China Law Blog: SaaS in China

The very good China Law Blog from Dan Harris has a fantastic post by Steve Dickinson on how to mange your Software-as-a-service for China. While SaaS products are not directly related to WordPress hosting in China, I’ve answered a lot of very similar questions on this topic at WP Engine for customers who do more than just websites.

Read the whole article here.

A short excerpt:

Countless foreign software companies wish to deliver their software as a service (SaaS) to China. But since China requires commercial ICP licenses for commercial Internet services within China and generally forbids foreign enterprises from obtaining such licenses, directly providing SaaS through a server in China is typically not possible for foreign software companies.

Like web hosting, there are pitfalls in trying to host directly in China. The core issues being China hosting versus trying to reach the market externally and uninhibited by the Great Firewall. As I often tell people, you have absolutely no guarantee in reaching the mainland Chinese market from overseas (even from Hong Kong/Macau). If you decide to host directly within China, there’s a litany of bureaucratic steps required for your business before you can host unimpeded (which include foreign registration of your company and government review/best practices of your software’s content).

If you like this article, I recommend following China Law Blog on LinkedIN or Facebook.