Hi Kevin

I don't think location is that important.

Customer service is probably one of the more important things to look for. Can you contact your hosting company 24 hours a day? Do they have an online chat line and/or a good ticket system?

Equipment and features are maybe next to compare - uptodate equipment, redundancy, back up policy, downtime are all things to look for

The only small advantage of using a local company would be that you can pay them in your local currency

Sometimes you can find local deals that are better than better known, national companies, or those in another country. On the other hand, you have to balance your choice with reliability. How long has the local hosting company been around? How long will they continue to exist? In fact, now that I think about it, you should definitely check into the local hosting companies you like and find out if they are actually resellers for a bigger company. If not, then they would have to have access to their own servers, datacenter, backups, security, etc. Personal choice I suppose, but I would probably recommend the host with the best ratings for the features you want in a hosting provider.

Check the fine print, terms of service, list of fees, limitations on bandwidth and storage, privacy policy, etc. Make a list of pros and cons for each local hosting provider, and compare it to your list for hosting providers outside New Zealand.

When I think of overseas problems I think of the data connection getting interrupted because an undersea cable was cut into pieces by a boat anchor. Or there was a fire in a train tunnel that melted communications lines. You can always use a service to ping the web server for monitoring, and use the data as a baseline for further comparison if you are worried about uptime, availability, and response times.

There is no big difference on using a local and international hosting because your visitors came from different countries.

Ross

Hi!
I quite agree with Collegepro's idea. I also think that the location is not more important than the quality of the service. If the location one is cheaper but low quality, do you still want it?
Wish you soon have the correct choice.

I've been running sites hosted in California for about 6 years now - in which time I've lived all over the UK, US and some of Mexico - the great thing with the internet is it really doesn't matter! So apart from the customer service issue and any payment things you have personally - I would say go with a provider that you know gives good, reliable service. Saving a few $$ could cost you dearly if you lose your websites.

Local hosting can be important.

If you run a website that is locally based, serves a local market, and attracts local visitors, then yes you will see a benefit from being locally based. I have 2 websites service my local market right now and I monitor other competitors. 1 of my websites is hosted locally on a local machine through a local telcom. The second is located in another country and at a major host. Access times *can* be a concern but that is determined by routes, etc. The farther away a website is geographically, the longer it will take to respond, all things being equal. After all, if speed wasn't an issue, Google would only run one data center.

If you aren't doing local sites but you do have a geographically centered viewiership then locate close to them. For example, if you determine 70% of your viewers are from Europe, 20% are from North America and 10% scattered, then locate in Europe, not New Zealand. Your viewers will see a speed difference.

But if you have a site where people come from all over the world then you could pick and choose. Or you could use a distributed content cache system, like Akamai (if you are big enough).

No matter what you do, choose a host with good customer support, one with a proper data center (and not a purchaser of resold spapce), one who maintains their own machines with on-site technicians and administrators, one with diesel (or similar) backup power, and one not located in the path of frequent natural disasters.