If a WordPress website is a critical part of your business and income, there are two things essential to it performing at it’s best. Expert WordPress help for updates, fixes and improvements is one. The other is a quality WordPress hosting solution.
Your hosting company will provide the servers (basically computers for hosting websites) that allow people to view your website.
There are so many web hosting companies out there, that it can be really difficult to understand the differences between them and exactly which one you should pick. Choosing the wrong WordPress hosting means you risk a slow website, frequent downtime or frustrating support.
We are going to make choosing an Australian hosting company for your website easy!
Since we don’t place restrictions on where our clients host their websites, we’ve had experience with the majority of local Australian hosting companies and the major players offshore as well.
I’m frequently asked who we use for hosting our WordPress websites and who we recommend. But first I want to give you a few tips on choosing a WordPress hosting company, which is basically our criteria for recommending them.
If you want to jump ahead and see our list of the best Australian hosting for WordPress click below…
TAKE ME STRAIGHT TO THE WINNERS!
How to Choose the best WordPress Hosting
Customer Support Quality
What happens when you need support? It’s a little hard to know how helpful a hosting company is before you become a customer.
When choosing a Hosting company for WordPress it’s a good idea to read online reviews. Get a better feel by contacting them to see how they treat you as a prospective customer. Most hosting companies have 24/7 email support, but how quickly and painlessly you get your questions and issues resolved varies considerably!
We’ve done the homework for you on this. We’ve been in touch with all the recommended hosting companies support staff and had consistent positive experiences with short wait times. They’ve also had great feedback from our customers. The quality of local support from these providers is one of the top reasons why we recommend them.
Hosting Location
Where you host your website matters. Choosing a local Australian hosting company rather than hosting off-shore minimises any delay in your website load times for Australian visitors. So don’t handbrake your WordPress website speed with off shore hosting companies. All our recommended hosting companies have servers located in Sydney, Melbourne, or both.
Backup and Recovery
If your whole business is online, one of the worst things that can happen is your website crashing and needing to be recovered. Any reputable hosting company takes backups of your account as part of their disaster recovery plan. How frequent and accessible those backups are will vary. Some hosting companies don’t give you access and will charge you to restore a backup!
The recommended WordPress hosts here all have regular (off-site) backups you can access and restore yourself at any time.
Hosting Performance
We touched on website speed when talking about hosting location. The performance of your server is also important. As you can imagine, we work on website speed day in and day out. Hosting companies with slow servers were not considered at all.
Downtime is another aspect of performance. No hosting company has 100% uptime. Facebook, Netflix and the Wall Street Journal have all had downtime in the last 12 months to name a few. The key here is how well hosting companies communicate with their clients and the speed of fixes.
Cpanel vs Plesk vs WordPress hosting, what’s the difference?
Each hosting company will have server level software for things like taking a manual website backup, managing email accounts and accessing your website files and database. CPanel is an industry leading software application to manage standard web hosting accounts, and you’ll see it with most hosting plans in Australia.
Plesk is it’s nearest competitor and actually dominates in Europe. With a recent focus on the WordPress platform, it’s becoming a preferred option for WordPress hosting services, although some have built their own custom WordPress hosting control panels.
So…What is WordPress hosting exactly?
Here’s the difference. While traditional CPanel hosting services support WordPress, their servers also must cater for other content management systems, email and other applications. WordPress hosting is essentially specialised hosting that runs nothing but WordPress websites. That means servers can be configured for the optimal performance of WordPress.
What does that mean for you? WordPress hosting will have servers security hardened for level optimised caching for speed. Improved security from . Additionally most plans have staging sites and the option of automatic updates for WordPress, core and plugins (for available updates in the WordPress dashboard).
While you can host email on regular servers, that’s not the case for WordPress optimised servers. You will need to purchase either G-Suite or Office 365 to host your email.
The Best WordPress Hosting in Australia 2022
There are currently only 5 Australian hosting companies that meet our requirements for quality hosting services. From our experience choosing the best hosting package for your website from the providers below will minimise the the risk of hosting transfer regret!
Dream IT Host Review (Winner Best Hosting For WordPress)
When it comes to powerful yet affordable hosting for WordPress, Dream IT Host tick all the boxes for us. While most companies focus on the software marketplace, DreamIT Host is a unique provider that also acknowledges traditional custodians of the land.
Launched early 2014 after discovering no Australian web host satisfied our criteria for their web design clients, the founders of DreamIT Hosting focused on high performance, exceptional service, and great value.
DreamIT Customer Service
Its customer support system is geared towards APAC, covering Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. So it’s easy to get localised help for your support ticket. Australia based support is available via email, live chat or phone.
A customer can expect their ticket to be resolved within thirty minutes, which makes it ideal for people with busy schedules. In addition to the website builder, DreamIT Solutions offers reseller hosting and dedicated servers. These features are a great addition for those looking for a high quality web hosting service. In addition to offering a free domain name, DreamIT Host’s customer support staff will be there to help you with any questions or concerns.
DreamIT Hosting Plans
An independant benckmarking study found their Business Web Hosting plan to be the fastest WordPress hosting in Australian around the $20 price point.
The startup plan costs $6.95 per month, while the business plans start at $19.99. Both are great value and come with unlimited bandwidth and email accounts.
The Startup Web Hosting Plan is recommended for small businesses who need a cheap hosting. It still packs a punch with 5GB of RAID NVMe storage and 2GB RAM.
The Business Web Hosting plan comes with unlimited email accounts, 50GB of RAID NVMe storage and 6GB RAM + 300% CPU. So there’s plenty of room and power under the hood, that’s for sure! The business plan also allows you to host multiple sites and is ideal for businesses with multiple WordPress websites.
Free website migrations are now a common feature of hosting companies, but Dream IT Host claim they can transfer your website and email for free within hours.
DreamIT Host operates servers in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and Singapore. Their servers use NVMe based storage. That’s the next level on SSD storage, running 12x faster for optimal website performance. Hourly backups are accessible in the control panel which runs Direct Admin web hosting software.
Free SSL certificates from Sectigo are also included with the hosting plans.
If you need a local, dependable webs hosting plan, Dream IT Host our number one pick for WordPress hosting in Australia.
Digital Pacific Hosting Review (Runner Up Best WordPress Hosting Provider)
We’ve had websites using Digital Pacific hosting for WordPress since 2012. They’ve consistently provided top quality hosting and support for us and many of our customers over the years. one of Australia’s leading hosting companies they support over 50,000 businesses worldwide
Established in 2000, Digital Pacific is a carbon neutral Australian hosting provider. A great peace of mind for those who want their money to go to green companies and care about the environment.
Digital Pacific Customer Service
The local support team have been exceptional anytime we’ve reached out for help and we regularly hear similar comments from clients hosted with them. Their support center is based in Sydney and offers 24 hour phone and email support.
In order to provide a confident and satisfied environment for customers, Digital Pacific offer a full 30 day money back guarantee and customer service guarantee.
Digital Pacific Hosting Plans
Digital Pacific’s WordPress hosting plans stand out for value and configuration. Servers are specifically optimised to give you the ideal technical specifications and conditions for running WordPress smoothly and securely.
Personal hosting plans start from $9.90 per month and business hosting ranges from $17.90 to $35.90, all hosted in Sydney, Australia.
The price range for all plans are reasonable, and there are no hidden fees and you can save up to 35% with annual or prepaid billing cycles.
With the range of plans, you can decide how much storage space, RAM, and cores you need. In case your website grows and needs more performance, you can always opt for an upgraded plan with more features.
At $22.90 per month you get 50GB SSD storage with the popular Business Standard hosting plan. It also includes the option of hosting three websites on the same account, unlimited bandwidth and email accounts. You can also choose an extra-large plan if you’re using a dedicated server.
Digital pacific have invested in Imunify360 Malware scanning and daily backups for your website security. For your email hosting Digital Pacific recommend G-Suite and are G Suite Authorised Resellers.
Digital Pacific’s WordPress Hosting is built with Plesk. You can create staging websites in a couple of clicks to test updates before going live. Backups are automated daily R1Soft backups which can be easily accessed via the Plesk dashboard. The server configuration is tuned for WordPress for fast load times with an easy hosting dashboard. Four WordPress hosting plans start from $1690 with increasing RAM, storage and CPU.
Other Top Australian Hosting Companies
These hosting companies all rate a mention as good quality hosting for WordPress in Australia.
Crucial Hosting Review (CPanel Hosting & WordPress Hosting Provider)
Founded in 2003, Crucial Hosting in Sydney are another great performer when it comes to customer support and reliable hosting. In fact Crucial has been recognised for customer service excellence at the Australian Business Awards.
A full range of hosting from shared CPanel hosting to dedicated servers and WordPress hosting are available to suit any Australian website.
VentraIP Hosting Review (CPanel Hosting For WordPress)
We also have hosting accounts with VentraIP in Melbourne. VentraIP’s hosting offers great value when it comes to price vs performance starting from $8.95/month with 2G RAM and 5GB of SSD storage.
VentraIP’s acceptable use policy (AUP) doesn’t allow storage of website backups on your account, but they do run hourly backups automatically. This allows you to restore backups from the previous 30 days.
WP Engine Hosting Review (WordPress Hosting Provider)
WP Engine hosting is a global leader in managed WordPress hosting. Built on the Google Cloud Platform, servers are located in Sydney and many locations across the world.
WP Engine hosting prices are higher than the other hosting companies listed (starting at $35USD/month) but this comes with a number of added perks. Their hosting is optimised for WordPress with their own caching system (called EverCache) and global CDN.
Solid WordPress security and DDOS protection is backed by a free hack cleanup guarantee.
One of my favourite features of WP Engine hosting is the 1 click staging site for WordPress where you can test changes and updates to your website away from the live site.
If you are a CPanel hosting user then the WP Engine dashboard will look a bit different but quickly become familiar. There’s no file manager, so accessing WordPress files is done with SFTP access using a tool like filezilla.
Daily or on demand website backups are available with a neat interface. G suite and Office 365 are recommended for email hosting with WP Engine managed WordPress hosting plans.
They have a local support team in Brisbane who can quickly respond to any issues and even scale your hosting during traffic spikes!
Panthur Hosting Review (CPanel Hosting For WordPress)
Anytime one of our clients talks to me about Panthur hosting, they rave about the support received.
Panthur also have a good range of plans, from cheap hosting for those just starting out (As little as $5 per month!) to high performance hosting options.
R1soft backups mean you can restore your own backups with a 30 day history.
How do I transfer my website to new hosting?
To change web hosting companies you must:
- Sign up for a new website hosting plan.
- Transer a copy of your website files and database to your new hosting server.
- Check that all pages on the new copy of your website are identical to your current website.
- Change your nameservers or DNS records to point to your new web hosting server.
- After 24 hours, your domain name should be point to your new hosting server, usually much faster.
- Test that everything is working and performing as expected.
- Cancel your old web hosting package.
The recommended hosting providers will transfer your website files and email for you when you purchase a new hosting account, taking care of that step for you.
Conclusion
Before moving hosting it’s best to chat with your WordPress developers and the hosting company to ensure you start off on the right plan for your needs. By choosing from the best WordPress hosting Australia has to offer, you not only support a local business but you can be confident you’ll have high reliability and great support when you need it.
7 Response Comments
Green friendly Server is Good idea. and also great option is backup and recovery.
Sure is, Digital Pacific keep their customers and the environment happy;)
It’s great that you’ve highlighted Digital Pacific as an optimal WordPress host. One of their key points for me is affordability and location (being in Australia). I normally use WPengine but if looking for Australia based digital pacific is my next choice.
We’re using Lightning Base as they ONLY host WordPress sites, so the server is optimised for WP. They also have Australian servers, which is great. Haven’t had any hassles with them so far – hosting around 3 sites with them. (Have also used VentraIP for years – they are great too, but not WP optimised/dedicated hosting).
Hey Damien, I’m not familiar with Lightning Base. Good to hear you’ve had a positive experience with VentraIP hosting as well.
I think VentraIP Hosting is number one hosting of Australia as it has a dozen hosting features under cPanel at all levels and it serves more than 150,000 customers in Australia. I like their reasonably priced shared hosting plans.
I moved my clients off Zuver when I realised that one can’t cheap out on hosting.
I looked at WP Engine, Kinsta and Flywheel but think they are overpriced and i like my cPanel
A lot of people say good things about Lightning Base but my impression is that it’s a one man operation, more or less, and that is a risk.
I ended up with a local provider: WP Hosting. They look pricey on paper but that means that their customers aren’t cheapskates as I used to be lol. Their support is very good and WP specific.
PS this comment form wouldn’t allow me to submit this using my .agency domain name!