A rough guide to virtual private servers/virtual dedicated server providers that have hosting actually in Australia.
Requirements
My non scientifically worked out requirements for a Linux (ideally Debian) host are:
CPU: 1 core (dedicated).
RAM*: 1GB (dedicated).
Storage: 20GB – technology unimportant, but preference on SSD.
Data transfer/Bandwidth**: 100GB (non strict requirement).
* I ignore providers who list ‘burstable RAM’, because I don’t understand how it’s useful for anyone.
** If all things other than data transfer match, or are exceeded on a virtual server, I will consider it for this list, but will note that the transfer is below the ‘minimum’.
All prices are monthly prices.
Upto $20/month:
| Name | CPU | RAM | Storage | Transfer | Price | HVM | Notes/Comments |
| Binary Lane | 2 | 1GB | 30GB SSD | 400GB | $15 | Out of capacity at time of attempting to place order in January 2015! | |
| CloudIO | 2 | 1GB | 30GB | 1000GB | $20 | KVM/OnApp | New provider? Parent company is RackHosting Pty Ltd. Firewalling can be done outside of the VM.[Negative: Bad security design, passwords sent in plain text emails, to unconfirmed email addresses]. |
| Network Presence | 1 | 1GB | 15GB SSD, 10GB non-SSD | 2000GB | $7 | ? | Amazingly priced. Website design dated. Manual setups.[Negative: Passwords provided in plain text]. |
| Ransom IT | 2 | 1GB | 20GB | 300GB | $10 | KVM/SolusVM | Website design seems dated. Expensive over usage fees at $2.20/GB!
Initial password supplied in the clear, but can be provided via SMS, increasing security. User is asked to change password on first login. Root login is provided in clear on control panel, but is recommended to be changed, and from then on is not stored. VNC password is stored in plain text, for viewing purposes. But VNC can be disabled. Acceptable methods. |
| Web24 | 1 | 1GB | 20GB | 100GB | $15 | ? | [Negative comments] |
Upto $35/month:
| Name | CPU | RAM | Storage | Transfer | Price | HVM | Notes/Comments |
| Crucial | 1 | 1GB | 25GB | 500GB | $30 | ||
| ServerMule | 1 | 1GB | 20GB SSD | 100GB | $26.25 | Medium plan | |
| vpsblocks | 1 | 1GB | 40GB SSD | 100GB | $24.95 | Seems confusing with their ‘blocks’ thing, curious why they don’t just do the usual ‘number of CPUs, amount of RAM’ type thing.Pretty site, but doesn’t seem to work well in Safari or Chrome |
Upto $50/month:
| Name | CPU | RAM | Storage | Transfer | Price | HVM | Notes/Comments |
| exigent | 2 | 2GB | 50GB | 1000GB | $49.95 | Xen | Confusing site/offerings. OpenVZ hosts offer fully unmanaged, the Xen based ones are ‘semi managed’. Pricing seems high, but so are specs – the specs are higher than what I’ve been comparing other providers to.They also have hosting in 4 locations in Australia, including Perth. |
| GoDaddy | ? | 1GB | 40GB | 1000GB | $35.99 | Unsure if the hosting is actually in Australia. | |
| iiNet | 1 | 1GB | 30GB | 100GB | $49.95 | VPS2 plan. | |
| Jumba/Uber | 1 | 1GB | 40GB | ‘Unlimited’ | $39.95 | ||
| Mammoth | 2 | 1GB | 30GB | 150GB | $39.95 | ||
| Microsoft Azure | 1 | 1.75GB | 40GB | ?? | ~$44 | Complicated selection process (not as complicated as Amazon or Google). Can’t just pick a CPU, RAM, disk, transfer set. Pricing is also not exact it appears. Not sure if Debian is available. | |
| Net Logistics | 1 | 3GB | 40GB | 500GB | $39.95 | Lots of RAM… | |
| Net Origin | 1 | 1GB | 25GB | 100GB | $14.99 | Possible this is OpenVZ. This the ‘VPS’ plan. VDS plan is 50GB disk, 200GB data, for $49.99 | |
| Net Virtue | 2 | 1GB | 50GB | 500GB | $49 | Xen | Site is out of date – only lists Debian 6 as an offering (as of Jan 2015) |
| Rackservers | 2 | 2GB | 50GB | 100GB | $53.70 | ||
| ServersAustralia | 2 | 1GB | 25GB | 200GB | $45.95 | ||
| VentraIP | 2 | 1GB | 60GB | 250GB | $49.95 | Comes with a 1 year SSL cert, and a bunch of SMS credits. |
Upto $100/month:
| Name | CPU | RAM | Storage | Transfer | Price | HVM | Notes/Comments |
| Micron21 | [Awful website!] Difficult to know if their $60/month pricing includes things like a hardware firewall and monitoring or not. If it’s without, then the prices are obscene. If it’s with, then it makes me curious as to what their real prices for unmanaged hosting is.[Negative] | ||||||
| Atech Technology | 1 | 1GB | 50GB | 100GB | $99 | Storage can be SAN or local disk |
Over $100/month (who is this for?):
| Name | CPU | RAM | Storage | Transfer | Price | HVM | Notes/Comments |
| AusWeb | 2 | 1GB | 60GB | 200GB | $159.95 | VMWare | Not sure what this price gets you – maybe it’s a managed service? |
| Ingenuity | 4 | 1GB | 30GB | 40GB | $160 | $160 setup cost. I hope this is a managed hosting. Way too expensive if not. | |
| Netregistry | 2 | 1GB | 200GB | 100GB | $149.99 | VMWare | Jan2015 promo pricing is $97.49/month. Wondering if the high prices are due to VMWare? |
| Quadra Hosting | 1 | 1GB | 25GB* | 100GB | $199 | $199 setup. Really only made for their existing web hosting customers, I think.* Very weird storage too. 15-50GB for the OS, 25GB for user data. Not sure what that actually means. | |
| xHost Solutions | ? | 1GB | 20GB | 100GB | $110 | Virtuozzo |
Non AUD, or unclear pricing:
| Name | CPU | RAM | Storage | Transfer | Price | HVM | Notes/Comments |
| Amazon EC2 | 1 | 1GB | 20GB | 100GB | $24.39 | Complicated. Have to use a pricing calculator. Pricing includes Free Tier discount of $18.36.Assumption is that prices are in USD, but not clear.Storage is ‘magnetic’.Data is 10GB data ingress, 100GB data egress. | |
| Google Cloud | 1 | 3.75GB | 20GB | 100GB | $57.27 | Complicated. Even more than Amazon, for me.Prices are probably in USD, but not obvious if that is the case.Data is egress to Australia (at $19/month).Storage is SSD. | |
| Rackspace | 1 | 1GB | 20GB | 200Mb/s | $23.36+$3.65 | Lots of options. Also expensive.Storage is SSD.There is also a minimum charge of $50/month for ‘managed infrastructure’. Also known as ‘unmanaged’ in most other providers.Pricing is all in USD. | |
| SoftLayer | 1 | 1GB | 25GB | 5000GB | $42.90 | Billing is actually in USD, but the price here is in AUD.They have a documented ‘private network’ feature (much like Linode offers, I think).They charge a 20% premium for Melbourne DC services.Network seems very good.Storage is SAN or local. Can’t recall if it’s SSD or not. |
Others list follows:
TPP Wholesale – No pricing on site, query placed online. Reply to query with request for more information. Can’t be bothered to respond – have no interest in doing business in such a manual way for my needs.
Flexihostings – Not appropriate. They only offer plans with ‘burstable RAM’.
Austiger – No information on site on what their VPS offering is about.