If you run a business and want to use WordPress to power your website, you might be looking for a WordPress host. Most business owners that are looking for WordPress hosting are looking for a hosting service that supports WordPress, rather than specialised WordPress hosting. Here are our top picks:
| Image | Product | Features | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
 | SiteGround
| 9.6 | Visit SiteGround |
 | HostPapa
| 9.5 | Visit HostPapa |
 | GreenGeeks
| 9.4 | Visit GreenGeeks |
 | Web InMotion Hosting
| 9.3 | Visit InMotion Hosting |
 | Bluehost
| 9.2 | Visit Bluehost |
 | A2 Hosting
| 9.1 | Visit A2 Hosting |
SiteGround:
SiteGround is a firm favourite among WordPress site owners, and the company itself is one of the very few hosting companies that WordPress actually recommends for users of their platform. Everything that you get with this hosting provider is designed to run WordPress as smoothly as possible, including SuperCacher, the speedy in-house caching system, to easy one-click WordPress installs, free CDN integration, automatic daily backups, a customised WordPress plugin, free SSL and more. Security is taken very seriously with SiteGround’s unique and custom-built system that is designed to crawl the servers on a regular basis to ensure that any potential threats are detected immediately. They offer 24/7 support to customers with an average response time of ten minutes on support tickets. Their data centres are located all around the world, with a super-fast one located in Sydney, making it the ideal choice for Aussie businesses.
Pros
Cons
SiteGround offers three hosting plans for shared WordPress hosting with prices starting at just $6.99 per month. They also offer a thirty-day money-back guarantee.
HostPapa:
HostPapa is another hosting service that has been growing quite rapidly, with a range of additional services that you don’t often get from a typical web hosting provider including G Suite and Office 365 integration support plus web design services. They offer specialised WordPress plans that include expert WordPress support, built-in security and monitoring for WordPress, and servers that are optimised for WordPress. They also offer shared hosting, VPS hosting, and reseller hosting. However, a CDN is recommended since there are no servers located in Australia.
Pros
Cons
GreenGeeks:
GreenGeeks is a hosting company that’s growing very quickly at the moment due to their commitment to being the greenest hosting company and the excellent quality of their services and customer support. What makes GreenGeeks unique is that they have pledged to put 300% of the energy that they use back into the grid. And, they offer a range of specialised WordPress hosting plans with around-the-clock support, enhanced security, free WordPress migrations, unlimited SSD disk space, free SSL and more. They also offer plans for shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers, with a thirty-day money-back guarantee.
Pros
Cons
InMotion Hosting:
Known for their excellent business hosting solutions in the US, InMotion hosting might not have any servers in Australia, but their excellent reputation means that most users find that using a CSN is worth it. Although they might be a little pricier than their competition, it’s definitely worth investing in their plans, with WordPress specialised hosting plans that offer a range of additional features like malware scans, automatic updates, an optimised server stack, and an excellent drag and drop page builder. They offer a range of hosting options including shared hosting VPS hosting, dedicated servers and reseller hosting. They also offer web design services.
Pros
Cons
Bluehost:
Bluehost is another big name in the hosting industry that has been around for a long time. Since they were recently acquired by EIG, they sadly experienced a drop in reputation but have worked hard to regain this, and whatever they have done is working. They offer great support and a range of hosting plans that are tailored to WordPress to ensure that your site runs as smoothly as possible. They are a top choice for bloggers and offer lots of disk space plus a free SSL and more cool features. However, they do not have any Australian data centres, so it’s worth using a CDN to boost your page load speed. They offer a range of hosting plans including shared hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS hosting and WordPress hosting.
Pros
Cons
A2 Hosting:
This web hosting provider is growing at a rapid pace. While they might not have yet been officially recommended by WordPress themselves, they offer a range of well-optimised hosting plans designed to ensure that WordPress sites are running at maximum performance. Their global servers are fully equipped with decent caching capabilities and incredibly fast SSD drives. Their closest server to Australia is in Singapore and is almost as fast as the Sydney data centre for SiteGround. They offer a range of hosting packages with shared hosting, dedicated servers, reseller hosting and Australian VPS hosting available.
Pros
Cons
A2 Hosting offers three different shared hosting package options, with the cheapest starting at just £3.92 (AUD $5.22) per month.
WPHosting:
WPHosting is the perfect choice for small Aussie businesses, offering high-quality local WordPress hosting. Their plans offer everything that you would expect to see from a high-end WordPress hosting service, including top security with detailed malware scans and DDOS protection for your site, with regular automated backups. Although they are pricier compared to some of the other hosting services available, they are definitely worth the extra cost for many Aussie companies.
Pros
Cons
Hostgator:
A hosting provider that has been around for a while and certainly stood the test of time, Hostgator is the ideal choice for anybody who is looking to run a WordPress site on a budget. While they might not offer services that are quite as powerful as some of the WordPress-specialised hosting providers, they do offer excellent value in terms of performance and cost. However, one main thing to keep in mind if you are considering Hostgator is that they do not have any server locations in or near Australia, so you’ll need to use a CDN such as CloudFlare to ensure that your site gets decent loading times.
Pros
Cons
Panthur:
An Australian company at the start, Panthur have since been bought by Hostopia, and they had a little bit of a rocky transition to their new parent company, although it appears that all those issues have now been smoothed out. Their data centres are still located in Australia and they provide a range of powerful hosting plans on high-performance servers. Although they do not offer any specialised WordPress plans, their hosting plans are designed to support WordPress and they offer one-click installations, domain name registrations and more. Since they only have servers in Australia, they are ideal for local businesses, but you’ll need a CDN if you want to target audiences overseas.
Pros
Cons
Cloudways:
Known as being the king of cloud hosting, Cloudways is a hosting provider that allows you to use a range of data centres that belong to high-end hosting providers while deploying and managing a wide range of apps including WordPress. Although the experience here is a little different to most hosting providers and there may be a learning curve to go through as you get started, the main benefit of using Cloudways is that they enable you to access extremely high-performance software at a much cheaper price compared to what you’d expect to pay for VPS or dedicated hosting. They work with a range of huge cloud providers including Amazon AWS, Digital Ocean and others.
Pros
Cons
StableHost:
While StableHost might not appear to be much different compared to the other Australian web hosting options out there, looks can be deceiving. The main reason why StableHost users choose this hosting provider is that they offer a clustered hosting technology that offers impressive performance when combined with their customised versions of Litespeed, MySQL and PHP. Although they do not offer any specialised WordPress hosting plans, they do offer shared hosting plans that are designed to work well with WordPress sites and one-click installation for WordPress. However, since they are based in the US, they do not have any servers local to Australia.
Pros
Cons
Host Geek
Another 100% Aussie host, Host Geek offers data centres in both Australia and Singapore. Alongside hosting plans, they also offer a range of digital marketing services that you can take advantage of to improve your website’s visibility online and grow your business. They also offer WordPress specialised plans alongside shared hosting, VPS hosting, reseller hosting, dedicated servers, and specialised hosting plans for Magento and Joomla. However, on the downside, you do not get a lot of disk space for the price and this could easily be outgrown.
Pros
Cons
Shared VS. Managed WordPress Hosting – The Pros and Cons:
Shared WordPress Hosting:
Pros
Cons
Managed WordPress Hosting:
Pros
Cons
Best Managed WordPress Hosting Provider: WP Engine
If you are looking to invest in managed WordPress hosting, we always recommend WP Engine. They are the market leader in the industry, and it’s easy to see why. Their custom-built caching system called EverCache ensures that your website is loaded as quickly as possible, along with a CDN to ensure that the WordPress sites that they host are the fastest around no matter where in the world they are being accessed from.
They offer 24/7 WordPress-specialised support and you can rely on them to fix any issues as quickly as possible so that you can continue on with business as usual. They will also take care of all core WordPress updates on your behalf so that there’s less for you to worry about. They’ll test the site before performing any major updates to ensure that everything runs smoothly.
Finally, security is top-notch with real-time threat detection features, active DDOS attack blocking, and a promise to fix your site completely free of charge if you’re the victim of hacking.
How to Find the Best Australian WordPress Host:
If you’re not sure what you are looking for when it comes to the terminology and features, choosing the right WordPress host for your site can be tricky. A good host will ensure that you are not dealing with all the techy side of things or managing downtime and server issues, making sure that you’re free to oversee the day to day running of your business. Before deciding on which host to use for your WordPress site, be sure to check out these key features to review.
Where the server you are hosting your site on is located should always be taken into consideration. While getting Australian servers is always the best to aim for, it’s usually fine to opt for one that is fairly close, such as in Singapore. It’s best to avoid a server on the other side of the world, although you can use a CDN to speed up your site if you end up hosted in the US or Europe.
A CDN (Content Distribution Network) will store a cached version of your site on a network of global servers, which can then distribute your content to visitors from wherever the closest server to them is to optimise page load speed. Most WordPress hosts offer the CloudFlare CDN which is free of charge and easy to set up.
Downtime can wreak havoc with your business, so we always recommend only going for a hosting provider that offers an uptime guarantee of no less than 99.9%.
It has never been more important to build a website that is secure, and having an SSL certificate is the best way to show your visitors that they can trust your site. An SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate is a protocol for encrypting data between the server and your site users, and shows up as the ‘s’ in ‘https://’ or a padlock symbol in the browser bar. It’s a must for sites today, so choose a hosting provider that includes SSL as standard with all plans.
Aside from the server location and the option to use a CDN, there are various factors that will determine your site’s loading speeds. Hosting providers have a variety of ways to optimise the speed of your site including custom scripts that optimise servers for WordPress, custom caching plugins, and allocating more CPU resources per account.
Disk space is important, but it’s easy to overestimate how much you’ll need. You can easily host a small business website or a large blog with less than 2GB of space, so unless you are planning to create a seriously massive business website or a forum, there’s usually no need to insist on unlimited disk space.
Bandwidth is the rate at which data is transferred over the network, while data transfer is the data traffic that is generated by the website. If you are planning to offer on-site downloads, you will usually use data very quickly, so it’s important to look out for data transfer and contact the host to discuss your options.
It’s important to be able to get in touch with customer support as and when you need them, so we always recommend opting for a host that offers 24/7 support.
Most WordPress hosts will work with CPanel, which offers email features as standard so that you can easily create a personalised email address. This is offered by 95% of WordPress hosting companies, but always double-check.
You will need to make sure that your website, email files and database are regularly backed up. Before choosing a web host, check that they come with automatic backups on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Although you might not require this feature at the start, it’s worth checking if there’s a chance that you might want to host additional domains on your account in the future as your business or blog expands.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Although you can run WordPress on Windows hosting, it is usually recommended to use Linux for the majority of cases. Windows hosting tends to be more expensive in comparison.
Technically, no, since your WordPress site will need to be hosted somewhere. However, if you don’t want to sign up with a hosting provider, you can use WordPress for free at wordpress.com where they’ll take care of it all for you.
Yes, if you use wordpress.com rather than wordpress.org. Signing up with wordpress.com allows you to use a limited version of WordPress with a subdomain.
The main difference between the two comes down to who is hosting the website. When you use wordpress.org, you will need to download and install WordPress on your chosen web hosting provider. On the other hand, wordpress.com is designed to host the installation for you and there is the option to do it for free, although this is limited in terms of features and design and might not be ideal for all business websites.
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