Do Australian Web Hosts really have Servers Australia or Servers USA

People seem to question web sites claiming to be Australian Web Hosting, and advertising Business Hosting, Web Site Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, hosted on Servers located here in Australia.

In an earlier post here on shonky web hosts we discussed the simplicity of opening a shared hosting resellers account, and claiming to be a large ISP or hosting company. Here we look further into the advantages of using a web host with servers in Australia or overseas.

Until the recent stock-market crash and the world economic disaster fiasco, the cheapest hosting was in the USA, where Aussies could grab a hosting package of good proportions, for a few dollars a month. Now with the vast devaluation of the Aussie Dollar, (approx .61c at the time of this post), overseas hosting has become very very expensive.

Lets consider overseas servers here first:

The Pros:
Larger disk space offers, more bandwidth, instant setups, moderate pricing.

The Cons:
Email support only, timezone difference, higher lag time, slower page loads.

Now the Australian Servers:

The Pros:
Faster loading, phone support, personal setups, local networks, lower priced, reliability.

The Cons:
Billy the School Boy, Amateur Host.

In general, the US based servers only ever appealed to Aussies when their costs were very low. How ever as I mentioned earlier, the current devaluation of the Australian Dollar has virtually ripped the heart out of this as being a viable option for reliable web hosting.

Proper Australian Web Hosting on Servers in Australia is the industry recommended solution for business web hosting, and in particular for Australian eCommerce Web Hosting. Why? Well one very important consideration is that the majority of Australian business and ecommerce web sites target a specific Australian audience, and Australian based servers will still reflect on our local Australian Network even if links to the US or Europe fail. Major search engines also recognize Australian IP addresses as being local, and can actually use this information to help target your audience with local search results.

Other considerations are that local servers are operated and maintained by local Australians, who are familiar with our currency, taxes, address formats, legislations, business practices, and even the name of your company! You are more likely to get a genuine and caring response from a local support technician at 3.30am here in the morning, than from someone across the globe who knows that you too are across the globe from them, and you cannot really do much about it. ie: They do not have to care, as distance provides immunity.

By the same token, any one dragged out of bed at 3.30am on an emergency server outage is not going to be 100% excited, but your local guy is going to be more understanding of the importance and need to get your site back online as fast as possible. It's a lot smoother when both parties are aware that they both are up at the same time, or working the same shift, trying to sip coffee and communicating over hundreds of kilometers, in similar cultures.

Then again, how many of us really enjoy calling our phone company or cable network in Australia, only to be greeted by a support person in another foreign country. Lets keep it local, and help keep our money here in Australia where it belongs!