Nigerian website hosting provider GigaLayer was founded in 2007, after which they grew quickly and gained more than 500 customers within their first two years of operation. Their servers are located in the U.S.A., but their prices are advertised in American Dollars, British Pounds, Nigerian Naira, South African Rand, Ugandan Shilling, and Kenyan Shilling, which suggests a big African customer base. Their website is in English.
Features and Ease of Use
GigaLayers offers a good selection of website hosting services, including shared hosting, virtual private servers, SSL certificates, and domain registration. To give you an idea, their shared hosting plans come with the following features:
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Manual backups at any time
- Domain registration available at additional cost
- From zero to ten add-on domains, depending on the package
- SSL certificates available at additional cost
- From 2 GB to 20 GB disk space
Whilst they do not own their data center, they do own their servers which are colocated in an American data center. As always, this comes with the caveat of potentially slower website loads speeds and slower responses to technical issues. That said, they do state they have 24/7 on-site technicians as well as automatic notifications in the event of any issues.
GigaLayer offers feature-packed plans that include Softacolous one-click installer (for an unspecified number of programs) as well as support for advanced scripting languages like Python and Ruby on Rails. They support PHP, but at the slower version 5 rather than the faster version 7. They also provide a backup facility, but it has to be configured manually.
Finally, GigaLayer boasts about an SLA-backed 99.9% server uptime on all its hosting plans and VPS. They use the latest version of cPanel which they’ve customized to allow users to easily manage their FTP, subdomains, traffic statistics, website files, and backups.
Pricing and Support
Although GigaLayer is not the cheapest provider on the planet, their prices are reasonable, and almost certainly attractive to Nigerian customers looking for American servers. Note that both SSL certificates and domain registration cost extra.
Their plans are available on one, two and three-year terms, but there are no discounts for paying for longer-term plans upfront. It’s also a pity they don’t offer a month-to-month plan, but they do give a 30-day money-back guarantee.
GigLayer’s customer service has left a strong impression on me. They provide 24/7 support through telephone, tickets, and email, and they also offer a convenient login feature for existing customers on their website. If you prefer self-support, their extensive knowledge base is a valuable resource to tap into.
