slicematt [03.19.07 01:57 PM]

We have several Australian customers and what you describe seems to be the case. It's a shame too, doesn't sound like the situation will get better since everyone is going with alternatives.

  Ian Waring [03.19.07 02:16 PM]

The first web site I ever set up was on rackshack (before it became ev1servers) in Texas, while I was sitting at the end of a 500kb/s broadband line in the UK (vintage 2002). Did everything from PHP development (using Zend Studio remotely) over SSH, to the finished site with credit card processing - and no one here knew where it was.

$80/month for a dedicated Red Hat 7.2 server, no contract and no bandwidth restrictions. Much better prices than you can get in the UK... even today.

Ian W.

  Bryce [03.19.07 03:44 PM]

It wasn't so long ago that hosting in Europe was prohibitively expensive and the local networks did such a poor job of peering with each other that traffic would often be routed through NYC or DC.

  Tony Williams [03.19.07 05:15 PM]

Allison,

It's not just hosting that is more expensive in Australia. .au domain names are more expensive than US alternatives and network bandwidth is ridiculous by comparison

In Australia it's not just a lack of economy of scale but a telecommunications infrastructure that has been crippled by government policy and a bungled sale of a government 'comms monopoly.

Most of us Aussies are perfectly happy to host in the US and stay as far away as possible from our own below par, over priced hosting.

# Tony

  Quoc [03.19.07 05:17 PM]

I also have some customers from Australia that stuck with me for 6 years. I always questioned why they didn't go with Australian hosts.

A more "distributed" method to host website is similar to the methods of CDNs in which hundred of servers are distributed globally and visitors are sent to their best server. The work of planetlabs, http://www.planet-lab.org/ , and http://www.globule.org/ uses this method. I really wonder if it will take off for general web hosting w/ ever decreasing prices of hosting.

  Andy Wong [03.19.07 05:31 PM]

People blame the monopoly of Telstra. While this could be the key reason, there are many others. I host web sites in Hong Kong after investigating providers in Europe and US.

  Pete Yandell [03.19.07 06:04 PM]

On the other hand, if connectivity between the US/Europe and Australia is good enough, Australian hosting providers could make a killing by turning the tide and offering competitive pricing for American and European customers.

The problem is that there's a couple of hundred milliseconds of latency between Australia and the States. Australian customers, who browse plenty of U.S. web sites, are used to it and not bothered by it. U.S. customers, who mostly hit U.S. sites, get annoyed by even that level of latency pretty quickly.

That's even putting aside the many reasons that Australia will be paying much more for bandwidth than the U.S. for a long time to come: geographic remoteness, small population, long distances, cost structures on international links, etc.

  Andrew Russell [03.19.07 06:33 PM]

I have had a little experience hosting from New Zealand, and it wasn't pretty.
The international bandwidth charges are crippling (often US7c per MB) because of Telecoms part ownership of the southern cross cable.
Telecom NZ is the incumbent voice provider that muscled it's way into being the dominant broadband ISP.
I was IT support for a now defunct site hosted in Canada http://web.archive.org/web/20060420012329/http://www.sunline.co.nz/index.html because of the extreme traffic that could be generated by the promotional site of a racing horse that was winning big at the time.
And the de-peering of international traffic in peering networks such as Citylink.co.nz has recently caused international traffic to skyrocket as the two major traffic players (Telecom and Telstra Clear) now require expensive individual peering relationships to get access to their subscribers without doing a back-and-forth to the states.
This article shows some light on the practice: http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/C272817F941D71D3CC257299000ADDA5

Oh why can't we have anti-trust legislation like you have in the States that held Microsoft to the fire for anti-competitive acts ... no wait ... maybe I need to do some catch up reading ;).

  Richard [03.19.07 06:44 PM]

Well... I came to say that I know that's the case here in Hong Kong - I know a few guys running decent-sized commercial sites, who host them in the US because the quality and cost of hosting here makes it uneconomical to do otherwise.

Then I see Andy's comment about hosting in HK to avoid Telstra. Maybe things aren't so bad here after all...

  Vinu Thomas [03.20.07 03:49 AM]

We have the same problem in India too. Hosting providers in India are much costlier than the US providers.
This is because the cost of running datacenters here in India is quite high.

  Daniele [03.20.07 06:00 AM]

I'm hosting my blog on mambo-express.com, it starts from 2,33$ month, it's customizable so I don't have to pay for large amount of disk space or bandwidth that I don't want, is an Italian Hosting but the website is in English and I guess they hosts worldwide.

Sorry for my poor English language

  Noel - ANG Malta [03.20.07 09:21 AM]

We are in the process of setting up a web design and hosting business targeted at the Maltese Market, but here the situation is the same as in other countries where bandwidth prices are extremely expensive.

In a recent research we carried out, we found that bandwidth in Malta is around 6 times more expensive than in the US, mainly due to Malta being an island and having just two submarine cables (shared with telephone, video etc) from where the national bandwidth is coming (and a backup microwave link).

Another factor contributing to the extremely expensive hosting costs in this country is the high costs for non-reliable electricity, thus the need to invest in better generators, stabilizers, etc..

Our research has led us to outsource the hosting to another country (US) because at the end we will give a better service to our clients at a much lower price.

  Emmanuel Paraskakis [03.21.07 10:34 AM]

I'm in Greece and we host in the US (rackspace) because of both cost and reliability. Local hosting operations are a joke - no SLAs.
As an aside, aliencamel.com is the best way I know to eliminate spam - I'm a fan.

  Mario Nogueira [03.23.07 01:08 PM]

Yes, here in Brazil the situation is quite the same. Sadly.

Cheers.

  James Brunskill [03.27.07 09:20 PM]

I know I'm a few days late on the comments but I thought I should add that Australian hosting is cheaper than NZ. I know of a number of people opting for an Australian server to service NZ customers for pricing reasons! Of course this option is still a lot more expensive than using a US server but the NZ-AU latency is pretty good.

I think part of the reason a lot of sites choose to host in the US is that a lot of their site's visitors are from the US. For truely nz based businesses they might choose to pay the extra cost of local hosting, certainly online only companies like trademe.co.nz which dominates the local online auction market here do that.
However, If you just want a website people can lookup your phone number and shop opening hours on, who cares where it is hosted?

  Petrus Potgieter [05.23.07 09:10 PM]

I live and work in South Africa and most people except the really big corporates host in the US as it is many, many times cheaper than hosting locally. The high cost of Interent bandwidth in South Africa (and the non-implementation, so far, of regulations requiring differentiation between local and international traffic) mean that the cost is shifter to the consumer.

  Oleg [05.31.07 04:49 AM]

In Czech republic (EU) the situation is quite the same. extremely expensive hosting.

i think that i can host my site in US because it is more cheaper than hosting locally.

And what you thik about ping EU vs US? ping about 150-200 is normal for czech costumers or no ?