Recaptcha - Availability in China

Question

We are developing a site that will require the use of the captcha service.

Does anyone successfully use Google Recaptcha for a website for users from mainland China?

• Have you had a serious problem with load time?
• Having trouble with reliability?
• Any problems with the big firewall in China?

Any experience you can share is welcome.

Answer 1

I can’t even open the Recaptcha page that you are connected to without a VPN. I have been in Beijing for the past two years. Assuming that you are not here and / or do not know very much about the infrastructure situation in China:

• I don’t know about any Google service that is reliably accessible and fast from the mainland. they are probably the worst choice that depends on it.
• in general, if you want stability and speed, you will need to take part in China. A firewall often provides international sites anywhere from painfully slow to completely useless. if hosting is too much of a headache and hassle, I understand that Hong Kong is the next best thing.
• even if you are in China, you will have to deal with the situation between telecoms if you want serious speed and stability (they do not always play “well” with each other, as we are used to in the west, which requires more expensive and complex hosting settings for mitigation). Note: as mentioned above, Alibaba and Baidu cloud hosting solutions can make it a lot easier and can help hide some of the ICP license materials from my understanding.
• suggested alternative to local developers: http://www.yinxiangma.com/ all in Chinese, but this is China in the end.

China is a huge market, but it is far from simple. hope that helps, let me know if you have any specific questions.