. You will not pay anything if people do not click on your ad. If you choose the right keywords, more people will click on your ads, and you will increase the exposure of your online store.

Email Marketing

You may also advertise your online business through email. To start, you will only need to collect your loyal customers; you can also ask your new customers to leave the emails. Create a solid list of the emails, and send them regular updates regarding your business. For motivation, you may include coupons, discounts, and other lucrative deals to the customers who leave you emails. Alternatively, you may ask them to subscribe to your email. In this way, you will keep them attached to your business, and you increase the success of your business.

The eCommerce world changes daily. The techniques which work for you may not be valid tomorrow. To stay relevant, you should adopt the changing technology and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly. Work closely with digital marketing experts and follow the above tips to enhance your online business’s success.

August 2, 2020
How To Get Free Email Hosting With Your Own Domain In Malaysia?
You probably aware that having your own domain is an important step in branding especially in Malaysia. But how about using a branded email address for your business? Using a branded email address is important because it creates a form of trust. Instead of sounding cheapskate, scam or simply ineffective with a Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo email account, a branded email address offers more advantages than disadvantages.

The question that I would love to highlight today is how to get free email hosting with your own domain in Malaysia?

Carry on reading to learn more.

What is email hosting?

Business Email Hosting in Malaysia

Before we even start with email hosting and how to get email hosting free in Malaysia, let’s talk about email hosting.

What is email hosting?

Email hosting is a service in which a hosting provider rents out email servers to its users. While there are free versions available with many hosting companies, many businesses take advantage of the flexibility and power of professional email services.

Here’s the problem.

Don’t go cheap on email hosting and please, don’t go for free email hosting in Malaysia (or any parts of the world).

Ever heard before “good things not cheap and cheap things not good?”

I bet you do, especially you are a Malaysian!

Professional email hosting in Malaysia is all about ensuring emails land in your receipients’ inboxes, getting high delivery rates and avoiding the spam folders.

Trust me. You ain’t getting good results if you are using Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo and that’s for sure!

How to get free email hosting with your own domain in Malaysia?

How To Get Free Business Email Hosting In Malaysia

Now, let’s get down to the juicy part of this story today. There are two parts to this — so pay close attention to get this right the first time.

There are two simple ways to get free email hosting in Malaysia:
- Through an existing domain hosting
- Using a professional email hosting solution
Option 1: How to get free email hosting with an existing domain?

Let’s say that you have a website registered under your business and you are currently hosting in Exabytes Malaysia (it’s the best hosting company in Malaysia and you can check out their latest deals right here). You should be able to see the option to create email addresses and accounts on your cPanel.

Here’s how it looks like:

Email Hosting Creation In cPanel Hosting

SImply click on the Email Accounts and you can create one or more email accounts in just a few seconds.

Create Email Accounts

Take note on the numbers above (from 1 to 4) as they are indicators for easier navigation.

REGINALD CHAN

If you have a web hosting account, you should be able to create one or more email addresses based on your domain name. This is how you can get free email hosting with your own domain name in Malaysia without spending any extra money. If you are not sure, I recommend you to reach out to your web hosting company to get some clarifications.

Option 2: Use a professional email hosting solution in Malaysia

Now, what to do if you don’t have a business website (yet) and looking for professional email hosting solution instead?

Here, I want you to understand that I don’t recommend you to get Microsoft365 or GSuite if you have limited knowledge. Setting them up can be tricky and more importantly, these are international businesses. In other words, you won’t be able get instant help and support in case you hit a deadlock in email hosting.

The quickest and most reliable solution is this: Using a professional email hosting solution in Malaysia.

Of course, this leads to another question.

Which is the best business email hosting solution in Malaysia?

My honest answer would be Exabytes Malaysia (here’s the link to know more about email hosting).

Business Email Hosting Malaysia

Now, how to get a business email hosting with Exabytes? Well, it’s fairly simple to be honest. Here’s how it is done the right way (and under 5 minutes).

Step 1: Head over to Exabytes (click here) and click on Email Hosting. Adjust the slider to determine the number of email addresses (users).

Email Hosting Creation Using Exabytes

For sample, I selected 10 email users and the price will be updated on the right side. It costs RM32.39 for 10 users if you host your emails on Exabytes (that’s RM3.24 per month and per user which is very affordable).

Step 2: Here, you need to determine if if you have a valid domain to point your emails to. In other words, I need to have the domain reginaldchan.net in order for me to create an email support@reginaldchan.net.

Selecting email hosting domain

Step 3: In this step, you need to configure the email hosting plan a.k.a. selecting the duration of the service. If you are going for business email hosting Malaysia, you won’t be changing domain name or business name anytime soon (it’s fixed). So, getting the longest term would be the best value for you since you will be getting tons of discounts.

Configuring email hosting plan

By now, you should have everything pretty much set up right.

Did you notice the domain pricing in the order summary? You need to purchase the domain if you have yet to. That’s the only way to send a branded email through a business domain.

At this point in writing, Exabytes is offering anywhere between RM 20 to RM80 per year for domain name registration. It’s pretty cheap and way cheaper than GoDaddy to be honest.

Summary: How to create free business email hosting with my domain?

I certainly hope that this article gives you some light in how you can create free business email hosting with your own domain name.

Need help? Hit me up in the comments or contact me for more assistance!
August 2, 2020
Top 13 WordPress Blogging Tools You Should Be Using In 2020

I have been blogging since 2004 and I want to be really honest. Blogging tool changes by the years and I can’t help myself but to find for the best blogging tools for my websites (and my clients’).

Here’s the thing. It is not that simple because it depends highly on what you need and expecting from a tool.

Nonetheless, here’s a quick recap of my favorite blogging tools in 2020.

Table of Contents1 WordPress CMS1.1 WordPress Page Builders1.1.1 Elementor Pro1.1.2 Astra Theme1.1.3 Thrive Architect1.2 Essential WordPress Plugins1.2.1 SEOPress1.2.2 Async JavaScript1.2.3 Autoptimize1.2.4 Fluent Forms1.2.5 Flying Pages by WP Speed Matters1.2.6 Flying Scripts by WP Speed Matters1.2.7 WP Rocket1.2.8 WPForms1.2.9 MonsterInsights2 Summary: The Best Blogging Tools 2020

WordPress CMS

WordPress CMS

Make no mistake — WordPress is the most important tool for bloggers and for my business. I use WordPress every day (close to 355 days in a year) so, yes! WordPress all the way. Sorry Wix!

WordPress Page Builders

Best WordPress Page Builders Plugins

As a freelance website developer and marketing agency, it is important for me and my team to build beautiful WordPress pages quickly. Thanks for WordPress page builders, our work is cut down dramatically (like over 50%)!

Here’s a list of our favorite WordPress page builders in 2020:

Elementor Pro

Elementor is easy to use and powerful in many ways. This WordPress page builder is the most downloaded page builders in the WordPress market and by far, one of the most intuitive tool too! I can’t recommend Elementor Pro enough (so to say).

Astra Theme

As a website developer, I find Astra theme very clean and beautifully crafted. It has a powerful inbuilt page builder, so you don’t have to get additional page builder plugin. A huge upside using Astra is that it comes with lifetime deal and you don’t have to stay on for a monthly commitment.

Thrive Architect

Last but not least, Thrive Architect is our favorite tool when it comes to building engaging blog posts. It is by far an interesting WordPress plugin that doesn’t fail me. If you are thinking of creating high converting blog posts and pages, you can’t go wrong with Thrive Architect.

Essential WordPress Plugins

Best WordPress Plugins for Beginners

Plugins make our lives easier and here’s a list of my favorite WordPress plugins that you should be using. And no, you won’t go wrong with them!

SEOPress

SEOPress is a powerful WordPress SEO plugin to optimize your SEO, boost your traffic, improve social sharing, build custom HTML and XML Sitemaps, create optimized breadcrumbs, add schemas / Google Structured data types, manage redirections 301 and so much more.

Async JavaScript

Async JavaScript gives you full control of which scripts to add an ‘async’ or ‘defer’ attribute to or to exclude to help increase the performance of your WordPress website. Wethather it is to eliminate render-blocking JS or defer specific JS file, this is an important plugin for speed optimization.

Autoptimize

Autoptimize makes optimizing your site really easy. It can aggregate, minify and cache scripts and styles, injects CSS in the page head by default but can also inline critical CSS and defer the aggregated full CSS, moves and defers scripts to the footer and minifies HTML.

Fluent Forms

WP Fluent Forms is the ultimate user-friendly, customizable drag-and-drop WordPress Contact Form Plugin that offers you all the premium features, plus many more completely unique additional features.

Flying Pages by WP Speed Matters

lying Pages injects a tiny JavaScript code (1KB gzipped), waits until the browser becomes idle. Then it detects pages in the viewport and on mouse hover and preloads them.

Flying Pages is intelligent to make sure preloading doesn’t crash your server or make it slow.

Flying Scripts by WP Speed Matters

Flying Scripts delay the execution of JavaScript until there is no user activity. You can specify keywords to include JavaScripts to be delayed. There is also a timeout which executes JavaScript when there is no user activity.

WP Rocket

Recognized as the most powerful caching plugin by WordPress experts, WP Rocket is an important speed optimization plugin that works out of the box, without requiring custom settings to make it work. Best for beginners!

WPForms

One of the best WordPress contact form plugin, WPForms is an intuitive drag & drop online form builder that helps you create beautiful contact forms with just a few clicks.

MonsterInsights

The best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. See how visitors find and use your website, so you can keep them coming back. This is by far the most accurate Google Analytics WordPress plugin the market that is free to use.

Summary: The Best Blogging Tools 2020

I want to recap that there are many blogging tools that you could use in 2020. While there is no a perfect blogging tool stack, the above blogging tools are best suited for beginners and small non-WooCommerce websites.

Have something to add? Leave a comment below!

August 1, 2020