The Best Website Hosting in Australia - (Updated for 2024!)

As an agency we've worked with over 2000 businesses in the last 10+ years and as a result have tried and worked with 100s of different hosting providers around the world!

Deciding which host to go with is a big decision. There's a decent chunk of work involved to move a website and if you make the wrong choice, not only will you have to deal with the hassle of downtime and moving your site again, you'll also be seriously out of pocket!

Poor quality, slow hosting providers and downtime hurt your sales, hurt your SEO and ultimately leave you out of pocket. I don't need to tell you, you know it yourself - when a site is slow to load or not loading properly you quickly lose interest and move on. Your own site is no different.

In this post we share the best website hosting we've found in Australia and why we use them. These are the few we use ourselves, trust and recommend to clients on a daily basis.

Australia's Best Website Hosting Providers

Most people choose a hosting provider based on price but when you care about performance, SEO, Facebook and Google Ads, that’s a bad idea. If you’re on this page I’m guessing you’re not looking for the cheapest you’re looking for the best right?

You’ll find our preferred hosts in the table below. Here’s a one line summary of each one:

Cloudways - this is a new-ish provider and is by far the fastest because of their speed optimized server stack. Here you're getting a dedicated server without the complexity of managing one.

If you want the fastest choose this one.

**They have a 3 day free trial BUT if you use the coupon code FASTHOSTING they'll give you $25 credit so nearly 3 months free on the base plan!**

 

Siteground -one of the fastest Cpanel hosts worldwide (only marginally more expensive that the rubbish $3-5/month hosts!). Best if you have a handful of small sites, have a tight budget and also need email hosting.

 

WPEngine - if one of the original Managed Wordpress Hosts (they host Wordpress only) now with an Australia data centre. Go with WPE if you have Woocommerce or a complex site that needs high quality backups and a staging environment. Not the cheapest BUT you’ll save money on web developers and support.

 

Kinsta - a premium managed WP hosting provider running on Google Cloud Platform. For some types of sites they may be a better choice than WPEngine especially if you're running a large or complex site. If you're considering WPEngine it'd be worth looking at Kinsta too. Based out of Sydney

 

Crucial Hosting - one of the older Australian hosts, worth a look if you need a true Australian provider and phone support.

 

Digital Pacific - another pure Australian host, similar to Crucial with a few different server options

Vultr - we love Vultr nearly as much as Cloudways (in fact we tend to use the Vultr servers from Cloudways for our Australian hosting). We use Vultr if we need a true dedicated server solution a great price. One other feature we love is that they have a huge range of different off the shelf Linux distros and applications they support right out of the box which can save a ton of time configuring a server from scratch. Their datacentre is in Sydney.

 

Why is speed and reliability important?

If you’ve done any searching around the web around website speed or fast hosting you’ll see a bunch of scary stats and numbers thrown around. You’ll see things like “every 1 second of speed equates to 1% less conversion rate” and similar.

I don’t know how correct these numbers are, or the testing methodology being used but I’m guessing we can both agree faster websites=better, right?

There’s really no argument about whether speed is important, it’s even part of Google’s search algorithm, faster loading sites rank higher!

It's not just speed that's important, reliability is key too! After all, a website that's down effectively has zero speed. We've recommended the hosts on this page not only because they're fast, they're reliable too and unlike some cheap hosts, won't have continual downtime. If you scroll further down this page you'll see a detailed breakdown of the criteria we use to assess hosting providers.

Web Hosting CompanyCoupon CodePrice Per MonthWhy Recommended?Website Link
Cloudways HostingFASTHOSTING ($25 OFF Month 1)From $10/monthCheapest, Fastest & Best Performance, Dedicated Server Power, Dirt Cheap, Sydney LocationVisit Site
siteground2Get $10 Off Month 1 using our linkFrom $14.95/monthBest All Rounder & Fastest Cpanel Host, Not Recommended For High Traffic Sites, Singapore LocationVisit Site
WPSPEEDFIX(50% OFF Month 1)From $24.99/monthBest Value Managed WP Host, Good For Small to Mid Size SitesVisit Site
WPE20OFF(20% OFF Month 1)From $35/monthBest & World's Leading Fully Managed WP Host ,Fantastic For Complex Sites & Woocommerce Although A Little More ExpensiveVisit Site
From $30/monthHighly Scalable, Managed WP Host, Great For Mid Size SitesVisit Site
From $25/monthManaged WP Hosting, Great For Small SitesVisit Site

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Best (and Fastest) Wordpress Hosting Providers in Detail:

Cloudways is the FASTEST Hosting for Wordpress & usually the BEST Choice

www.cloudways.com

  • Coupon Code: FASTHOSTING - gets you $25 credit (roughly 3 months free on the base plan!)
  • Priced from: $10 USD per month
  • Disk Space Starts at: 25 GB
  • Backup System: From 1 hour to every 7 days + manual backup
  • Traffic Quota Starts at: 1 TB (1000 GB)
  • Admin Console: Custom
  • Data Centers: 60+ Locations! Including US, UK, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, France & many more!

Cloudways is a relatively new hosting provider and a bit different to most other providers in the market. In a nutshell you get dedicated server hosting without the complexity associated with running your own VPS or dedicated server.

They offer over 60 different locations with 5 different providers - Linode, Vultr, Digitalocean, Amazon and Google. (most providers only use one provider, eg Wpengine & Kinsta both use Google as their core provider).

Because it's highly configurable, scalable AND you get dedicated server resources, Cloudways is the fastest WP hosting provider on the web right now.

Why they might be the best Wordpress hosting choice for you:

Pros:

  • High performance, dedicated server power without the complexity
  • MASSIVE number of locations across several different core providers
  • High configurable
  • FANTASTIC price
  • Supports more than just Wordpress
  • VERY flexible in configuration capability

Cons:

  • Slight learning curve if you're used to cPanel (they use their own panel)
  • Fast growing company so support quality can vary at times
  • Signup process on the website can be a bit clunky

More details at www.cloudways.com


 

Siteground is the FASTEST Hosting for Wordpress & usually the BEST Choice

www.siteground.com

  • Coupon Code: Get $10 Off Month 1 using our link
  • Priced from: 3.95 €/mo (special price); 9.95 €/mo (regular price)
  • Disk Space Starts at: 10GB
  • Backup System: Daily backup
  • Traffic Quota Starts at: Unmetered Traffic
  • Admin Console: cPanel
  • Data Center: 4 Data Centers: UK, Singapore, US (Chicago), Europe (Amsterdam in the Netherlands)

Best All Rounder & Fastest Cpanel Host, Not Recommended For High Traffic Sites

Pros:

  • One of the FASTEST cPanel hosts on the web
  • 4 well placed locations to choose from
  • Supports more than just Wordpress
  • Dirt cheap!

Cons:

  • Great for low to mid traffic sites, not great for large sites
  • It's a shared host so you don't necessarily have a lot of CPU juice

More details at www.siteground.com


 

WPX is the FASTEST Hosting for Wordpress & usually the BEST Choice

www.wpxhosting.com

  • Coupon Code: WPSPEEDFIX(50% OFF Month 1)
  • Priced from:$24.99/mo (if paid monthly); $20.83/mo (if paid yearly)
  • Disk Space Starts at: 10GB
  • Backup System: Manual Backups and Nightly automated backups
  • Traffic Quota Starts at: 100GB
  • Admin Console: WHMCS
  • Data Centers: USA + UK Hosting locations

Best Value Managed WP Host, Good For Small to Mid Size Sites

Pros:

  • Dirt cheap for managed Wordpress hosting
  • One of the fastest managed WP hosts
  • High quality support
  • Good for upto mid range sites

Cons:

  • No Asia or Australia coverage

More details at www.wpxhosting.com


 

WP Engine is the FASTEST Hosting for Wordpress & usually the BEST Choice

www.wpengine.com

  • Coupon Code: WPE20OFF(20% OFF Month 1)
  • Priced from: $35/mo
  • Disk Space Starts at: 10GB
  • Backup System: Manual Backups and Nightly automated backups
  • Traffic Quota Starts at: 50GB
  • Admin Console: Custom
  • Data Centers: US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Taiwan, Tokyo

Best & World's Leading Fully Managed WP Host ,Fantastic For Complex Sites & Woocommerce Although A Little More Expensive

Pros:

  • Fully managed Wordpress hosting
  • Simple to use backend
  • Large number of locations
  • Good for higher traffic sites

Cons:

  • Higher priced
  • Not super flexible

More details at www.wpengine.com


 

Kinsta is the FASTEST Hosting for Wordpress & usually the BEST Choice

www.kinsta.com

  • Priced from: $35/mo
  • Disk Space Starts at: 5GB
  • Backup System: Automatic daily backups and Manual backup points
  • Traffic Quota Starts at: 20000 visits per month
  • Admin Console: Custom
  • Data Centers: US, UK, Australia, Belgium, Tiawan, Brazil, Singapore, Tokyo, India, Canada, Netherlands, Finland, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Osaka

Highly Scalable, Managed WP Host, Great For Mid Size Sites

Pros:

  • Large number of locations including locations other providers don't cover
  • Fully managed WP host
  • Good for higher traffic sites

Cons:

  • Higher priced
  • Not super flexible

More details at www.kinsta.com


 

Pressable is the FASTEST Hosting for Wordpress & usually the BEST Choice

www.pressable.com

  • Priced from: $45.00/mo (2 months free if paid yearly)
  • Disk Space Starts at: Unlimited Storage
  • Backup System:Daily, 30-day backups
  • Traffic Quota Starts at: 200000 visits per month
  • Admin Console: Custom
  • Data Center: US

Managed WP Hosting, Great For Small Sites

Pros:

  • Enterprise Architecture
  • Higher end host
  • Great for Woocommerce
  • Fully managed WP hosting

Cons:

  • Higher priced
  • Not super flexible

More details at www.pressable.com


 

Pressidium is the FASTEST Hosting for Wordpress & usually the BEST Choice

www.pressidium.com

  • from: $42/mo (annually) or 49.90/mo (monthly)
  • Disk Space Starts at: 10Gb
  • Backup System: Nightly backups
  • Traffic Quota Starts at: Unlimited
  • Admin Console: Custom
  • Data Centers: US, UK, Asia, Australia

Enterprise Grade Managed Wordpress!

Pros:

  • Enterprise Architecture
  • Higher end host
  • Fully managed WP hosting

Cons:

  • Higher priced
  • Not super flexible

More details at www.pressidium.com


 

How To Choose A Provider

Unfortunately most people choose a hosting provider based on price which is not really the best way to do it.

Ultimately with hosting you get what you pay for. Cost is obviously one of the considerations to look at when choosing a provider but that's really only one element of many. Below I’ve summarized the key features or things we look for when choosing a hosting provider.

Click play below to hear an audio walk-through and more in depth explanation of what you consider when choosing a provider. Alternatively click here for an MP3 audio or scroll down for a Youtube powered embed.

Server Location

Server location is key and poor location choice is a common problem we see. It's really important that you host in the geographic location that is closest to the majority of your visitors.

That means if you're an Australian company serving mostly Australian customers you need to host at a location in Australia. If you're a US company, then host in the US and a Europe based business then host in Europe.

Generally the site will run 0.5-1 second SLOWER when the visitor traffic has to cross an ocean so this is really important!

Not all providers offer hosting in all locations so before committing to a provider make sure the servers are located in the right location for your business.

**NOTE if you're serving an international audience then it's really important you use a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN is a distributed network of servers around the world that host your content that will reduce the impact geographic location has on speed. Most top tier hosts have CDN services built in.

Speed, Reliability and Uptime

Obviously if you're on this page you know that site speed is really important but most people overlook uptime and reliability which are arguably even more important, after all, if your site is down is effectively has zero speed!

Your hosting needs to be well matched to the number of visitors you’re expecting and the order volume you’re catering for. If your store revenue is in the millions then you’ll need a much larger server to suit.

Don't expect to run a high traffic site or a database heavy site on cheap hosting or a low end plan. Make sure the plan is matches to the traffic level you're expect.

Sidenote: we use tools.pingdom.com to test website speed. In a perfect world your site should be loading in under 1 second (where the load begins to feel instant). We also use uptimerobot.com to monitor site uptime.

Support

What is your support expectation?

At some point you’re going to need support. Do you expect to be able to call your provider when the site is down? Do you expect them to be able to help with general technical problems that aren't strictly related to hosting? Being clear with what your expectation is up front is really important.

You're not going to get a high level of support paying a few bucks a month - it's just not commercially feasible. Make sure you factor in the level of support you want when choosing a plan.

If you’re a larger store doing millions in revenue you’ll ideally need your own dedicated Wordpress dev resources on top of what the hosting provider offers.

Patching & Security

Your website CMS is no different to your smartphone or laptop. It needs regular patches and updates to ensure bugs are taken care of and security holes are patched.

Some hosting providers offer patching as part of their service, others expect you to take care of it. Bottom line, patching needs to be done by someone!

Hosting Plan Specs & Features

Most hosting plans will offer roughly the same specs and features but often there are some subtle differences.

Features that are worth considering are:

Free SSL Certificates - all good hosts offer free SSL certificates and SSL/HTTPS is standard across the web now. Any host you’re looking at should support free SSL certs.

HTTP2 protocol support - this is an important speed consideration. A host that doesn’t support HTTP2 is not running updated servers and should be avoided.

PHP 7.X support - your host at a minimum should support PHP v7.0 and ideally the newer v7.1 and 7.2. The PHP version your hosting instances are running can have a dramatic impact on site speed. Newer versions run faster.

Number of Wordpress instances or domains supported - how many sites do you want to run on the plan? Some providers give you one instance, some a handful and some unlimited.

Storage and Disk Space - how much disk space are you going to need? Most sites aren’t actually that big, 10-20gb is usually plenty for even larger sites.

Traffic Quota - how much traffic or quota do you need for your site? Some hosts charge on raw gigabytes or terabytes transferred, some on actual visitors.

Backups - this is probably one of the most important features so we’ve expanded further in the point below.

CPanel - Cpanel is a hosting management console. Some hosts use/provide Cpanel and some use different management interfaces. This really shouldn’t be much of a consideration because all admin panels allow you to do roughly the same thing but for some people this is important.

MySQL server version support - v5.7 is the latest version of SQL server, the database server Wordpress uses. v5.7 can be significantly faster than v5.6 for *some* types of sites so if you’re interested in absolute maximum performance this is important.

Backups

What is your backup strategy? There’s so much digital capital tied up in your website that it’s critical that you at least have some backup system in place taking daily backups.

On bigger sites ideally you’ll need to look at realtime or near realtime backup solutions where the site is backed up upon every change or on an hourly basis.

With backups there's a saying, 2 is 1 and 1 is none. What's the is implying is that it's not wise to rely solely on one backup system.

With ALL our SEO agency clients we run two backup systems - usually the hosting the site is on has a backup and then we generally use Blogvault on top of the hosting backup.

Blogvault is by far our favourite backup solution as it has a realtime option where changes are backed up on the site as they happen (perfect for Woocommerce) AND they specifically tell you which files and database tables are not being backed up.

We've used pretty much every major backup plugin on the markup - Backup Buddy, Vaultpress, Updraft, BackWPUp and a bunch of others - Blogvault is really the only one we trust.

It's not good enough to solely rely on the hosting provider's backup as problems and data loss DO happen. Even a moderately successful website will have 100s if not 1000s of hours invested in it along with SEO rankings and optimizations - most businesses today simply cannot afford data loss so at less than 10 bucks a month for the base plan there's really no excuse.

Avoid Known Slow Hosting Providers

Like I said at the top, you get what you pay for when it comes to hosting. You simply cannot expect a quality hosting service when you’re paying a few bucks a month.

These hosts are known to be slow hosts and should be avoided if speed is your top priority:

Bluehost, Godaddy, Hostgator, any hosting company owned by EIG, Dreamhost, A2 Hosting, Site5, iPage, 1&1 Hosting.

These guys all run a business model that is based on price being the key feature. In order to give you that $3/month hosting plan they run their servers to the absolute limit, don't keep infrastructure up to date and provide poor quality support. Avoid them if speed is important. If price is an important concern, Siteground and Cloudways are both fast and dirt cheap.


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East Fremantle 6158
Western Australia
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