What is the difference between Australian & International Website Hosting?

To answer that question quickly… the answer is speed and local support. When in Australia your internet can access Australian hosting servers slightly faster. Sometimes the difference is barely noticeable but other times it can be annoying to have a website load too slowly when it’s hosted in another country. However very light websites (not many pictures, videos etc) would not be affected too greatly as to be noticeable.

There are a few things to take into consideration when choosing a website host.

1. Service: We consider this more important than price. The price differences are very minimal these days between Website hosting companies but the service difference can be huge. If something goes wrong with your site you need to be able to contact your hosting company quickly and get it remedied fast. You could be losing money by the minute so fast response in essential. There are many good service website hosting companies in Australia and overseas so this isn’t too hard to find.

Another aspect of service is ease of use of the websites control panel. Did you know most up to date website hosting packages include free website statistic charts? All you need to do is login to your website control panel and go to the Webstats icon. These stats go into great detail and tell you how many visits you are getting per day, where your visitors are coming from, how long are they staying and much more. This should be free with any decent Website Hosting Basic Package.

2. Price: Sure this is important not to get ripped off but usually the price difference is so slight it doesn’t make a big difference. Choosing between a company offering $5.95 AUD per month for slower service, slower download speeds and older servers… or $7.95 AUD per month for faster service, fastest available download speeds and the latest servers and software with stats availability… which one would you choose?

3. Speed: The faster your webpage loads the happier your viewers will be. There are 2 factors here: 1) The viewers internet speed – This factor is out of your control  2) The Hosting Companies Bandwidth and Server speed – This factor you can control by choosing a hosting company with the fastest speeds available. Have you ever looked at the same video on 2 different websites and found 1 of them loaded much slower than the other? This is because the bandwidth speed was lower with the slower server. So if you have a website that will have photos, images or videos or other speed intensive items then it’s important to find a hosting company with high bandwidth speeds. If most of your viewers will be from Australia then choose a fast Australian hosting company.

If your website will have viewers from all over the world then choose an international hosting company in the country or region where most of your viewers will be from.

Here is a list of Australian and International Hosting Companies worth looking at that combine Good Service, Good Pricing and good Bandwidth Speed.

Ultimately you will need to choose yourself - If we are not building your website and installing it for you since you will need to create the relationship with the company of your choice. Give them a call and send them an e-mail and see how fast they answer you.

Suggested Australian Hosting Companies:
Web City: www.webcity.com.au

Suggested International Hosting Companies
Host Monster: www.hostmonster.com