Hosting in Ireland V Abroad

[dattley]

Hi,

We have a db-heavy web platform which was developed and launched on a small scale in a shared hosting environment. As we're about to see a singificant increase in traffic we're reluctant to move to a VPS solution which could very well prove insufficient relatively soon.

We have developed the site on an extremely shoestring budget, and while we have some initial revenue incoming it barely meets our marketing needs.

A dedicated server would seem to meet our requirements - however there seems to be a gigantic difference between dedicated server costs at home compared to, for example, Germany or the US.

We'd like to host our site in Ireland - we will initially have an almost entirely Irish userbase and from a 'number of hops' perspective it makes sense to keep the journey short. We'd also be aware of a potential google rankings hit if we were located abroad.

I guess what i'm asking is:

1) Has anyone moved their site abroad, and if so did you take a hit in terms of either traffic latency or google ranking?

2) Similarly has anyone moved from a dedicated server package here to abroad and found the increased specs on offer and reduced prices made you glad you moved?

3) Has anyone tried dediserv? Seems affordable but apparently they only launched recently and I can't find any real testimonials on 'neutral' websites!

Sorry so long, Thanks.

 

[mneylon]

Entry level dedicated servers might be cheaper overseas, but once you start looking at higher end specs with SLAs etc., there isn't that much difference in price

 

[link8r]

I would agree with Blacknight.

Some questions for you:

1. What platform are you developing on? ASP or PHP?

The reason I ask is that there are resources for small, <10 man web design companies that develop in ASP and PHP from Microsoft under websitespark (which is under Bizspark). I posted about it here Primary Position SEO Blog Ireland: Techludd and MIcrosoft Website Spark Launch and details are here http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/Support.aspx?tab=ProgramDetails.

Maybe you could rent a bare server and use these licences?

If it's PHP/MySQL - and shared, is there anyway to create additional accounts and split the database or would that slow it down?

2. Have you thought about looking for some investment/business angels? It sounds like your budget is quite tight, maybe you can get some interim investment or sponsorship? Take a look at the Outvesting.org idea from @Eirepreneur (on twitter)

3. I've tried a few VPS. Even the most expensive (at €200 p.m.) gave us a lot of headaches, was very slow and there was a lot of security work. I have inclination to try it again soon without lots of resources.

4. I haven't yet found better hosting at better prices overseas. Clients in the UK have preferred to keep their sites in Ireland in most cases

5. Yes, latency can be an issue, especially for AJAX sites where latency is an issue anyway.

6. I dont know what your site is or what your rank for or how competitive it is * but * I'd be surprised if you lost much in the way of SERP's if your site is clearly an Irish site. You can re-enforce TLD's in Google Webmasters but I'd think you'd have to be in a very competitive index to lose positions.

 

[hosting365]

Move to a cloud solution (an Irish one) and you will have the benefits of a rapidly scalable platform that delivers.

 

[hosting365]

Also, fwiw, Dediserv are based in the hosting365 datacentre and have top-class enterprise infrastructure.

 

[dattley]

1. What platform are you developing on? ASP or PHP?
...
If it's PHP/MySQL - and shared, is there anyway to create additional accounts and split the database or would that slow it down?

Its LAMP based and the database server provided with our shared provider is a significant problem (naturally for shared hosting and particularly with my particular host), even for low numbers of queries.

2. Have you thought about looking for some investment/business angels? It sounds like your budget is quite tight, maybe you can get some interim investment or sponsorship? Take a look at the Outvesting.org idea from @Eirepreneur (on twitter)

3. I've tried a few VPS. Even the most expensive (at €200 p.m.) gave us a lot of headaches, was very slow and there was a lot of security work. I have inclination to try it again soon without lots of resources.

4. I haven't yet found better hosting at better prices overseas. Clients in the UK have preferred to keep their sites in Ireland in most cases

5. Yes, latency can be an issue, especially for AJAX sites where latency is an issue anyway.

6. I dont know what your site is or what your rank for or how competitive it is * but * I'd be surprised if you lost much in the way of SERP's if your site is clearly an Irish site. You can re-enforce TLD's in Google Webmasters but I'd think you'd have to be in a very competitive index to lose positions.

We've gone for a dedicated server from dediserve as the pricing looks decent - a low end dedicated server + vps for the same monthly price as the next cheapest dedicated server I could find.
Thanks all for the replies.