ANn good hosting companies in Australia ?

I am in Australia and I have my sites hosted in England. Essentially Aussie hosts are rip-off merchants. Telstra charges, infrastructure charges etc make it pretty cost prohibitive compared to OS companies.

IBM are still planning the largest server farm in the southern hemisphere to be located in sydney(?) but I would think that that is a long way off, and doubt whether the savings would be that terrific.

Cool thanks for the info.

Cheers,

Blue

Here is a few hosts that I do know of, and are "hoping" to change the attitudes of aussies who repeatedly bag services in Australia, based on what their friend told them or read on the back of the weeties box.

OzHosting.com

Supplier of hosting and reselling services, and servers are based in the U.S. at present. Offer both windows and linux based hosting solutions. Products include dns type accounts, standard hosting, virtual server hosting, dedicated, and colo.
Pricing for shared is on an annual payment at $328.00 plus a setup fee of 54.00 approximately. Dedicated pricing is very high considering what is on the market for u.s. based hosting.

- advertise in the Australian Computer Trader Magazine (Full Page Ad at least 10 pages into the magazine, and also have placed a small ad on the front page of the magazine.)

ktvies.com.au

Are aussie based, in melbourne and would guess that this service is run out of the person's home, given their actual location. Very pricy for what they give in shared hosting plans.

- advertise in the Australian Computer Trader Magazine (Small ad almost at the back of the magazine).

akashik.net

Have been around for a while online, especially at WHT, etc and operates servers now out of the U.S. and began as a reseller for HostMatters. Offers similar priced plans as the mainstream hosts do, and has different plan specs though to reflect the target market he seeks.
He also does have another site for the Australian market with a different name, and will find that as soon as i can.

- advertises his Australian site in Australian Personal Computer Magazine and places usually 1/8 or 1/4 page ads in the advertising section of the magazine which is located at the back of it.

enet21.com.au

Their servers seem to be based in sydney, and offer all types of hosting. Have seen them previuosly run advertising in local magazines in the past, and also are active on WHT, etc to a smaller extent.
Their shared hosting is quite expensive, considering what is included in each package. Their dedicated servers are leased on contract, being RAQ's only. Colocation is offered as well.
They offer a Dealer plan aka reseller plan as well.

Webhost.com.au

Are a bigger p[layer in the market in Australia, and are more so into offering dedicated server sales and colocation.

Surrenderonline.com.au

Are a new hosting provider and are slowly growing.

Hope this helps a bit....

akashik.net <-- I know him on another forum. Lovely guy.

Thanks for all the info. It still sounds like the best deals are outside Australia, mainly in US. I am looking at Insiderhosting.com and maybe phpwebhosting.com

Any feedback on them ?

" Thems fighting words Nishtec!! "

you have to agree that up to this point hosting has been totally cost prohibitive in this country though....

This is from personal experience. All my friends are hosted OS and I dont eat weeties!!!!

My last company was approached to partner with IBM for the server farm idea, so we obviously did a lot of study into the reasons behind the costing and other related issues.

True, the history of Australian telecommunications has shown us to be always 10 steps behind anywhere else, and that was heightened back in the late 90's when we were being hit with dual data charges before the worldwide agreement was done if memory serves me correctly, in oslo. Since then, the same old follow telstra campaign was followed by all others not only as it wasnt practical to do anything else but that it was an accepted standard practise.

Since 2000, this has changed and we are now seeing a shift from the monopoly to oligopoly, and on to segmented oligopolies within the telecommunications industry. This is heightened by the shift of focus by international markets towards Australia, and investment into infrastructure. The catalyst is the smaller players now that are deciding to place investment capital in to segmented areas like hosting services and play this new found advantage back against the world markets. It does stand to reason that the amount of investment capital injected at present into infrastructure equates to a shift in market forces directed outward apart from enhanced developments locally.

Sales in server equipment is growing locally, especially in hosting environments and this trend will continue to grow with increased awareness by the local consumers. The only drawback of our climate at present is our incoming data ratio's due to the amount of sites hosted in overseas markets, reflected in our connectivity charges for internet services.
The current state of supply and demand isnt that we cannot offer competitive services, rather the willingness to offer at those prices, which is a big difference in the scope of pricing and reasoning behind such pricing locally.

As for phpwebhosting, give them a miss and use someone like akashik.net, venturesonline.com or hostmatters.com as either have excellect support and offer value overall if you like reliability in your u.s. based hosting. Best bet is to go thru an Aussie owned host though and at least have a little bit of change flow back to Australia