Finding the best Australian web hosting companies is not easy. This is because there are hundreds of firms that claim to be the best in the industry. While consumers can have their sites hosted by international firms, the best results can be obtained when Australian sites are hosted by Australia-based hosting firms. To find the best firm, be sure to consider the following factors:
1. Reliability of the Service
This is the most important consideration because you want your site to always be available 24/7 365 days a year. Your visitors should never get an error message when they visit your site. For this reason, you should start by making a shortlist of firms that offer 99.99% server up-time guarantee. The ideal firm should have multiple broadband connections to their data centers as well as automatic power back up systems to ensure that there is both network and power redundancy. Once you have a list of the most reliable hosting firms in Australia, narrowing down the search will not be difficult.
2. Range of Packages
Different types of businesses have different hosting needs. Bloggers and professionals may only require a few megabytes of storage space, but a large e-commerce website will need gigabytes of storage space. They also need more RAM and processing power. To ensure that the needs of different types of clients are met sufficiently, the ideal hosting firm should offer a number of hosting packages. There should be shared hosting, cloud hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated server hosting and reseller hosting among others. Furthermore, there should be several different hosting plans under each of these categories to ensure that consumers can always find exactly what they need.
3. Pricing
Whether you are buying clothes, groceries or hosting products, you want to spend the least amount of money on the highest quality product or service. To find the most powerful hosting plan at the lowest cost, be sure to visit the websites of all the firms on your shortlist to compare prices. Do not just rely on review websites as some of them may be biased; take the initiative and check the prices for yourself.
4. Freebies
There is a lot of competition in the hosting industry. This has forced hosting firms to offer freebies to stay ahead of the competition. For instance, most firms nowadays offer free domains with every hosting plan. Others offer huge discounts to first time clients. Most firms also offer free site builders and PPC advertising credits among other things. Be sure to check everything a firm offers before making a decision.