Choosing the best WordPress hosting for your WordPress website is extremely important for your business. It needs to be able to load quickly and reliably for all visitors no matter where they are accessing your website.
There are thousands of Australian WordPress hosting providers that you can choose from to host your website on. And there are hundreds of thousands more across the world.
The problem is a great number of them suck!
Fortunately, this guide compares and helps you choose from the 4 best WordPress website hosting providers that we have come across.
No time to read on? Choose from either SiteGround or WP Engine and you cant go wrong. Not only that but we have some amazing discounts on these hosting options too.
No matter whether you are in Australia or around the world, these WordPress hosting providers are the top 4 that we recommend you choose from if you are wanting to host a website or blog.
What to look for in good WordPress hosting?
The three main factors you need to consider when choosing WordPress web hosting for your website are.
- Speed – Is it fast?
- Reliability – Can it handle traffic? and
- Support – Will people help me?
Speed plays a huge role in both customer satisfaction and the search engine ranking of your website. The faster your website loads, the more favourable it looks to search engines like Google.
We have written a number of guides on how to speed up your website. But if you do not have the right foundations in the first place, you are doing your website a huge disservice from the get go.
Reliability is the second yet equally as important factor to consider when choosing which is the best WordPress hosting provider for you.
Reliability comes down to whether you can update your website without running into errors and most importantly, whether your visitors can access your website without it crashing.
Another thing to consider is the uptime of the server. No website hosting provider can provide 100% uninterrupted uptime. Things like server updates and network faults are the cause of the 1% downtime. But the best WordPress hosting providers certainly should be able to keep your website up and running for 99% of the time.
Hosting providers will also limit the amount of traffic your website can handle which means when you reach your limit, it may shut off your website to all other visitors.
You definitely don’t want that! It may be costing you tens of thousands of dollars of lost business if it does.
Support is often something you don’t know you need until you need it.
If something were to happen to your website or you needed to perform a specific action like backing up your website on your WordPress hosting platform, then support can make your life a hell of a lot easier. All of the options listed below offer 24/7 support.
Comparing the best WordPress hosting providers
For this test we will be taking the three factors of speed, support and reliability and putting them to the test to see which WordPress hosting provider is the best.
We will be testing Bluehost, Siteground, Dreamhost and WP Engine as the 4 top WordPress hosting providers.
Find out below who we prefer.
SiteGround WordPress Hosting
SiteGround has been around for over 15 years. On last count they were servicing more than 1,800,000 domains.
SiteGround is one of the three WordPress hosting providers that WordPress endorses.
Hosting Features
SiteGround offers the following features on their website hosting plans
- Free Site Transfer
- Free Website Builder
- Free App Installs
- 30 Days Money Back
- Free Email Accounts
- Free Auto Daily Backups
- Unlimited Traffic
- Secure and global delivery network
Get up to 70% off SiteGround hosting while our deal lasts.
As far as reliability goes, we have used SiteGround for a number of client websites at our web agency. We have had no issues with reliability. You can count on websites staying online without a hitch.
They offer 24/7 support to customers. You can call them, chat with them or lodge a ticket.
Bluehost WordPress Hosting
Bluehost is one of the largest WordPress hosting companies globally. They are one of the 3 WordPress website hosting companies that are endorsed by WordPress themselves.
Bluehost powers over 2 million websites around the world.
As far as speed goes, Bluehost uses modern hosting software and does a good job at ensuring your WordPress website runs as quick as it can.
Hosting Features
Bluehost offers the following features on their website hosting plans:
- Free domain name for the 1st year
- Secure hosting
- 1-click WordPress install
- Free Email Accounts
Get up to 50% off Bluehost hosting while our deals last.
Bluehost are a little more welcoming when it comes to new support queries than SiteGround. You can call or chat with them 24/7 no matter if you are a new customer or existing.
Dreamhost WordPress Hosting
Dreamhost is the oldest WordPress hosting provider on this list. Dreamhost was founded over 23 years ago. They service over 400,000 customers on last count.
Dreamhost is the final WordPress hosting company on this list that is endorsed by WordPress themselves.
Hosting Features
DreamHost offers the following features on their website hosting plans:
- 1-Click WordPress install
- Free Domain name
- Free Email Accounts
- Secure Hosting
- Daily Automated Backups
Get up to 47% off DreamHost hosting while our deals last.
Dreamhost provide 24/7 support just like the other hosting companies. They are third on this list purely from preference having used all these WordPress hosting providers dozens of times.
WP Engine WordPress Hosting
WP Engine is the youngest of all the WordPress hosting companies being reviewed today having been founded in 2013. But we recommend it because it is the freshest and arguably the best WordPress hosting provider on this list.
Though they are definitely different from the other hosting providers listed above because of their product offerings. WP Engine is more of a premium hosting provider that offers a little more power than the other 3 options listed above.
As their name might suggest, they are all about WordPress. This is a benefit for all WordPress users because it means that their platform and support team are all fine tuned for WordPress.
WP Engine do not offer cheap shared hosting like the other providers, they are all about offering powerful solutions for websites that need that little bit more power.
They are a managed WordPress hosting provider which means they are actively managing your hosting server. This means you are better protected from security breaches and they will help make your site load faster where they can.
WP Engine has offices in Australia but are head-quartered in the USA which means they are technically the only Australian WordPress website hosting company on this list. But then again it doesn’t matter where they are located as long as your hosting is top-notch and reliable.
Which WP Engine is!
WP Engine offers 24/7 support to new or existing customers. You can call or chat with a team member any time.
Note: One potential downside to WP Engine is that they ONLY do WordPress which means if you would like the option of hosting another app or your emails on the same server then that is out of the question. Though, it is not recommended to host your emails on the same server anyway but that is a whole other topic of its own (Get Google’s G Suite for that).
Our sister site and recommended web agency, Web3, uses WP Engine for all their Brisbane managed WordPress hosting clients.
Best WordPress Hosting? Quick Recap
Choosing the best WordPress hosting provider is very important to an overall successful website strategy. Having worked with thousands of websites at our web agency, we have had a huge amount of experience with all types of Australian website hosting providers and international providers too.
All of the hosting providers mentioned above provide exceptional 24/7 support and are all very reliable when it comes to hosting. So the choice comes down to what you need your hosting for.
In most cases and especially if you are just starting out or hosting a simple website then you cant go wrong with siteground hosting. They are also good for budget conscious people as the price is very affordable.
We use Siteground with a number of our clients websites. With their solid feature set and reliability, they make hosting your website a breeze.
For businesses that are growing and need a little more scale then WP Engine is your best bet. WP Engine are a premium hosting provider who offers greater scale options than the other hosting providers. We use WP Engine alot at our agency.
Having said that, you cant fairly compare SiteGround hosting and WP Engine hosting against each other as they serve two different markets with different product offerings.
Both are highly recommended by us. All four hosting providers are top picks when choosing your own website hosting Australian provider.
SiteGround | View Discounts |
Bluehost | View Discounts |
Dreamhost | View Discounts |
WP Engine | View Discounts |
Let us know in the comments below what Australian hosting provider (or international) you prefer to use or if you have any further questions do not hesitate to ask.