Aussie Web Hosting 

 Aussie Hosts 

There are two good reasons for using an Australian hosting service:

1) If you are a business you get the GST back
2) Your site should be quicker for Aussies to access

Try Hosting Bay - current home of my site OzFlower.com - AU$2.40 a month gets you 200MB space and 500MB of traffic.

or SmartyHost - email hosting from $5 per month, or full-featured hosting from $12.50 per month. They regularly get recommended by Aussie computer magazines, and are owned by MYOB.

• FlexiHostings - cheapest package is good value - unlimited bandwidth and disk space for only $6.95/mo. They also offer international servers
• ilisys - have the important features other hosts forget about - they are aimed at larger business, and plans start at $25/mo. They have clustered servers (means extra reliability!), and are also owned by MYOB
• AusWeb - looks like the best local service for reseller plans - for when you have many sites to host, or if you wish to start your own hosting business. Basic plans start at $10/mo.
• Zip Hosting - dirt cheap domain names, and good value hosting - $4 a month for huge amount of storage & unlimited data transfer.

All of the above hosts have been in business for over a decade and use local servers.

 Overseas Hosts 

I personally find that if you use a good overseas service it is much cheaper and the service is better than their Aussie counterparts. Here are some that I use myself, and can recommend:

HostGator

HostGator ave a huge reputaton in the internet entrepreneur community. They are reliable, great value, and awesome support. More importantly, they are on your side, whereas many hosts seem to treat the customer as an enemy. I have 4 accounts with HostGator, and have never had a problem.

I can also recommend the following hosts who I currently use:

• WiredTree - I have a virtual server with them for running a very busy forum (almost 1 million posts...). Their pricing is good, support excellent. Based in the USA.
• Arvixe - standard web host, but reliable, in business since 2003, and good pricing - $4/mo. gets you everything you need to run a small website. They also cater for larger businesses who need dedicated servers

 Watch Out for Rip-Offs! 

Always, always, always read the small print. Common tricks are to offer unlimited traffic, but to exclude sites with images in the conditions. Or to charge ridiculous fees for exceeding traffic limits. Host1 offer 10Gb of traffic for $10.95/mo, but each excess GB is charged at $55 (they call it 5.5c per MB, so it sounds insignificant...)

If you find any other examples, let me know, I'll list them here