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When it makes sense to host your website in Russia
This selection includes around 480 plans from 105 hosts with servers in Russian data centers. Prices start at about $0.50 a month, and the median is around $5.50, noticeably below the median for the whole catalog. People choose Russian hosting for three reasons: the personal data law, speed for visitors in Russia, and easy payment in rubles.
Where the servers are
Most Russian hosts rent racks in data centers in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, less often in Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and other cities. For a site with an audience across the country, the difference between Moscow and Saint Petersburg is negligible. But if your visitors are mostly in the Urals or Siberia, look for a host with a data center closer to them: latency from Moscow to Novosibirsk is around 40–50 ms, and that's noticeable on every request to a dynamic site.
Note that some Russian companies also offer locations abroad, so host descriptions may list the Netherlands, Germany and other countries alongside Russia. Check the country of a specific plan when ordering.
152-FZ and personal data
Russian Federal Law No. 152-FZ on personal data requires an operator that collects personal data of Russian citizens to initially record and store it in databases located in Russia. This covers names, phone numbers and email addresses from lead forms, registration and online store checkouts. If your site collects such data, a server in Russia is the simplest way to meet the requirement.
- For a business card site without forms, a blog, or a landing page that doesn't collect contact details, the data storage requirement is less critical.
- For an online store, online booking, a customer account area or a CRM on the site, a Russian server is all but mandatory.
- If your lawyer requires it, ask the host whether it can provide a contract with data processing terms and what security level its facility offers.
Speed for visitors in Russia
Latency from a user in Russia to a server in Moscow is usually a few milliseconds to a couple dozen, to Germany or the Netherlands 40–60 ms, and to the US 120 ms or more. For a static page this is barely noticeable, but a dynamic site makes several sequential requests, and the difference adds up. Another argument is reliability: traffic to locations abroad sometimes goes over congested or restricted routes, while connectivity within Russia is usually more stable.
Payment and paperwork
Russian hosts accept Mir cards (Russia's national card system), SBP (Russia's Faster Payments System) and bank transfers against an invoice for companies, issue the closing accounting documents, and work under a Russian contract. This removes the difficulties people run into when paying for hosting abroad. If paying by card is what matters to you, see the hosting paid with a Mir card selection.
Control panels
ISPmanager leads on Russian plans: it's listed for about two thirds of the plans in this selection. It's followed by cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk and FASTPANEL. ISPmanager's advantage is a fully Russian-language interface and documentation, and many hosts write their own guides specifically for it. Plans with this panel across all countries are collected on the ISPmanager hosting page.
What else to check with a Russian host
- Disk size and type. The median in this selection is 15 GB, and about a third of plans have NVMe.
- Number of sites. Many Russian plans allow 5, 10 or 20 sites, and some have no limit at all.
- Traffic. More than half of the plans list unmetered traffic.
- Ready-made CMS environments. Many Russian hosts optimize servers specifically for 1C-Bitrix: if your site runs on it, look for plans that support the modules you need and have PHP settings tuned for Bitrix.
How to move your site to a Russian host
- Make a full copy of your site files and a database dump on the old host.
- Create a site and a database in the new host's panel, upload the files and import the dump. Many Russian hosts migrate sites for free, so ask support.
- Test the site on a temporary address or through an entry in your hosts file, without changing DNS.
- A day before the move, lower the TTL on your domain records so the address change propagates faster.
- Change the domain's A records or name servers to the new ones, issue an SSL certificate and check email if it's moving too.
- Keep the old hosting running for a few more days until all traffic has moved to the new server. During that time, check the logs and lead forms so that no inquiry gets lost at the old address.
When hosting abroad is the better choice
A server outside Russia makes sense if your main audience lives in Europe or the Americas, if you don't collect personal data of Russian citizens, or if your project needs another country's jurisdiction. You can compare options in the hosting in Europe and hosting in the USA selections.