A green website is a site that has all its data stored on a carbon-neutral server. That means whatever energy that website uses will be carbon offset by a third party who is doing things like planting trees or supporting verified carbon mitigation projects. 

Some datacentres may also use renewable energy. However, this often comes from purchase agreements or offsets, which means technically they are still using fossil fuels but buying the equivalent back in renewables. 

In fact, there’s even a nifty little tool created by our friends over at The Green Web Foundation that’ll let you know which websites are already doing their bit.

A green server operates exactly the same as a dirty server – just the key difference is any carbon that’s created from hosting your website is offset. All thanks to a bunch of hard working people and trees, you can create a website that hosts your business or organisation page that works exactly the same as it does now, but without contributing to climate change. 

Some datacentres may be using renewable energy. However, commonly this still uses fossil fuels and is offset by carbon credits or a purchase agreement for renewables elsewhere.

It’s easier than you think. Our expert team of local Aussies (and international support, for when it’s dark in our patch of the planet) can do it all for you. Even if you have an established website, we can do the whole switcheroo. In fact, we’re so keen to help you (and the planet) we can migrate your whole website and all your files for free. 

All we need is access to cPanel, FTP, Plesk (or your website equivalent) and we should be able to migrate your files and transfer you to our green web host network faster than a bottle fly.

Extra bonus: You can host as many websites or files as you want, we just need to make sure that you meet the plan and disk space requirements.

You can sign up in a few minutes. Our team will then review your order and if everything is looking alright, we’ll set up your account usually in 1-2 business days. We do this to make sure the process is smooth and that we review who signs up.

As part of our organisation’s ethical charter, we reserve the right to refuse services to any organisation that’s not the right fit. For example, we don’t allow web hosting accounts for fossil fuel companies, or groups.

We’ll give you a simple explanation here – we don’t love a lot of jargon and bet you don’t either. 

Disk space is the amount of room your files have on the server. Kind of like some houses have more bedrooms, some servers allow you more disk space. How much space you need all depends on the needs of your website. Those files can include everything from images, written content, videos, and emails. Rather than measuring in square metres like you would a house, it’s measured in megabytes. A megabyte is a unit of code, it’s quite small – like the equivalent of a millimetre on your ruler. 

Given megabytes are so small (and things like photos and videos take up so much space) we measure plans in gigabytes. A gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes – so in the analogy, it would be a metre. In the same way, larger homes typically use more power, larger websites with a lot of data need more energy too (which in turn racks up more carbon emissions). That energy goes towards storing your information as well as processing it. 

Bandwidth is how much data can transfer from your server to your user. We’ll use a different example here. Think of a doorway into a shop. You can imagine that the wider the door is, the faster people will be able to enter and browse what you’re selling. Bandwidth is the equivalent of the door size here, so the more bandwidth you have, the easier it is for people to get inside (and visit your website) without people getting wedged and squished at the entrance. When you’re slacking on bandwidth, the page will load more slowly. You know people hate waiting – often that results in people clicking away from your website so it’s a pretty important box to tick when you’re managing your website. 

What about unlimited providers? Yep, there are some hosts who will offer an unlimited package – hold your horses though. 

When it comes to the internet, there’s always limits as technology can only operate so fast and hold so much. Sometimes in the fine print, there’ll be terms and conditions which means you don’t actually get what you signed up for. 

We like to be as transparent as a white t-shirt on a rainy day which is why we have limits on all our hosting plans. Even better, we’re not going to kick you out or put you in the naughty corner if your website goes over your set usage. We’ll tell you when it’s time to move up a plan or pay more for your disk space. That little extra spare change covers the costs of storing extra data and monitoring any increase in emissions from the extra disk space you needed. 

One final note: Email Plus plans work differently from this and require a plan upgrade which you can do yourself once you’ve got an account with us. Or, we can take it off your hands and do it for you.

Unlike some other providers, we’ve invested in putting the right procedures, protocols, and systems in place to minimise disruption to your business. In fact, we maintain 99% up-time, which essentially means we have kept our sites online for as long as we’ve been around.

Our 24/7 True Green® Technical Penguin team monitors the server every hour of the day and gets alerts if there are issues arising often before they even get the chance to impact you. 

In the event a site goes down, it’s not usually related to the server. To give you an example, WordPress sites can come down due to a plugin conflict. Another common issue is if you’ve been blocked by the server firewall. This often happens because you have tried to log in multiple times and the server considers you as an unwanted guest that’s trying to kick the website door down. If this was to occur, you can chat with our 24/7 True Green® Technical Penguins who will unfreeze you.

Email is a vital component for businesses which is why we’ve chosen to partner with a dedicated expert in this space. It means we can provide you with reliable, trusted, and high-value email hosting solutions. cPanel can be used for emails but is not recommended as it is unreliable. Nobody has time for that.

Absolutely. When your business and website needs change in either direction you can change your plan yourself on your 24/7 GROW dashboard. Or you can chat with our sales team who can help you.

As long as you stick with us, you won’t be charged a termination (hooroo) fee.

Our sales team may also reach out to you to discuss other plans if we find you are growing more than your plan limits. These limits relate to disk space and bandwidth allocations. We do this to help you get the best fit for your needs as well as to help save you some cash in the long term.

Yes. And we do that hourly no matter which plan you’re on.

Our backup solution consists of three different layers. The backup of our servers and the backup of your site – both internally and externally. We do this because we understand that losing data is worse than your game crashing before you get the chance to save it. Having more than one solution to rely on when it comes to data backups is a winner all round.

By choosing an Australian web host that has its servers located in Australia, not only will you be supporting an Australian business, you’ll also likely receive the benefits of reduced latency. That’s a fancy word for data speed. 

For example, let’s say your customer is in Sydney, Australia but you choose a web host that puts your site on a United States of America server. This increases the amount of time it takes for your website to load. Why? Because the data has to come all the way across from the USA to Sydney. When your site is hosted on a local server, the time to travel back and forth will be a lot quicker. 

We know that this can result in a few milliseconds, however, it all adds up and can drive a considerable impact on your conversion rate. Especially when you’re getting multiple visitors at any one time. 

That’s why if your business has a global presence we strongly recommend our Kickstart and Bloom plans with Security Plus on top.

The Sucuri Content Delivery Network makes your site load faster by connecting to the customer’s nearest server in their global network with the added benefit of their advanced firewall for greater protection from naughty guests.

Yes, you will need a domain name (web address) if you want people to find your website online. If you don’t have one, you can get one with us. If you’re already up and running you can transfer your existing domain with us via the GROW dashboard at any time. 

Web hosting is where your files are located on a server but your domain name is what points people to the website files in a professional and clear way. Kind of like your home address, you know where it is but you need to have a street name and number for other people to find you. Without a domain you’d have to give them a long IP (internet protocol) address and that’s far from ideal.

There’s an old saying “you get what you pay for”. While you might find cheaper hosting elsewhere, we like to think we’re doing a pretty good job of covering all the bases of managing and supporting your website. 

Our shared True Green® Web Host Network has been designed with business owners in mind. We’re here to help provide the best service, experience and value where possible.

As an Australian business ourselves, you’ll be supporting us to make a considerable difference to the local economy, as well as reducing the carbon footprint of your business. 

We would never lower our prices as we maintain them at this level to ensure we’re keeping up with the level of service we want to provide and the green promise our clients expect from us.

Our plans are fixed and we don’t have lower-priced plans available. If a super low price is important to you, we might not be the right match.

The amount of disk space you use plays an important factor in how much your carbon footprint is. The more you use, the more you add to emissions for our planet. 

Those providers who claim they have “unlimited” disk space still need to pay for the costs associated with the greater use of memory, performance, and energy. So you have to ask yourself, where does the cost go? 

There are many reasons to avoid them, but one of the main concerns is these providers often are restricting you in ways that are usually hidden in their lengthy terms and conditions. Or, it might hit you where it really hurts and ends up slowing down your page’s loading time. Essentially, there is no such thing as “unlimited” when it comes to disk space.

At the moment, True Green® gives you transparent plan options for when you grow, and is happy to discuss custom arrangements to meet your growing needs.