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VPS in Australia: when the distance is worth it
Australia is the most remote of all the popular hosting locations for anyone in Europe or North America. Its internet relies on a handful of submarine cables across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and any request from Europe travels halfway around the world. So people rent an Australian server not for speed or price, but for a specific audience: users in Australia and Oceania, for whom a server in Asia or the US means an extra 100–200 ms on every request.
How Australia is connected to the world
Most external traffic goes in two directions. East — cables from Sydney to Hawaii and the US west coast. North-west — lines from Sydney and Perth to Singapore, and from there on to Asia and Europe. There is also a route via Guam to Japan. The number of these cables is small compared with Europe, and international capacity has historically been expensive. Hence the main feature of local plans: traffic is valuable here, many offers have a noticeably smaller monthly allowance than European ones, and overage is billed separately.
Sydney, Melbourne, Perth
Most plans in this selection are hosted in Sydney: it has the country's largest internet exchanges, regions of every global cloud and access to the main cables. Melbourne is the second-largest market, chosen for a backup site or an audience in the south. Perth stands apart: it is around 50 ms from Sydney, but closer to Singapore and the Indian Ocean. If your users are spread across the country, the east coast is almost always the better bet. Keep the time zone in mind too: Sydney is roughly eight to ten hours ahead of Central Europe depending on the season, so the maintenance window while Australians sleep falls in the European afternoon.
For a project whose audience is not only in Australia but also next door, compare the option in New Zealand: latency between the two countries is small, but a local server in Auckland gives New Zealanders an even faster response.
Latency from abroad and who it does not bother
From Western Europe to Sydney you can usually expect around 250–300 ms, with the route going either via Singapore or via the US; from the US west coast it is closer to 140–170 ms. That makes an Australian server a poor choice for a corporate VPN, remote desktop or games with users in Europe. SSH administration works, but every command will feel noticeably "laggy".
Local tasks are a completely different story:
- Websites and online stores for Australians: from a local server a page loads several times faster than from Singapore, and that has a visible effect on conversion.
- Game servers for Oceania, where players have traditionally suffered from high ping to overseas locations. CPU and network requirements are described on the VPS for a game server page.
- An Australian IP for checking regional ads, search results and service availability.
- A monitoring or CDN node that completes your project's footprint in the South Pacific.
Local laws: metadata and encryption
Since 2015 Australia has had a data retention law: telecom operators and internet providers must keep subscribers' communication metadata (who, when, from which address) for two years. Hosting providers do not always fall under it, but take it into account if you plan a corporate VPN gateway or proxy on an Australian server. The 2018 Assistance and Access Act allows the authorities to require technology companies to help with access to data, including encrypted data.
Processing of personal data is governed by the Privacy Act 1988, with mandatory breach notification. If you work with Australians, these rules apply to you too; if you also handle EU residents' data, GDPR obligations apply on top, and Australia has no EU adequacy decision, so transfers need standard contractual clauses or similar safeguards.
Payment and choosing a plan
Australian and international providers generally accept Visa and Mastercard, many take PayPal, and some accept cryptocurrency. The "Payment" column in the table shows the methods for each plan, and prices are converted into your currency. Many plans in the selection belong to international providers for whom Australia is one of several locations, so when ordering make sure the Australian data centre is actually selected.
When comparing offers, look first at the traffic allowance and the overage price, then at whether hourly billing is available: it is handy if you need the server for a test or seasonal load. And if the Australian audience is only part of an Asian one, start with the VPS in Singapore selection: a single server there may be enough.