There are a number of issues to consider when choosing the web hosting service that is right for you:
There are several ways to choose a web-hosting service provider. These include:
If you search the web for “web hosting services australia” the top site is Hosting Review which purports to give you a listing of the top ten websites in Australia. When I visited, far and away the best site would seem to be HostPapa being cheaper, faster and more highly rated than the next nine.
Rated by who? Who is Hosting Review?
HostPapa presents no phone number to make further enquires, engages in high-pressure selling (“Sign up within the next hour to get this special rate!” [I was offered the same rate several days later]) and provides no phone number to make further enquiries. They offer to get you a domain name for free, but make no statement about who will be the registered owner of that name. They offer free ads but fail to mention how the fee-per-hit income might be distributed. At $3.95 per month, HostPapa is obviously looking to other sources of income.
.au Domain Administration Ltd is the regulatory authority for domain names in Australia (specifically in the .au top-level domain). They list all the accredited registrars for .au names, many of whom (if not all) are also service providers. Whilst this is not in itself a recommendation, it does provide a comprehensive list of major players, as a starting point for further research. (The .au Domain Administration website opens just fine in Safari, but there must be something wrong with their site’s interaction with FireFox, the CSS is not picked up at all.)
Many of the providers have names that suggest they are not worth investigating: Cheaper Domains Pty Ltd presents pressure selling, 20% off because I entered from the .au Domain Administration site, which comes to $5.00 per month for the basic package. They do offer a phone number (hidden at the bottom of the page).
RackSpace is a UK-based company, established in 2001, that is at the opposite end of the spectrum. They offer comprehensive services, including cloud backups for client files as well as site files, hybrid and dedicated servers, and a range of server-end processing options. Pricing is difficult to establish, as they offer “Pay As You Go”. Previously they were offering at $51 per month, but precise costing is no longer on the website.
They make it quite clear that data is regarded as the client’s property, and they previously had a position statement concerning their response to government requests for access to data — based on case law, it was basically “Go away, we won’t give it to you”. They up-dated their site in the last few weeks, and I can no longer find this page, but I doubt that they have changed their policy.
Their services are also scalable, that is, they can offer anything up to a dedicated server, so that as your site grows and traffic increases, increased capacity can be offered by RackSpace. Despite this, they emphasise that there is no vendor lock-in (free to move your site at any time).
My brother’s website is hosted by netregistry and he is quite happy with the service he receives, although it is a very low traffic site. He has allowed me to have an email and personal website within his package, which is pretty cool because it costs me nothing. netregistry offer a number of packages for small business, at $12.95 per month for Startup, $15.96 for Business+ and $23.96 for Enterprise. The Startup package does not include any server-end processing, but the other two include MySQL and other database systems, and scripting including PHP, PERL/CGI and Python. The differences between Business+ and Enterprise are mainly to do with storage space, and Enterprise offers a 99.9% up-time guarantee.
A “recommendation” can also be a recommendation to avoid a particular service. When my workplace wanted to up-date their website, the previous service provider (who shall remain nameless) wanted $4,000 to alter the website themselves, $4,000 to upload an externally designed site, refused to release the password, and wanted $4,000 to release the domain name (despite it being properly registered to the business, not the service provider). I think they may have been threatened with a suggestion that we take them to Fair Trading, as they eventually relinquished control.
Ballina West Medical Centre is now hosted by Melbourne IT. Their basic Starter package seems to start at $27.95 per month, includes PHP and MySQL, but this is a bit excessive for Ballina West’s needs, as the site consists of only two pages that look like they are relics from the late 1990s. Even compared with the Business+ or Enterprise packages from netregistry, this price seems excessive, with less storage, and fewer scripting and database options.
| Hosting service | Monthly cost | Scripting software | Database support | Storage space |
| HostPapa | $3.95 (regular price $8.99) | Assume PHP (e-commerce package available) | Assume SQL of some flavour (e-commerce package available) | Nothing said |
| netregistry (Business+) | $15.96 | PHPS, ASP, ASP.NET, PERL/CGI, Python | MySQL, MSSQL, MSAccess | 200GB |
| Melbourne IT | $27.95 | PHP v5.3+ | MySQL | 10GB |
| RackSpace | Not clearly stated, but in excess of $50 for the most basic set up | Seemingly anything you want | Seemingly anything you want | Seemingly anything you want |
On the basis of personal experience with netregistry, I would be quite happy to recommend their service to any client for anything from a personal website up to a medium-sized business. For large sites, RackSpace might be a better option.