Tremhost and Afrihost both sell web hosting and related services to customers in Southern Africa, but they are different businesses with different home markets, currencies and product ranges. The right choice depends on where your customers are, how you pay, what you need beyond a website and how you want support to work. This guide is a fair checklist: Tremhost’s answers are filled in, and for Afrihost it tells you exactly what to check on its official website. It does not pick a winner.
Start with what you actually need
Write down the essentials before you compare anything: how many websites, roughly how much storage, how many staff need email on your domain, whether you run WordPress or an online shop, which country most of your visitors are in, and whether you also need connectivity such as fibre or mobile data. A provider that is a good fit for one of these may not be for another.
1. Home market, currency and billing
- Tremhost: based in Harare, Zimbabwe, since 2016. Prices are in US dollars, payable by EcoCash, InnBucks, ZimSwitch, Omari, Visa, Mastercard, Bitcoin, Tron or Litecoin.
- Check on Afrihost’s site: the currency its prices are shown and billed in, the payment methods it accepts from your country, and whether VAT applies to you.
If your business earns in one currency and the hosting bill is in another, exchange-rate movements change what you really pay each year.
2. Hosting plans, inclusions and renewal prices
- Tremhost: web hosting on cPanel with LiteSpeed and NVMe storage, free SSL, unlimited mailboxes, daily backups and free migration. Plans run from Himalaya at $30 a year to The Big Mike at $25 a month or $250 a year. There is no introductory pricing: plans renew at the sign-up price.
- Check on Afrihost’s site: the control panel used, storage type and limits, whether email and SSL are included, how backups work, and the renewal price after any promotional period.
3. Server location
For a website, the distance between the server and your visitors affects how quickly pages start to load.
- Tremhost: shared hosting servers are in Europe and the USA. VPS servers can be placed in Johannesburg, New York, Miami, Limburg (Germany) or Roubaix (France); the data centres page describes each one. Tremhost is a Cloudflare partner, and Cloudflare has a data centre in Harare.
- Check on Afrihost’s site: where its hosting servers are located and whether you can choose a location.
A content delivery network such as Cloudflare narrows the gap by serving cached files from locations near each visitor, wherever the origin server is.
4. Business email
- Tremhost: business email plans from $5 a month for 50 mailboxes and 75 GB, with spam and virus filtering, two-factor authentication and SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up for you.
- Check on Afrihost’s site: mailbox counts and sizes, whether email is bundled with hosting or sold separately, and what spam protection is included.
5. Domains
- Tremhost: .co.zw from $6.99 a year (administered by ZISPA) and .com at $15.99 a year.
- Check on Afrihost’s site: which extensions it registers, including .co.za and .co.zw if you need them, and the renewal prices.
6. Range of services beyond hosting
- Tremhost: managed WordPress, KVM VPS from $15 a month, managed cPanel VPS from $80 a month, dedicated servers, reseller hosting from $7 a month, server licences, website design from $550 a year, and Cloudflare-based security under the Tremhost Armor name, such as Armor Guard (Cloudflare Pro) at $9 a month.
- Check on Afrihost’s site: which of these it offers, and whether it also provides connectivity products you may want from the same supplier.
7. Uptime commitment
- Tremhost: a 99.9% monthly availability target for hosting, email and servers, set out in the Tremhost SLA with service credits.
- Check on Afrihost’s site: whether a written SLA covers the product you are buying, how availability is measured and what compensation applies.
8. Support
- Tremhost: tickets, WhatsApp on +263 73 563 9917 and booked calls, Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 17:00 CAT. Armor SOS gives free same-day triage for hacked sites.
- Check on Afrihost’s site: the support channels and hours for hosting customers specifically.
9. Refunds and switching
- Tremhost: a 30-day refund on the first order for web hosting, managed WordPress, business email and reseller hosting, and free cPanel-to-cPanel migration, typically within 24 hours, with the site live until you switch.
- Check on Afrihost’s site: the cancellation terms, any notice period and whether it helps with migration.
How to decide
- Fill in the nine points for both providers from their official pages, noting the date you checked.
- Convert both to one currency and work out a three-year total including renewals and any add-ons.
- Weigh location and support hours against where your customers and staff are.
- Send each provider the same pre-sales question and compare the answers.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tremhost or Afrihost better?
Neither is better for everyone. Run the checklist above with your own requirements and current prices from each official site.
Can I pay Tremhost from outside Zimbabwe?
Yes. Visa, Mastercard and cryptocurrency work from any country; EcoCash, InnBucks, ZimSwitch and Omari are available for Zimbabwean payers.
Can I move my website from Afrihost to Tremhost?
If your current hosting uses cPanel, Tremhost migrates it free. Otherwise files and databases can be moved manually; ask support before you order.
Next step
Ask the Tremhost team on WhatsApp at +263 73 563 9917 (Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 17:00 CAT) to check your requirements against Tremhost’s plans before you decide, or compare Tremhost’s web hosting plans now.
