Field notes

How Hosting Guide selects providers

Hosting Guide covers 12 Australian hosting, cloud and managed infrastructure providers. It is a field guide for choosing where a workload should run, starting from what each provider says it operates.

Three service types

Providers are tagged as web hosting (7), server hosting (7) or cloud services (7), and many carry more than one tag. The tag reflects services listed on the provider's own site, not a test of speed or reliability.

Reading a profile

Each profile lists the services the provider names, so shared hosting, dedicated or virtual servers and cloud offerings can be compared in the provider's own terms. The evidence line shows exactly which page established the Australian footprint.

Australian presence

A provider needs official evidence of an Australian footprint. 10 providers state Australian operations and 2 publish an Australian office. Hosting that is merely reachable from Australia does not qualify, and neither does a provider whose only local sign is a .com.au domain.

What is not measured

We run no benchmarks and publish no uptime, latency or support response figures. There are no plan prices, coupon codes or reviews. Reviewed providers are listed alphabetically on service type pages; the directory is ranked by Google rating adjusted for review count, as set out below, and a place in it reflects Google's figures, not a verdict of ours.

Staying current

Every provider in this guide was checked in September 2026, and the date is repeated on each profile. Plans and locations change often, so confirm details on the provider's site before you migrate. To report an outdated entry or ask for removal, email support@hostingguide.com.au with the profile link and the provider page showing the current facts.

How the directory is ranked

Ranked by Google rating adjusted for the number of reviews: every business starts at 4.5 stars from 10 reviews and its own reviews move it from there, so 4.9 from 300 reviews ranks above 5.0 from 6. The ratings are Google's figures as held in our data in October 2026, not an assessment by Hosting Guide. The directory page lists every business Hosting Guide holds, best-rated first, and each category and city page ranks the businesses in that category and city. A business whose branches share one website may be listed at only one of them, or at a few, so a chain's shop or office in your city may have no entry of its own here. Each listing carries that branch's own Google rating and review count, and its card says where that branch is. Source-checked profiles have no Google rating on file: they follow the ranked list on the directory page and are listed alphabetically on category pages. A city page shows its best-rated 100 as cards and the rest in a compact ranked list.

Businesses from public map listings

Besides its source-checked profiles, Hosting Guide lists 2,427 businesses taken from their public map listings, across 99 ranked city pages, as held in our data in October 2026. Each is marked "Public map listing". A business is included only with at least five Google reviews, a primary category that matches the page, and a location placed from its own address or map coordinates; a business on our removal list is never included. These businesses have not been checked against their own websites. Each has a profile with its name, suburb, Google rating with the review count and the city page it is listed on, linking to its own website or its Google Maps listing.