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I am planning to launch a new website targeting the country I am based in. Webhosting here is very expensive and for what you pay in other places for a dedicated server you will get the shared hosting deal of 2005 here.

Since I have reasonably fast internet at home I am considering to host the website on a small server here by using dynamic DNS.

The opinions on this and SEO don't seem to be so clear, so I am wondering if I would have to expect any serious negative effects in terms of search rankings through this?

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As far as I know dynamic DNS isn't a big SEO ranking factor. However, page speed is. There's a big possibility that users will immediately close your website if it loads very slow. Hence, this can increase bounce rate, which will then make Google think that the users who were in your site weren't able to find it useful since they close it immediately.

There are tons of search ranking factors that also be considered. Page speed is just a fraction of it.

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  • Thanks for your comment and the speed issue makes sense. I think my home internet would be reasonable fast especially compared to hosting in EU/US which will mostly be rather slow from Asia.
    – BenBen
    Oct 12, 2017 at 10:47
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A hosting decision is something that can be changed at any time. If hosting at home is cheaper for you, then go ahead and start that way. If you find that your site's performance is poor or you have downtime because of home hosting, then you can always switch to other hosting later.

This is exactly the path that I took when I started. I hosted my website at home and only moved it to a better server once it was ranking well enough in search engines and getting a fair number of visitors.

I would recommend that you buy a domain and use that with dynamic DNS. Often you can get a free subdomain with dynamic DNS. Don't use that for a website that you want to rank in search engines. Those domains often have spam on other subdomains and search engines don't rank them well (or at all). The free subdomains could also be taken away from you at any time and for any reason.

I agree with other answers to an extent. Hosting from a data center is almost always more reliable and faster than hosting at home. The problems with hosting at home that could hurt your rankings would be poor speed and downtime. Data centers are better because:

  • They are built where internet is fast
  • They have multiple connections to the internet for redundancy
  • They are built near power plants so electricity is cheaper and more reliable
  • They have backup power
  • You can get a static IP address. With a dynamic IP address at home, you will have at least a few minutes of downtime every time your IP address changes.
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  • I second your answer! Hosting at home could be quite good in fact. I was a web host in the past and now host at home in a tiny town in the mountains of Pennsylvania. It so happens that a major fiber trunk goes right by. My up times are stellar. Slower connections are fine too. 10mbs is enough. I did sub .4 response times. My connection is much faster these days. Still, the security risks for someone who is not well aware of security could be an issue. As far as SEO is concerned, I did rather well. But I had a commercial IP assigned too. That probably helped.
    – closetnoc
    Oct 12, 2017 at 15:52
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I wouldn't recommend it, speed is one thing, bandwidth and usage limits set by your ISP is another. Along with likely poor reliability, it would be a nightmare and most likely much slower response times which will have knock on effects SEO wise if its inconsistent and unreliable.

It would be hugely dependant on the resources and traffic your site generates, I'm "assuming" its reasonably good considering your wanting a dedicated server rather than settling for a reasonably price Malaysia VPS. ( which seem to be available for industry average prices )

You have other options available such as using a premium DNS such as Cloudflare, DNS made easy, Rackspace DNS ( A couple of those offering free DNS in a limited form too )

Or setting up your own Nameserver clusters with smaller, more cost effective VPS's based in local country and serving a cheaper US based dedicated server. But there is of course additional cost and management in doing your own nameservers, since cost seems to be a motivator its probably counter productive.

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  • Thanks for the details! For my ISP there are no limits as far as I am aware but you are right that reliability and speed would not be up to a professional host. Malaysia does have cheaper priced servers and VPS but the quality is a joke. It is really nothing that you will want to work with if you know what the rest of the world has. Also bandwidth is a huge problem here, rarely you will have more than 10mbps unless you open your wallet a lot. Nameservers would be of course done by a proper service like namecheap.
    – BenBen
    Oct 12, 2017 at 10:48

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