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5 Best Hosting Services in 2021 – Reviewed by Australians
Web hosting has come a long way since the early days of setting up your own FTP server and adding each HTML page one by one.
Setting up hosting is now easier than ever.
Hosting providers generally fall into 2 categories.
Those that want to overcharge you and those that don’t. Since you probably found this page by looking for the “best web hosting” I’m going to assume you’re in that second camp. ?
But first, I need to explain something.
You’re probably gonna take a look at this list and think why hasn’t Will included any local Australian companies. The reasons are simple – servers, support and pricing from non-Aussie hosts are just better.
The explanation behind this is simple – larger companies have bigger infrastructure so their cost per customer is actually lower and they pass that off to you.
The second one is a bit more technical. It’s about data centers.
You can think of data centers as giant computer farms that store your website. When a reader wants to read your content, look at your uploaded cat videos or visit your business website they need to request files from the datacenter.
To be perfectly blunt, Australia doesn’t have the best data centers.
That’s why most of my picks rely on overseas data centers, with my top pick using a state of the art Singaporean datacenter. Alright enough nerd talk. Let’s jump into this review and help you find the best picks.
| WEB HOST | PRICE | LOAD TIME | RATING | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SiteGround | $4.99/mo | 713ms | ★★★★★ |
| 2 | Hostinger | $0.99/mo | 389ms | ★★★★★ |
| 3 | Bluehost | $2.95/mo | 1.765ms | ★★★★★ |
| 4 | HostGator | $2.75/mo | 657ms | ★★★★★ |
| 5 | A2 Hosting | $2.94/mo | 223ms | ★★★★★ |
What is Privacy Australia?
Privacy Australia believes in the solemn mandate of defending the very fragile concept of digital dignity. This quest is more so urgent at this time in our society when people’s privacy and data are under siege. Data compromise and intrusion are a constant threat from malign actors and hackers spanning the range of individual, corporate, and even nation-states.
The mission we have at Privacy Australia is to ensure that the separation between your private life, which should be as secret as you want, does not intrude or interfere with your public self without your consent. We want all Australians to understand the rapidly evolving world of data privacy. Because without this understanding, digital sovereignty can not be vigorously defended.
My name is William J. Ellis and the seeds for Privacy Australia were sown when I was working as a security analyst in Beijing back in 2008. It started as a quest to circumvent China’s ban on basic websites like Wikipedia and Facebook (the ban continues today with much more volume and heavy-handedness).
In so doing, I ran headlong into the murky standards of virtual private networks, and Privacy Australia germinated from my response to that problem.
?? Australian Hosting Reviews ??
We don’t want to inundate you with information. Although we have provided plenty of information, we have nevertheless made them simple to understand. Ranking our hosts numerical serves that purpose by providing an immediate snapshot of their hierarchical status.
Our ranking systems places our selected hosts in descending order of recommendation, starting with the top recommendation, subsequently followed by the others. To further avoid unnecessary information burden, we’ve only incorporated the top five choices.
If you have any questions, you can contact us here.
The Best Web Hosting Services in 2021
Below are the top five Australian web hosting reviews based on their cost, speed, customer service, and uptime.
1. SiteGround – Embraced by Over 2 Million Domains
Average uptime of 99.95%
Average load time of 713ms
SiteGround has distinguished itself as one of the most popular and highest rated hosting providers in the WordPress community.
Australians evidently agree with the verdict.
Easy Installs and Setup ✅
They provide unique, in-house WordPress solutions that are big on speed and security to make your site is as fast and secure as possible. But SiteGround isn’t just riding the coattails of WordPress as the most ubiquitous content management system. Apart from being a great solution for both new and established WordPress projects, they aren’t a one-trick pony.
They have a highly-attuned customer support service that is knowledgeable, fast, and friendly. Also, they have other competitive advantages that enable them to stand out from the crowd.
Fast Speeds, Free SSL and Upgrades ✅
It’s optimized hosting plans include cutting-edge features such as automatic upgrades, built-in WP caching, a widespread and dispersed content delivery network (CDN), one-click staging and GIT version control. They tout their solutions as in-house built, giving them the flexibility and nimbleness to tailor these solutions to their customers’ needs.
Best Performance and Support ✅
While other providers offered low initial and renewal rates, SiteGround’s performance in terms of speed, uptime reliability, and robust support are far better than anything other hosts have to offer. There are renowned as the best 24/7 support in the industry, so much so that they’re an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider.
SiteGround also offers some of the lowest rates for all secondary add on services like renewal, Cloudflare protection as well as free SSL.
2. Hostinger – Best Cheap Host
Average uptime of 99.1%
If you’re looking for an affordable web hosting solution without sacrificing quality, then search no more.
Hostinger is the answer to your quest.
While promotional pricing is viewed as a widespread marketing tactic, especially in the hosting industry designed to capture low-hanging fruit, Hostinger has nevertheless mastered the art of this strategy, ensuring the benefits impact you just as much as it does them.
Cheapest Host Without Sacrificing Quality ✅
Hostinger’s price usually fluctuates between $0.99 to $2.15 per month on a semi-regularly basis. To take full advantage of the low price discount, you can pin down the price for 48 months. This provides a user with a bargain hosting price of below $70, which is quite remarkable.
If you harbor any misconception or concern that their service might be inferior because of its pricing, let’s quickly disabuse you of that notion. Although it is still a relative newcomer, Hostinger delivers on its promise.
Hostinger provides all of the rudimentary features the other hosting providers offer, but with the extra sweetening of its marvelous pricing. The downside is that you won’t get all of the attractive accessories that come with all the plans. So it is incumbent upon you to review you’re the range of features you anticipate you’ll require before picking a package.
Free Domain With Registration ✅
Apart from cost-price benefits, it still offers many risk guarantees and protection: it gives a free domain to use, in addition to free SSL protection. On top of that, you’ll still receive a generous money-back guarantee spanning 30 days! And that includes the lowest-tier package on offer.
The crux of the matter is, Hostinger is a great choice, especially if you’re trying to save a lot of money with a host that still delivers outstanding performance.
Free Website Builder ?️
Hostinger’s website builder is called Zyro and you do not have to be an experienced designer to find your way around it. Zyro is quite simple to use and, as an added bonus, you do not need any coding experience to use it.
Free SSL certificate to authenticate your domain, unlimited SSD storage and unlimited bandwidth are just one of many included features that come with Zyro. One more feature we found quite useful was an enormous library of free images that you can use to design your website any way you see fit.
If you have a need to design your logo or improve it, you can do that here as well. Zyro’s Logo Maker makes your brand more accessible to the public. You can design your logo in no time without anyone’s help.
Pro Tip – Looking for more discount hosts? Check out our guide to cheap VPN Australia.
3. Bluehost – Most Reputable Host But Kinda Expensive
Average uptime of 99.74%
Average load time of 1.765ms
If you were playing word association, the first thing that would come to mind concerning Bluehost is the word “easy.” It has set itself apart from the pack with its simplicity of use.
Among other things, Bluehost has set itself apart from the pack with its simplicity of use. If there is one recurring theme in the positive online reviews you’ll read about Bluehost, it is that it stands out as one of the best web hosting services for beginners.
The company clearly understands the points of pain that bedevil beginners, and have consequently gone above and beyond to make sure the process is less confusing for people who are venturing into hosting for the first time.
1 Click Installs for WordPress + Tons of Guides ✅
Several things lend Bluehost this smooth-sailing quality. Its interface and tools are geared toward a level of intuitiveness that beginners comprehend and appreciate. The 1-Click installation option that is featured in all their plans is also a huge draw for these newbies who aren’t technically savvy for the multi-step processes involved in traditional setup procedures.
Though Bluehost speed is good, it nonetheless tends to experience lag and latency with bigger websites. However, one thing you cannot deny them: they are very persistent. They are extremely skilled at marketing and advertising, so brace yourself to start seeing their ads follow you everywhere once you visit their website.
65% Off All Plans (But Expensive Upsells) ❌
The aggressive marketing aside, its competitive pricing is another attractive aspect of Bluehost that makes it a draw for beginners: you can currently get 65% off all plans. As if that weren’t enough, BlueHost also offers a 100% money-back guarantee. This is ideal for freelancers and bloggers who are just starting and realize it might take a while to monetize their website.
That being said – BlueHost will try to charge you and arm and a leg for all of their services.
4. HostGator Cloud Hosting – Best Cloud Hosting for Price
Average uptime of 99.4%
Average load time of 657ms
Websites and gators maybe two strange bedfellows, but HostGator has somehow been able to make the marriage work.
The ruggedness of the alligator is an apt metaphor of the site’s name.
As the saying goes, the best ability is availability, so the reliability of service is one of the most important and cherished attributes of any website. HostGator executes this feature in spades, providing outstanding uptime for its service at a low price.
Amazing Uptime and Speed Performance ✅
Over the past 16 months, it has posted an average of 99.98% uptime. HostGator also manages to do a couple of other things quite well. In addition to its uptime prowess, the blazing fast servers it has is equally remarkable.
They claim to have “up to 2x faster load times” as a result of a diversity of features, such as premium hardware, low-density servers, and multiple caching layers.
It is quite reassuring that they can stand behind their service and that as a customer, you won’t be penalized if there’s a temporary dip in performance.
Great for Small Business Hosting ✅
For example, in a scenario where the average uptime gets below 99.9% for the month, their customers possibly stand to gain a payment credit for that entire month. This concession, however, excludes planned maintenance or other one-time fluke events. But, it is comforting for clients to know that their business won’t be penalized if the hosting service performance temporarily slips.
In terms of user-friendliness, WestGator has launched a website builder feature that helps readers with their install. For the uninitiated new user still grappling with hosting technicalities, the website builder makes creating their website a breeze.
These attributes, coupled with a robust base of global servers make HostGator an exceptional choice. However, its pricing paints a bit more complicated picture. As remarkable as the page load and uptime speeds of their shared servers happen to be, the HostGator’s Cloud service blew them out of the water.
Which then begs the question – why aren’t customers falling over themselves upgrading to the cloud service. Well, the answer to that question happens to be pricing.
The pricing advertised for HostGator’s Cloud option starts at $4.95/month and rises to $9.95/month. This sticker shock is quite the turn off for customers, compelling them to stick with the shared hosting instead.
It doesn’t help that the Cloud option locks you into a longer, three-year term too.
But there is some silver lining, as Gator has improved the situation by offering an exclusive discount, bring down its Cloud pricing to only $2.99/month. This essentially means that you’ll be getting a MUCH better service in return, while only paying shared hosting rates.
However, the discount currently applies only to one, three, and six-month plans. So, after the initial term, the pricing will subsequently rise to $8.95, which is the renewal rate on the lowest plan.
5. A2 Hosting – Great Performance for Price
Average uptime of 99.1 %
Average load time of 223ms
Speed kills they say, but in the world of online hosting, it might as well enhance the longevity of your business.
A2 Hosting’s excellent speed ranks as one of the best in the business.
It is a comprehensively solid hosting platform, with an all-around good game which includes an extremely high uptime, and helpful customer support.
A2 Hosting has staying power. It has been around since 2001 and apart from its longevity, A2 has a track record of excellence, regularly featuring in PCMag’s ‘Best Web Hosting Service’ list.
A2 made our list based on its strong record in areas ranging from shared monthly plans with rudimentary features, to packages focused on dedicated service plans. Though most of A2 Hosting’s data centers are stationed in Michigan, it still performs perfectly for small businesses throughout Australia.
How We Choose – The Ingredients that Make Up Our Web Hosting Criteria
They say you should never desire to know how the sausage gets made. Well, because we are rebels and contrarians at heart we like bending the rules to treat our customers like adults, and so we are unveiling the contents of the black box we used to judge the hosting services on our list.
So, without further ado, and in no particular order of importance, these criteria were used to shift the wheat from the chaff:
Reliability (Uptime and Downtime)
Reliability is an important metric because you want your host provider to be dependable. If they have the best features available, but you can’t rely on them to deliver consistently, that doesn’t do you any good.
High availability is a hallmark of a hosting service to guarantee a certain level of performance operational, especially for a period that is higher than normal.
The individual factors that represent facets of reliability are uptime and downtime. Without getting too much into the weeds, uptime is regarded as a measure of the uninterrupted, unbroken sequence of time that a hosting platform experiences.
In a perfect world, hosting systems would ideally have an uptime of 100%. But such perfection is almost impossible to sustain or attain. Concerning hosting services, it is the amount of time, expressed in hours, that a server can provide service and remain available.
Understanding Downtime
Downtime is the opposite of uptime, which indicates a trend in the wrong direction. Uptime is an important statistic to focus on because it signals whether your service is available to your users. Needless to say, if your website isn’t available then it reflects poorly on you. It looks unprofessional, hurts your business and highly detrimental to your brand equity.
Therefore, as a potential customer, when looking at Australian web hosting reviews, consider only those services with very little downtime, which have a quick turnaround system in place so that the occasions when are unavailable are rare, and mostly involve routine maintenance.
High levels of uptime and data availability can usually be achieved through using multiple, redundant systems to ensure that one failure will not result in downtime as there are backup systems in place to take up the slack. It possible, ascertain whether the hosting provider has enough fail-safe redundancy in place for your region.
Furthermore, a quality web hosting service which holds these factors in high regard will respect your business by granting you advance notice, and try to schedule any unavoidable downtime during the periods that will result in the least business disruption.
Speed
Speed Fortunately, the era of dial-up internet connection is over.
Don’t allow a hosting provider to drag you back into the dark ages.
High-speed internet and widespread broadband connectivity with its accompanying lavish bandwidth, have conditioned consumers to accept a base standard of speed and service load times.
Coupled with our increasingly short attention span, customers are not liable to wait around for a couple of extra seconds for your web page to load, no matter how rich and engaging your content may be.
So, apart from being important for your professionalism, as well as your search engine optimization (SEO), speed enhances the user experience of those who visit your site. And if you provide users with a favorable experience, they will be more inclined to return.
As a result, the speed of access that a hosting provider offers is extremely important. To ascertain whether a host is fast, you should take it upon yourself to test their speed over a period of time, during both peak and off-peak hours.
Hosting Customer Support
How a web host communicates with you as a customer to address your concerns and questions cannot be overstated. Poor customer support is one of the reasons that clients sour on a business.
There can be a significant difference in the quality of support received from one host to the next.
Most web hosting services lack enough customer support staff to respond to requests in real-time.
Though they may not have adequate staff to answer phone calls, they should, however, be able to respond to your inquiry via email.
The rule of thumb is the average turnaround time to respond to your inquiry is 24 hours. But excellent response times are within the 4-hour range. If however, it takes more than a day or two for them to get back to you, that is a red flag. It either means that they lack adequate staff to respond to your request promptly, or worse, they simply don’t care.
Also be wary if they don’t provide technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round. Because server failure doesn’t take time off, proceed cautiously if they don’t have support staff at their posts during holiday seasons.
What is the Most Well-Known and Renowned Web Hosting Service?
We’re not exactly comparing apples and oranges, so it can be challenging to judge the different hosts due to all the different hosting options and prices available. For example, there are some free web hosts available, while others cost as low as $1 or $2 a month.
Choosing between web hosts with attractive, though conflicting interests requires a carefully orchestrated balance on your part: you don’t want to go too cheap on your web hosting, and yet you shouldn’t acquire a powerful host package that you don’t need.
Therefore, the best advice, especially when you can’t anticipate your future needs, is to keep it simple initially and then upgrade as your needs demand.
Top Hosting Types for Australian Businesses
Every business has different niches, product categories, target customers, and service focus. Therefore, their hosting needs can’t be expected to be monolithic. As a result, a variety of hosting types exist to meet the needs of different businesses.
We’ll dive in to take a look at the most common types of web hosting plans so you determine which one would best serve the needs of your business.
There are five broad categories under which web hosting services are pigeonholed. They are shared, virtual private server (VPS), cloud, dedicated and reseller. Without further ado, let’s proceed to review each kind of hosting plan in detail.
What is Shared Hosting?
A shared web hosting service is a service in which several sites reside and share one web server. As the name suggests, it means that the services of the server aren’t exclusively dedicated to a single website. Rather, the resources of the server are distributed among several websites.
This is the most economical choice for hosting, as the general cost of maintaining the server is spread across numerous customers. This makes it the least expensive option because, with this type of hosting, you’re essentially renting space that you share with other sites. It invariably has a simple plan and setup procedure.
The shared hosting arrangement works because most websites get a small quantity of traffic, so the shared server isn’t onerously burdened. Hence, the websites can adequately share server resources without facing performance issues.
What is VPS Hosting?
The next logical step and upgrade above shared hosted is the Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. A virtual machine emulates a computer system, but it isn’t an actual physical machine.
A VPS is just a software program or operating system that exhibits the behavior of a separate computer. Because it is based on computer architecture, it can provide the functionality of an actual computer, performing tasks such as running applications and programs.
What makes a virtual private server a great hosting option you ask? Well, it is a natural progression from a basic shared plan, presenting an improved hosting option for small to medium-sized businesses frustrated with the limitations that come with most shared web hosting services concerning uptime, storage, and speed.
A big advantage of using VPS is that you have full control over it unlike the shared hosting server, and yet you don’t pay as if you’re using a dedicated server.
However, unlike the shared hosting plan, the setup and management process is more intricate.
What is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting and cloud computing have been growing in popularity in recent years. Cloud computing is on-demand availability of resources from a computer system. Some of the resources that the customer rents are data storage, computer processing power; however, these are now under the control and direct active management of the user.
Likewise, cloud hosting is equally becoming very popular along with the rise of cloud computing. When you request cloud hosting, you are procuring computing resources from a cloud computing provider or facility to assist you to host your data, services and/or solutions. In cloud hosting, Divide and Rule is the name of the game.
The way this concept is implemented in cloud hosting is by having the resources of your website spread across more than one web server. Consequently, it is rendered to you as per need basis
Though it has similarities with VPS, the fundamental difference between them is that in cloud computing, the user is using a distributed system of servers through which their resources are spread, instead of a dedicated physical address.
The benefits which accrued to the customer due to this distributed workload include easy scalability and faster loading times.
What is Dedicated Hosting?
If you’re inclined toward the best, then dedicated hosting is the way to go. A dedicated hosting service is the kind of internet hosting in which you don’t share with anyone else but lease an entire server for your usage.
It is the best and most expensive option, requiring a more complex and intricate setup.
Reseller-Based Hosting and How It Works
This is a form of hosting in which the owner of an account can use their apportioned resources such as bandwidth and hard drive space to host websites in support of other third parties.
With reseller-based hosting, you purchase enough server resources to enable you to operate your own web hosting service.
Comparison of Web Hosting – Which CMS is Best For You?
A content management system (CMS) enables you to handle digital content on a website in a coherent, streamlined way. It facilitates the authoring, collaboration, and management of websites.
A CMS comes with a peculiar interface, is ideally suited for a certain type of website, and more inclined to work with specific hosting options than others.
There are many CMS options on the market but the most popular are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento.
WordPress
When it comes to the CMS and entire webpage building ecosystem, WordPress is a juggernaut, the proverbial 1,000-pound gorilla in the room.
WordPress is currently used on over 60 million websites, including those of most top-tier organizations.
Though it started as a blogging tool, it has entrenched itself as a robust CMS.
However, for the uninitiated in the world of WordPress, there is a distinction between wordpress.org and wordpress.com, as they are two different platforms. WordPress.com is free but with limited theme support and allows no plugins. WordPress.org, on the other hand, has full theme support and provides total branding freedom.
WordPress incorporates lots of features but one of its main benefits is its ease of customization along with the range of tools it supplies.
Joomla
In the CMS world, Joomla comes a distant second. One of the reasons Joomla is lagging so far behind WordPress is because it isn’t particularly user-friendly. Unless there is some sentimental reason you’re attached to Joomla, a switch to WordPress is the best-advised course of action.
PHP
The popularity of WordPress means that it is imperative to learn how to use the tools and languages that come with it. One common consistent among the popular CMSs is their reliance on PHP as their server-side scripting language.
PHP isn’t a CMS but it is the backbone of its programming. It is required to set up a CMS-driven website, you’ll need to know PHP, or have to hire a PHP developer if you want specific features or apps on your website.
Can All Business Use These Web Hosts?
Most of the hosting companies listed here can scale and handle an ever-growing amount of traffic. Whether you’re a small business still trying to create online impact or you’re already an internet behemoth with 500,000 monthly views, these hosts are more than capable of accommodating you.
Start with the lowest hosting plan, no matter how optimistic you are on the growth of your website. If it outgrowths its current capacity, you can always upgrade to a more scalable service plan.
The common denominator among Australia’s best web host providers is their provision of WordPress, especially in their shared hosting plans. This has the benefit of saving customers on costs while providing a much-requested application.
Best Web Host or WORST Hosting?
It is easy to get enamored by cheap products, especially when it comes to web hosting. After all, who doesn’t want to get bargain rock-bottom prices? While it may be easy to live with the consequences of freebies with other products, the decision may very well come back to bite you with hosting.
As the saying goes, if you pay peanuts, you’ll probably get a monkey service.
Too many scams abound in the web hosting industry, with companies offering low rates to hoodwink customers who don’t know any better.
But beware because it’s a bargain with the devil – although you may save some money initially, such cheap hosting has much fewer features. And after they hook you in, they’ll look for ways to charge you for all kinds of premium add-ons.
If you think that the companies perpetrating these scams are some backwater nonentities that prey on the unsuspecting public, you are sorely mistaken. Due to extensive marketing and aggressive PR, some of the worst perpetrators have been able to launder their image successfully.
While we don’t necessarily like naming and shaming, there is, however, an overriding public good that comes from identifying these perpetrators that outweighs concerns for hurt feelings.
GoDaddy – They have slick marketing, but don’t let that fool you. Their service is low-quality yet, they charge you a premium for add-ons that would be free with other hosts.
We think their reputation is bogus, though they are often touted as the best web host in Australia. ScamDaddy would be a more appropriate name in our estimation.
Network Solutions – They have somehow managed to combine the dreaded, non-holy grail of web hosting – poor service and low-quality servers.
They are a terrible choice, so we strongly advise not to listen to whatever hosting review that extolls their imaginary virtues.
If you elect to go with a cheap web host, beware when you try to extricate yourself from their shackles and decide to switch to a better provider. They’ll make it such a hassle that you’ll wish you had gone with a quality provider from the beginning.
Web Hosting – Things to Avoid Like the Plague.
Small business owners crave low cost and minimal overhead. However, the few bucks you might save isn’t worth the pain and heartache you’ll experience later.
- Brace Yourself of Potential Security Breaches – It doesn’t come as a surprise that these bottom-feeding web hosts have lax security practices. They are always trying to cut corners and don’t ultimately have the best interests of their clients at heart to invest in top-notch security measures. For buttress our point, the web host 000Webhost had 13-million user names and passwords leaked.
- Eventually, You’ll discover that Something, Anything is Bound to Cost You Extra – These discount hosts find several underhanded ways to rip off off hapless victims. The most common is balkanizing items and charging miscellaneous fees they have no business doing. For example, they may charge customers, say, $30 just for domain registration, another $30 for some essential privacy protection, and perhaps, $100 for SSL. Before you know it, you’re staring in disbelief at a bill of $160 per year!
- Poor IP Neighbourhood – Low-quality hosts are notorious for this, and you should beware of this practice because factors such as hosting density, the number, and quality of the domains hosted on a particular server impact your own service delivery. For example, if on just a 16 IP address, a web host manages to share that IP space between say, 9.5k websites, this could make your search engine optimization (SEO) more difficult.
If most sites on that IP are spammy and thus potentially dangerous neighbors, you are in real trouble since that would reflect poorly on your business. Low-quality sites with bad reputations hosted on the same IP or subnet as yours will undermine your website.
What Determines Hosting Speed?
Determining hosting speed isn’t rocket science, so don’t overthink. Two simple rules impact hosting speed: data centers and dedicated Internet Protocol (IP) address.
Data centers are the pulse, the heartbeat of the speed solution. Therefore, the fastest web hosts invariably have super latency data center(s). Earlier, we discussed the dangers to your website reputation, and by extension, SEO optimization posed by the practice of poor IP neighborhood.
A dedicated IP, on the other hand, usually fosters speed. 90% of the time, you don’t need to have an exclusive IP address for your domain, since many WordPress configurations don’t need one.
The Choice Between Windows or Linux Based Hosts
Windows operating system (OS) and its open-source Linux counterpart has been raging on for quite some time. However, they have both evolved to meet the demands of the internet age. Consequently, choosing either one wouldn’t put you at an insurmountable disadvantage.
Most server-side applications are developed to have cross-platform appeal. But an OS can exclusively support some web hosting apps. For example, cPanel is only on Linux.
Windows also has some developer tools designed to only run on its OS. Otherwise, you can use a virtualization setup to get support for an app that isn’t compatible with the OS you’re using.
Although we don’t have the stats, anecdotal evidence suggests that most web hosts use Windows. These factors highlight their uniqueness:
Windows
Windows has been Microsoft’s flagship product and OS for decades.
As a result, if you go with a Windows-based host, you’ll have at your disposal Window’s databases and apps such as ASP.Net.
You’ll usually pay a bit more for Windows-based host platforms than for Linux, even though Windows is prone to crashing more often. Its proprietary nature is likely responsible for the increased expense, but at least you’ll be getting support from Microsoft.
Linux
Linux is the most widely used server, making it the industry standard. It is cheaper than Windows systems, but that doesn’t mean you’re being shortchanged on quality. Its servers are super reliable, allowing you to run almost any application.
Linux is also very good with most of the modern programming tools such as scripts and is quite popular as a web application development platform. If you designed a web app, you’ve probably encountered LAMP systems. LAMP is the acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.
What is “Unlimited” Hosting And How Does It Work?
The best analogy for “unlimited” hosting is that it is akin to your favorite all-you-can-eat buffet. “Unlimited” hosting refers to offers where the provider hasn’t established resource limits. It is also important to note that these types of offers only have a bearing on reasonable situations.
The caveat is important to remember since the offer will likely be inapplicable if you’re getting millions of page views.
The resources that are usually extended this unlimited courtesy include disk storage, bandwidth, data transfer and in some cases, the number of addon domains. The unlimited domain addons are attractive since the hosting provider is offering you the opportunity to host as many websites as you want at an affordable price.
These offers are to entice new customers, so don’t get carried away by the advertisement, but rather check the conditions that apply. It doesn’t benefit you if the unlimited bandwidth offered happens to throttle when there’s a huge amount of traffic, and substantially slows down.
Therefore, in our Australian hosting reviews, we made a judgment call not to include any hosts that make unlimited hosting offer claims.
Initial Steps to Domain Hosting in Australia
Several things go into setting up a website. While we’ve been talking about the best hosting platforms in Australia, there might be so many things you don’t know about launching a website. Not to worry, because we are here to help.
Perhaps, there are terminologies you are unaware of, or unfamiliar with regarding web hosting. These may include name records, hosting packages, domain name registration, and so on.
These weird-sounding terms shouldn’t freak you out because they aren’t as complicated as they seem. And besides, we’re here to help you out. These are the most likely terminologies you’ll encounter in your quest to establish a website, so keep on reading.
For those New Zelander’s looking for a hosting solution check out our guide to best hosting nz.
Domains
Every begins with the domain. Before you can set up a website or hosting of any sort, you’ve got to have a domain name. To put it n layman’s terms, a domain is the name of your website.
A domain name is the main part of a website URL address, placed immediately after the hypertext protocol (http(s)) and www (world wide web) portion of the string. This address is utilized by internet users to find your website.
Registering a domain is the process you go through to acquire a domain and get it under your control. Once created, a domain acts as the foundation of several other fruitful online activities. You can add pages, blogs, ecommerce functionality or even subdomains to your domain.
Australian Domain Registers and Registrars
A domain registry is a database that contains all the domain names, along with all accompanying registrant information of Top Level Domains (TLD) like .com, .net, and.org.
A company has to be accredited before it can sell domain names to people.
The organization so accredited is called a registrar. The public can then purchase domain names through them or transfer an already owned domain to another registrar.
Therefore, a registry is like a wholesale manufacturer while a registrar is similar to a shop or dealer.
How Do Domain Name Servers (DNS) Help The Internet
The domain you just acquired is stored as a sequence of numbers known as an IP address in a domain name server (DNS). A DNS then takes the human-friendly domain name records, which are the domains that people type as web addresses, and maps those to their respective IP address.
Web Hosting Mistakes to Avoid
Setting up your site on a host isn’t exactly rocket science. With enough common sense and due diligence, it shouldn’t be difficult to succeed. But common sense isn’t very common, so here are some things to avoid like the plague.
- Going with the cheapest host your can find – There is some virtue in saving costs and looking for discounts. But you need to realize when the tradeoff for cheapest, lowest cost results in the albatross of a crappy product hanging round your neck.
- Selecting a CMS platform other than WordPress – Regardless of the kind of website you’re building (blog, online newspaper, ecommerce), WordPress has the competence and simplicity to make your work easier. And oh, did we mention that it has a thriving community with 33% of all websites using it?
- Not reading the fine print – Does this really need further elaboration? When a host provider is promising you heaven and earth, with “unlimited” resources to boot, it behooves you to read the fine print to know where the legal loopholes are hidden.
- Paying for SSL – Legitimate hosts don’t require you to pay for a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate.
Finding The Top Host in Australia – Wrapping it Up With a Tidy Bow
In this article, we’ve tried to be detailed without overwhelming you with too much information. Despite our best intentions, we do realize that this is a lot to process.
You don’t need to read the guide all at once; it is broken down into self-contained segments so you can use it as a reference and study at your own convenience.
While evaluating web hosts, keep your own specific needs in mind. Quality is important, so don’t base your purchase decisions solely on price. Your website is an important part of your brand identity. As a result, it is too crucial to meekly accept the accolades web host providers heap on themselves at face value.
Hopefully, this guide will serve to illuminate your mind on what to avoid and the things to embrace when looking for a web host provider.
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