We set up and manage hosting built for the Chinese internet. Fast load times, ICP filing handled end to end, CDN configured, monitored from inside China. Whatever stack your site runs on.
15+ years on the ground in Shanghai. 100% ICP success rate so far.
Median load time on a mainland Chinese server
Mid-range Chinese phone, Shanghai connection
Uptime across the sites we currently host
Rolling 30-day average
ICP filing success rate so far
Every application has eventually gone through
Years on the ground in Shanghai
Same team, same city, since 2005
The problem
Try pulling your site up from Shanghai sometime. Most international sites take ten or fifteen seconds. Sometimes the page just never appears.
That's the Great Firewall: throttled traffic, blocked CDNs, Google Fonts that won't resolve. After twenty years inside China, it's still the most common problem we see. Great in New York, broken in Beijing.
loading...
12.4s
median load
0.8s
median load
Tested from a mid-range Chinese phone on a typical Shanghai mobile connection.
Hosting options
Right answer depends on whether you have an ICP, how fast you need to launch, and whether you also need to perform globally.
Load time
< 1s
ICP
Required
Baidu boost
Big
Time to live
6 to 10 wks
Your site lives on servers inside mainland China. We use Aliyun, Tencent Cloud or Huawei Cloud, depending on the project. We have been working with all three for years now, so we know exactly what we are getting from each one of them.
Load times come in under one second. Baidu gives a noticeable ranking boost to sites that hold an ICP licence on local servers, which matters a lot if organic search is part of your China strategy. We handle the full ICP filing too. Honestly, that is where most foreign companies hit a wall without someone in-country helping them through it.
Best for
Brands committed to the Chinese market, anyone serious about Baidu SEO, e-commerce, sites capturing Chinese user data.
Load time
2 to 4s
ICP
Not required
Baidu boost
Minimal
Time to live
2 to 3 wks
Don't have an ICP licence yet? Hong Kong gets you online faster. No filing required. With the right CDN and caching setup, you are looking at 2 to 4 second load times in mainland China. Compared to serving the site from Frankfurt or Virginia, that's night and day.
We use this as a bridge solution pretty often, while clients wait on their ICP filing or while they are still deciding whether to commit to a mainland presence. Some of our long-running clients have stayed on Hong Kong for years and never felt the need to move.
Best for
Quick launches, interim solutions, projects that can't get an ICP yet, brands testing the Chinese market before committing.
Load time
< 1s in CN
ICP
Required (CN)
Baidu boost
Big
Time to live
8 to 12 wks
Some clients can't just optimise for China and forget about the rest of the world. They need the site working everywhere. For those situations we build a split: visitors from inside China hit a mainland Chinese server, everyone else goes to your existing global setup.
DNS takes care of the routing automatically. One backend powers both sides, content syncs across the two. The China site has its own ICP filing, the global site keeps running wherever it already lives. We handle both sides as one engagement so the editorial team only has one workflow.
Best for
Global brands with a serious China audience, multinational e-commerce, sites where neither China nor the rest of the world can be deprioritised.
What's included
One predictable monthly fee, no surprise add-ons. The list below is what you get on day one of any China hosting engagement, regardless of which option above you picked.
Hosting tuned for your stack, with China-compatible SSL, server-level firewalls and DDoS protection configured for how things actually work behind the Firewall.
Aliyun or Tencent Cloud CDN hooked up. Your assets get served from nodes near your users in Shanghai or Chengdu instead of from across the Pacific.
Most tools check from outside the Firewall, so dashboards lie. We monitor from inside China. Sounds like a detail, changes everything.
Automated daily, stored off-site, point-in-time recovery, disaster plan documented. Because stuff does break sometimes.
Paperwork, submissions, back-and-forth with the provincial authority. You never log into a Chinese hosting panel or read forms in Chinese.
Server patches, security updates and scaling on our end so the site keeps performing without you having to think about it.
If you want your site on mainland China servers, you need an ICP. There is no shortcut and no exception. Without one your hosting provider just shuts the site down. They don't warn you either, it just goes offline.
2 types of ICP exist. We figure out which one applies, get the paperwork together, submit it through the provincial authority, and follow up when the application stalls. So far every ICP we have submitted has eventually gone through.
Informational sites
Company website, blog, brochure site, anything that doesn't involve transactions. The most common filing for foreign brands launching in China.
What we collect
Commercial activity
For sites handling transactions, e-commerce, paid services, anything commercial. Longer process, more documentation, deeper scrutiny from the provincial authority.
What we collect
One heads up
You need a Chinese-registered business entity to even start the filing. If you don't have one yet, that's ok, we can walk you through the alternatives.
Data compliance
Hosting in China is also a data residency requirement. Certain types of user data on Chinese residents have to live on mainland servers.
If your site collects Chinese user data, mainland hosting is the cleanest path to compliance. We configure the architecture so personal data stays in country.
Governs how personal data on Chinese residents must be handled, stored and transferred. The closest Chinese parallel to GDPR.
Foundational data law since 2017. Sets the rules for network operators, critical infrastructure, and data localisation requirements.
Classifies data by sensitivity and requires categorised protection. Affects how Chinese user data is stored and moved across borders.
Timeline
ICP filing usually sits on the critical path. We start the filing on day one and run the build in parallel.
Hong Kong
No ICP filing needed. The fastest path online for the Chinese market.
Mainland China
ICP runs on the critical path. We start the filing on day one and run the rest of the build in parallel.
Dual-Stack
Depends on how the global site is currently set up. The mainland Chinese half drives the timeline.
Performance
Median load time in China
Lower is better. A 12-second load loses every Chinese visitor before the page renders.
US or Europe
ICP: No · Baidu: None
8 to 15+ seconds
Hong Kong
ICP: No · Baidu: Minimal
2 to 4 seconds
Mainland China
ICP: Yes · Baidu: Big
Under 1 second
Chinese users expect pages to load fast and they will leave yours if it doesn't. Mainland hosting with an ICP filing is what closes that gap.
Who Is This For?
International companies launching a brand new site for the Chinese market.
Businesses with an existing site that is painfully slow for anyone visiting from inside China.
Teams dealing with the ICP filing for the first time and finding it confusing or stalled.
Brands that need fast hosting which is also compliant with Chinese regulations and the local payment ecosystem.
You don't need to understand how any of this works on the technical side. That's what we do. Our team is based in China, we have been doing this for over twenty years, and we handle the infrastructure so you can focus on the parts of your business that you actually care about.
Frequently asked
Tap any question to expand. If yours isn't here, ask us directly.
You can stay in Hong Kong, especially for an interim launch. But Baidu treats Hong Kong sites as foreign and the ranking penalty is real. For brands serious about the Chinese market long-term, mainland hosting with an ICP filing is the right call.
Yes, if you want the site on Aliyun's mainland servers. Aliyun also runs servers in Hong Kong and Singapore which don't require an ICP, but you lose the mainland performance and the Baidu boost.
It varies by traffic, storage, and the level of management we run on top. Most marketing sites land in a predictable monthly range that is actually lower than equivalent Western managed WordPress hosting. Tell us the scope and we send a real quote within two business days.
Yes, this is the dual-stack setup. Your global site stays where it is, the China visitors get routed to a mainland Chinese server, and the two share editorial workflows where it makes sense.
Aliyun, Tencent Cloud and Huawei Cloud are our three. Aliyun is usually the default for marketing sites, Tencent Cloud is strong for sites that integrate deeply with WeChat, and Huawei Cloud comes up more often for clients who already use Huawei elsewhere in their infrastructure.
It happens, especially for first-time foreign filings. Usually it is a documentation issue or something missing from the business registration. We handle the resubmission. Every ICP we have ever submitted has eventually gone through.
Yes. The build runs outside China on a CI pipeline, the static output gets pushed to a mainland Chinese server, and the site loads as fast as anything we have shipped. We do this regularly with Astro and with headless WordPress setups.
For sites that collect data from Chinese users, yes. Mainland hosting on a properly configured Aliyun or Tencent Cloud account is the cleanest path to compliance with PIPL, the Cybersecurity Law and the Data Security Law. We configure the architecture so personal data stays in country.
No. We run the hosting account, the ICP filing and the day-to-day server work. You don't log into anything in Chinese, you don't read forms you can't understand. You just get a working site and a monthly report.
We scale the hosting up. Aliyun, Tencent and Huawei all support flexible scaling on the plans we use. We handle the resizing, the load balancing and any architecture changes the site needs to keep up.
Get started
Every project looks a bit different. Your timeline, where you are with the ICP, who your audience is, what your budget looks like. Tell us what is going on and we will come back within two business days with a hosting recommendation that fits your situation. No generic proposals.
