Best WordPress Hosting Australia 2024

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Matthew Rogers

Author: Matthew Rogers

Last Updated on July 2, 2023

Before we give you the best WordPress hosts for Australia, we need to clear something up.

A lot of people looking for WordPress hosting are actually looking for web hosting services for Australia that support WordPress, rather than WordPress specialised hosting (aka managed WordPress hosting).

Typically, when you go out and look for WP hosting, what you actually find are the companies that specialise in “managed WordPress hosting”, which is the next level up from your average web host (and usually costs a lot more – $6/mo for a shared hosting solution that supports WordPress, vs $30/mo for high-end managed WP hosting is a BIG difference).

There are a few rare exceptions to this, like our #1, SiteGround, who manages to offer managed WordPress hosting at prices only found in shared hosting plans.

Basically, if you’re a small to medium-sized business, don’t want to host forums, or expect millions of visitors per month, either type works fine.

As a web design agency, we have accounts with a LOT of different hosting companies (we like to experiment) and have picked our own top WordPress hosts based on experience, support, speed, and an array of other factors.

Best WordPress Hosting for Australia

  1. SiteGround – Best WordPress Host overall
  2. A2 Hosting – Best Host for Resellers
  3. WPHosting – Great Australian WordPress Host
  4. HostGator – Experienced US-based Host
  5. Panthur – Reliable Australian WordPress Host
  6. BlueHost
  7. CloudWays
  8. InMotion Hosting
  9. GreenGeeks
  10. HostPapa

Below our comparison table, you’ll find individual WordPress hosting reviews for more info on each of our top picks.

Web Hosting CompanyOverall RatingPrice/mo.FeaturesWebsite
siteground2AUD $4.99 (down from $19.99!)
  • Officially recommended by WordPress!
  • Very user-friendly
  • Servers in Sydney + a global network
  • Lightning fast
  • Expert WP Support
  • 30-day money back guarantee = Win!
Grab Your Discount
A2HostingLogoUSD $2.99
  • 100GB Disk Space
  • Great WordPress optimised plans
Visit Site
WPhostingAUD $19
  • Daily backups
  • Malware protection
  • DDoS protection
Visit Site
hostgatorUSD $2.75 (down from $14.49)
  • Very Cheap
  • Unlimited Disk Space!! <- US based servers though, so slightly slower.
Visit Site
PanthurLogoAUD $5
  • Great performance
  • Lots of choice.
Visit Site

Best WordPress Hosting Australia 2024 – Reviews

1. SiteGround

Best WordPress host

About

SiteGround review

SiteGround logo

URL: www.siteground.com.au
Price: AUD $4.99
Disk space: 10 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~100ms Load Time
  • 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Support
  • Free SSL, CDN
  • Daily Backups
  • 500+ Applications Supported
  • Google Cloud with SSD-persistent Storage

SiteGround is definitely our all-time favourite and our pick for the best WordPress hosting provider, & the owners of the two million domains they host agree with us here. 

And WordPress too

Moreover, SiteGround is one of the very few hosting companies that are officially recommended for WordPress, by WordPress… and with good reason! There are only two other hosting companies in that list- BlueHost and Dreamhost. 

WordPress logo

BlueHost is also a recommendation of ours (you’ll read about it further in the article), but sadly, Dreamhost didn’t make it to the list because their recommendable DreamPress plans might not be for you. Anyway, let’s continue discussing SiteGround.

Fine-tuned for WordPress

Everything is finetuned to run a WordPress website as smooth as possible. Their plans come with features like:

  • SuperCacher: It’s their one-click caching solution that will increase your site’s concurrent viewers capacity. Plus, it will make for a faster experience for the visitors.
  • One-click installs for WP: WordPress recommends it & it’s managed WordPress hosting, so no surprise here- you can install WordPress in one click.
  • WP AutoUpdates: Again, no shocker here, managed WordPress plans gives an auto-update option. This is for you if your site is more static and you won’t be opening the wp-admin frequently.
  • Free CDN: Their partnership with Cloudflare gives you a free CDN integration option. A CDN or content delivery network is a network of servers (across the globe) that stores your site on each of their servers so that when someone tries to access your site, they’ll receive it from the nearest node of the CDN. This benefits you in two ways: 1) The server response time will be fantastic. 2) The main server load will be spread.
  • Free WP migrator: SiteGround has a free WordPress Migrator Plugin you can use to transfer your site to SiteGround. 
  • WP-CLI & SSH access: You also get access to the command-line interface, so if you know your way around it, you can handle everything via the command line.
Siteground support

Generally great features

Above, we discussed the features that’d make your WordPress experience better; now, we see the general hosting features SiteGround packs:

  • Plenty web space: You get 10 GB and upwards SSD storage with SiteGround managed WordPress plans. It’s more than enough for the purposes the plans are meant for, in our opinion.
  • Free SSL: The communication between your site and the visitor will be completely safe, thanks to SiteGround’s free SSL.
  • Free email: At no extra cost, you can create as many professional emails as you want. Suppose you are building a website for your business. In that case, it’s a fantastic feature to have ⁠— it will boost the credibility of your emails + you can create email accounts for different purposes like [email protected] for accepting support queries.
  • Free daily backups: If by any chance you delete some files, or something happens to your site resulting in loss of essential data, SiteGround keeps a fresh copy of your site. It auto-backups every day, which can be restored whenever needed.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee: And of course, you can ask back your money if you don’t like it in the first thirty days.

Secure

They also take security very seriously, with custom-built IDS & IPS systems that regularly crawl the servers to make sure they remain squeaky clean. Plus, the latest PHP version with regularly-updated security patches strengthens it further. 

Incredible customer support

We aren’t exaggerating when we say “Incredible” customer support. SiteGround’s WordPress support is one of the best if not the best in the web hosting market. 

They offer 24/7 support and have options via phone, chat, and tickets (with an average response time of 10 minutes on support tickets). And the support agents are well-versed & ready to go above and beyond to help you.

WP Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / Month
StartUp110 GB$4.99
GrowBigUnlimited20 GB$7.49
GoGeekUnlimited40 GB$12.49

Pros

  • Very user-friendly
  • Great security
  • Multiple data centres around the world
  • Free CDN, SSL, etc
  • Recommended by WordPress
  • In-house caching system for super-fast loading times

They have 3 hosting plans for shared hosting, starting at only $4.99/mo (down from $19.99)! Oh, + they have a 30-day money-back guarantee, an absolute no-brainer for anyone looking for super reliable and fast WordPress hosting in Australia!

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2. A2 Hosting

Best WordPress reseller hosting

About

A2 Hosting review

A2 Hosting logo

URL: www.a2hosting.com
Price: USD $2.99
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~50-250ms Load Time
  • 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Support
  • DDOS Protection
  • Free SSL
  • Anytime Money-Back Guarantee
  • Free Site Transfers
  • Cpanel Control Panel
  • Eco-friendly Hosting

A2 Hosting is a web hosting provider that’s growing at an incredible pace. Although not officially recommended by WordPress, their hosting plans are very very well optimised and make sure all WP sites run at max performance. Their servers are well-equipped with super fast SSD drives and decent caching.

As for their WordPress plans, they have two versions: Do-it-yourself shared WordPress hosting, which is their shared hosting and Managed WordPress hosting. Both are optimised for WordPress, obviously. However, managed plans come with extra features (and therefore cost more).

Managed WordPress features

These are the features that are included in managed plans:

  • Turbo servers: These are A2’s low-density servers that are supposedly 20 times faster compared to standard shared servers. Websites on managed plans are hosted on Turbo servers. Plus, the premium shared WordPress plans also use turbo servers.
  • Easy WordPress backups: To keep your website pages & posts safe, managed plans also include easy, automated backups that can be restored with a click of a button.
  • 1-click site staging: Managed plans also include a WordPress site staging option for those who want to test new functionalities before applying to the live site. It’s a great feature for developers; if you are one, you certainly know it.
  • Jetpack Personal: You also get a Jetpack Personal license with A2’s managed WordPress plans. It’s a WordPress plugin that will take care of your backups, security, and overall site performance.
  • WP-CLI pre-installed: Another feature that’ll make developers happy; it’s a command-line access WordPress developers can use to make changes.
A2 Hosting features

The other features

The above ones were just managed plan-specific features. They unquestionably have foundational aspects on managed as well as unmanaged plans, including:

  • SSD storage: A2 Hosting uses enterprise-grade RAID-10 solid-state drive to store data. That’s possibly the highest-performing storage used in the value-focused commercial hosting business.
  • Free SSL certificate: If you are going to ask the visitor for any information about themselves, may it be email or credit card, A2’s free SSL certificate will ensure that the possible eavesdroppers won’t be able to decrypt the encryption SSL will provide. 
  • Free email: You can create as many business email accounts as you want.
  • Free CDN: They have partnered with Cloudflare to offer free CDN. A CDN will increase the average loading time by as much as 200%.
  • Free site transfer: Want to migrate your site from another host? Well A2 hosting will do it for you — you can either DIY or ask the guru crew support for help.

The Guru Crew support

That’s what they call their customer support. The team is available 24/7 and can be reached via email, support ticket, phone calls, or live chat. Any question, any problem…they are ready to help whether it’s 3 AM or 3 PM.

cPanel vs. Plesk

The shared WordPress hosting plans provide cPanel to control your hosting, and the managed plans offer the Plesk control panel. Both are top-of-the-line control panels, and you can get used to either and access all the functionalities from either.

Anytime money-back guarantee

A2 Hosting has the best money-back policy. Period. If you claim for a refund in the first 30 days of signing up, you’ll get a full refund on whatever you paid for the hosting. Plus, for any claim made after the 30 days, the charges for the previous months will be subtracted, and the remaining amount will be refunded.

In our opinion, this shows A2’s confidence in their services.

Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / MonthFeatures
Startup1100 GBUSD $2.99Great for a single site
DriveUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $5.99More sites + resources
Turbo BoostUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $6.9920x faster
Turbo MaxUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $12.9920x faster + 5x more resources

Pros

  • Global servers
  • Unlimited disk space
  • Anytime money-back guarantee

Just like SiteGround, they also offer 3 shared hosting packages, their cheapest plan starts at only USD $2.99/mo.

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3. WPHosting

Great WordPress hosting for small business

About

wphosting.com.au

Price: AUD $19
Disk space: 5 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~250ms Load Time (TTFB)
  • Australian Servers
  • 1 Click Staging for Premium Plans
  • 24/7 100% Australian Support
  • GZIP, HTTP/2, PHP7+, MariaDB
  • Free SSL
  • 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
  • Free Site Migration
  • Always-On DDoS Protection

“WP Hosting – 100% Australian WordPress Hosting, Since 2008” 

That’s the title of WPHosting’s site, and we can’t put it more accurately than that. It’s an Australia-only WordPress-focused hosting started to serve Australian bloggers & WordPress website owners. Today, they serve everyone from individuals, SMBs, and corporations to the government. 

It’s premium

First things first, WPHosting isn’t for everyone. If you are looking for quality rather than low cost, then only read about their services further. Of course, you’d have read the $19 pricing (which is nearly 4x compared to most web hosting providers on this list), but if you didn’t this is just a reminder.

WPhosting features

The need for speed

You are buying WPHosting for quality, and one of the primary quality factors is loading speed. For the best speeds, they include the following:

  • SSD storage: You get at least 5 GB of solid-state drive(SSD) space on WPHosting plans. It may not look like much, but practically, that’s more than enough to store website pages & posts. Of course, if you want to host videos directly, it’s not adequate. Anyway, from a speed perspective, getting a quality SSD storage is crucial given that’s the latest & the fastest read/write speed-giving storage that’s realistically usable.
  • CDN compatible: Though they don’t offer a free CDN themselves, their servers are equipped to install CDN from major providers like Cloudflare and MaxCDN. And if you didn’t know already, Cloudflare has a free version you can use.
  • HTTP/2: It’s a revised version of the HTTP network protocol. Compared to its previous version, it takes requests faster & the latency is low, essentially giving a faster load speed.
  • PHP7: It’s the most up-to-date version of PHP, which is twice as fast as the predecessor PHP5. Meaning, your site will load quickly with WPHosting.
  • Gzip: It’s a software application used for file compression & decompression. WPHosting uses to compress your WordPress pages so that those pages load faster.

Australia data centres

Another factor that directly affects the speed & deserves a separate mention is the location of their data centres. As mentioned at the beginning, WPHosting is 100% Australian hosting & hence the data centre is in Australia.

This fact benefits you in two ways:

  1. Privacy: Only Australia’s privacy rules apply to WPHosting.
  • Server response time: An important factor that directly affects your site’s performance is server response time. In brief, server response time is the time a web server takes to receive a response from the server. Generally, the farther the server, the higher the response time. 

Because WPHosting’s servers are in Australia, you will get the best server response time directly. 

Side note: This is the primary reason why the non-inclusion of a CDN doesn’t bother us.

Security

WPHosting comprises a few things that will ensure your website security. This includes:

  • Daily backups: In case you lose your data in some unexpected way, you can restore it because WPHosting auto-backups it (you’ll have to pay a restore fee, though). On the base plan, 15 copies of your website are kept (from the previous 15 days). As you upgrade, it increases to 30 & 45. 
  • Malware scanning: Your website & the whole server is under malware scanning all the time. Anything unusual will be quickly looked into.
  • “Always on” DDoS protection: This preemptively stops any sort of DDoS attacks on your site or the server.

24/7 support

WPHosting’s support team is expert at what they do. However, because it’s Australia-only, they aren’t truly available 24/7. You sure can generate support tickets or send an email or check their knowledge base 24/7. However, their live chat and phone support are only available 9 to 5. If that’s not a dealbreaker for you, we can surely vouch for their quality of support.

Three WordPress plans

StartUp, Business, and Corporate are their three WordPress plans. They are meant for what the name suggests. 

If you want to renew it monthly, they cost $19/mo, $29/mo, and $49/mo respectively. You will get a discount on the annual purchase, though.

Wrap-up

If you are looking for a premium WordPress provider and want to support a local business, WPHosting is an excellent option. Great for Australian business owners that need local hosting.

Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / Month
Start Up15 GB$19
Business410 GB$29
Corporate620 GB$49

Pros

  • WordPress hosting kings

Cons

  • Probably won’t work if you’re on a budget…
  • Or don’t use WordPress

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4. Hostgator

Best cheap WordPress hosting

About

HostGator review

HostGator logo

Website: www.hostgator.com
Price:
 $2.75 (USD)
Disk Space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~100-300ms Load Time (TTFB)
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • Free Domain
  • Free SSL
  • Free site transfers
  • 45-Day Money-Back Guarantee

HostGator is a veteran in the hosting industry, great for people on a budget! They’re definitely not as powerful as SiteGround or other more WP-specialised hosts, but looking at the performance/cost value, they’re on point.

We use them for a lot of smaller projects and quick experiments where we don’t want to spend the money on more premium hosts.

That’s the general overview of HostGator’s offerings. However, for WordPress, we do recommend their cloud-based managed WordPress plans.

Cloud architecture

Hostgator uses cloud architecture for their managed WordPress plans, which is a rare attribute in the value hosting market. 

Cloud architecture means multiple different servers are synchronised & used to host a site. The two main benefits of this architecture are 1) The server load is distributed & balanced, and 2) Because multiple servers power your site, if one server goes down, your site will keep running, i.e., high uptime.

Another plus of cloud hosting is you can scale whenever you want ⁠— just upgrade the resources, and you’re good to go.

High speed

Alongside high uptime, Hostgator’s cloud-based managed plans also provide high speed. In fact, a combination of the following factors makes it about 2.5 times faster compared to their shared counterparts, which is okayish in our opinion.

  • Low-density servers: Fewer sites per server are hosted on their managed WordPress plans, essentially giving more resources (mainly RAM and CPU power) to your site.
  • CDN: A CDN or content delivery network distributes your site content across its server network. This way, when someone accesses your site, they will get a copy from the nearest node of the CDN, and hence there won’t be any load on the main server.
  • Caching: HostGator uses a multi-layer caching solution to serve the visitors requested pages faster. 

Free SSL certificate

All managed packages come with a free SSL certificate, which is extremely useful if your website is meant for business, directly or indirectly. Basically, it encrypts any information the visitor provides so that no one else can tap in and steal it. E.g., if you are choosing the plan for your WooCommerce store, credit card details must be kept safe. Plus, the padlock sign beside your URL makes the customer feel safe.

HostGator uses 256-bit encryption with a 2048-bit key, which is impossible to crack by brute force.

Free migration & domain

If you already own a site that’s hosted with some other hosting provider, HostGator team will help you to transfer it for free. 

However, if it’s your first time building a website or you are going to use Hostgator for a new site, you’ll need a domain name. HostGator includes one free domain for that. Register a domain for the first year on yearly and above plans. The domain will be automatically renewed at $17.99 after the year ends.

$100 ad credits

HostGators’ managed WordPress plans come with $100 Google ad credits, that can help you get the initial boost you need. You can attract targeted traffic through Google Adwords.

24/7 customer support

Their support agents are well-versed with WordPress cloud hosting. You can get real-time answers via phone call & live chat. There’s a support tickets option as well. Moreover, they also have a decent knowledge base for common queries.

Shared Web Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / MonthFeatures
Hatchling Plan1UnlimitedUSD $2.75Free Domain, Free SSL
Baby PlanUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $3.50Free Domain, Free SSL
Business PlanUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $5.25Free Domain, Free SSL, Dedicated IP, Free CDN

Managed WordPress plans

HostGator has three WordPress hosting plans – Starter ($5.95/mo), Standard ($7.95/mo), and Business ($9.95/mo). The plans let you host one, two, and three websites respectively, and have equivalent resources to offer as well. Meaning, the base plan is suitable for about 100k monthly visits, the middle one can handle around 200k visitors, and the business plan is ideal for half a million monthly hits.

Wrap-up

Though their shared plans aren’t of a higher calibre, HostGator’s managed WordPress plans are well worth the money. You get cloud hosting for as little as $5.95!

Pros

  • Experienced
  • So cheap
  • Great value for the price
  • Unlimited Disk space

Cons

  • Servers in the US, loading times suffer a bit

Their plans start at only USD $2.75 (Around AUD $3.70)

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5. Panthur

Great WordPress hosting for beginners

About

Panthur review

URL: www.panthur.com.au
Price: AUD $6
Disk space: 10 GB
Support: Phone, Tickets

Features

  • ~200ms Load Time in Australia
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • Australian Servers
  • 24/7 Support
  • Free SSL
  • 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
  • Website Builder

Panthur was initially 100% Australian, and their servers are still in Australia, but they got bought by Hostopia. The switch to the new parent company was definitely rocky, with new support staff having to be trained. Though it looks like they’re back to their former glory.

What they provide are pretty powerful plans on high-performance servers… and it’s affordable. While they don’t have specialised WordPress plans, their normal shared plans do support WP and have 1-click installers available. 

The downside

The only downside would be that they don’t have any data centres overseas, so if you want to target a different country, you’ll need a CDN. However, if your core demographic is Aussies, Panthur is perfect!

Adequate server resources

Let’s discuss the server resources the cheapest Economy plan comprises.

  • Storage: The Mini plan, which is meant for one website, offers 2 GB of storage space. This is sufficient for blogs and small websites.
  • RAM: The plans come with one gig of memory. It’s more than most other web hosting providers offer. In fact, one of the best performing web hosts, A2 Hosting, offers 700 MB RAM on its base plan.
  • Bandwidth: Monthly bandwidth of 100 GB is more than enough for small sites that generate little traffic. Of course, more of it will be needed if you are actively advertising and attracting visitors.
  • CPU: You can use up to one CPU core at a time, which is excellent.
  • I/O speed: The economy plans come with 2 MB/s I/O speed. It’s adequate if real-time traffic isn’t very high.

Features

Panthur does have some foundationally solid features like the following:

  • Unlimited email accounts: This allows you to create professional email accounts for free. Create as many as you need. E.g., Different emails for support, personal, sales, newsletter, etc. Remember one thing though; you can send a maximum of 500 emails per hour.
  • Click restore: Panthur auto-backups your site frequently, and with the Click Restore feature, you can restore a copy in a click of the button.
  • Free SSL certificate: All the domains hosted with Panthur will have SSL certification. It will encrypt all the communications happening between server and user.
  • Cloudflare & Railgun: Cloudflare CDN, as you might know, stores your website on their network of servers to server websites faster to the users. Railgun accelerates the connection between each Cloudflare data centre and an origin server so that requests that cannot be served from the Cloudflare cache are nevertheless served very fast.
  • Free domain: They also offer free domain registration on .com.au, .net.au, .org.au, .com, .net, and .org extensions. It’s for the first year on any yearly or above plans.

The two promises

Panthur, like most hosting providers, guarantees two things:

  • 99.9% uptime: If they fail to deliver at least 99.9% uptime, they will refund you for the duration of excessive downtime.
  • 30-day money-back: If you don’t like their offerings after you purchase a plan (which rarely happens), you can ask for a full refund in the first 30 days. You’ll get it without having to answer the whys and whats.

Panthur plans

They have three types of web hosting packages with three plans under each. The cheapest plans — starting at $6/month — come from their Economy packages. Then, there are Business plans starting at $21/month and Stealth packages priced from $50/month.

These are their monthly charges, and if prepaid for a year or more, you can get up to 20% discount.

Wrap-up

Panthur is a great host if you are serving the Australian audience, thanks to Australian data centres. For global visitors, too, it’s not bad, thanks to Cloudflare and Railgun. In either case, it’s well-rounded otherwise.

Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / Month
Mini12 GB$6
Advanced46 GB$11
Professional610 GB$16

Pros

  • Local web host
  • Great performance
  • Good support
  • Servers in Australia…

Cons

  • But none overseas…
  • Only 2 GB disk space on their basic plan

Their cheapest plan starts at $5/month (though we recommend going with their bronze business plan for that perfect value/cost balance).

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6. Bluehost

Great WordPress hosting for bloggers

About

BlueHost review

BlueHost logo

URL: www.bluehost.com
Price: USD $2.95
Disk space: 50 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~100-400ms Load Time (TTFB)
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Phone and Email Support
  • Free SSL
  • Free Domain Name
  • 75+ Apps Supported
  • Free Site Transfer
  • 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Bluehost is another hosting veteran; they’ve been going through quite a rollercoaster in the last few years. They got acquired by the infamous EIG, which resulted in everything going downhill, from speed, to support, it wasn’t pretty.

Lately, however, they’ve been working very hard to boost their reputation, and it looks like it’s working. The support is good again, and they have WordPress-focused hosting plans that run very smoothly. They offer some cool features like free SSL and a LOT of disk space to start with. 

The downside is that they don’t have any data centres in or near Australia, so a CDN is recommended if you want to sign up with them.

Hosting option 

As for WordPress hosting options, they offer 1) WP hosting & 2) fully managed WordPress hosting, WP Pro. They also have other types of hosting like VPS and dedicated you can install WordPress on and play around.

Recommended by WordPress

WordPress.org officially recommends three hosts; one of which is BlueHost, as we mentioned in our SiteGround section. 

See, WordPress.org putting SiteGround as a recommendable host increases the list’s credibility in our eyes. However, we don’t feel BlueHost should be one of the only three web hosts WordPress officially recommends. BlueHost’s good, no doubt (it’s in our top WordPress hosting for Australia list for a reason), but is it that worthy? No, in our opinion.

Anyway, it’s a boast-worthy feat for them, so…let it be.

WP Pro features

The top & unique features included in BlueHost’s this range of hosting are:

  • Fully managed: When you choose a WP Pro plan, you can have pre-installed WordPress on your site. Plus, WordPress auto-update and core environment update make it the fastest and the most stable possible.
  • Marketing centre: WP Pro plans are expensive and hence presumably used by businesses. Therefore, it comes with a marketing centre from where you can manage emails, SEO, and social media. Also, you can integrate your Google Analytics to analyse from the marketing centre.
  •  Jetpack: All WP Pro plans come with different versions of Jetpack plugin- Basic, Pro, and Premium. Basically, it’s a security and performance plugin for WordPress sites.
  • WordPress themes: You get access to more than 100 WordPress themes with all WP Pro plans. You can customise any of those as per your need and get your site live within a couple of hours.
  • Staging environment: A staging platform helps you test changes like plugin installation, WordPress updates, etc. on a copy of the live site, which protects the running site from potential mishaps. This feature is exclusive to WP Pro plan.

Common features

Even more important than the special features are the fundamental elements that will keep your website foundationally strong. BlueHost has a set of such features also, including:

  • Free SSL certificate to encrypt the communication channel between visitor and server.
  • Unmetered storage to store as many files, posts, pages, etc. as you want.
  • Free domain for the 1st year, which is great to have, especially if you are creating a new website.
  • Free CDN with multi-layer caching for maximum performance across the globe, including Australia.
  • $200 in marketing credit to give your website an initial boost.
  • Backups are included in the WP Pro plans and the Choice Plus plan of shared WP hosting.
  • 24/7/365 customer support/WordPress expert support (via call, live chat, or support ticket) to solve all your technical & non-technical queries. 
  • And a 30-day money-back guarantee in case you don’t like what you get for your money.

BlueHost WP plans

The shared WordPress plan costs $3.95/month. The most expensive plan in this range, Choice Plus, is priced at $6.95/month.

As for WP Pro range of plans, there are three: Build, Grow, and Scale. These cost $19.95/month, $29.95/month, and $49.95/month.

Wrap-up

BlueHost is an excellent host in general. It performs well, offers exceptional uptime, is secure, and has decent 24/7 customer support. It’s also recommended by WordPress.org, which isn’t a factor you should judge a web host based on, but still a point in their favour.

Pros

  • Free SSL
  • Plenty of disk space
  • Affordable

Cons

  • US servers
  • Rocky reputation

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7. Cloudways

Best cloud hosting for WordPress

About

www.cloudways.com

cloudways logo

Price: USD $12
Disk space: 25 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • Load Time (TTFB) Depends on Cloud Provider
  • Choose from DigitalOcean, VULTR, Linode, AWS, Google Cloud
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7/365 Support
  • Free SSL
  • Dedicated Firewalls
  • Varnish, Memcached, and Redis
  • Staging Environment
  • Free Migration
  • Great Security

Cloudways is the king of cloud hosting; they allow you to use various high-end hosting providers’ data centres and deploy & manage a whole array of apps (including WordPress). While there is a learning curve, being able to access high-performance hardware for a fraction of the cost compared to managed VPSs or dedicated servers is pretty awesome!

They work with massive cloud providers like Digital Ocean, Vultr, Amazon AWS, and more. The real benefit here is the scalability cloud hosting offers.

Cloudways plans

We’ll break from the pattern here and share Cloudways’ plans first. You can choose servers from any of the following five cloud providers:

  • Digital Ocean: DO plans start at $10/month (for 1 CPU core, 1 GB RAM, and 25 GB storage) and can go up to $80/month (4 CPU core, 8 GB RAM, and 160 GB storage). 
  • Linode: Linode plans are priced from $12/month to $90/month. 
  • Vultr: Vultr’s packages start from $11/month and can go as high as $84/month. 
  • AWS: CloudWays’ AWS plans cost between $36.51/month and $274.33/month. 
  • Google Cloud: Here, the price range is $33.30/month to $226.05/month.

All of these cloud providers are super famous, especially AWS and Google cloud. Digital Ocean is also renowned to an extent. Vultr & Linode are mostly known in the tech communities.

The data centre aspect

Cloudways manages your WordPress site. The respective cloud provider owns the servers. Meaning, all five providers have their own data centres at different locations. And one of the benefits of having so many options is, there’s always a right fit for you.

E.g., If your target audience is Aussies, Linode, AWS, and GCE, all have data centres in Sydney.

Excellent performance

Cloudways is meant for high performance, and the following elements of their offerings show so:

  • You get dedicated resources on each plan. Meaning, if it’s written 1 GB RAM, you are provided with the 1 GB RAM. It’s highly unlikely in other shared hosting providers.
  • All cloud providers use enterprise-grade SSDs to store your data.
  • Cloudways has its own CDN add-on, which ensures excellent response time across the globe. Still, we’d recommend choosing the nearest-to-your-audience data centre.
  • Similarly, they have their custom caching plugin that’ll help you serve static data quicker, making overall loading speed faster.
  • HTTP/2 combined with latest PHP makes certain the throughput and requests handled per second are at its best.

Other features

Apart from performance attributes, there sure are other essential features, like the following.

  • Free migration to transfer your site to Cloudways.
  • Free SSL certificate to encrypt the communication channel between user and server. This is especially needed if you are asking the visitor for personal information like mobile number or payment details.
  • 24/7 real-time monitoring, regular security patching, and dual firewalls to keep your site & server secure from any kind of cyberattack. 
  • Automated backups in case you lose essential pages of your site or the website altogether.
  • Staging environment to test changes on a duplicate of the site or developing the whole site before pushing updates to the live site. 
  • SSH and SFTP access for WordPress developers.
  • And a bunch of team management and collaboration features for teams.

24/7 expert support

Twenty-four hours a day, you can contact them via support ticket, online form, and live chat. You can also request a callback whenever you need. There’s one premium support option for faster response, access to the Slack channel, and more. Besides, there obviously is a well-rounded knowledge base. 

Wrap-up

If you have the budget, go with Cloudways. The performance is exceptional, security is incredible, support is fantastic, and there’s everything a top-notch hosting must-have.

Pros

  • High-performance hosting
  • Very scalable

Cons

  • More difficult to master

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8. InMotion Hosting

Great WordPress hosting for eCommerce

About

Inmotion Hosting review

InMotion Hosting logo

URL: www.inmotionhosting.com
Price: USD $6.39
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~50-600ms Load Time (TTFB)
  • 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Support
  • Free Domain
  • Free SSL
  • Free Automatic Backup
  • Free Migration
  • DDoS Protection
  • 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee

InMotion hosting is known for their high-quality business hosting solutions in the US (yes, this means no servers in Australia, so a CDN is recommended). While the cost is higher compared to the competition, the quality justifies it. 

The hosting plans

They also have WP specialised plans with extra features like auto-updates, malware scans and additional security, an optimised server stack, and a drag-n-drop page builder.

Besides, InMotion offers shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. They also provide web design services if you can’t find anyone locally (which would be odd as web designers are everywhere these days).

Anyway, let’s discuss all the WordPress plan-specific things.

High loading speeds

InMotion is meant for businesses, and the faster the loading speed, the better it is for businesses because speed is directly proportional to the bottom line. InMotion ensures excellent loading speed by using the following:

  • SSD storage: The base plan comes with 50 GB SSD storage, which is 1) An overkill 2) super-fast due to the high read/write speed nature of solid-state drives.
  • Caching: All WordPress plans come with advanced caching solutions and a cache manager. In simple words, caching decreases the loading time significantly.
  • Jetpack: Apart from the WP-1000S plan, all packages include a jetpack license. Jetpack is a WordPress plugin used to boost site performance.
  • CDN: Thanks to their partnership with Cloudflare, each WordPress plan comes with free CDN. A CDN or content delivery network is a network of servers spread across the globe. The way it works is your website will be stored at all server locations, so when someone requests a web page, they’ll get it from the nearest server or node.
  • PHP 7: The latest PHP 7 can handle more requests per second compared to PHP 5 and PHP 3. It improves speed by 2x to 3x.
  • WordPress optimised stack: They describe it the best: “Our WordPress specific hosting plans were created with the operational infrastructure of hardware and software needed to allow your website to have exceptional load times, plenty of room to grow, and significant increases in speed over other plans.”
  • More PHP workers: Dynamic sites demand PHP workers availability. And InMotion assigns adequate of it. If you don’t know, a PHP worker’s job is to process PHP code, to put it simply.
  • Brotli Compression: It’s a compression algorithm that decreases the size of a web page, which eventually leads to faster page loading.

Your site’s secure

We are repeating ourselves here: InMotion is meant for businesses, and keeping a business site secure is a priority of both parties. InMotion achieves maximum security by providing:

  • Automatic backups: In case anything happens to your site, may it be due to security reasons or something else, they keep a copy of your site offsite. You can restore it if & when needed.
  • Free SSL: If you are accepting payments on your website or are collecting information like emails & phone numbers, an SSL certificate is essential because it encrypts users’ data. In the absence of an SSL certificate, a hacker can tap in on the connection and steal all the incoming information.
  • Hack & Malware protection: It does what it sounds like ⁠— this feature scans your website files for threats and adds security patches.
  • WAF: To keep the servers safe from commonly-practised attacks, a custom web application firewall (WPF) is built.

Other features

Keeping the security and performance features aside, there are a few other features as well, such as:

  • Free business email account with real-time spam filtering.
  • Auto-updates for WordPress, themes, and plugins.
  • BoldGrid- a DIY website builder that comes with 200+ mobile-responsive templates.
  • 90-day money-back guarantee on WordPress hosting plans pre-paid for six months or longer. For less than six months, it’s 30-day money-back guarantee.
  • 24/7/365 US-based support is available via live chat, phone, and support ticket.

Pricing

They have four WP packages costing from $6.99/mo to $14.99/mo. The WP-1000S plan and WP-2000S plan both cost $6.99/mo, which makes the latter plan the best value for money. However, remember, it’s an introductory price. The renewal rate of WP-2000S will be higher than WP-1000S.

Wrap-up

InMotion’s WordPress plans are excellent for businesses. If you are purchasing it for your company, you can be assured of outstanding performance, security, and best in class uptime.

Pros

  • High-quality WordPress hosting
  • Good reputation

Cons

  • Servers in the US
  • Expensive

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9. GreenGeeks

Best eco-friendly WordPress hosting

About

GreenGeeks review

GreenGeeks logo

URL: www.greengeeks.com
Price: USD $2.95
Disk space: Unlimited
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~50-450ms Load Time
  • 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Live Chat Support
  • Free Domain
  • Free SSL
  • 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
  • Free Site Transfers
  • LSCache, MariaDB
  • Custom Security Rules
  • Green Hosting (300% Energy Replacement)

GreenGeeks is one of the fastest-growing hosting companies at the moment. Partially due to the high quality of their services and support, but also because of their commitment to being super green. They put 300% of the energy they use back into the grid.

Where “Green” comes from!

They are committed to using green energy and putting back twice of what they use in the grid. That’s where GreenGeeks gets its name from.

Obviously, they haven’t hired engineers and operators to build some windmills and generate renewable energy. What they do is they buy (3x of what they use) MWH in the form of RECs. RECs or renewable energy certificates are market-based instruments that back renewable energy generators.

Anyway, let’s get back on track.

Best speed technologies

Achieving fast loading speed requires a mix of great hardware and equally good software. GreenGeeks understands it, and hence provides:

  • SSD storage for faster read & write speed compared to spinning drives.
  • Litespeed web server, which is perhaps the swiftest server platform for WordPress.
  • LS Cache plugin to cache your WordPress site and deliver quickly when requested, without stressing the server resources.
  • Latest PHP7 and HTTP/2 for the ultimate performance.

Scalability

At some point in your journey, hopefully, the site traffic will increase and/or you will expand your site. After a certain point, the current plan might not be suitable because your site is no longer “Lite”. 

With GreenGeeks’ built-in scalability function, you can scale computing resources and upgrade your plan seamlessly. 

Freebies

They also have quite a few value-added features included with their WordPress hosting plans. Even on the cheapest plan, you’ll get:

  • Free SSL certificate: It encrypts the communication between visitor and server, and safeguard from possible data theft.
  • Free domain name: On the annual or more plans of WordPress hosting, you can register a domain name for free.
  • Free nightly backups: A copy of your website is stored every night as a backup file. In case you delete something, or your site gets hacked/infected/etc., you can restore it.
  • Free CDN: A CDN or content delivery network delivers your website across a network of servers that are spread across the globe. Basically, it helps in decreasing server response time. This is especially crucial for you because GreenGeeks doesn’t have a data centre in Australia; hence, Cloudflare’s server in Australia will serve your audience (they have servers in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney).
  • Free emails: You have the option to create unlimited professional emails. You know the ones like [email protected]

Developer friendly

Alongside all these features that anyone can use, there are a few meant for developers and technically-literate people only. This includes access to SSH access, Git, phpMyAdmin, WP-CLI, SFTP, a staging environment, and option to switch between PHP versions

24/7 expert availability

When in doubt, contact GreenGeeks’ support team via phone, live chat, or support tickets. You can also look around their well-categorized and considerably deep knowledge base if you feel it’s a FAQ.

Plans & Pricing

They have three WordPress hosting packages- Lite, Pro, and Premium. The Lite version costs $2.95/month and is suitable for one website. For multiple websites, Pro plan priced at $5.95/month and Premium plan priced $11.95/month are your choices. Which one to choose depends on the resources you need.

Wrap-up

If you love the environment, want good WordPress performance, and decent support staff to help you when needed, GreenGeeks is an option. Their plans are primarily targeted at beginners, so if you are one, well, the packages are for you.

Hosting Plans

PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / MonthFeatures
Lite150 GBUSD $2.95Standard Performance
ProUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $4.95Better Performance
PremiumUnlimitedUnlimitedUSD $8.95Best Performance

Pros

  • Super green
  • Affordable
  • Great WordPress support

Cons

  • No servers near Australia yet

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10. HostPapa

About

HostPapa review

Price: AUD $2.95
Disk space: 100 GB
Support: Phone, Live Chat, Tickets

Features

  • ~20-500ms Load Time
  • 99.99% Uptime Guarantee
  • 24/7 Support
  • 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
  • Website Builder
  • Free Site Transfer
  • Free Domain Registration
  • Free SSL
  • 400+ Applications Supported
  • CloudLinux Servers

HostPapa is another one that’s been growing quite fast (despite their odd branding I’d say). They offer a few more services than your usually shared hosting provider, including web design services, G Suite and Office 365 integration support.

WordPress features

They also have WP specialised plans that include the following features:

  • Auto-installed WordPress: If you are a lazy person, this is a feature worth appreciation 😉
  • WordPress Super Caching: It’s Hostpapa’s caching solution that will essentially increase the site loading speed without any load on the server.
  • Free WordPress transfer: Have a WordPress site you want to migrate to Hostpapa? Don’t worry; they’ll help you do it without any charges.
  • Jetpack: Jetpack free comes pre-installed on the two base plans, and the Pro plan includes the Jetpack premium. It’s a WordPress plugin that enhances your WordPress performance. The features Jetpack packs are image CDN, lazy loading images, downtime monitoring, automated social media posting, etc.
  • WPForms: Well, it’s used to create WordPress forms such as “contact us” form.

Multiple websites

Most web hosting providers ⁠— whether on this list or in general ⁠— only let you host one website on the base plan. With HostPapa, you can host two websites on the introductory plan and unlimited websites on the other two packages.

Moreover, 100 GB storage on the base plan is more than needed to host two basic websites.

Top-notch security

HostPapa has a decent set of security features also. This includes

  • Free SSL certificate: HostPapa has partnered with Let’s Encrypt to offer a free SSL certificate on all WP hosting plans.
  • Auto-detect and remove malware: Their servers and your website are frequently crawled by top-notch security systems to remove malware.
  • Firewall: HostPapa’s advanced WAF (Web Application Firewall) stops malicious traffic before it reaches your site.
  • Jetpack security: Jetpack also includes its own set of security features to keep your WordPress site safe.
  • Other security features: RAID-10 redundancy, DDoS protection, ModSecurity, and more.

Other features

There’s more to HostPapa than the WordPress-only or Security features. You also get fundamental features like…

  • Free domain registration
  • Free email accounts
  • Cloudflare free CDN. This is super-nice because they don’t have a data centre in Australia and Cloudflare has many servers there.
  • Premium Wildcard SSL certificate add-on
  • PHP 5.6, 7.0, 7.2, 7.3
  • One-click installer
  • Custom cron jobs
  • Enhanced SSD drives
  • Easy account management- HostPapa dashboard & cPanel control panel.

Award-winning customer support

PapaSquard customer support is available 24/7 at your service. You can get in touch via phone call, live chat, and support tickets. Moreover, you can take a 30-minute WordPress training from them.

The support is super-friendly and can talk to you in English, German, French, and Spanish. Apart from chatting, you can read on their WordPress knowledge base as well.

The three WP plans

  • WP Starter: Introductory price is $2.95/month. Otherwise, it’s $8.99/month.
  • WP Business: Same price, i.e., $2.95/month. However, the regular price is $13.99/month. This is the best plan to purchase if you are willing to commit to a long-term plan.
  • WP Business Pro: The sticker pricing of this plan is $7.95/month. Usually, it costs $21.99/month.
PlanWebsitesDisk SpacePrice / Month
Starter1100 GB$2.95
Plus10100 GB$5.06
ProUnlimitedUnlimited$5.06

Wrap-up

HostPapa is easily one of the best Canadian web hostings. However, we wouldn’t rank it much higher on our Australian hosting list. Still, because it’s fundamentally solid, it’s a recommendable WordPress hosting for Australian demographic.

Pros

  • Plenty of disk space
  • Additional services

Cons

  • No servers in or near Australia

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Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting

Shared WordPress hosting

Pros:

  • Cheap
  • Perfect for most small to medium-sized business websites
  • Not limited to only WordPress
  • No plugin limitations
  • More customisable, easy install through cPanel

Cons:

  • Resources are shared with other sites on the same server
  • Slow if other sites on the server hog all the resources
  • Support might not be specialised in WordPress.

Managed WordPress hosting

Pros:

  • Super-fast
  • Extra security
  • Automatic updates
  • Better support
  • Tailored for WordPress

Cons:

  • Expensive
  • Limited to WordPress
  • Plugin/functionality limitations (to keep the servers lightning fast)

Best Managed WordPress Hosting: WP Engine

If you’re actually looking for managed WordPress hosting, there’s only one web host to turn to, WP Engine! They are the market leader, and with good reason. They built their own caching system to serve pages as quickly as possible (called EverCache), and combined with their CDN, they are the fastest WordPress hosting company around!

Their 24/7 support obviously specialises in WordPress, enabling them to fix any issue without a hitch. On top of that, they also take care of any WordPress core updates so you don’t have to worry about it. And when it’s a major update, they actually test the site first before updating to be sure nothing breaks, top notch service.

They also have live real-time threat detection, actively block DDOS attacks, and they’ll even fix your site for free if it does get hacked…

All of the above more than justifies the price tag! Interested in peace of mind and can spare the budget?

Australian WordPress Hosting: How To Find The Best One

Choosing a good WordPress host can be quite tricky if you don’t know the basic terminology and features to check out. A good WordPress host means you have more time on hand to run the nitty-gritty’s of growing the business, instead of having to deal with downtimes/hacked sites/servers issues/etc. So we’ve put together a quick list of things to review before deciding on which host to use for your WordPress site (it’s the same process we used for our SiteGround review).

ps: If you’re in New Zealand, you can check our NZ web hosting top 5, or our other hosting top 5/10’s like Canada WordPress hostingbest WordPress hosting UK, & website hosting Singapore.

Server Location

It matters where the server you’re hosting on is located, though for Australia, as long as you’re close-ish (like Singapore), you should be fine, there’s no need to really get a host on Aussie soil if you find a better deal somewhere else. Just avoid hosting in the US/Europe, or anywhere that’s just on the other side of the planet. That being said, if you do end up on a host that only has servers in US for example, then using a CDN is definitely recommended.

server location map

A CDN, or Content Distribution Network, keeps a cached version of your website on a global network of servers. The CDN may then provide your site to visitors from the nearest node or server to that visitor, optimising loading times.

Most WordPress providers have included a CDN called CloudFlare; it’s absolutely free and simple to set up, so look for it while evaluating WordPress hosting options.

Server Uptime

We recommend just checking for an uptime of 99.9% or more. You may Google certain companies to find out their uptime rates, but it should be around 99.9%.

SSL

Building a secure website is pretty important these days, and having an SSL certificate is the best way of doing that. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and it’s a protocol for encrypting data between the server and your site visitors, you can recognize sites that have it enabled by the “s” in https:// in front of the URL. Personally, I feel it’s a must, and Google agrees as it has made it an actual ranking factor in its search engine algorithm.

SSL sertificates

Luckily, the basic SSL certificates are free through a service called Let’s Encrypt, and a lot of hosting companies have it integrated with their control panels for easy activation.

Speed

Aside from server location and the use of a CDN, there are a lot of other factors involved in making sure your website loads as quickly as possible. Different hosts have different ways of optimizing your sites’ speed, from allocating more CPU resources per account, to even writing custom scripts that optimize the servers specifically for WordPress.

Some hosting companies, such as SiteGround and CloudWays, have created unique caching plugins that interact with their own servers to speed up your site even more. Optimizing a server to handle WordPress is major business these days, from employing the latest PHP version to Server-side caching.

Storage

While important, people usually over-emphasize the importance. You can easily have quite a big blog or host a small business site under 2Gb, and use Gmail for your email… you really don’t need that 10Gb of HD space, unless you want to host an e-commerce site in Australia. And cheaper WordPress hosts that boast unlimited space usually have other issues and shortcomings, like really limited resources per account (this also goes for any free Australian web hosting offerings you might find).

Bandwidth and Data Transfer

Bandwidth is the rate at which data is transported across a network, whereas data transfer is the amount of data traffic generated by a website. Data transfer is something to keep an eye out for.

If you plan on giving on-site downloads (pdfs, music, movies, etc.), you’ll go through your data quickly, therefore it’s better to contact the WordPress host directly to discuss your choices.

Customer Support

We suggest you search for web hosts that offer 24/7 online chat and call-based support. Support is pretty darn important.

E-mail Features

Most WordPress hosts work with Cpanel, which usually also comes with email features, so you can easily create @yourdomain.com email addresses. 95% of WordPress hosting companies have this by default.

Backup System

You need to back up your website, database and email files regularly. Check if the hosting plans come with automatic daily/weekly/monthly backups, it’ll save you a LOT of problems in the future.

Add-on Domains/Databases

Initially, you may not require this but as you expand you might want to host additional domains on your account, so just double-check if you’re allowed more than 1 domain.

If you’re having problems finding all the above qualifiers to find the best WordPress hosting companies for Australia, save yourself the trouble and just pick one from our top 10.