(Disclaimer: Aaron W. from Crucial Paradigm emailed me early last week asking for a review on their re-launched Xen VPS plans. So here we go — a review on their Xen VPS after playing with one for a few days.)

Crucial Paradigm is a web hosting/web design company in Sydney, Australia that have both Australian and US based operations (just realised that their office is around 400 metres to where I work). They have been in business for 5 years now, and early this year they launched their virtual dedicated servers service, providing fully managed Xen VPS hosted at the Equinix data centre in Sydney (which is on the same road where I live!)

Two events this week that just made hosting business in Australia a bit tougher.

1. Weakening US Dollar

Australian dollar has just hit 93 cent USD today, and it is still on its way to parity (which I doubt will happen but I can be very wrong). Everything has already been more expensive in Australia than in US, and strong Aussie dollar + weak US dollar has just made the gap even wider.

From this Google Webmaster Central blog entry:

Does location of server matter? I use a .com domain but my content is for customers in the UK.

In our understanding of web content, Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, “.co.uk ” domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server’s IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.

That pretty much sums up why you would want to host a website on a server inside the country where its primary audiences are, especially when obtaining an appropriate ccTLD is less than trivial.

Alright. I might got my small Xen VPS hosted in Sydney, I am still looking for alternatives every now and then. After all, virtual private/dedicated server hosting in Australia has a very small market, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is good, because it does not take long to survey all the hosting providers to see what they have on offer. It is bad, because there actually aren’t many choices. Few choices means less competition. Less competition means expensive price. Expensive price means annoyed VPS shoppers heading overseas.

Anyway. I have documented my research and put a list of companies providing VPS in Australia.

Virtual Private Server Hosting in Australia

I am pretty sure that there are more VPS hosting providers in Australia than what is on the list, but these are the ones that I can find via the almighty Google. The documents are no where near being completed either, but hopefully I will find time adding more and more content to it.

This post is a continuation from my previous post, searching for an affordable VPS on the East coast Australia. At the end I was choosing between two offerings — GPLHost’s Xen package 4 in Sydney, or DarkStarX’s VDS package in Perth. Although DarkStarX is cheaper, but (1) it’s on OpenVZ with only 128Mb guaranteed (2) it’s on the west coast so 60ms ping, at the end I picked GPLHost.

3 weeks later, I am writing this review.

I have stated previously that I was looking for a virtual private server in Australia. I have 2-3 sites that are targeting the Aussies, and I want low network latency and better search engine optimisation for Google Australia (see why hosting in Australia). However, finding an Australian VPS that is “economical” (read: cheap) has proved to be very difficult.

I thought, maybe I’ll post my requirements here on HostingFu. Maybe someone knows a better deal than me.

According to Adam at Jumba, MD Web Hosting is Australia’s 2^nd largest budget hosting company, with SmartyHost the biggest and Jumba trailing behind.

However it appears SmartyHost might be a bit nervous with MD Web Hosting. Or may just want to make some quick bucks at someone’s downfall.

Jumba Interactive, a Melbourne-based web hosting company, is my current choice for the Australian-hosting needs. They have both Sydney and Melbourne based servers (mainly Dell dual Xeon’s), running cPanel on CentOS (I think). Network connectivity is pretty good for me, as they are peering with PIPE Networks, where most Australian ISP are also peering with.

Note: This is a re-post of this same-titled entry on my blog.

I wrote this quite a while ago on Whirlpool forum over a debate on Australian verses overseas (usually US-based) web hosting. Thread has since been closed (not my fault :) but I think I will jog down my thoughts here, looking at what is the most suitable web hosting solution for Aussies.