About WebsiteHosting.lk
Editorial review: 19 September 2026 · By: Alston Antony
Hey there - I'm Alston Antony
Before this was a website about websites, it was a kid in Sri Lanka trying to build his first Google AdSense site and monopolising the family dial-up connection to do it. That involved a great deal of trial and error, a phone line nobody else could use for hours at a stretch, and some very patient parents. 😅
I never really stopped. The tools changed - dial-up became fibre, hand-written HTML became WordPress, and getting a website online went from a weekend hobby to something businesses depend on. The questions people ask me have barely changed at all: which host, why is it slow, why did the renewal cost four times the first year, .lk or .com. WebsiteHosting.lk is where I answer those properly and in public, with the receipts attached, instead of one WhatsApp message at a time.
This page is the short version. The full professional bio lives on alstonantony.com.
What WebsiteHosting.lk is
WebsiteHosting.lk is an independent Sri Lankan guide to hosting, website cost, .lk domains, ecommerce and web design. It is a reader-facing publication, not an agency, not a hosting reseller, and not a lead-gen page for a specific provider. Every LKR price on the site carries the date it was verified against the vendor's own page; every ranking states its criteria above the table, never under it; every provider recommendation names the vendor and links to the source.
Why this site exists
Most Sri Lankan web hosting content on Google is one of three things: an advert with a Sri Lankan skin, a rewritten global blog post that treats LKR as a rounding error, or a lead-gen page that ranks the site owner's own service at position one and reverse-engineers the criteria to justify it. WebsiteHosting.lk is the site that would have saved me several thousand rupees the first time I registered a .lk domain, chose a host, and hired a designer - so it is the site I built.
Who writes it
Every page is written and edited by Alston Antony. The full professional profile is on that canonical URL - this page carries only the parts that make me credible on this specific subject:
- Colombo-based, working on websites since 2010.
- Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Brainstorm Force, the team behind Astra (one of the most-installed WordPress themes) and ZipWP.
- MSc Computer Software Engineering (Distinction), University of Greenwich. BCS Professional Member.
- Founder of Maxinium (SaaS SEO agency) and ZPlatform.ai.
- The count of sites I've owned or tools I've tested is on the personal profile linked above, not asserted here without that receipt.
What you actually get from me
I don't sell hosting. I'm not a reseller, I don't take a cut of anyone's hosting bill, and there is no sales team behind this page. That matters more than it sounds: the only thing I have to protect here is being right. So when the honest answer is "the cheap one is fine for what you're doing" or "don't buy that yet", that is what the page says.
- Local knowledge, specifically. Not "we serve Sri Lanka" - the actual details. How SLT-Mobitel and Dialog routing behaves, which cards quietly decline at a USD checkout, what LK Domain Registry will and will not let you change after registration, what a Colombo agency really charges. That is the layer generic global hosting advice gets wrong about this country, and it is the whole reason this site is worth writing.
- I don't disappear once you've bought. Choosing a host is the start, not the end. The renewal tracker, the migration guide and the maintenance sections exist because the expensive mistakes happen in year two, not in week one.
- You can just ask. If your situation isn't covered by the guides, message me. Free, no sales call, and nothing you send is passed on to anyone. I aim to reply within two business days - and if you would rather open with a bad hosting joke than a question, that works too.
When a reader's site does well, that is the entire return on this project. There isn't another one.
What this site covers
- Web hosting - local vs international for Sri Lankan sites.
- Website cost - real LKR ranges by build type.
- Web design - hiring, quotations, ownership.
- Domains - .lk vs .com, registrar comparison.
- Website builders - WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace.
- Ecommerce - payment gateways, launching a store.
What this site does not cover
Generic digital marketing, general SEO, social-media tactics, crypto and general AI news. If it does not directly help a Sri Lankan person build, host or run a website, it does not belong here.
How money flows through this site
Some outbound links are affiliate links. If a reader buys through one, WebsiteHosting.lk receives a small commission at no extra cost to the reader. That commission does not change the criteria on a ranking page, and it does not change the order of a comparison table - the ranking is derived from the criteria published above the table. Full detail in the affiliate disclosure. I do not broker leads: nothing submitted through the contact form is passed to a designer, an agency or a hosting company.
How to reach me
The fastest route is the contact page - editorial corrections, hosting questions, or anything the guides do not already answer. I aim to reply within two business days, and there is no such thing as a question that is too basic to send. If a page carries a factual error, please cite the URL and the specific line; corrections are noted at the bottom of the affected page per the editorial policy.