Need recommendation on australian web hosting service provider

Our church website is now hosted free on a shared server with storage 1.5GB and monthly bandwidth 4.5GB. Since we are keeping the sermons on site for download, I have to remove old ones to allow space for new ones. Therefore less than 2 years’ sermons mp3 files can be kept.

May I know which australian hosting service provider I can consider when the budget is tight? Also, there are already two times the bandwidth of 4.5GB being blasted by some unknown reason and that blocked the access to the site until end of the month. I’m only a lay person to manage the website.

The CMS used is Textpattern, very light-weight.

Monica

Are you based in Australia?

Anyhow, here’s something to consider: if you are serving up lots of big files like that, it can be a lot cheaper, and more efficient, to store them on a ‘content delivery network’ (CDN). They charge a lot less for bandwidth and serve up the files faster—even if the CDN is located overseas, it seems.

So, you store all your audio files on your CDN and link to them there rather than on your own hosting account. End user has no idea.

I use Rackspace for doing this, but there are plenty of others.

Thank you for your quick reply. Yes, our church is in Sydney. Your suggestion is good and I need to set up a new web page for the archives. For the most recent ones I still need to keep them on site as each one has a page containing the meta data (speaker, bible reading, date, notes and a file id (auto link by the CMS) of the sermons.

It might be cheaper to use American based hosting. The connection between the US and Australia is very fast so there is no noticeable difference except for the price.

Thank you for the suggestion. I just wonder if there is any good service provider in Australia. Besides, I need someone to manage the service. That is, someone who will patch or upgrade the (operating system) or apply security updates etc. Right now I only need to focus on adding web pages, upload files etc. I don’t have to do the database or site backup.

You aren’t quite understanding what a CDN does. You keep your page on your site with all its data as you describe, and a play recording button as normal. It’s just that the files are stored on another server. That’s all. It has no bearing on what you can do on your own site.

Anyhow, there are plenty of good hosts in Australia. You could Check out Digital Pacific, for example, or Micron21 or Ilisys, to name a few.

Thank you, I shall do some research on those companies.

how tight is that budget ?

if you want cheap VPS based hosting in Australia check out https://www.binarylane.com.au/ - I am using them for Brisbane VPN server or check out https://www.serversaustralia.com.au/

if you need shared hosting check out Aussie posted offers at http://www.webhostingtalk.com.au/. Shared hosting forums at http://www.webhostingtalk.com.au/australia-11/

Also if it’s just download files needed sharing, have you considered a Google Drive account ?

1 Like

Thank you. I’ve looked at your suggested links and others. It seems to me that anything under $10 may not be enough as compared current quota: 1.5GB storage and 4.5GB download per month, which is free to our church at present.

I may consider using cloud drive as you guys suggested and still stick to the free hosting offered by the anglican diocese shared services.