Hosting your site in Switzerland or elsewhere in the world? The question is worth thinking about. In this respect, the price factor is not negligible. The cost of accommodation in Switzerland is generally cheaper than foreign accommodation (French, German, American). However, and apart from stimulating the country's economy, I will give you here some good reasons to publish your site on servers located in Switzerland especially if the content is intended for a local audience.
- Your website hosted outside Switzerland may be slower. The greater the distance between visitors and your host's server, the longer the requests will take.
- Search engines generally take into account the geographical location of the server. It is therefore useful to have your site hosted in the same country as the target audience in order to get the best visibility on local search engines. Especially if you have taken a domain name with a generic extension (.com,.org,.net etc...).
- The language of the support and the hours of the hotline are important. Indeed, an American host, for example, will not answer your phone in French or German and the hotline's opening hours may not be adapted due to time difference.
- Also remember that no one is immune to a legal problem. Your site hosted in Switzerland is subject to Swiss law. To give you an example, your site hosted in the United States is subject to American law and more particularly to the famous USA PATRIOT Act, which allows the government to access your data without a warrant from the authorities, - on the vague condition that you represent a security threat. In this context, you cannot guarantee your customers the security of their data hosted across the Atlantic.
To conclude, it seems important to me to underline that we have Swiss hosts such as "Infomaniak", leader of the Swiss market and internationally recognized for its quality services and prices that remain very affordable in view of the services offered. It would be awkward to deprive yourself of a local partner for hosting your sites.