Irish Politics and Hosting

Seth Brundle

I recall someone did some research prior to the last General Election and found that many Irish politicians and parties did not use Irish hosting (so much for supporting Irish jobs)!
Anyhow, I started doing some research and so far
FF = Irish
FG = Irish
Labour = Not Irish (anu.net based in Bristol)
Greens = Irish
PDs = Not Irish (Northern Ireland - tibus.net)*
Sinn Féin = Not Irish (quickserve.com in USA)

I will look at my local candidates in Kildare N. tomorrow but its interesting to note that Labour & SF, parties supposedly there to help the irish worker, don't use Irish hosting services!


Any comments?

* Im excluding NI from being Irish as its a different tax jurisdiction

louie

That's a good find, but i will bet you they haven't got a clue about where abouts their website is hosted.

Seth Brundle

I can't remember but I have a feeling it was Joe McCarthy of usenet fame who did the last survey.
They were all notified with a letter going to the Oirish Times about it.

mneylon

Nice to see someone doing a little survey like this.

And the worst offender has to be the GAA:

http://blog.moybella.net/2007/03/06/gaa-supporting-local-business/

Seth Brundle

Kildare North:
Catherine Murphy (Ind) - Not Irish (LIVEDNS.CO.UK)
Emmet Stagg (Lab) - no website
Bernard Durkan (FG) - no website
Darren Scully (FG) - no website
Michael Fitzpatrick (FF) - Irish
Aine Brady (FF) - Irish
Shane Fitzgerald (Green) - Not Irish (Arizona - SECURESERVER.NET)
Cristín McCauley (SF) - No website

zAbbo

finegael.ie resolves here - http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=84.23.9.142

I think thats NI, not Irish

Seth Brundle

They are hosted with weblink.ie who according to their site are based in Dublin so I don't know if I would fault them for the host having their servers elsewhere.

zepp

ya I posted on this a while back. pretty poor.
http://www.irishelection.com/05/sinn-fein-not-supporting-irish-indigenous-enterprise/

McSandwich

I think that the important issue isn't where the site is hosted, but who developed the site and where they are based. If I contracted an Irish web design company, I might assume that it would be hosted in Ireland. As we know, this isn't always the case.

Just a quick check, but here's what I found:

Fine Gael - BIZNET SOLUTIONS: http://www.biznet-solutions.com/index.cfm/section/contact

Labour - Labour Press Office

PDs - TIBUS: http://www.tibus.com/contact/

Green - Created using a CMS called eZ publish 3

SF - Created by J.Bennett, E.Eckhardt, and T.Fowler

FF - ? [edit] Paddy the web designer [/edit]

ndonegan

McSandwich wrote:

I think that the important issue isn't where the site is hosted, but who developed the site and where they are based. If I contracted an Irish web design company, I might assume that it would be hosted in Ireland. As we know, this isn't always the case.

On a purely technical basis, it's usually better to have the server close to your primary audience. Why do you think companies like Google and Microsoft have clusters all over the world and not just in the US?

On todays internet it isn't as big an issue as people can easily get sub 200ms pings to the most of the world. However if the site is hosted on an Irish Host that's peered with INEX, they are that much closer to their primary audience.

damien

Right, so the parties should subsidise Irish businesses who are not as competitive as their American or European counterparts?

Are all you guys buying stuff from Irish-owned and operated companies or do you use the likes of Play, Komplett and Amazon for things you want?

I'm not trolling but can you outline why hosting with Irish businesses is better if non-Irish firms are better value for money?

mneylon

Most Irish hosting companies are competitively priced

Seth Brundle

Damien, maybe you are using Eircom pricing but as blacknight says, most Irish hosts are competitively priced.
However, as you ask why its better to use Irish hosting as opposed to non-Irish, the first thing I can think of is support. it really is worth its weight in gold (sic) when its needed. Trying to contact a foreign host when wondering why your site is down will result in huge international call charges (as I have found out with both UK and US based hosts).
Using a 'local' host can also benefit in terms of search engines, e.g. a search for 'web hosting' on google.com and then using the regional variants of .ie and .co.uk returns quite different results.

However, my point to this was that the various parties should be working to help Irish business interests over foreign ones. They want the support of the Irish people - why shouldn't they help the Irish economy?

damien

kbannon wrote:

However, my point to this was that the various parties should be working to help Irish business interests over foreign ones. They want the support of the Irish people - why shouldn't they help the Irish economy?

If they can find a better or equally priced Irish webhost who can also provide the same level of support then they should but I don't see a reason why they should pay out more for something that's the same or inferior to what they are getting. It is why I buy stuff online from non-EU countries. I'd expect a party I vote for to run their party efficiently. The State may be a charity in some regards but a political party should not be.

As for support, how many Irish webhosting companies have 24 hour support? Yeah they may be local, but they are also in their own local come 5pm and all weekend long.

damien

Another thought, is this surely not a reflection on the poor salesmanship and reputation of the Irish webhosting business?

Maybe if they could all get together* and all contribute to a marketing campaign to extol the virtues of local hosting, then more companies and not just a few dulll political parties would use them. Lads, you need to form a group the equivalent of RECI.

*Given that their childish behaviour contributed to closing of Webhosting forum here, I have little faith.

mneylon

damien.m wrote:

As for support, how many Irish webhosting companies have 24 hour support? Yeah they may be local, but they are also in their own local come 5pm and all weekend long.

Damien

I can't speak for other Irish hosting companies, but we are in the office until 6 Monday to Friday and we definitely answer support queries both outside office hours and at weekends

Michele

Bob the Builder

...But isn't Ireland trying to reduce on Imports, the prices of our web hosting around ireland is ridiculous though...

How can a company offer 8mb of space, 3gb transfer, no dynamis technology(php, perl, etc.), and charge €90 per annum, whereas for €70 hosting in america, you get 300gb space, and 3terabytes bandwith, with all scriptingt technologies.

Although I have to reconcile and say, the larger hosting companies are making a genuine effort to produce excellent hosting at competitive cost but 21% Vat isn't helping in most cases


Just thought I'd do a very quick one for Mayo:

Michael Ring(FG) - http://www.michaelringtd.com/ - Not Irish: France
Enda Kenny(FG) - http://endakenny.finegael.ie/ - Not Irish: UK
Frank Chambers(FF) - http://www.frankchambers.ie/ - Irish
John Carty(FF) - http://www.johncarty.ie/ - Irish(Mayo).
Jerry Cowley(Independant) - http://www.jerrycowley.com/ - Irish.

Liam Byrne

damien.m wrote:

If they can find a better or equally priced Irish webhost who can also provide the same level of support then they should but I don't see a reason why they should pay out more for something that's the same or inferior to what they are getting. It is why I buy stuff online from non-EU countries. I'd expect a party I vote for to run their party efficiently.

Em - shouldn't they be running the country efficiently ? If prices and costs are so high in Ireland, isn't it at least partially their fault for having business, transport, etc costs so high and for not promoting competition and for not giving us a decent, competitive economy ?

Some factors (e.g. greed) might be beyond the Government's control, but the transport infrastructure (either traditional road/rail or broadband) is a farce and the cost of houses, etc makes sure that Irish staff have to be paid more than staff elsewhere.

Maybe we should do like the Government and look abroad for people to vote for on May 24th ? Maybe there are people there who would to the job better and/or cheaper ?

Hairy Marney told us to "shop around" - why doesn't the Government do the same ? If they have to look outside the country to get cheaper prices, shouldn't that tell them that the country is screwed and doesn't it make them completely po-faced when they tell the rest of us that the economy is booming and jobs are safe ?

louie

It's only hosting man. Ireland is not that expensive, and I don't think it will actually ruin them.
They do pay 200 euro for a poster in your garden if you are lucky to live in a visible area.

Hosting for one of their (complicated) website is not even that much a year.

damien.m wrote:

Another thought, is this surely not a reflection on the poor salesmanship and reputation of the Irish webhosting business?

Maybe if they could all get together* and all contribute to a marketing campaign to extol the virtues of local hosting, then more companies and not just a few dulll political parties would use them. Lads, you need to form a group the equivalent of RECI.

*Given that their childish behaviour contributed to closing of Webhosting forum here, I have little faith.

Liam Byrne

louie wrote:

They do pay 200 euro for a poster in your garden if you are lucky to live in a visible area.

Don't even get me started on that one, louie; how they reckon that a picture of people will make you vote for them is beyond me.

If you remember someone because of coverage of what they've achieved, you vote for them.

I can't see how those litter-inducing posters are of benefit, unless we're all so fickle that we blank out the achivements, failures and corruption - we just see a poster and say - he'll get my vote :rolleyes:

Then again, if the posters had no photos and only had meaningful lists of improvements and achievements, there's no way you'd see Fianna Fail's postage-stamp sized posters - unless they fancied including their achievements and success at corruption ?

I also love Bertie's Photoshopped posters - they are so ironic that they're true, showing how "in touch" he is with real people. The fact that he has the same photo superimposed on billboards with old people, young people, etc sums it up so much that it should be a campaign slogan:

"Fianna Fail do their best to make it look like we're in touch with people, but we couldn't be arsed doing it for real because it'd take too much effort"

Sposs

nevf wrote:

How can a company offer 8mb of space, 3gb transfer, no dynamis technology(php, perl, etc.), and charge €90 per annum, whereas for €70 hosting in america, you get 300gb space, and 3terabytes bandwith, with all scriptingt technologies.

Although I have to reconcile and say, the larger hosting companies are making a genuine effort to produce excellent hosting at competitive cost but 21% Vat isn't helping in most cases

[/B]

Not sure when the last time you looked at Irish hosting prices, but have a look here

http://www.hosting365.com/hosting-win-personal.php
http://www.blacknight.ie/soho.0.html

300gb of space??? that's larger than the drive size of most dedicated servers, what your talking about there is gross over selling.
Sign up for an American Host who offers that, but i'll gurantee you , they'll cancel your account before you get anywhere close to using that.

Seth Brundle

nevf wrote:

How can a company offer 8mb of space, 3gb transfer, no dynamis technology(php, perl, etc.), and charge €90 per annum, whereas for €70 hosting in america, you get 300gb space, and 3terabytes bandwith, with all scriptingt technologies.

Like who?

nevf wrote:

Although I have to reconcile and say, the larger hosting companies are making a genuine effort to produce excellent hosting at competitive cost but 21% Vat isn't helping in most cases

Are you including Eircom in there?

damien

For the sake of transparency, I wonder could all those who work in the webhosting business stick their hands up?

steve-hosting36

Well, we have 24/7 support, 7 days a week, and our own datacentre, networks, servers, infrastructure, and a head count of over 50 staff. All based in Dublin, yet we still offer highly competetive packages, which we're also just about to review and re-launch as even more competetive packages

Offshore hosting is over-rated

Stephen

Random

If only you'd switch to cpanel now

McSandwich

In my experience, Irish hosting companies are very competitive as regards pricing. Tech support is also excellent, just this week I sent a query to my host just before midnight in expectation of a reply the following morning. It arrived before I had a chance to shut down my PC.

My only critisisms of Irish hosts is that they tend to lag when it comes to implementing new technologies, e.g. virtualised hosting and Java based hosting can be hard to come by.

Now, back to the politicians. As I said earlier, most parties (and individual canditates) do not develop their own sites, but use a web design service. I'm more surprised that they (web designers) do not host their sites in Ireland when practical. Do hosting companies not talk to design companies?? Though I might have been tempted to host certain party sites abroad just to be a **** stirrer

cgarvey

blacknight wrote:

And the worst offender has to be the GAA:

That was years ago (and part of a bigger CMS and console game with a GAA theme). Can't say I agree with it myself.

damien.m wrote:

Lads, you need to form a group the equivalent of RECI.

The IWHA. It didn't work out though. Membership was small and non-representative, not to mention the bitching amongst some hosts!

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Well, we have 24/7 support, 7 days a week

Looks good on paper. You won't see many US hosts that claim otherwise. How well does it stack up though?

There's still a slight difference for budget/basic shared hosting which some will argue is more than balanced by having local Irish support. However once you get in to the higher grade of hosting (high bandwidth, SLAs, dedicated/co-lo), I can't see how anyone could suggest the Irish market compares well with the US (or EU for that matter). I'm all for supporting our own, but not being ripped off in the process.

Many politicians will have local business desigin their websites (or indeed friends/relatives/etc.). Many small businesses / contractors will have servers off shore (having out grown the less competitive reseller packages on offer here).

steve-hosting36

Not sure what you mean by 'stack up' - but outside the hosting 'giants' in the US, we probably have more support staff than most hosts, both in ireland and outside. We have reams of glowing testimonials from customers who experience rapid response and resolution at odd hours of the day

As for getting ripped off in Ireland, SLA's here are market leading, as is the technology and infrastructure - show me an 'apples with apples' comparison and I'll show you how Ireland is competetive.

Our main competitors are the 'big boys' in the UK and USA - if we werent competetive we wouldnt be here

McSandwich

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Not sure what you mean by 'stack up' - but outside the hosting 'giants' in the US, we probably have more support staff than most hosts, both in ireland and outside. We have reams of glowing testimonials from customers who experience rapid response and resolution at odd hours of the day

From experience, this is true - I switched from a US 'giant' to Hosting365.

squibs

Did a site for a politician lately - won't even say what party, but it was hosted with an Irish company. I always recommend Irish hosting.

Having said that I host some personally owned sites on a US managed VPS. I couldn't find any Irish companies who could approach the US price/specs, so I had to go international. Uptime and support has actually been top-notch too, I must say.

cgarvey

Sorry, I'm dragging this off-topic even more...

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Not sure what you mean by 'stack up'

I mean the quality & response time of support in practice, not what's advertised. I have a week old ticket with one Irish host with 1 response that was invalid, and no other responses yet. That same company advertise the usual fanatical 24x7 support.

SLAs on dedicated services are good, but then the prices are way over what you pay in the US for the same. Having said that, I've only had the opportunity to need an Irish SLA once, and when I went to check it, it had been removed from my service (without notice)!

steve-hosting36 wrote:

show me an 'apples with apples' comparison and I'll show you how Ireland is competetive.

I'll give you one basket of apples.. Take the entry level SoftLayer machine for $159 (10Mb). You give me the other comparable basket. If that's not a good example, pick any service from a big US data centre.

I'd love to move a good few servers back to Ireland, so I'm genuinely interested (rather than just having a go at you).

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Our main competitors are the 'big boys' in the UK and USA - if we werent competetive we wouldnt be here

Yeah, so eircom keep saying, I'm sure.

steve-hosting36

Well, I hope that's not us, as we have invested heavily in recent times ina 'real' 24/7 support team - send us a ticket any time to see the responses!

As for softlayers example - a few points:

- It's not a 'server' grade chipset (core 2 duo chip, as opposed to server xeons)
- It's a 10mbps uplink (We do 100Mbps as standard)
- You get 5 IP addresses (we provide them free)
- you get a 99.9% SLA (we provide 100%)
- you get a 4 hour hardware SLA (we give 1-2 hours depending on server)

If I configure a server to match our entry level, with dual drives in raid 1, Xeon dual core processors, etc, the price is US$336 per month which is almost identical to our price of 249.95 euro.

Seth Brundle

can we get back on topic (if its not too late?)?

Should public representatives support Irish business (as much as they can without taking brown envelopes) or should they do their part and try to keep costs down by using foreign services and products?

IMO they should use Irish services and I don't believe that in terms of hosting the service is better abroad. Even more important is that if public representatives support foreign businesses then they send out the message that this is OK and in the long term this can't be good for Irish trade!

steve-hosting36

The key point methinks is that using offshore services does not actually represent cost savings at all.

zAbbo

steve-hosting36 wrote:

The key point methinks is that using offshore services does not actually represent cost savings at all.

No, the key point is whoever is designing these websites are not using Irish based hosting services.

Probably charging an arm & leg as well.

cgarvey

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Well, I hope that's not us

It is I'm afraid. I hear you on your strong SLA, but you're ignoring the superior infrastructure of SoftLayer plus many additional features. Rackspace give you similar spec with an equally strong SLA for less. The Planet do, for a lot less than you (with a weaker SLA than yours, though).

I won't drag it out further, just to say I've yet to see a convincing argument that Irish hosters are competitive for dedicated server hosting (budget or premium).

That's in contrast to my earlier state opinion that shared hosting is competitive and compares well with the rest of the world (especially when you take massive overselling of small resellers in to account). Most politicians have very basic websites that really ought to be here. As Damien said, that's not to say that if shared hosting was a rip-off here they should still host here. It's not and that's in a large way thanks to the hosters who post here (including you Steve )

The GAA one is a different kettle of fish, though.

mneylon

kbannon wrote:

Should public representatives support Irish business (as much as they can without taking brown envelopes) or should they do their part and try to keep costs down by using foreign services and products?

They should support Irish business.

We employ over a dozen people directly.

Most candidates' sites would easily fit on an entry level hosting plan from any of the Irish hosting companies, so there's absolutely no reason for them to host overseas.

Dave!

Hardly a huge issue like....... Headlines like "SF not supporting Irish indiginous enterprise" are ridiculous. I'd say they wear foreign-made clothes, too, and eat the odd foreign-made meal......

Seth Brundle

maybe not but this is the webmaster forum hence why we are talking about it.
Furthermore, they all were alereted of this issue around the time of the last general election so they cannot claim ignorance of it as an excuse.
The simple fact is that they should be encouraging the use of Irish businesses whenever possible. In this instance three of our main political partys are not!

McSandwich

zabbo wrote:

No, the key point is whoever is designing these websites are not using Irish based hosting services.

Probably charging an arm & leg as well.

Exactly. We can blame politicians for many things, but if they pay an Irish designer to produce their website and that designer hosts it in Kazakhstan, how can we blame the customer (politician)?

Seth Brundle

I don't accept that.
As they were made aware of this issue several years ago it would be something that they are aware of. They could have mentioned it when discussing the site with their webmasters

leftofcentre

I think both views are valid. In the past irish hosting was very expensive and support did tend to stop at 5pm.

Now things are a lot better, prices are better but there is a real shortage of innovation.

I am considering moving some of my sites back to ireland, mainly for google reasons, but the things i want are:

• VPS servers - no one seems to offer these
• Spam filtering as standard (blacknight have this, 365 do not)
• Backup service as standard

If I could get these from an irish supplier to would be great.

Also Stephen your support is nothing to boast about, its takes me over a day on average to get a response from 365 to windows hosting problems

When are the new 365 hosting offers launching?

Bob the Builder

kbannon wrote:

Like who?

I'm not going to do advertising but Bluehost.com is the host... Although, typically, they would be one of the best hosts I have yet to find in my years of trolling the web...

kbannon wrote:

Are you including Eircom in there?

Oh god, noo, I have a client thats been nicely ripped off by them, how the hell do they get away being so uncompetitive??

Bob the Builder

leftofcentre wrote:

If I could get these from an irish supplier to would be great.

Make that an iffy! ...and if you do find a company, you will no way see prices similar/less to what you were paying! ...and if you do, please tell me!

damien

kbannon wrote:

Should public representatives support Irish business (as much as they can without taking brown envelopes) or should they do their part and try to keep costs down by using foreign services and products?

If the Irish business can be as competitive or offers something better but for a little higher price then support them. Otherwise, no. Why in god's name should anyone, political party or not, subsidise an inefficient business? This is like the crap army regulations in the states where they had to use a local supplier instead of the cheapest supplier and all of a sudden they were paying 60 dollars for jacks roll. It isn't business if you are paying too much for any Irish service, then it's just charity.

kbannon wrote:

Even more important is that if public representatives support foreign businesses then they send out the message that this is OK and in the long term this can't be good for Irish trade!

Actually it *is* good for Irish trade. If the local market is healthy then the exported products will be quality enough to get used. Consumers around the world could not give a tuppeny feck if Irish people are buying Irish products, they care about price and quality.

If Irish people considered that when buying Irish instead of some nonsensical tricolour flying patriotism schlock then businesses here might get out of their civil service "enough to get the job done" mentality and start making good on a world stage. It is patriotic to point out what needs fixing and not to tolerate second or third best.

Boston

Damien makes some good points. You lads wouldn't be advising people to get their broadband for eircom just because it's a big irish (I know technically it's not) company.

Seth Brundle

Brian Cowen mentioned on Prime Time tonight that Fg was sourcing their election posters from abroad so spending a few quid on foreign hosting isn't going to cause them to lose sleep I guess!

mneylon

nevf wrote:

how the hell do they get away being so uncompetitive??

People are still happy to pay them (and others)

If you look at some of the offerings in other markets you will always find a range of prices that will vary from extremely cheap (and possibly nasty) through economical to overpriced to downright rip off.

mneylon

Boston wrote:

You lads wouldn't be advising people to get their broadband for eircom just because it's a big irish (I know technically it's not) company.

I actually would

Maybe not for me, but the home packages suit my mother perfectly.

mneylon

leftofcentre wrote:

Now things are a lot better, prices are better but there is a real shortage of innovation.

What would you classify as innovation?

axer

Is €35/€40 a year that expensive for hosting?