We get asked a lot of the same question before people sign up: “why should I use AppyHost instead of [insert household name]?” It’s a fair question. Domains.co.za, Axxess, HOSTAFRICA, telaHosting and Afrihost are all bigger than we are, and some of them have been around since before AppyHost existed in its current form.

So instead of writing another “why we’re the best” page, we pulled the actual, current pricing and policies from each of those five companies’ own websites and put them next to ours. Some of it makes us look good. Some of it doesn’t. Here’s the honest version.

This guide covers:

• the cheapest shared hosting plan at each company, and what you actually get for that price
• money-back guarantees, star ratings and how long each company has been operating
• where AppyHost holds its own on storage, support and uptime
• a full side-by-side comparison table
• answers to the questions we get asked most before signup

Everything below was checked directly against each provider’s website in August 2026. Hosting companies change pricing often, so if you’re reading this months later, double-check the current numbers on their sites before deciding. We’ve linked to nothing we haven’t verified ourselves.

The entry-level price comparison

If you just want the cheapest way to get a website online, here’s what each company’s lowest published shared hosting plan actually costs per month right now:

• telaHosting: R20/month, capped at 10GB storage and 100GB bandwidth (a starter tier, not a like-for-like comparison with the others)
• AppyHost: R55/month (Start Up plan) for 10GB NVMe storage, 100GB bandwidth, 10 email accounts and one website
• Axxess: R69/month (XS plan) for 2GB, unlimited bandwidth
• Afrihost: R84/month (Silver plan) for 2GB, unlimited bandwidth
• HOSTAFRICA: R99/month (Starter plan) for 20GB, unlimited bandwidth, plus a free .co.za domain
• Domains.co.za: R109/month (Basic plan) for 25GB, unlimited bandwidth

Where we’re honest about being behind: HOSTAFRICA, Domains.co.za, Axxess and Afrihost all sell unlimited or unmetered bandwidth on their entry plans. Ours are capped (100GB on Start Up, scaling up to 1000GB on our Rocket plan). For a normal small-business site that’s rarely a practical problem, but if bandwidth caps matter to you, that’s a real difference and you should know about it before you sign up, not after.

Guarantees, reviews and how long we’ve been doing this

Here’s how our guarantee and reputation stack up against the bigger players:

• Domains.co.za: 60-day money-back guarantee, a stated 99.9% uptime guarantee, and a 4.5-star Google rating. Operating for over 20 years.
• HOSTAFRICA: 30-day money-back guarantee, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and a 4.9-star “Excellent” rating across more than 100 pages of Trustpilot reviews, which is the detail that impressed us most doing this research.
• telaHosting: 10-day money-back guarantee.
• Afrihost: no published money-back guarantee, but 25+ years in business and a self-reported 4.7-star rating from tens of thousands of respondents (on their own site, not an independent platform).
• Axxess: operating since 1997 with multiple ISP-of-the-year awards, though we couldn’t find a stated uptime or money-back guarantee anywhere on their hosting pages.
• AppyHost: 30-day money-back guarantee on every shared hosting plan, and a 5-star rating on Google. Founded in 2022, so four years in, not twenty.

AppyHost’s short timeline includes adding VPS hosting in 2023, reseller hosting in 2024, and an AI-powered domain name generator in 2025. We don’t yet have the review volume that Trustpilot or HelloPeter profiles built up over decades show, and we’re actively growing our presence there too.

What we’d add to that: a small, four-person-sized company answering your support ticket personally is a different experience from a queue at a company with tens of thousands of customers, and our 5-star Google rating suggests customers notice the difference. We’re telling you the full picture because a comparison page that only lists our strengths wouldn’t be worth publishing.

Where AppyHost holds its own

A few things we do think stack up well against all five companies above, price-and-feature comparisons aside:

• NVMe storage on every shared hosting plan, including the R55 entry plan (some competitors reserve NVMe for their higher tiers)
• Free SSL, one-click WordPress/Joomla/Drupal installs, full weekly cPanel backups and free migration off your current host, included on every plan and not upsold as add-ons
• A stated 99.9% uptime guarantee on reseller hosting, and 99.95% on VPS hosting
• 24/7/365 live chat, with support handled by our own team in Durban rather than outsourced

None of that replaces twenty years of track record. It’s just what’s actually true about what you get if you host with us today.

Full comparison table

(“Not stated” means we couldn’t confirm the detail from the provider’s public pages, not that they don’t offer it; we’d rather leave a gap than guess.)

Why businesses choose AppyHost

Put the numbers above together, and here’s what South African businesses get by hosting with AppyHost:

• NVMe storage on every plan, including the cheapest one
• a 30-day money-back guarantee on shared hosting
• a 5-star rating on Google
• free SSL, one-click installs, weekly backups and free migration on every plan, with no upsells
• a stated uptime guarantee on reseller and VPS hosting
• 24/7/365 live chat with a local South African team based in Durban
• hosting infrastructure built for reliability, backed by a team that answers your support ticket personally

Frequently asked questions

Is AppyHost cheaper than Domains.co.za, HOSTAFRICA, Axxess, telaHosting or Afrihost?

It depends which plan you compare. AppyHost’s R55/month entry plan is cheaper than Domains.co.za (R109), Axxess (R69), Afrihost (R84) and HOSTAFRICA (R99), but more expensive than telaHosting’s R20 starter plan. Bandwidth and storage differ across all of them, so price alone isn’t the full picture; see the table above.

Does AppyHost offer a money-back guarantee?

Yes. Every AppyHost shared hosting plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, matching HOSTAFRICA and beating telaHosting’s 10 days. Domains.co.za offers 60 days.

How long has AppyHost been in business?

AppyHost was founded in 2022. That makes us significantly newer than Axxess (1997), Afrihost (25+ years) and Domains.co.za (20+ years), though we’ve grown quickly in that time.

Does AppyHost have good reviews?

Yes, AppyHost holds a 5-star rating on Google. We don’t yet have the review volume that HOSTAFRICA has built on Trustpilot (4.9 stars across 100+ pages of reviews) or that Domains.co.za cites on Google (4.5 stars), and we’re actively growing our presence on those platforms too.

What does AppyHost do better than the bigger hosting companies?

NVMe storage on every plan including the cheapest one, no upsells on SSL/backups/migration, a stated uptime guarantee on reseller and VPS hosting, and direct support from a small local team rather than a large outsourced queue. Whether that trade-off is right for you depends on what you value more: a longer track record, or a smaller company that answers the phone itself.

Which of these hosts is best for South African small businesses?

It depends on what you’re optimising for. AppyHost now matches HOSTAFRICA’s 30-day money-back guarantee and holds a 5-star Google rating, so if that matters most alongside NVMe performance and direct access to the team building the product, we’d make our case for AppyHost. If price is the deciding factor and you don’t need much storage, telaHosting is hard to beat. If an established, long-running track record matters most above all else, Axxess, Afrihost and Domains.co.za have been operating the longest.

Final thoughts: choosing between price, track record and support

Every one of the five companies we compared has real strengths, and none of this comparison changes that. What it does is put the actual numbers next to ours, so you can weigh price, storage, guarantees, reviews and years in business for yourself instead of taking anyone’s marketing at face value.

If you value NVMe performance, a 30-day money-back guarantee, a growing 5-star reputation and direct access to the team building the product, that’s where AppyHost makes its case. If a longer track record or a specific price point matters more to you, the table above should make that comparison easy too.

---

Prices, plan details and guarantees above reflect what was published on each company’s own website in August 2026. We’ll update this page as pricing changes. If you spot something here that’s out of date, contact us and we’ll fix it.

---

Share this article

• Share on Facebook
• Share on X
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on WhatsApp
• Share by email