Website
Design
Website Hosting
& Domains
SEO &
Google Ads
Social
Media
Email Marketing
& Blogs
Graphic Design
& Printing
Website Hosting / Web hosting is like renting an office space
Hosting is the virtual space you rent for your website, so it’s available to your customers 24/7.
In technical terms, it’s your space on a big computer (a server) with fast internet that operates 24/7.
Domain Name / Just like an office or shop, your website needs an address
The address for your website is your domain name, like yourbusiness.com.au or yourbusiness.au.
For an Australian business, it’s best to have a domain name that ends in .au as this shows Google you are an Australian business.
If this sounds technical, it is! But lucky for you, we’ve been doing this for over 25 years (since before Google even existed), so we know how it all works and can look after you. We can register your domain name or even register a few domain names to protect your business so no one else grabs them. Then once your domain is sorted, we can host your website on our high-tech Australian servers located in secure data centres in Queensland and around Australia.
Cyber Security & IT Partnership
Enterprise Grade Services and Infrastructure
To provide you with the best hosting infrastructure, Catalyst Directions have partnered with a Queensland-owned and operated Cyber Security and IT Company. UmbrellaNET is like family to Catalyst, working with us for many years and looking after our clients.
UmbrellaNET, are proud to have a team that has worked with significant IT and telecommunications companies and developed architectural frameworks across multiple countries. They bring Fortune 500 technology to the small business sector at an affordable rate. One of their biggest achievements is working as equal partners with Cisco, a world leader in server hardware and security, to develop the advanced DNS filtering protocol CiscoUmbrella. In addition, they have partnerships with international IT providers such as Microsoft to provide robust infrastructure, cyber security and IT support services.
Australian Website Hosting
Secure, Robust, High Tech – with local suppport
Data Centre / A data centre is just a big secure room with lots of impressive computers.
We call these impressive computers “servers” and the Data Centres have high-tech security and climate control, so the servers don’t overheat as well as redundant power and internet access so they automatically switch to alternatives to keep running if there’s a power failure or internet outage.
We have many servers in secure data centres around Australia, including the Microsoft Azure data centre in Sydney, and UmbrellaNET secure data centre nodes in various locations across Queensland and Australia.
World first solar powered hosting
The UmbrellaNET data centre nodes use solar power, in a world-first approach, to completely power the data centre nodes with backup power from the grid when needed. When the sun is shining brightly, they even pump excess electricity back into the grid; on average, they create more power than they need.
Distributed data center network
High tech security
While it’s all very high-tech and exciting…for you it means your website hosting is on robust infrastructure with high security, so your website is well looked after.
Professional Email + Calendars + Contacts
Microsoft 365, Exchange Online Email
An email like [email protected] might be free, but it comes with limitations and you never actually own it – the provider could change their rules and your free account is gone. And everyone can tell that you got it for free.
Your business should have a professional email address like [email protected] or [email protected].We make this easy for you, and provide personalised support to get your email account setup on your computer, phone, iPad etc.
The Microsoft email accounts are world-class and keep working smoothly. But if you have an issue, you can always call us. We know how critical email is for your business, so we aim to be very prompt with support to keep you and your business working.
We provide email accounts using the Microsoft 365 suite of services – so you get robust, secure, high-availability Microsoft email accounts. This email works perfectly in Outlook on your computer and on mobile devices. Not to mention, it’s quick and easy to set up. And you can use contacts and calendars as well.
Domain Names
For your website and email – yourbusiness.com.au
Your domain name is the address for your website and your email accounts. And you can register extra domain names just to be sure your competitors don’t grab them.
A domain name registration is a bit like a business name registration: there’s a small fee, and it needs to be renewed every two years.
Australian .au Domains
Australian domain names all end in .au. The main option our clients grab is .com.au which is aimed at businesses in Australia, so you need to have an ABN to register one of these. There’s also a new option for just .au on its own, so instead of yourbusiness.com.au, you could have yourbusiness.au. This option doesn’t need an ABN, but you do need to prove you are Australian (so you can use an ABN to register this as well).
Watch out for upsells
Options for marketing internationally
If you’re targeting customers internationally, we can get domain names in almost any country, such as .co.uk or .co.nz for the UK and New Zealand, respectively. Or there are options like .jp for Japan or .asia as a broad option to market to a range of Asian countries.
If you don’t need a specific country, then there’s plenty of top level options such as .com, .net, .org and .info and even a lot of specialty options like .coffee, .shop, .dog, .hiphop, .fun, .space, .life, .events…
The first question is, what market are you targeting? Talk to us, and we can explore domain name options to work for your business.
Find the right domain name for your business
Have you got a domain name for your business yet? Your own .com.au? Do some searching here to see what’s available. Not sure what might work best? Talk to us and we can help you consider options that will work well for you business.
FAQs
Do I need website hosting?
Yes, your website needs space on a server somewhere so it can be accessed online.
I have hosting with another provider, can I use that?
Yes you can. If you already have hosting with another provider we can build you a new website and provide you the files etc so you can upload it to your hosting, or we can even upload it for you.
Are your servers in Australia?
Yes, all of our servers are in Australia, and most are actually in Queensland.
I already have a domain name, can you manage it for me?
Yes we can, if it’s .au we can transfer it for free, for other extensions we will need to renew it for an extra year when we do the transfer.
My previous web designer registered my domain name, can I still use that?
Yes, and you should! It’s usually best to keep the same domain name so Google knows you’re still the same business (although we can help transition you to a new domain name and maintain rankings in Google). If you’re not sure how to access it, we can do some research and help you figure it out and in most cases get control of your domain name.
I used to have a domain name but I'm not sure if it’s still mine…
We can look this up for you and see who owns it, and help you recover it if you can’t access it.
Can you register other country domain names?
Yes we can. Some countries have rules such as needing to have a presence in their country but we can explore those for you. Let us know the countries you’re targeting and we can take a look at options.
If I setup new email addresses will my old mail be transferred over?
We can help to migrate your email over to your new addresses so you have everything and don’t miss any emails.
Will my old email redirect to my new email address?
This depends on who provides your current email address. If you have a gmail.com address, there are settings to forward your mail to your new email address. If you have bigpond.com you can ask them to forward your email to your new email address. For other providers, you can typically ask them or look for settings in their system to configure a forwarding email address.
Can I access my email on my phone or tablet device?
Yes you can. It’s quick and easy to configure on mobile devices and we can help you out with getting it working.
Can I have multiple email addresses all go into the one mailbox?
Yes you can. If you have several email addresses under your domain we can set them up to all go to one mailbox so you don’t have to check separate accounts.
Do I need website hosting?
Yes, your website needs space on a server somewhere so it can be accessed online.
I have hosting with another provider, can I use that?
Yes you can. If you already have hosting with another provider we can build you a new website and provide you the files etc so you can upload it to your hosting, or we can even upload it for you.
Are your servers in Australia?
Yes, all of our servers are in Australia, and most are actually in Queensland.
I already have a domain name, can you manage it for me?
Yes we can, if it’s .au we can transfer it for free, for other extensions we will need to renew it for an extra year when we do the transfer.
My previous web designer registered my domain name, can I still use that?
Yes, and you should! It’s usually best to keep the same domain name so Google knows you’re still the same business (although we can help transition you to a new domain name and maintain rankings in Google). If you’re not sure how to access it, we can do some research and help you figure it out and in most cases get control of your domain name.
I used to have a domain name but I'm not sure if it’s still mine…
We can look this up for you and see who owns it, and help you recover it if you can’t access it.
Can you register other country domain names?
Yes we can. Some countries have rules such as needing to have a presence in their country but we can explore those for you. Let us know the countries you’re targeting and we can take a look at options.
If I setup new email addresses will my old mail be transferred over?
We can help to migrate your email over to your new addresses so you have everything and don’t miss any emails.
Will my old email redirect to my new email address?
This depends on who provides your current email address. If you have a gmail.com address, there are settings to forward your mail to your new email address. If you have bigpond.com you can ask them to forward your email to your new email address. For other providers, you can typically ask them or look for settings in their system to configure a forwarding email address.
Can I access my email on my phone or tablet device?
Yes you can. It’s quick and easy to configure on mobile devices and we can help you out with getting it working.
Can I have multiple email addresses all go into the one mailbox?
Yes you can. If you have several email addresses under your domain we can set them up to all go to one mailbox so you don’t have to check separate accounts.