WP Hosting: Aussie WordPress Specialists

WPHosting is Australia’s first specialised WordPress host. Even though you can host non-WP sites on their platform as well, this provider’s main advantage is their WP (and WooCommerce) tuning and expertise. More importantly, all of their support staff are Aussie locals, whom you can call (Business plan or greater) and live chat (all plans) with during business hours or email to open a ticket 24/7. With their privately-owned data centre located in Melbourne, they are a very quality-of-service orientated company. So if you value calling your host and hearing an Aussie voice from someone that really understands the technology, WPHosting is the best local support choice.

• No free SSL is included; however WPHosting offers Standard SSL certs for $49/yr and Wildcard (for subdomains beyond just “www”) certs for $199/yr, with free instant setup
• Their excellent local support is also available on Managed Virtual Dedicated Servers, which can be customised and easily scaled up/down, for high resource WP sites
• Loading speed was a tad slower than the other hosts, but they are compatible with major CDNs (CloudFlare, MaxCDN, Incapsula, Akamai) and provide unlimited traffic
• Account dashboard includes Cpanel access, which is great for power users, and DDoS Protection plus free nightly DB/file backups (15+ day retention) are included

 

Sydney, AU	Hong Kong	India	Brazil	Canada	Texas, USA	London, UK
567 ms	1600 ms	2000 ms	3700 ms	2300 ms	1900 ms	2800 ms

A –	“First Contentful Paint” Loading Time ~ Performance Rating

SiteGround: Award-Winning 24/7 Support & FAST

SiteGround is the winner of our two highest hosting plan ratings: “Absolute Best Deal” and “Unlimited Speedy Sites”, due to the 86% discount they are offering for a limited time. Meaning that you only pay $4.99/mo for a single site or $7.49/mo (1-year terms) for unlimited ones, with a host that has won awards for their excellent customer support. This on top of delivering the fastest load times in our speed tests, thanks to their Google Cloud-based and green Sydney data-centre plus CDN location. So if you value 24/7 live help and having the fastest loading times, SiteGround is the best support + speed choice.

• Free Wildcard SSL certificates (Let’s Encrypt) on all sites/subdomains, as well as an integrated Weebly site builder (free version) if you prefer using it instead of WP
• Live chat support is available 24/7 and has a 90%+ resolution rate, with phone support also provided, and helpdesk tickets having an only 15-minute avg. response time
• The free CDN feature can be instantly enabled with just a few clicks from the dashboard, and even pre-CDN load times were the fastest in our tests (255 ms for Sydney)
• Dashboard is the most user-friendly we’ve found, though it doen’t provide Cpanel access but rather beautifully replicates its functionality, along with unlimited email accounts

Sydney, AU	Hong Kong	India	Brazil	Canada	Texas, USA	London, UK
189 ms	757 ms	687 ms	2600 ms	1400 ms	1700 ms	2200 ms

A +	“First Contentful Paint” Loading Time ~ Performance Rating

Hosting Australia: Site Updates Included (Fusion WM)

Even with today’s site builders and user-friendly hosting dashboards, not everyone has the time or inclination to manage so many elements in the digital toolbox. For this reason, Hosting Australia has developed Fusion WM (Web Management). For a single monthly fee, you can have a local Aussie team with decades of combined experience host, design and update your site. They will migrate your existing site to a customised hosting package or, if you’re starting from scratch, they’ll create a WordPress site for less than $600 and then ongoing edits are covered by the monthly fee: from $89/mo to $149/mo depending on site size. So if you value being able to focus on your business while experts handle all the digital stuff, Hosting Australia is the best managed hosting + web design choice.

• The customised hosting package they’ll create for you can include a free SSL certificate and CPU/RAM limits ranging from 1-4 cores/GB on an unlimited bandwidth plan
• Another area where Hosting Australia shines is their 100% local Aussie phone support and ticket desk, where you can request help from the same support engineer each time
• Not only are their load time test results among the fastest (262 ms), but as an HA customer, we’ve seen how they constantly update their network to ensure high performance
• Even under management, you’ll have full WordPress dashboard control and Cpanel access to your hosting setup, which includes unlimited email accounts and daily backups

Sydney, AU	Hong Kong	India	Brazil	Canada	Texas, USA	London, UK
262 ms	1300 ms	1400 ms	2700 ms	1300 ms	1600 ms	2300 ms

A +	“First Contentful Paint” Loading Time ~ Performance Rating