Do you live in Australia and are looking for the web hosting provider? Are you relatively new to web hosting, so are not absolutely sure about the most important features offered as oppose to those you may not need?

Follow these tips to help you find the web hosting provider in Australia, and you should be happy with the one you eventually choose.

Speed of the server — The most important thing with any company offering web hosting is that they have fast servers. Servers affect the speed of your website and, if you end up with a server that is slowing your site down, you will be penalized in Google and Bing’s search results.

Find out what a web host guarantees and then, once you have registered with them and your site is online, ping your site to find out about its speed. If the speed is not what the web hosting provider promised, contact them and ask them to fix it.

The right server software — While you may want to have your website running on a server with Windows software, some web hosting providers in Australia only offer Linux servers. Make sure you can get the server software you want before signing up.

Uptime and reliability — One very important thing about any web hosting provider in Australia is how much uptime they promise as far as your website is concerned.

Uptime means how long your website is online before it crashes and the server has to be restarted, or before it is taken down during maintenance. Uptime with any web hosting provider in Australia should be at least 99.9 percent. Any less, and that web hosting provider is not worth dealing with.

Access to tech support — If you have any problems with your site, or if your site suddenly crashes, you need to have a hosting Australia provider that allows you immediate access to tech support.

Whether this access is via instant messaging, email or telephone does not really matter. What does matter is that this tech support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and, when you contact them with your problem, they respond within minutes.

If you sign up with a company that takes hours to respond to your tech questions or problems, drop them immediately and find one that does not.

Automatic backups — While you should be responsible for backups of your site, a good web hosting provider should also do regular automatic backups for you, and they should be free of charge.

No excess charges — Look carefully at the features a web hosting provider in Australia offers, and compare them with other companies.

This is because, while some companies look like they are offering you a very cheap deal, when you look closer they are charging you extra for everything.

Automatic backups should be included in the fixed price, as should an SSL certificate, a fixed IP address and more. Look at other companies if you find one that does not offer these without an additional charge.