Website Hosting

Unlike most web development companies, at Get Started we maintain our own hosting infrastructure and domain registration system. This means that when your website is complete we can publish it online ourselves. It also means that any questions or problems arising after your website is in operation you can come straight to us - no complex arrangements, middle men or buck passing. Just give our support team a call and we will deal with it directly.

What exactly is 'hosting'?

'Hosting' is the service provided when someone makes your 'stuff' accessible to people on the Internet. Websites, email, domain names, databases and files are just some of the things that can be hosted on a web server and thereby made available on the Internet.

Most web servers are not much different to a powerful personal computer. The two most important things about a web server are the software that it runs (powerful and often expensive) and the speed of its Internet connection (reliable and very, very fast). When you connect to the web server from your computer, the server works out what files or information you want to see, then sends them to your computer.

A website is just a collection of files that are all grouped together in a folder on your web server. Typically, these files are HTML pages and images but sometimes databases and more advanced programming as well. When a web user follows a link, or goes to a web address (like www.getstarted.com.au/index.asp) the server finds the file called 'index.asp' in the group of files for www.getstarted.com.au and sends that file to the user's computer.

What types of website hosting are there?

Most mail servers and web servers host multiple web sites and domain names. This is called 'shared hosting' or 'virtual hosting' and is the most common type of hosting, as it is the least expensive. Very large web sites and online systems often have a server all to themselves, this is called 'dedicated hosting'.

The vast majority of our clients choose the shared hosting arrangement. Single dedicated hosting is not necessarily more stable. Our shared hosting infrastructure is load-balanced with multiple web servers and multiple database servers. In summary, no single point of failure.

Hosting your website with Get Started
 

Hosting websites is not a side business of ours. We realised early on how important hosting was to a web design and development business. Many years ago, we outsourced our hosting to a sub-standard provider and the impact was enormous. Not to our provider, but to our business. We've learnt from this experience and have invested a lot in a stable, reliable and well-supported hosting infrastructure.

Here are the benefits of hosting with Get Started:

• Stable, reliable and well-supported hosting infrastructure
• Backed by largest hosting provider in Australia
• Pricing below the retail prices of that hosting provider
• Dedicated Support Team available on phone and email from 8am-6pm
• Access to web development knowledge. Can't get your website working? We probably can.
• No contracts - leave when you want (we feel safe in saying that because we know you won't want to leave...)