I’m gonna make it real easy for anyone who wants to host a Magento Store in Australia. Go with Koowii. Hands down some of the best service I’ve had from a host, no rather, ANY business in Australia full stop. Highly recommended!
It seems too cheap at$39 for a magento server, obviously not dedicated but not sure if i need that.
Hi Russell,
I’m sure they could charge you more if it made you feel more comfortable =)
Seriously though, if you’ve got a budget and are expecting a significant amount of visitors, shop around for a VPS that fits your budget and that you can tune to your visitor load.
What are you looking for from a provider? “Just” hosting or someone who can maintain the technical aspects of Magento too?
I just want to say that whilst I don’t run my own online store, I did need to learn how Magento works from both an SEO and a web dev (API, plugin) point of view as it’s something I’m moving into from work.
I got chatting to Mick from KooWii who responded to me and he was kind enough to give me a modestly specced account for a very good price.
My Magento install gets no visitors and isn’t even customised yet so I can’t comment on speed of server, but terms of service so far, KooWii are great and they even installed Magento for me.
I am using KooWii\’s shared hosting for almost 5 month. I am very happy with the speed and technical support. Though what I am using is just a shared hosting ($25.45 per month), not VPS or dedicated server, but it really works great. I have more than 500 products, but with some help from KooWii\’s support team, I can get 82 scores of YSlow test.
So for merchants targeting Australian market, I suggest taking a look at KooWii. They are great.
This looks like a Ads, but it\’s NOT. I have nothing to do with KooWii except they are hosting my website and I pay them monthly ^_^
By the way, they also have hosting servers in US and other hosting options, such as VPS, but I haven\’t tried that. I am happy with this $25.45 sharing hosting optimized for Magento.
Hi and thanks in advance
I am using hosting webcity. Does anyone else use this hosting.
I am finding my web site to be running slower then expected and the admin backend of magento very slow when entering in products.
I have been through the hoops with web people and I cannot recommend Koowii hosting and web service more highly. I was found them through this forum and boy have they been great; knowledgeable, efficient and patient.
Great people to be involved with from start to finish.
BTW if you need any golf gear check me out at www.golfzone.com.au.
Regards.
John Lyons GolfZone
First post for me, but thought I would chip in with my 2 cents worth.
Ventraip.com.au are fantastic. Great communication and easily runs Magento. After having gone through several ‘less than desirable’ web hosting providers over the last few years, I cannot recommend Ventraip highly enough.
Was about to sign up with VentraIP.com.au this morning and thought I would give their 24/7 tech support a try - but after waiting on hold listening to music for 7 mins, I had to leave a message. Bit of a worry… so I had a better look around and just my thoughts are below.
I have a LONG background in ecommerce and running large bandwidth intensive sites with my own dedicated servers. I want to have a play around with Magento so looking for a host with some speed (Ram and web).
Micron21 was my early favorite. They have great ping times and tracerts are great. Their tech guy seems best informed I have spoken to. They also offer PLESK (im old school - but apparently CPANEL is the better panel to use these days) Their prices are the highest.
Ventraip I think would get the bang for buck vote. Great ping times just behind Micron21 and any company who posts a plan where they state they have a separate SQL server on shared plans CLEARLY knows what they are doing. As before - rang their tech support number and no call back or reply so far about an hour later. Tried to call them again and still no one answers the tech support line. Thank goodness my server isn\’t down.
Koowiis Could be worth a look - make sure you specify you want to be hosted on Aus servers. See later posts in this thread. One of their Magento customers is the fastest Magento sites I have seen.
Crucial looks interesting. Their ping times are by far the quickest and their tracert the shortest. Only 4 hops for me. They are very open about where they host, and how their boxes and network is configured and state they are located in the Equinix Data Centre which supposedly also is where Yahoo, eBay, Fairfax, Unwired, and Google also choose to host. Tried to call them this morning, but they only answer phones Mon-Fri business hours. I\’m running a 24/7 business, I do have expectations my business partner will do the same. Quite a lot of posts on Whirlpool about Crucial having a bit of downtime, and when they go down then tend to stay down. Not good. Pity as I had almost talked myself into using them.
mdg-it also looks like it has boxes in the Equinix Centre but hosting certainly doesnt seem to be their core business.
netlogistics could be okay, but they didnt ping or tracert well for me - over 100ms and I tried quite a few times. Plans seem okay.
So who do I like the best? Well none of them but I think Ventraip probably has the best reputation and the most flexibility in their plans depending on how your business grows - so thats who I will try first. I also cant tell you enough about how important it is to have mySQL on its own hard drive - or even better on its own server. Its definitely a big part of my decision. If Ventra fall over, then I will look at Crucial.
The other reason I like ventraip is that they host http://www.livefish.com.au/ - and for a Magento site this one loads blazingly fast for me.
Your correct, we do have some boxes over at the planet in the US, looks like you only did who.is on our main domain.
But we also have several VDC’s here in Australia and proudly hosting many Australian companies using Magento.
I can’t complain about Ventraip. Have had amazing service with them and no downtime yet and I have been with them for over 8 months. In regards to weekends, I generally email them with my ticket and have a response in less than 1/2 an hour. I phone them during the week with if I have any questions or concerns.
In regards to their management team, I am not sure what you are referring but maybe you would care to enlighten us? No point flinging mud if you don’t wish to elaborate.
Another positive with Ventraip is that if their servers are down or if there has been an issue they post regular updates on twitter and their forum (if you are able to access the forum). I personally haven’t had to use it, but the service is there if you need it.
Any time you are looking at ‘budget hosting’, their are going to be pitfalls. All that most people are asking is for a reliable web host that is capable of running Magento efficiently. Ventraip is one of those hosts and the speeds are very good. Now if you had of mentioned Webcity, that is a web host that I can tell you a few horror stories about........LOL
I can\’t complain about Ventraip. Have had amazing service with them and no downtime yet and I have been with them for over 8 months. In regards to weekends, I generally email them with my ticket and have a response in less than 1/2 an hour. I phone them during the week with if I have any questions or concerns.
In regards to their management team, I am not sure what you are referring but maybe you would care to enlighten us? No point flinging mud if you don\’t wish to elaborate.
Another positive with Ventraip is that if their servers are down or if there has been an issue they post regular updates on twitter and their forum (if you are able to access the forum). I personally haven\’t had to use it, but the service is there if you need it.
Any time you are looking at \’budget hosting\’, their are going to be pitfalls. All that most people are asking is for a reliable web host that is capable of running Magento efficiently. Ventraip is one of those hosts and the speeds are very good. Now if you had of mentioned Webcity, that is a web host that I can tell you a few horror stories about........LOL
but I think Ventraip probably has the best reputation and the most flexibility in their plans depending on how your business grows - so thats who I will try first. I also cant tell you enough about how important it is to have mySQL on its own hard drive - or even better on its own server. Its definitely a big part of my decision. If Ventra fall over, then I will look at Crucial.
