Hi, I have been looking at AbleCommerce to replace an ageing osCommerce store for a customer and I really like the software but I am wondering about the hosting requirements.
For what it is worth, I am in Australia and we do have ridicuously high hosting costs compared to most of the rest of the world so while I would prefer the site to be hosted in Aus, I will have to look at other alternatives as well. The customer is happy to pay for the software but ongoing costs running into $1000's / year could be a deal breaker.
From reading through these forums it hard to get a handle on what type of hosting most people are using and whether they are happy with the performance so I was hoping to get some responses from people regarding the hosting they are using and the rough costs.
So if anyone is willing could you please answer the following questions:
Hosting Type: eg. Shared/VPS/Dedicated
Hosting Country: eg. Australia/USA
Price per Month: eg. $100 AUD
Satisfaction: 1 to 10 (10 is best)
Question regarding hosting options
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wileyveteran
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Witchdoctor
- Lieutenant, Jr. Grade (LT JG)
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- Location: Brisbane, Australia
Re: Question regarding hosting options
Hi, I already have an existing AbleCommerce installation, and I am also based in Australia. For the last year, I have had it hosted in USA on a shared hosting arrangement while we grew 'comfortable' with the software.
The biggest problem we found was there is a LOT of drag time to communicate with the hosting company in USA, and this was distressing to users, this was especially noticeable once a private SSL certificate was added to the mix. Initially it hadn't seemed too bad, but afterwards, it was really noticeable.
2nd problem was that with using a shared hosting arrangement with USA, the hosting company was used by other spamming companies, and our shared hosting wasn't just the server, but the email routers as well. Which meant that... when the email router IP addresses were blacklisted by various companies, it was very hard for us, as a company, to do anything about it. We had to put up with dodgy email (eg every 5-8th email was blocked because it used the blacklisted routers, especially to Hotmail/Gmail/Live users) forever more because of this circumstance - penalised for other's bad behaviour. This would have happened at any hosting company perhaps, but the main problem was dealing with the 14hr time difference in getting help with the issue.
3rd problem was that I had 2 websites being hosted, and the CPU resources would get sucked down in a black hole a couple of times a month and would cause time-outs for AbleCommerce. It just happened at various times, for multiple reasons including the distance to USA and back.
4th problem was that we had picked a fairly large scale hosting company in USA, and over 1 year later, there was absolutely no change in the services and allowances etc being offered, and no deals to upgrade to for a better price comparison (yes, you could upgrade the service, but a specific plan itself wasn't upgraded, even in limits). Even Telstra upgrades its plans every few months.
In saying all this, I am in the process of dragging everything back to Australia for hosting. The services are better now than they were 12 months ago, and better deals are available. At least I can get real-time help and service which is a big change, and things work a lot faster now. I am still using a shared hosting environment, although considering going to dedicated (yes, this is expensive, and one of the holdups on this side of things), but I do spend easily anything between $600/$1000 for hosting per annum now, and dedicated would be approx $3-4K per annum.
Long story short:
- When you are Australian and have Australian customers, do NOT host outside of Australia, you WILL regret it in the long run.
- You can always start with shared hosting, and move to dedicated server if/when circumstances require it - or, if your shop will be that popular to start with, go for dedicated anyway.
- Make sure they can supply all the required services and conditions you need before you host.
- Go for a hosting company that can provide plenty of support people, has GOOD online instructions, and an easy-to-use control panel.
- Go for a hosting company in the same time zone that you are in, determine whether the hosting company works in GMT or UTC time and stick with it (you don't want to know about time/date horror stories).
- Price per month? - you get what you pay for.
Hope this helps.
The biggest problem we found was there is a LOT of drag time to communicate with the hosting company in USA, and this was distressing to users, this was especially noticeable once a private SSL certificate was added to the mix. Initially it hadn't seemed too bad, but afterwards, it was really noticeable.
2nd problem was that with using a shared hosting arrangement with USA, the hosting company was used by other spamming companies, and our shared hosting wasn't just the server, but the email routers as well. Which meant that... when the email router IP addresses were blacklisted by various companies, it was very hard for us, as a company, to do anything about it. We had to put up with dodgy email (eg every 5-8th email was blocked because it used the blacklisted routers, especially to Hotmail/Gmail/Live users) forever more because of this circumstance - penalised for other's bad behaviour. This would have happened at any hosting company perhaps, but the main problem was dealing with the 14hr time difference in getting help with the issue.
3rd problem was that I had 2 websites being hosted, and the CPU resources would get sucked down in a black hole a couple of times a month and would cause time-outs for AbleCommerce. It just happened at various times, for multiple reasons including the distance to USA and back.
4th problem was that we had picked a fairly large scale hosting company in USA, and over 1 year later, there was absolutely no change in the services and allowances etc being offered, and no deals to upgrade to for a better price comparison (yes, you could upgrade the service, but a specific plan itself wasn't upgraded, even in limits). Even Telstra upgrades its plans every few months.
In saying all this, I am in the process of dragging everything back to Australia for hosting. The services are better now than they were 12 months ago, and better deals are available. At least I can get real-time help and service which is a big change, and things work a lot faster now. I am still using a shared hosting environment, although considering going to dedicated (yes, this is expensive, and one of the holdups on this side of things), but I do spend easily anything between $600/$1000 for hosting per annum now, and dedicated would be approx $3-4K per annum.
Long story short:
- When you are Australian and have Australian customers, do NOT host outside of Australia, you WILL regret it in the long run.
- You can always start with shared hosting, and move to dedicated server if/when circumstances require it - or, if your shop will be that popular to start with, go for dedicated anyway.
- Make sure they can supply all the required services and conditions you need before you host.
- Go for a hosting company that can provide plenty of support people, has GOOD online instructions, and an easy-to-use control panel.
- Go for a hosting company in the same time zone that you are in, determine whether the hosting company works in GMT or UTC time and stick with it (you don't want to know about time/date horror stories).
- Price per month? - you get what you pay for.
Hope this helps.
Re: Question regarding hosting options
We have clients based in Australia and you are right, the 14hr. time difference may cause communication issues, but from our experience it has its advantages. For instance most
site migrations and server upgrades for our clients located in U.S (East Coast, Northeast, Midwest) are scheduled during off-peak traffic hours 1AM-3AM EST.
For our clients located in Australia we are able to schedule the same tasks during normal U.S business hours (8am-10am EST) which are off-peak hours in Australia. As far as technical phone
support calls we have not had any issues with Australia either. We do monitor all servers and web sites on application level and if the site is not responding or performance goes down for more than 5min
our admin team gets notified immediately via SMS and Email. In almost all cases we are able to isolate and fix the issue before it affects site visitors.
Each server is also installed with its own private IP VLAN range block, in case the IP range get blacklisted for some reason it only affects specific server.
Yes, it is always better to work with local service provider located in the same area/region if they can offer similar service quality/price and are familiar with AbleCommerce.
site migrations and server upgrades for our clients located in U.S (East Coast, Northeast, Midwest) are scheduled during off-peak traffic hours 1AM-3AM EST.
For our clients located in Australia we are able to schedule the same tasks during normal U.S business hours (8am-10am EST) which are off-peak hours in Australia. As far as technical phone
support calls we have not had any issues with Australia either. We do monitor all servers and web sites on application level and if the site is not responding or performance goes down for more than 5min
our admin team gets notified immediately via SMS and Email. In almost all cases we are able to isolate and fix the issue before it affects site visitors.
Each server is also installed with its own private IP VLAN range block, in case the IP range get blacklisted for some reason it only affects specific server.
Yes, it is always better to work with local service provider located in the same area/region if they can offer similar service quality/price and are familiar with AbleCommerce.
Mike Kolev
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wileyveteran
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Re: Question regarding hosting options
Thanks for the info witchdoctor that is very helpful indeed. If you don't mind who are currently hosting with in the US and who will you be moving to in Aus. I am struggling to find any hosts (at a reasonable price) that meet the system requirements. And I see that Michael's plans seem to start at about USD$200/month - Ouch.
Ultimately, the software looks good for the price but the hosting could be the thing that kills this in the end.
Ultimately, the software looks good for the price but the hosting could be the thing that kills this in the end.
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Witchdoctor
- Lieutenant, Jr. Grade (LT JG)
- Posts: 38
- Joined: Sun Sep 06, 2009 5:31 pm
- Location: Brisbane, Australia
Re: Question regarding hosting options
Hi from Brisbane and the floods.
We have been using Verio in the USA as a hosting company, and were paying approx $90 USD/month for shared hosting. Note - current exchange rate is approx dollar for dollar, so say... approx A$1100/year. We didn't have the very smallest plan, but not the biggest either. Also - not locked in for a set period either, so could up-stakes whenever we wanted to.
We are in the process of moving to QuadraHosting (there will be others out there better/worse), and we are still using a shared hosting environment, Annual payment of A$460 + SQL DB A$264 + dedicated IP address A$40 = A$764/yr. I've heard of others that are cheaper, but not what I wanted.
Other things to think about is your individual Australian bank, because they will have a list of acceptable payment gateways (if you need credit card payments) that work with their merchant service (which also needs to be purchased), and you will have to purchase the gateway service, and not all ones that are provided by USA ecommerce shop software is acceptable to Australian banks. We use the eWay service for our bank, and Able works well with it.
eCommerce is not cheap to run, no matter which way you go, and there are a lot of hidden costs.
We have been using Verio in the USA as a hosting company, and were paying approx $90 USD/month for shared hosting. Note - current exchange rate is approx dollar for dollar, so say... approx A$1100/year. We didn't have the very smallest plan, but not the biggest either. Also - not locked in for a set period either, so could up-stakes whenever we wanted to.
We are in the process of moving to QuadraHosting (there will be others out there better/worse), and we are still using a shared hosting environment, Annual payment of A$460 + SQL DB A$264 + dedicated IP address A$40 = A$764/yr. I've heard of others that are cheaper, but not what I wanted.
Other things to think about is your individual Australian bank, because they will have a list of acceptable payment gateways (if you need credit card payments) that work with their merchant service (which also needs to be purchased), and you will have to purchase the gateway service, and not all ones that are provided by USA ecommerce shop software is acceptable to Australian banks. We use the eWay service for our bank, and Able works well with it.
eCommerce is not cheap to run, no matter which way you go, and there are a lot of hidden costs.
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wileyveteran
- Ensign (ENS)
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2010 11:52 pm
Re: Question regarding hosting options
Thanks witchdoctor. I hope you and your family are all safe.
Some of the stories are just terrible, like the 13 year old boy who was stuck on the roof of their car with his mother and younger brother as the water rose around them. A passer by went to save them and the kid told the guy to save his brother first which he did but he and his mother got swept away and died.
The store is for a customer who has an existing store and merchant account so that is not an issue. I may have to write a new payment module for them as they currently use Netregistry's payment gateway which I don't believe is currently supported by Able.
From what I can see Quadra use clustered servers so does that mean you will need to purchase the Enterprise version? Anyway I will be interested to see how it pans out for you. I would be interested to hear any feedback on how your move goes if you get the time.
Thanks for all your help so far. It is much appreciated.
Some of the stories are just terrible, like the 13 year old boy who was stuck on the roof of their car with his mother and younger brother as the water rose around them. A passer by went to save them and the kid told the guy to save his brother first which he did but he and his mother got swept away and died.
The store is for a customer who has an existing store and merchant account so that is not an issue. I may have to write a new payment module for them as they currently use Netregistry's payment gateway which I don't believe is currently supported by Able.
From what I can see Quadra use clustered servers so does that mean you will need to purchase the Enterprise version? Anyway I will be interested to see how it pans out for you. I would be interested to hear any feedback on how your move goes if you get the time.
Thanks for all your help so far. It is much appreciated.