I want to Consult with you about web hosting.
I own a web site and i'm looking for a server.
I noticed that local companies are very Expensive, and also requires more money for extra memory,database,webmails etc'.
I recently reached a web site <URL snipped: top 10 list> that gives information and recomondations about companies who offers webhosting for a better price,
no matter how big is the web site and no data base restriction-But all the servers there are from USA.
Is there a difference between a local server from another state?
Is there a problem using a server from out of my state?
I will be thankful if you can help me find a server for my web site.

I forgot to mention that I am from Australia

It really won't make a big difference if your host is the USA and not Australia. But, if most of your website's visitors come from Australia, then you should find a local host. I've heard good things about AussieHost. However, if you plan to make more of a global online presence, then I would choose a host in the USA so that the whole world could connect without issues.

Hope that helps.

May I ask what your website is?

Seems that all internet access is costly in Australia, this is why many of our client do host here in the US, even if your target audience is your native country it makes more sense to host here.

Aussie web hosts are pretty good and you shall probably stay use a provider which has servers in your own country. One more thing I hope you aren't using this forum to post links to some kind of top hosting site.

It makes a very big difference on whether you host your site in the same country as your targetted visitors, or overseas!

In this case...if your majority visitors are Australians, there are four reasons to locate your hosting locally - in Australia. And the main consideration when hosting a website, application, data-base or whatever, is location, i.e. putting it as close as possible to the end user. This improves speed and availability by eliminating the reliance on international links.

The following 4 factors should influence your decision on where to host your website:

Speed: This ties in nicely with "location", the single most important consideration! From an Australian perspective...it is a proven fact that there is more latency when visiting websites hosted in the US as compared to websites hosted in Australia (when you are viewing from and based in Australia). This can be quite simply explained: Everything on the internet travels at the speed of light - all good connections anyway :-). So if something, anything (a packet of data in this case) travels from point A to point B and back again at the speed of light, it is only logical that the shorter the distance from A to B the quicker that something will get to the final destination. In this case, these packets of data have to travel across the entire Pacific Ocean to get to the US and then travel all the way back again to show you the web page you are viewing (and every subsequent page, bits-of-data and images after that)! So, not getting too technically involved, it is fairly straight forward to understand Australian based servers and web hosting doesn’t need to travel across the biggest ocean in the world, and therefore will be faster than US based hosting! Many people say it doesn't matter, but it defintely does and that prompts the second important consideration.

Search engine visibility: Search engines base their algorithms on a number of factors, one of them being the IP address location. Also, the actual domain can help, such as a .com.au domain for a business website targeting the Australian market. Overseas hosting can still work with some additional steps, like logging into the search engine webmaster tools and telling them who your target market is. But by default the country of your target audience is given priority.

Support: Isn’t it nice to call someone and actually be able to speak to them during “normal” hours? Aside from this, if there are any types of disputes, how successful do you think you are going to be at resolving them as opposed to dealing with a local company under the same law as yourself? Australia has Departments of Fair Trading that are designed to protect the consumer from getting the short end of the stick. Seriously, what are you going to do with a US based company if they don’t want to co-operate, or if they don’t take your calls or emails? Think about it.

Economy: Why support another country’s economy. I have nothing against supporting foreign trade or foreign business and I would actually recommend it if you can’t get that same product or level of service locally. However, given the facts above, and especially when the local product and service is available at a competitive and very affordable price. Why go looking overseas for something you can already get locally and is in fact the better option if your target market is Australia. Many people say Australian hosting is expensive, however if this is your business you are talking about, any hosting, anywhere is a negligible cost.

Also, beware of "unlimited" offers, these are unsustainable and if you choose to use one, be sure to have complete control of your domain name and have very frequent backups of your website.

Thanks !

The web <URL snipped> suggest 8 Companies - did you hear about them? Can you help me choose?
By the way , I will show you my new site soon

And thanks again !!

While the original poster got banned for promoting a top 10 list website in the most naive way, this thread had so much good advice that I thought of just keeping it public.

@NewSprout - thanks for your Australian insight. While I agree with most of your thoughts, lots of providers have 24/7/365 phone support. And I wouldn't say if this is your business you are talking about, any hosting, anywhere is a negligible cost - maybe for shared, but not for colocation.

And what is actually so bad about unlimited plans? When you are going for a shared account it is not likely that you would need enough resources to violate the host Acceptable Usage Policy. And if you do not violate the policy you actually get what you need. I mean is there any use of paying extra dollars for those 2 Gb you currently lack if there are hosts our there that would just not meter your Disk usage? Of course they will track your resource usage and this is actually more important than space itself. So I think it is better to look for the appropriate resource usage policies policies if you are going with the shared offer.
And as for the Dedicated offers or VPSs i think unlimited is a word to fear here. This is truly a lie for a VPS or a dedicated server.

My pleasure Steve, yes I agree, I was mainly referring to shared, but even for dedicated, if a business needs to use a dedicated hosting service it means it is quite heavily reliant on it's online presence and therefore needs to set a realistic budget to get the service they require to offer a reliable service for their customers. But you are right, cost is always a factor, however it just overrides common sense sometimes :-)

Also, 24x7 support is a fairly abused term, it's very different getting through to a call centre agent trained to be polite than getting through to a genuine tech that can fix the problem (this costs money). Many companies do this well, however the majority, in my opinion don't add much value. A query of technical nature usually needs to wait until the morning anyway and then the Aus/US time difference kicks in.

SergeyS, in my experience, most hosting companies that go out of business, do so because they offered some type of unsustainable offering (I'm talking from experience with clients we get that all of a sudden can't access their site or email) - both Aus and US hosts are guilty of this! It's fine to offer discounts and specials, but on a permanent basis doesn't make business sense. Not to say businesses don't do this successfully, just a note to check a little more carefully when you see unlimited all over the place, they have to be making money somewhere. Me personally, if I'm buying anything or doing business anywhere I want quality and to see the business is sustainable.

Having said that, US hosts are in a better position to offer unlimited bandwidth than Aus hosts. With shared hosting, like you said, most sites won't use the full resource. But whether you have unlimited or enough resources as a customer, what is the difference? You can always revisit the service if you eventually do need more. And therefore the cost becomes neglibible - for a business customer - whether they pay 5 bucks or 50 bucks, it's not a big financial decision, but the wrong decision can cause your business, website and email major headaches! Also, I'm not implying that expensive = good either.

From an Australian point of view, all I'm saying is do your research a bit more carefully if you see unlimited all over the place.

Cheers,
Gavin

If your market is in your country, you should use local hosting. As I know Google will give the priority result for local site first. But if your market is globe, I recommend you to use US hosting

And what Australia people thinks about hosting website in Singapore? This city is near them as I see in map

If you're targeting an Australian audience Singapore is still classed as another country (no matter how close it is on the map) and you're adding unnecessary international links, which affects speed and reliability...all the things mentioned above. Keep it as close to your target market as possible as angeli mentioned.