New webhost urgently needed - recommendations please!

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Sancho

119 posts

Master Geek

#110545 11-Oct-2012 10:52

Sorry if this is the wrong section but it looked like the best place.

Can anyone recommend a good webhost? Mine was just bought out by Internet services group who seem to own most hosting companies now and the performance has plummeted! Coincidentally so has our google ranking of 4 of the sites we host there so not sure if one of their IP's has been blacklisted from google or what!

I'd like one with prompt friendly customer service too as our websites are our income and it's important they are always live!

Thanks in advance :)

theEd

341 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#699587 11-Oct-2012 11:20

I'd suggest http://www.net24.co.nz/ who are owned by Voyager.

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Sancho

119 posts

Master Geek

#699595 11-Oct-2012 11:30

Yeah I had thought of them, but one of our websites is direct competition with one of theirs also... not sure if that creates a conflict of interest or not....

Then again, that site would not be hosted with them so probably be OK.

snowfly

511 posts

Ultimate Geek

#699620 11-Oct-2012 12:19

Some recommendations: (who are not owned by Internet Service Group):

www.ramsu.co.nz
www.sitehost.co.nz
www.myhost.co.nz

pcheroes

52 posts

Master Geek

#700284 12-Oct-2012 16:52

I've ventured a lot of New Zealand web hosts.

Net24 is very good - however we still lag behind USA support. You can only really get assistance 9 till 5.

Personally I use Rackspace Cloud. Offers a similar response to local VPS but with a 24 hour support line that you can contact them anytime if something goes wrong.

Anybody with a reasonable level of traffic must factor in after hours support to their feasibility studies.

I.e. one of my export companies makes its sales primarily during the night and early hours of the morning. If my website goes down at 6pm then I need to get it back up then and there - not have to wait around till the following morning (or worse still Monday morning).

www.rackspace.com

theEd

341 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#701386 15-Oct-2012 11:58

Have to agree. If the websites are your income, don't bother with NZ hosts, as they don't provide proper 24/7 support.

Our websites are also hosted at Rackspace.

dman

946 posts

Ultimate Geek

#709205 30-Oct-2012 15:26

I'd recommend a top overseas host but if local is important then check out http://hostingnow.co.nz

https://www.youtube.com/c/SoundSpeeding

michaelmurfy

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#709236 30-Oct-2012 16:02

Go for Linode if you're wanting a VPS that you can scale / have full control of / is speedy. I am currently hosting 68 websites off a Linode 512 including my own and the whole thing runs as fast as anything - if one of the sites get's hammered with traffic I just power on a second one and load balance them.

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mattwnz

19389 posts

Uber Geek

#709238 30-Oct-2012 16:11

theEd: Have to agree. If the websites are your income, don't bother with NZ hosts, as they don't provide proper 24/7 support.

Our websites are also hosted at Rackspace.

There are some that do. But probably not your cheap 5 buck a month host. Some will also have full after hours emergency support if you need it, which will be free if it is server related, and not a problem with your own websites code. The overseas ones that do tend to contract out their support to developing countries. One US one I use you get replies from english sounding names, but english is definitely not their first language. NZ hosted websites can load faster than US based ones for people viewing the website in NZ, especially if you do a lot of FTping. FTPing to a US server can be incredibly slow I have found compared to NZ servers.

To the OP, if your website is your income, then a dedicated or VPS server with a full SLA is a must. You probably won't get that with cheap shared web hosting.

Sancho

119 posts

Master Geek

#709307 30-Oct-2012 17:38

Thanks everyone, I like the shared hosting thing as you get cpanel etc which lets us do all we need to without getting too complicated. The website is not our full income but certainly a good portion of it. We were on a large US server and were mostly happy for around 7 years but then I read on a fairly recent google update that they now considered server location in their rankings and we want to use every advantage we can get as it is now a pretty competitive market that we are targeting.

Rackspace etc sound good but I think the knowledge required may be beyond my relatively basic skill level.

mattwnz

19389 posts

Uber Geek

#709511 30-Oct-2012 22:06

Sancho: Thanks everyone, I like the shared hosting thing as you get cpanel etc which lets us do all we need to without getting too complicated. The website is not our full income but certainly a good portion of it. We were on a large US server and were mostly happy for around 7 years but then I read on a fairly recent google update that they now considered server location in their rankings and we want to use every advantage we can get as it is now a pretty competitive market that we are targeting.

Rackspace etc sound good but I think the knowledge required may be beyond my relatively basic skill level.

That is partly true about google, but I believe you can override that so it knows you are a NZ website, using the google webmaster tools. Also if you use a .co.nz domain that helps too. If you let us know how much you are wanting to spend and what resources you need, people may be of more help. Shared web hosts that offer 'unlimited' anything you will find however you will do have limits in their fine print. Some even limit the amount you can transfer via FTP, or the number of files stored in the account. Some also only do daily or weekly server backups instead of multiple levels.

Sancho

119 posts

Master Geek

#709516 30-Oct-2012 22:12

Sure, sorry... Around $50 a month I think should be enough, thats what the last 2 I had were for a basic 'reseller' acct. We have around 14 websites currently hosted, all except for 2 are very small, the other 2 are still pretty small to medium sites. I like Cpanel as thats what I've always used but don't mind changing. Pretty much want a company thats not going anywhere in a hurry, has fast NZ traffic and supports zencart and opencart... not too much to ask I'd have thought :) Prompt and efficient service is also important, if our site goes down its important its back up again quickly.

mattwnz

19389 posts

Uber Geek

#709522 30-Oct-2012 22:29

Sancho: Sure, sorry... Around $50 a month I think should be enough, thats what the last 2 I had were for a basic 'reseller' acct. We have around 14 websites currently hosted, all except for 2 are very small, the other 2 are still pretty small to medium sites. I like Cpanel as thats what I've always used but don't mind changing. Pretty much want a company thats not going anywhere in a hurry, has fast NZ traffic and supports zencart and opencart... not too much to ask I'd have thought :) Prompt and efficient service is also important, if our site goes down its important its back up again quickly.

For sort of price you aren't going to get any SLA, it is just standard low cost reseller hosting. That is probably at the lower cost end of the market. The problem with reseller hosting is that it can be less reliable than non reseller shared hosting, as you are sharing that server with other resellers, and the main host has no control over what websites are being installed on the server by those resellers. For a mission critical website I wouldn't host it on a server with other reseller accounts, unless you know the host is very reliable. They wont provide any guarantee that if there is a problem that it will be back up again quickly. I have been with a reseller host that was down for several days while they restored all the accounts from a backup. You could contact different web hosts, find out how long they have been around for and what their uptime statistics are like.

Zeon

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#709739 31-Oct-2012 11:07

I can say that being a NZ webhost while we don't officially provide 24/7 support, we actually do as I will get a call on my mobile at literally any hour of the day for support even if there isn't anyone at the office to answer. Lol shouldn't give out my mobile number!

We have never had any extended downtime in the 5 years we have operated beyond downtime with our ISP. If you configure your server correctly then the other accounts shouldn't be able to take over all server resources and bring your website down. There is a risk of DDoS but TBH I've never seen one directed at any website we host and if one did come in larger than our internet bandwidth (1gbps) then it would take down the whole rack so VPS/dedicated servers would also be affected. This is true of any host.

Speedtest 2019-10-14

dman

946 posts

Ultimate Geek

#709853 31-Oct-2012 14:02

mattwnz is on the money when it comes to local SEO, you should already be signalling you're local to Google kiwi searches in other ways.

So I'd believe it is fine to host overseas.

But if you really want to host in nz then go to Hosting Now :-)

https://www.youtube.com/c/SoundSpeeding