Best WordPress Hosting Australia

Finding a decent WordPress host isn’t that difficult these days as most of the top Australian web hosting providers support WP out of the box (mostly because it powers over 30% of the entire internet).

The majority of our websites are built on WordPress, so we know what makes a good host! Find our top WordPress hosting services for Australia below, sorted by Usability, Performance, Support, & Cost/Value ratio. Enjoy!

Best WordPress Hosting in Australia 🥇 2023

1. SiteGround – Best WordPress Hosting Overall
2. Hostinger – Best for Value
3. HostPapa – Best for Bloggers
4. Kinsta – Best for Agencies
5. WP Engine – Best for eCommerce
6. Cloudways – Best for High Traffic
7. DreamHost
8. GreenGeeks
9. A2 Hosting
10. Bluehost

1. SiteGround AU – Best Overall

• URL: www.siteground.com
• Price: AUD $4.99/mo
• Disk Space: 10 GB

We LOVE SiteGround! There are a LOT of reasons why SG is still the king for hosting WordPress sites (after all, they come officially recommended for WordPress, by WordPress). From super-optimised server setups for max loading speeds, to custom security measures designed to catch any potential threat as early as possible, every feature you can think of has probably been implemented, and much more.

For us Aussies, they have a lightning-fast data centre in Sydney. Combine that with their custom caching plugin that compresses your site to get to load as quickly as possible, and even quite heavy sites can load under a second (if you’ve got a decent web dev of course ;)).

Like we mention in our SiteGround review. Their customer WP-specialised support is top-notch, and available 24/7. Their ticketing system has an average response time of about 10 minutes, which is pretty good I’d say.

Other neat features include free SSL (make your site secure with https), auto-updates for WordPress, and even a 30-day money-back guarantee. They’re truly a no-brainer for any WordPress site.

Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Personalised WordPress Installation

Installing WordPress is a matter of clicks away with SG’s WordPress Starter. When you run the Starter, you’ll be greeted by a myriad of preset themes to choose from. Additionally, SG doesn’t forsake you in a mess of add-ons.

Instead, it’ll suggest that you try out plenty of plugins before you’re taken to the one-click installation procedure. The versatility here ranges from adding contact forms to online shops. I like that it also features marketing-oriented plugins for integration with Google Analytics and tools like Optimize for SEO.

Foolproof Uptime

If you’re like me, you probably wonder why SG’s credibility has skyrocketed lately – the secret lies in the infallible uptime. After monitoring SG’s performance for 12 months through tracking tools, I observed an uptime guarantee average of 99.99%. It’s been fluctuating recently between 99.98% and 99.99%, and I couldn’t complain!

Ultrafast Load Times

Yes, you’ll undoubtedly scare away customers or visitors if you have slow loading times. On measuring the speed of a test website running on the StartUp plan, I’ve got results ranging from 500 to 600ms – almost half a second. What’s SG’s recipe for rendering this speed possible?

SG used to suffer from slow load times as a web host in Australia. Now, here’s a quick fact: SG has 6 data centres around the world, one of which is situated in Sydney! The second key to the rapid site speed is definitely the CDN, Cloudflare, with around 5 data centres distributed in Australia alone, in combination with their SuperCacher plugin for WordPress.

WordPress Hosting Plans

In short, we HIGHLY recommend SiteGround as the Australian WordPress hosting provider to go with. From performance to customer support, they’ve got it all streamlined to a T!

Pros:

• Instant WordPress installation
• Reliable uptime with AU-based centres
• Knowledgeable support team
• Premium features in the starting plan
• Fantastic customer support

Cons:

• Higher renewal costs

Grab The Discount!

2. Hostinger – Best for Value

Hostinger review

• URL: www.hostinger.com
• Price: USD $2.89/mo
• Disk Space: 20 GB

I’m surprised at how Hostinger decorates its mid-tier Premium Shared Hosting plan with a free domain, SSL certificate, 20 GB of space, and free-of-charge setup fees. For USD $2.89, you’ll enjoy the luxury of unlimited website registration, bandwidth, and professional email accounts.

Bear in mind that you’ll only get the $2.89 deal if you purchase the plan for 4 years—we’re approaching some insane savings here with $138.72 for 48 months! However, you’ll have to pay for domain renewal annually, and the backups are done weekly.

Alternatively, you can apply for add-ons before your purchase, like daily backups, Cloudflare Protection, and SEO toolkits. I’d deem the basic plan sufficient, yet you’ll have to pay extra fees for the live support, a bummer indeed. Still, you can reach out for the ticketing system.

Besides affordability, people gravitate towards Hostinger for a couple of good reasons actually, and I listed them below!

Auto Installer

Hostinger makes installing WordPress on your website a no-brainer, thanks to the Auto Installer. You can access this feature when you first sign up via the Hosting tab and click on the target domain to load the page where the Auto Installer lies.

High-Speed Performance

Aussies still love Singapore servers since they’re almost as reliable as the ones I have for SiteGround AU. For this one’s speed test, I’ve used GTmetrix and got an average of 1.03 seconds for a clone website crammed with a plethora of visuals, quite impressive!

Combine that with LiteSpeed cache, and your visitors are bound to be mesmerised! Caching helps retain website data quickly either in CDNs or browsers.

Intuitive User Interface

Hostinger decides to ditch the old-school cPanel for a custom-made, user-friendly hPanel. At the heart of this panel lies the most paramount section: the WordPress dashboard at which you can control high-priority settings with effortless toggles.

You can activate plugins, force HTTPS, install the free SSL certificate, enable LiteSpeed caching, and deactivate the plugins that jam your traffic. Aside from dashboard, you’ll have the other parameters neatly arranged, like the Email tab for generating your domain-oriented emails and the Upgrade tab, which you’ll hopefully use when your business scales up.

Hands-Free Site Migrations

You don’t need to wreak havoc across your downloaded databases or use heavy cloning plugins to migrate your websites from other hosts to Hostinger. The guys generously offer to do it for you. Just pay a visit to the Hosting tab in the hPanel and open a migration request. For me, it took around 12 hours—better than messing everything up yourself!

Hosting Plans

Pros:

• Affordable
• Free domain and site migrations
• Impressive site speed w/ LiteSpeed
• Easy-to-navigate hPanel

Cons:

• Extra fees for live support and Cloudflare

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3. HostPapa AU – Best for Bloggers

HostPapa review

• URL: www.hostpapa.com.au
• Price: AUD $2.95
• Disk Space: 100 GB

At first glance, you’ll notice the abundance of riches HostPapa is giving you in its WP Starter Plan. I mean, look at this adequate 100 GB SSD storage space paired with the ability to create 2 websites. Additionally, HostPapa puts the perks of its starter’s pack under the “Essential WP Features” category.

For that AUD $2.95, you’ll get a unique domain name, free Cloudflare CDN, SSL certificates for the 2 websites, free migration requests, and WordPress super caching, compressing large-scale visuals to speed up your sites.

The above pricing applies only if you commit to a 3-year subscription to HostPapa. Also, you can include some add-ons in your purchase for website security and daily backups. Your mileage from HostPapa may vary, but there are some features that caught my eyes:

Snappy Site Speed

Despite operating from Canada, HostPapa managed to get to the bottom left corner of the globe, here in Australia! Our typical test with various tracking tools led to an average of 1-second loading time for a jammed landing page.

HostPapa has site caching on by default. Still, you can boost the loading speed a tad bit through the “Optimize Website” in the traditional cPanel. I paired that in my mind that with the 99.97% uptime guarantee, and found no right to complain—the total downtime accounts for roughly 2 hours per year.

JetPack for WordPress

Who doesn’t like JetPack? This precious plugin is every blogger’s loyal companion, which HostPapa includes no additional cost when you sign up for the Starter Plan. Through JetPack, you’ll get an unlimited CDN for images, a dashboard to monitor the downtime.

One thing I appreciated about this add-on is the managed social media posting, which makes it unnecessary to log into my social media accounts to publish my blog posts, incredibly time-saving!

Free SSL Certificates

It’s funny that most web hosts are still clinging on the curse of selling commercial SSLs. Haven’t they ever heard of Let’s Encrypt? Following the latter’s footsteps, HostPapa doesn’t wage war on your wallet by sticking to the norm: SSLs are a right, not a luxury!

Award-Winning Support Team at Your Disposal

I’ve had mind-soothing moments with PapaSquad—these in-house reps really know what they’re doing, given their around-the-clock performance on 3 axes: live chat support, phone support, and the ticketing system.

Since I was once fed up with raising tickets for millennia, I gave it a shot to see how fast they reply. Surprisingly, they responded to my ticket after approximately 10 minutes. Imagine doing all of this simultaneously with expanding an already enormous knowledge base.

Top-notch—that’s my final verdict on customer support. They even offer a 20-minute free consultation to help you get started!

Shared Hosting Plans

Pros:

• 2 websites for the affordable Starter plan with 100 GB SSD
• Free CDN/domain/SSLs
• High-performing customer support

Cons:

• No daily backups
• High renewal rates
• No Australian data centre

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4. Kinsta – Best for Agencies

Kinsta review

• URL: www.kinsta.com
• Price: USD $30/mo
• Disk Space: 10 GB

Managed WordPress hosts are the destination that webmasters always flee to after they stumble upon misfortunes with shared WordPress hosting. Unluckily, webmasters find themselves confused trying to pick the best managed WP host, but Kinsta manages to outperform its contenders for a smooth, decisive victory.

Kinsta adopts the core purpose of both managed hosting and WordPress: focus on business while we’re at it. It even transcends this notion when you take a look at its Starter Plan, starting at USD $30/mo.

You may put on your poker face on realising that it doesn’t allow for multisite installations; however, it arms you to the teeth with 10 GB of SSD storage, 50 GB of free monthly CDN, unlimited migrations, impervious web security, and uninterrupted daily backups. I let out a sigh of relief when I knew that you get 2 months for free when you go for a yearly subscription.

Still uninspired? Well, Kinsta got the rudiments of managed WP hosting right, and I’ll show you how below.

Loading Is Faster Than You Might Think

A steady uptime guarantee of 99.99% is nothing novel for a managed WP host. Instead, Kinsta shines when it comes to data centres. Among 24 worldwide centres lies the 2 holy grails situated in Sydney and Singapore. My curiosity led me to slam these servers with rigorous testing.

A diabolically bloated WordPress theme was the sword I wielded in this battle, and Kinsta rose victorious with roughly 1.5 seconds of loading for a 6 MB landing page. Kinsta also collaborates with KeyCDN, which is based on IPv6, more mobile-friendly and secure than IPv4 CDNs.

Navigable Dashboard & Staging Area

MyKinsta dashboard is an epitome of simplicity since it just looks eye-pleasing. You have all your statistics elegantly displayed in the Dashboard tab, from unique visits and CDN usage to data transfer. In the Sites tab, you’ll be able to create individual websites, install WordPress with one click, and assign the Australian server for your audience.

WP staging is where experiments meet reality. From the same Sites tab, you can launch a staging area to test plugins. Once you’re satisfied with your modifications, you can render the changes live when you use the “Push Staging to Live” feature. Don’t worry if things go south—Kinsta will generously keep a backup before overwriting.

Impermeable Security

Free SSLs are child’s play for Kinsta since it orchestrates its secure symphony with some unyielding tools. In the Starter plan, Kinsta’s team offers free malware removal if you’re subscribed. In case you’re migrating, they’ll wipe off the dust to get you ready for business. Moreover, your plugins will be inspected daily as a check-up.

Kinsta neutralises any DDoS attacks that may doom your site. Still, Kinsta believes that nothing is immune to hacking and provides automatic daily backups, which are stored for 14 days. So, backups are always ready to be deployed in case something tragic happens.

Top-Tier Support

Being a managed WP host doesn’t hinder Kinsta from nailing down the support quality. I really recommend checking the mind-blowingly RICH knowledge base, an imperceptible amount of information lies in there.

Reps are always within reach 24/7 through live chat, and if you’re not in a hurry, you can use the ticketing system for a long, informative rant on how to remedy your situation!

Pros:

• High-speed servers
• Free security features
• Unlimited migrations
• Staging area with “Push Staging to Live” feature
• User-friendly dashboard

Cons:

• A bit pricey without multisite installations

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5. WP Engine – Best for eCommerce

WPEngine review

• URL: www.wpengine.com
• Price: AUD $38.33/mo
• Disk Space: 10 GB

Buckle up for there’s an incoming traffic surge! If you’re hosting your website on WP Engine, you don’t need to worry about bottlenecks.

WP Engine also offers 2 months free with all its plans if you apply for an annual subscription, including the Startup plan. Billed at AUD $460 a year, you’ll get 10 GB of SSD storage, 25,000 visits/mo, and 50 GB of bandwidth for one website with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Though overwhelming, yet you’ll enjoy the automatically installed SSL certificates, migration requests, and most importantly, an easily scalable performance. WP Engine handles more than 2 petabytes of data and blocks a whopping 150 million malicious requests. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, let’s dive in!

Running at the Speed of Thought

WP Engine rocks a solid 99.95% uptime guarantee, but that’s only one part of the equation—the hosting provider utilises StackPath CDN with 2 PoPs (Points of Presence) in both Melbourne and Sydney.

The mastermind behind WP Engine’s imperviousness to traffic surges is EverCache, which aids the CDN in caching the static content (like buttons, visuals, etc.) of your website to enhance the speed. After a minuscule test, my ~200kB landing page loaded in under 800ms; that’s ridiculously blazing-fast!

In-House Migration Requests

WP Engine gives away a proprietary migration plugin, the WP Engine Automated Migration, that you can install on the WP dashboard of the website you want to migrate.

After installing the add-on, you’ll notice a new “Site Migration” tab added to your dashboard. It’ll ask you to insert your email and grab some info from WP Engine’s User Portal of the target install you want to migrate to. On filling the required credentials, you’ll be taken to a page showing the real-time status of your migration, which takes just a few hours to finalise.

Iron-Plated Security

A serious concern about security is what you should expect from experts in scaling. The team at WP Engine is fully aware that scalability leads to potential threats.

So, the security features are universal across all plans at the server level, including DDoS mitigation, blocking malicious, brute-force and script-based attacks, and automatically updating the WordPress core.

As the last line of defence, WP Engine performs daily automatic backups at no cost so you can get back on track if a 0-day threat taunts your websites. For the sake of argument, if all of these impenetrable shields fail, they’ll sort it out for you free-of-charge!

Elite Customer Support at Your Disposal

This enterprise-grade merger of features would go down the drain if not for the resolute, trained customer support team. You can opt for the non-stop live chat, 24/7 telephone support for sales inquiries, or even creating a ticket for miles-long questions.

Pros:

• Superior traffic handling
• Advanced server-level security
• 60-day money-back guarantee
• Fast CDN with AU-based centres
• Responsive support team

Cons:

• Staggering price for the Startup plan

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6. Cloudways – Best for High Traffic

Cloudways review

• URL: www.cloudways.com
• Price: USD $10/mo
• Disk Space: 25 GB

Have you wondered why Cloudways doesn’t advertise the number of websites it can host? Because it allows for hosting limitless websites regardless of the plan you subscribe to, including the basic plan that grants you a VPS (Virtual Private Server) with free SSL, automated backups, 25 GB of storage, and unlimited apps and migration requests.

You have to bow before Cloudways—this provider has overcome the perpetual weaknesses of VPS cloud hosting that relied on text-based commands to operate your website, which negates the point of WordPress hosting.

The Power of the Middle Man

You may smell something fishy when you compare the affordable price tag with the 99.99% uptime guarantee. However, Cloudways sets up a server for your website from 5 renowned CDNs with data centres all over the globe: DigitalOcean, Linode, VULTR, AWS, and Google Cloud.

I’d say Aussies should go for either Linode or Google Cloud for AU data centres. Cloudways acts as a mediator between the VPS and you with a handful of data centres cashing your static content. I used Pingdom to test Linode servers that retrieved a 700kB page in 0.5 seconds!

A Mix of Freebies

Cloudways proudly offers a 3-day free trial to test its services without providing any billing details. The UI will gladly walk you through the easy-to-navigate dashboard to install WordPress, add domains, and activate SSLs. Servers take around 7 minutes to get ready for deployment.

On applying for the trial, Cloudways didn’t want me to wait as my server was initiating. Alternatively, it took me on a journey on how to migrate my old website to the new VPS server using its Cloudways WordPress Migrator.

An Impregnable Fortress

Cloudways takes security extremely seriously. Aside from the DDoS protection provided by the CDNs, Cloudways ensures end-to-end encryption, up-to-date SSLs, firewalls dedicated to every VPS, isolated environments to neutralise malicious apps, and a sweet collaboration with MalCare Premium for automated malware removal.

Competent Guidance

Cloudways boasts an industrious team of professionals to help you navigate through adversities via either 24/7 live chat or the ticketing system. If the inquiry isn’t solved in 15 minutes, the representatives will refer it automatically to the ticketing system for high-priority aid.

Pros:

• Unlimited websites
• Excellent uptime with AU-based centres
• Trial period
• Great security measures
• Experienced customer support

Cons:

• No option for domain purchase
• No domain-oriented emails

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7. Dreamhost – WordPress Hosting for Small Businesses

DreamHost review

• URL: www.dreamhost.com
• Price: USD $2.59/mo
• Disk Space: 50 GB

Dreamhost has been attracting a lot of giant-to-be businesses for a while. Is it for its attractive 97-day money-back guarantee? Probably, yes. Another factor to this is what they include in the Shared Starter plan; for $2.59, you get unmetered traffic, a free domain and SSLs, and a low-cost email account.

You’ll get the free domain only if you commit to the 3-year plan. My bet is that small businesses can easily execute this purchase—managing a website with a 50 GB of ultrarapid SSD storage is elusive. Yet, it’s still packing more features to unveil.

Impeccable Uptime for Small Websites

Some websites rate Dreamhost’s uptime guarantee for 99.98%. Still, Dreamhost refutes this claim by advertising a 100% uptime for small businesses. The team at Dreamhost even proclaims that if your site experiences a suspicious downtime, you’ll get a refund.

Note that Dreamhost’s data centres are primarily located in the US. It’s a pity they don’t have a server in Sydney. Yet, for a small-sized business that runs on the Shared Starter plan, it’d perform well since the site speed for a ~500kB landing page benchmarked at 700ms in my testing.

cPanel Is Old News

Startups crave a more simplistic approach to managing their first website, and Dreamhost renders this possible in its control panel. When you jump on board, you’ll be welcomed with a navigable dashboard with colossal buttons for one-click WordPress installation, File Manager, and MySQL.

On the left, the navigation panel houses sections for controlling your website parameters, like activating or renewing SSLs, PHP versions, and migrating to the selected domain.

A Gentleman’s Email Account

How can a small business render itself credible without an email account? One of the sizable buttons in your Dashboard takes care of personalising your professional email account. Clicking on it will take you to a simple form you have to fill to create an account.

Keep track of your mailbox through the navigation panel. There, you can change passwords, customise the auto-responder, and manage the auto-removal of old emails.

“OK” Customer Support

Dreamhost is home to a team of well-informed support team members. They’re always on track 24/7/365 to reply to aid you in overcoming all the dire straits via email support, usually taking 8 hours to respond. I just wished for a 24/7 live chat support, but they have it available from 5:30 AM to 10 PM PST.

Pros:

• Great uptime for small-scale businesses
• Intuitive navigation panel
• Plenty of SSD storage
• Professional email accounts

Cons:

• No CDN or AU-based centres
• Limited support

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8. GreenGeeks – Green WordPress Host

• URL: www.greengeeks.com
• Price: USD $2.95/mo
• Disk Space: Unlimited

You’ll be doing two good deeds when you decide on GreenGeeks: grow your business and help the Earth wholesomely breathe! GreenGeeks guarantees that your website will reduce carbon emissions so long as it’s hosted. Luckily, it doesn’t scale up any prices in the name of nature; the Lite plan costs $2.95/mo provided you commit to a 3-year period.

A game-changing thing is the unlimited SSD storage for one website—I had to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming! To top it all off, GreenGeeks provides free SSLs, unlimited traffic, free domain for the first year, and Cloudflare CDN.

With all these “freemium” features in mind, you may speculate that GreenGeeks has reached the glass ceiling of WordPress hosting, but there’s more to discover.

Uptime Is Good Time

The higher the uptime, the more environmentally beneficial the hosting platform. That is the mindset that drives GreenGeeks, which guarantees 99.99% uptime. Unfortunately, GreenGeeks does not have any data centres in Australia. However, since we primarily worry about caching recurring material on websites, Cloudflare and LiteSpeed caching may compensate.

After signing up, you can quickly enable Cloudflare in your cPanel. The infinite SSD storage, which is reinforced with RAID-10 for faster data recovery, contributes to the fast performance, which aids LiteSpeed caching.

Unlimited Email Accounts

Most businesses struggle with the restrictions imposed on email accounts in web hosts. Fortunately, GreenGeeks gives you the privilege to create endless email accounts carrying your domain.

Just visit the cPanel’s Email section and fill in your preferred credentials. At the end of the form, you’ll have the utmost luxury to choose a maximum mailbox quota of 250 MB or simply click on the “Unlimited” checkbox!

The Green Patrol Is on Watch

Go have a nap while the green host performs nightly backups! GreenGeeks automatically creates what it calls “Daily Disaster Recovery Backups” in case something malicious clamps on your data. You can retain these updated backups via the ticketing system.

Despite being a shared web host, GreenGeeks simultaneously does proactive malware scanning/removal and implements DDoS mitigation at both the server and data centre level.

GreenGeeks Has, Well, Geeks!

Prior to signing up, I had an inquiry about the security measures and decided to try the 24/7 live chat. GreenGeeks connected me directly to a customer service rep to clear off my question marks. If you’re reading this, then thanks Leo G.! Besides, you’ve got a vast knowledge base if you prefer self-help.

Pros:

• Eco-friendly
• Decent uptime
• Free domain/CDN
• Unlimited space/traffic
• Responsive customer support

Cons:

• 30-day money-back guarantee that lets you pay for the free domain

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9. A2 Hosting – Best for Resellers

A2 Hosting review

• URL: www.a2hosting.com
• Price: USD $13.19/mo (reseller hosting) or USD $2.99/mo (WordPress hosting)
• Disk Space: 30 GB or 100 GB

What a magnificent place to start your web host reselling career! A2 Hosting is the breeding ground for future web hosting providers. Its cheapest plan, Bronze, grants 30 GB of allocated SSD storage, 40 client accounts, and free SSL certificates to all your customers. You’ll pay USD $13.19/mo if you apply for 3 years with a lifelong money-back guarantee.

The best thing about A2 Hosting is that even the cheapest plans, regardless of being for reselling or WP hosting, feature A2’s Turbo Servers that promise to load pages 20 times faster than contenders. Its affordable WP hosting plan, Startup, comes with free SLLs, staging areas, migrations, and unlimited email accounts.

Although many features caught my eyes right off the bat, I’ll demonstrate my favourite ones.

More Uptime Equals More Clients

I bet you’re now empathetic towards your clients when their sites experience the annoying downtime. Frankly, A2 Hosting puts forward an on-point 99% uptime commitment. There are 3 keys to this confidence: Turbo SSD servers, LiteSpeed caching, and the data centres located in Singapore alongside Cloudflare.

These three factors are seamlessly interconnected: LiteSpeed caching catches up with the reliable, 20x faster Turbo servers to achieve unprecedented site speed in the nearest data centre to Australia. So, you shouldn’t be overly concerned about your customers’ satisfaction.

Jingle Bills: Blesta

A2 Hosting saves you from searching for an efficient billing platform for your hosting client. Blesta is available in every reseller hosting plan and will keep you updated on the billing cycles of your clients from the moment they sign up till they terminate. Even if you’re a dummy with billing platforms, Blesta has its own knowledge base and ticket support!

Shielding Your Clients

Your clients may flatter your expertise in securing their websites, but what they don’t know is that A2 Hosting is what does the magic here. The implemented security measures include daily kernel updates through KernelCare, DDoS mitigation, virus scanning, and proactively removing malware.

Meet the Guru Crew

A2 Hosting has an army of web hosting experts awaiting your most meticulous inquiries. You can contact any customer service rep 24/7 via phone, live chat, and the ticketing system. These guys are mind-readers—when I connected to the live support, the agent immediately offered to remotely migrate my site for free!

Pros:

• Reliable data centres for reselling
• Free CDN and SSLs
• Billing platform
• Uncompromising protection
• Friendly support team

Cons:

• No backups in the cheapest plan

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10. Bluehost – WordPress Hosting for Beginners

Bluehost review

• URL: www.bluehost.com
• Price: USD $3.95/mo
• Disk Space: 50 GB

Endorsed Wordpress.org, Bluehost is one of the hosting providers that jumped on the WordPress bandwagon early. Since its launch, it’s become the golden standard that other web hosts followed shortly after. The blue-accented host provider is the optimal place to start for it strikes a rare balance between affordability and reasonably specced packages.

Although Bluehost advertises monthly costs for its plans, the USD $3.95/mo price tag for the Basic plan is valid if you give it a shot for 3 years. Actually, the plan is quite seductive with 50 GB worth of SSD storage, Let’s Encrypt SSLs, a 1-year free domain, and unlimited bandwidth for one website. This WordPress veteran has yet more to show off.

A Rare Speed-Uptime Equation

If you’ve hosted a website before, chances are you’re aware that you have to sacrifice speed for consistent uptime. Well, Bluehost refutes this fact and believes correlation doesn’t imply causation! Promising a 99.99% uptime guarantee, Bluehost also has data centres in Sydney. The standard load time for landing pages comes at 354ms in Australia, impressive!

cPanels Reinvented

Beginners always get baffled looking at cPanels for the first time. To solve that, Bluehost simplifies its cPanel and regroups all the relevant controls together in one section for easy navigation. For instance, the Website section has a “One-Click Installs” button where your CMS of choice awaits.

On the right, you’ll see a box for the features you use frequently. So, if you’re keen on revisiting your mailbox or managing plugins, Bluehost reads your usage and displays shortcuts accordingly.

The Vigilant CodeGuard

Bluehost bundles its protective shields in one single pill: CodeGuard, which works silently while you focus on refining your website. CodeGuard unceasingly backs up your data every day and keeps redundant copies of the backups in random directories as an extra layer of security. Simultaneously, it continuously monitors your website for malicious activity.

If you’re overprotective about your website’s quality content, you can also enable hotlink protection from the cPanel to encrypt your images and text.

It’s a Match!

I wanted to dedicate a section to how fast Bluehost connects me to customer service reps for the live chat support. If you’re still not sure about the service, you can connect to reps specialised in presales inquiries. As for technical support, Bluehost rates its team based on whether the problem was solved from the first interaction, a great impression!

Pros:

• Recommended by Wordpress.org
• Solid uptime and site speed
• First-class security
• Easy to use
• Free domain registration and SSLs

Cons:

• No free migrations
• Some security features come at a cost

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How To Choose The Best WordPress Hosting in Australia:

Beginning your journey into the world of WordPress can be overwhelming and confusing if you don’t have any prior experience with this extremely popular CMS. The terminology, features, and questions can throw you off and could lead you to make a bad choice.

You don’t just want to pick a good host, but the BEST Australian WordPress hosting for you. The best hosting means your hands and time will be freed up to work on the more important aspects while leaving issues with downtimes, hackers, server issues, and site malfunctions to someone else that is expertly trained in handling exactly that.

In order to help you make the right pick, have the most pleasant WordPress experience, and have a successful WordPress site, we’ve rounded up some important things to consider before you finalize which host you’ll be using.

Server Location: While the location of the server hosting your site IS important, it’s not the MOST important. For example, if you’re located in Canada, a US server location is fine. If you’re in Singapore, an Australian server location is great! Keep it close, but don’t think you have to pay a high ticket in order to get it located in your state, province, or town.

Finding the best deal in a sweet spot location is what you’re really looking for. As long as you can avoid choosing a host location located in another hemisphere or continent, you’re probably in good hands. That being said, if you already have a hosting service that is not close to your target market, you can use a CDN like CloudFlare to maximise loading speeds. a CDN or Content Delivery Network uses a network of servers or nodes to serve up a cached version of your WP site from the closest server to your visitors.

Uptime: Server uptime is a percentage of time that your server will be up and running smoothly. A percentage like 99.5% might seem like the best you can get, but that isn’t so. You see, that .5% could be several days of website downtime each year. And with each day of downtime, you’re losing revenue but still paying for the service.

To avoid bad days like that, we recommend going with a host that can confidently guarantee at least 99.9% uptime. If you can find something in your price range above that, even better!

1-click installers: Most WordPress hosts have some sort of 1-click installer available for installing WordPress. Some have their own custom-built system, and others use the famous cPanel, which has an app called Softaculous. Softaculous is awesome as it doesn’t only have a super easy installer for WordPress, but also for countless other CMSs like Joomla.

While it really shouldn’t be an issue as 99% of the web hosting companies out there use one-click installers, it might be good to double-check so you don’t run into a situation where you need to manually install WordPress.

SSL certificates: SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer as is a technology used to encrypt and secure the transfer of data and information between the server and your visitors. You can know a site is secure by checking the URL (https://) or the padlock symbol in most browsers.

We think having a secure site is a must these days, and because basic SSL certificates are free, there’s no reason not to have one.

Speed: While we’ve talked about server location and the use of a CDN in relation to loading times of websites, some WordPress hosts go a step further. The best web hosting providers that go after the WordPress market usually have custom built scripts and systems to increase the performance of WP as much as possible. While most of these hosts are the more expensive managed WordPress hosts, some more affordable ones like SiteGround also have custom plugins and systems in place to minimise loading times.

Storage: Storage is important. Don’t get us wrong, we know it’s important. To be honest, though, we think it’s overemphasized in the industry. It’s not THE most important thing. Easily, you can store a large blog or website that fits under 2GB of storage. You can find shortcuts like using Gmail as email rather than taking storage from your site, and this will cut back your need for storage in a big way. Signing up for 10GB of space might be overkill. Just consider it.

If you find a WordPress hosting site that boasts a ton of storage, chances are that they have shortcomings elsewhere that allow for all that space. These shortcomings could be in the form of a lack of resources, service, or bandwidth.

Customer Support: At this point in the game, you should only go with a WordPress hosting service that will offer you full 24/7 service. There’s really no excuse not to with all the competition that does offer it. You’re paying them to host your site, so they should always be available to you. This is pretty important and not an area we recommend skimping out on.

Backups: Backing up your site often is so important, because without a secure backup there’s always the potential for all data and settings to be lost if there were a large malfunction. Backing up manually is quite a hassle, so check to see if your hosting plan offers regular (daily, weekly, monthly) automatic backups.

Extra Domains: It’s a good idea just to check to see if the host you’re going with will allow you to add on extra domains. While you may not need it starting out, it could be something you’re interested in farther down the road.

What is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed Hosting is a pretty specific service offered by a website hosting company where they provide the maintenance, monitor security, install software, and perform upgrades around the clock for their customer’s server. But the scope can vary from company to company. Managed WordPress hosting is a more specialised hosting service that primarily services WordPress applications.

Everything from the server setups to support options is geared towards serving WordPress. While it does usually come with a higher price tag, it can be worth it as they really manage everything from core updates to backups.

Pros and Cons of Managed WordPress Hosting

Pros:

Allows those who aren’t tech-savvy to keep their sites up to date and running properly

Everyone running a successful website isn’t always technically inclined, and won’t know how to operate the server their website is on which can lead to major problems if the server were to crash. With Managed WordPress hosting, the customer can delegate the task of running the hardware to another party while they manage the website itself.

Extra Security

Some hosting plans offer proactive security that could keep potential threats to the server at bay by including features like SSL certificates and hardware firewalls.

Peace of mind

Having someone else manage the hardware is a good idea even if you are tech-savvy because it allows more time to dedicate to running the business end of the site rather than the technical side, and the peace of mind to know someone is constantly looking after your equipment.

Cons:

Managed hosting can get pricey

Australian managed hosting can cost anywhere from $30 dollars a month to hundreds or even thousands of dollars depending on the features included in their hosting plan.

You are still responsible for building your website

Even though you’re paying a little more for managed hosting, the service doesn’t include maintaining the website itself, only the server the website is on. Maintaining the website would still be the responsibility of the customer.

Some managed hosting providers won’t allow the user root access to the server

this can become a problem because any changes you want to make must be requested, then you’re waiting for them to implement these changes and test to see how the server functions. Having to do this constantly can get tedious and become time-consuming.

Common WordPress hosting Questions