title: Best IP to Country Database
body: <p>We've got a requirement in a couple of our systems to detect a user's country based on their IP address. We'd prefer to use a database rather than a Web Service (to prevent issues with downtime/network access to an externally hosted service) so I'm looking for recommendations, anyone got any good or bad stories of the various IP to Country databases?</p>
  
  <p>What I've found from google:</p>
  
  <p><strong>Paid</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="http://www.maxmind.com/en/country">Maxmind</a> - $50, then $12 a month, site license</li>
  <li><a href="http://www.ip2location.com/databases/db1-ip-country">IP2Location</a> - $50 a year, single server</li>
  <li><a href="http://software77.net/geo-ip/">software77</a> (Donationware)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>Free</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/">Maxmind Geolite</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.ip2nation.com/">ip2nation</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Any information on how the free ones compare to the paid ones would be good. Right now I'm leaning towards Maxmind's paid service since it includes automatic updates that we can run via script once a week.</p>