Updated 12/06/2022
Small business owners and not-for-profit organisation representatives often ask me this question: what is the best web hosting company for my WordPress website in Australia? First, I don’t agree with the hosting recommendations on the official WordPress site because they’re not relevant to Australian sites. So I’ve listed below some of the best companies to my knowledge and my experience. I didn’t include any affiliate or sponsored links so consider this a honest review.
VentraIP
Based in Melbourne, VentraIP is 100% Australian-owned. Their data centres are in Melbourne and Sydney. We use their sister company called Synergy Wholesale to offer hosting to our clients because it’s affordable, flexible and reliable.
Performance is relatively good most of the time. Sites may occasionally be slow because this environment is Shared Hosting. This means that hundreds of other websites share the same server. While the server is managed by VentraIP, you still need to maintain your WordPress site yourself (e.g. updates) or delegate these tasks to your web developer.
Note that I haven’t used their WordPress managed hosting since we provide more advanced services through our Care plans.
Their support team, based in Melbourne, is available 7/24 and responds quickly. I’ve found that they have a can-do attitude and often go beyond the scope of their support agreement. If you need to move away from another web host using cPanel, they will migrate your entire cPanel account. Their servers are also well secured.
I recommend VentraIP for simple websites, especially if your business is based in NSW or Victoria. Basic plans start at $10 per month.
Conetix
Based in Brisbane, Conetix is a very popular Shared Hosting provider among Australian WordPress professionals. I haven’t used their services yet but I’ve met their staff at WordPress events in Sydney and I was impressed by their knowledge. The control panel is Plesk and not cPanel.
I recommend Conetix for website owners who require excellent support, especially if you’re based in Queensland. Basic plans start at $20 per month.
Cloudways
Cloud servers are the best solution to have your website(s) on your own server so you don’t get penalised by the activity of other websites. You could rent a server directly from the Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services but it takes considerable technical skills to set this up.
Cloudways will take care of these tedious server management tasks. You simply choose in which data centre you want to rent a server and they will set it up for you. Then you can install a WordPress application as easily as you would do it on cPanel with Installatron or Softaculous. Cloud servers can be easily upgraded at any time. You pay as you go so there’s no monthly/yearly plan. You can rent a server for an hour or a day.
Unlike cPanel which can provide DNS hosting and email hosting, a cloud server will only host your website. Cloudways provides affordable addons for DNS and email hosting. While Cloudways handles most of the low level server management (e.g. OS updates), you will need some technical knowledge or a good web developer to manage your server.
Cloudways is a foreign company based overseas but they work with all major data centres in Australia. This website is hosted via Cloudways at the Vultr data centre in Sydney and it’s very fast, isn’t it?
I recommend Cloudways for resource-intensive websites like online stores. Prices start at US$11 (AU$16) per month, as of Jun 2022.
Flywheel
Flywheel provides “Managed WordPress hosting” for busy business owners who don’t have the time to manage their WordPress site and don’t want to rely on a web developer for maintenance. They have a data centre in Sydney.
I’ve only used Flywheel for one project but I found their control panel interface really good. Their support was helpful and the server performance was very good.
I recommend Flywheel as a premium alternative to Shared Hosting. Prices start at US$13 (AU$19) per month, as of Jan 2022.
