Web hosting in Australia does not need to be expensive anymore. There are quite a few high speed web hosts operating now who don't charge top dollar for basic hosting accounts. You no longer need to look overseas for cheap, reliable hosting.

If you have a small business website, paying more than $10 to $20 per month for website hosting means you are paying too much! I speak to many people who have organised their own hosting for small, basic websites and are paying $400 to $600 or more a year. With a little research these people could have found a much cheaper (but just as reliable) option, and still manage to keep their business in Australia. Not to mention that is you DO host your website overseas (eg, the USA), then you run the risk of being excluded from local search engine results.

Do a simple Google search for "website hosting customer reviews" and check out the organic results - these are the ones that display in the white area that do not come under the heading "sponsored links". Have a look at the customer testimonials, then check the services for the top (eg) three web hosts. If you want to go even further, contact a couple of the referees by email and ask them if their opinion has changed.

I cannot stress how important a fast, reliable web server is to a business website. If you have a web host who continually has "down time", or never answers your support requests, or whose services just don't stack up, then its time to change!

Your web host SHOULD offer you (in a basic package):

* Reasonable website space (100 megabytes+)

* Reasonable bandwidth or traffic (minimum 2gig per month)

* Reliability

* Fast customer service and efficient reporting system

* Free comprehensive statistical analysis (like Awstats or Webalyzer)

* A user friendly, feature rich control panel to access all your web and

email settings

* Webmail would be good - so you can access your mail remotely