What is the best server technology?

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Want to know the best web hosting services in Australia?

In this article, we’ll be looking at five of the most popular and affordable Australian web hosting reviews.

Not only have I scoured through all the options out there to find you only the best of what is on offer, but I’ve also had first-hand experience dealing with these hosting companies.

Whether you are a small business or an individual with a blog, these five companies will have something for you.

All of them offer great customer service, fast speeds and reliable uptime so your site can be up and running 24/7! You won’t need to worry about downtime or slow loading times when using any one of these providers. They also come with some pretty awesome features like unlimited email addresses, domain names and databases!

Click here to skip the article, and jump to what we recommend now!

For the record, I do not have any affiliates with any of these hosting companies from writing this article.

In this article we’re going to focus on the following:

• Best Hosting for Small Business
• Hosting for WordPress websites
• Price; and
• Support

For this guide, we’re basing it on Small Business and therefore the server technology we’re proposing is shared hosting because of its flexible pricing and ease of use.

The idea here is to provide an in-depth analysis of what the hosting company offers, how they stack up against their competition and if it’s a good option for your business.

Before we take a look at the list of web hosting companies let’s dive into some information about what exactly you’re looking for based on criteria.

Should my web designer host my WordPress website?

In most cases no.

What you need is to have a dedicated team of server technicians that will monitor your site, respond quickly in case your site goes down, there’s malware or a cyber attack, and provide you with the latest technology possible and server updates at all times.

Often web designers/developers, are reselling hosting and may not have the time to have their finger on the pulse.

If your web designer is a one-man-band/freelancer, then often they might be tied up in meetings or on the tools. If your site goes down, and your designer doesn’t answer, you’re going to want to have a contingency plan. And that contingency is a great web host.

There are times that your designer will make recommendations to a web host, and often they will suggest companies they have a good working relationship with. This should also be a consideration.

When it comes to website maintenance and security on your website, your web designer can go a long way towards keeping things running smoothly; such as doing monthly WordPress updates & backups. We do highly recommend this and should be considered on top of your web host!

Are you looking for a maintenance plan?

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See what is in each plan.

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Lastly, in some cases, you as the business owner may want to step away from your web designer. If you have your own web hosting account, this makes it really easy to do so. If you are a small business, then it is best to consider an expert web hosting company with skilled server technicians and support staff.

Why choosing the right web host is important for your business?

Website hosting is important for any type of business in the digital era.

It’s obviously necessary to have your website live at all times and to have a strong and reliable hosting service is critical for the success of your business.

It also plays a vital role in search engine optimization (SEO) because it influences factors like how fast pages to load, which ultimately impacts where your site ranks with Google.

In other words: Website hosting matters!

3. How to choose a suitable web hosting provider?

It’s important to do your research ahead of making any decisions like you would for say picking an accountant or lawyer.

This guide is obviously a great starting point, but like you would with any other service browse the web and ask for recommendations from friends, family members or other people in the industry.

The first question to ask is if the hosting company has a customer support team of people here in Australia?

Often, like Telstra, you find that the sales team are located in Australia but they outsource the technical support overseas. The Australian-based staff are usually trained to go off script and answer your specific web hosting question while those offshore aren’t required for this task.

WordPress is a powerful and versatile publishing platform that can be used for any number of different purposes, from blogging to running an entire eCommerce business.

To make sure you have the right host with the most in-depth WordPress knowledge available, it’s important to select a host who offers local support teams as well as having expertise in WordPress themselves.

It is unrealistic to look for customer support providers to fix WordPress bugs. Often, WordPress logs can point to fixes and good customer service teams can provide a quick solution and modification to files to assist.

4. What features should you be looking for in a hosting company?

Hosting companies can bamboozle even the most experienced web developers with their different package; unlimited storage, bandwidth, RAM, backups. All these features however are only as useful as the company’s ability to deliver them.

Storage: Ensuring that your web hosting provider has enough storage space is not always essential. If you’re running an eCommerce site where data files could grow exponentially in size. If you’re not sure how much space you need, find out from your web developer what the size of your wp-content folder & database is, and go from there. I would double the total amount which should give you enough space to grow. You’ll find that most hosting companies have bolt-on storage products for a minimal monthly payment. You can always look at storing your files with Amazon if this is a bigger than expected expense at a fraction of the price. This is outside the scope of this article, but if this is the case, we recommend using WP Offload Media Plugin to send all your upload files to Amazon S3.

Bandwidth: In addition to storage, it’s also important that your host offers sufficient bandwidth and ensure their network can handle peak volumes without impacting website performance during busy periods – this will be different depending on whether you have just one small blog with few visitors per day or a larger site. If you’re a small business that does PR or TV, Radio commercials, you’re going to want to ensure your hosting company has load balancers in place and is able to provide multiple high-speed connections.

RAM: Your hosting provider should offer enough RAM (think GB) so that you can comfortably scale your website without worrying about running out of system resources.

Backups: Your web host should be able to provide regular backups of all files on the server, and also have a backup strategy in place for when disaster strikes. It could mean something as simple as having an offsite copy of their data stored with another company every hour, or taking snapshots at various intervals throughout the day which are then copied to tape drives offline storage systems until they can be transferred back onto the production servers once again if required. Some hosting companies only offer weekly backups and only store last weeks backup. So if your site got hacked over a week ago you’ll lose your site.

Support: Just as important is the level of support provided by your hosting company. Web hosts that offer 24/hour live chat and phone support are more likely to be able to answer questions, provide assistance with server problems or resolve issues quickly (and often without needing to escalate to a Level 2 technician).

SSL Certificate: You’ll need an SSL Certificate, but don’t worry – they are inexpensive (often around $60 per year) and can be easily arranged by web hosts. Most hosts offer free SSL installations with a service called let’s encrypt.

Dedicated IP: If your store has high traffic demands then look for a host that provides dedicated IP addresses because these will reduce server load time which means fewer wait times for customers who are checking out at your site too! However, while not necessary for small storefronts, dedicated IP addresses can be very valuable for larger stores with high traffic demands.

Cpanel Hosting : If you are not already familiar with cPanel, it is a piece of software that will allow you to manage your web hosting account – whether that means creating email accounts or setting up WordPress blogs. Cpanel also comes with many scripts and plugins for various types of websites such as Drupal (Cpanels integration allows people to install the famous content management system). We highly recommend choosing a hosting provider that supports CPanel.

What if I have an e-commerce website, do my hosting requirements differ?

Ecommerce hosting requirements vary depending on the size of your business and how many people you’re expecting to visit it each day, you’re best to pull a report of how many orders you’ve had in the last 6 months along with a Google Analytics report of the number of sessions your site has received in the last 6 months.

What is the best server technology?

To keep things simple, we’ll review 3 server technologies; Nginx, Apache and OpenLiteSpeed.

Nginx servers are fast, scalable and provide a solid foundation for hosting websites. Apache servers are open source, reliable and can handle large numbers of concurrent connections whereas OpenLiteSpeed offers a robust and scalable alternative to Nginx.

OpenLiteSpeed transfers resources more quickly and uses less CPU and memory, so it is the superior solution when managing server loads. One of the most important considerations in choosing to host is reliability and security, and LiteSpeed excels at both metrics.

Nginx tends to be more popular than Apache or OpenLiteSpeed for web hosting while there are many reasons why this may be so, it’s clear that if you need performance then LiteSpeed offers an excellent alternative to Nginx.

According to an article written by Web Speed Tools, they also put together a strong case to use the Litespeed Cache WordPress plugin to even further optimize the speeds that Litespeed servers offer.

WordPress Minumum Requirements

According to WordPress Requirements, these are the minimum requirements, which you can forward to your web host.

I’m interested in running the open-source WordPress https://wordpress.org/ web software and I was wondering if my account supported the following:

• PHP 7.4 or greater
• MySQL 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB 10.1 or greater
• Nginx or Apache with mod_rewrite module
• HTTPS support

Thanks!

Let’s jump in and take a look at some hosting companies

Net Registry Hosting :

In my last post, it ranked really well for Net Registry reviews, so I’m going to start here. Their Cpanel hosting pricing starts at $9.95/month which includes:

• 24/7 support
• 20 GB storage
• 500 GB bandwidth
• 50 email accounts
• 3 FTP users
• 1 database

All their Cpanel servers are Apache web servers which is a great option for sites that are PHP-based, like WordPress.

What I have noticed though, according to their sales page; They only support up to PHP7.0 and the minimum requirements from WordPress are PHP7.4.

My experience with Netregistry has been interesting. I do get a lot of customers coming from Netregistry with hacked sites, so maybe I shouldn’t complain. But, what I find is that different accounts have random hosting setups. Whether clients have been with Netregistry for a while, I’m not sure. But as a web developer, it does make it hard to debug issues when you haven’t been given full access to a server.

In regards to support, they do have 24/7 support, and for the basic things, like domain transfer, record updates, they have been OK. But for the more complex issues, it can get frustrating.

Overall, I think Netregistry has probably grown too big over recent years. If you have your domain hosted there, I would leave it there but look to move your hosting elsewhere.

SiteGround Hosting Review

Siteground is one of the most popular web hosting services in Australia, it hosts over 700 000 domains and is one of the world’s most trusted hosting providers.

Siteground has been in business since 2004. They also offer an affordable plan which starts at $6/month for their basic (startup) package which has some limitations.

However, as tempting as $6 per month is, I would look towards their middle-tier package of $9 per month.

This includes:

• Unlimited Bandwidth
• 200 GB storage space with 20 GB backup Space
• ~ 25,000 Visits Monthly
• Free SSL
• Daily Backups
• WP-CLI and SSH (Developer access)
• Out-of-the-box Caching Plugin and CDN (which is pretty good for site speed)

They also have some other good developer tools such as staging setups. From a security front, they have a monitoring system that checks the server status every 0.5 seconds and not only detects ongoing issues but also prevents potential problems automatically.

Similar to Netregistry, I do get a lot of clients with SiteGround accounts that have been hacked. The good news is that SiteGround is onto it, and they do provide malware logs, which does make my life easier.

I have never had experience with their support team, but they have a live chat, phone call and email support.

Again I find SiteGround does make it easy to manage your account with their dashboard. They are also able to provide you with an overview of how many visits per day that site is getting, which can be very handy for small business owners as often this information isn’t easy to obtain for small business owners.

Overall, their price is pretty compelling, and I do think they provide better hosting than NetRegistry.

WP Engine Review

Founded in 2010, WP Engine is one of the fastest-growing WordPress hosting companies.

The company provides enterprise-grade WordPress solutions to designers and creative agencies as well as small businesses looking for a powerful website solution.

One unique feature that sets WP Engine apart from other providers is its near-limitless scalability: you can scale up or down your account with just a few clicks without any interruption to your site’s performance or features.

However, this is more for enterprise companies, and that does come with a hefty price tag.

WP Engine offers a few packages for small businesses, but you must purchase them as an annual ($300USD) or multi-year plan with no monthly payment options available.

As well, there can be limitations on what plugins and themes are supported in order to maintain website security (probably not a bad thing).

This package includes:

• 1 Site included
• 25,000 Visits / month
• Storage 10 GB
• Bandwidth / month 50 GB
• 24/7 Support
• Daily backups
• Free SSL and SSH
• One-click staging site

In my experience, their 24/365 support team is pretty good to deal with. Their support staff are based around the world, and I get the sense they are all very well trained as level-2 WordPress technical support.

So if you want a reliable web host who offers great features at an affordable price point without any limitations on themes or plugin usage – this might not suit your needs so much.

In my experience, I’ve had sites that have reached the above “start-up” limit and then quoted $400USD per month (from $300USD per year).

As you can imagine this left a little sour taste and was pretty embarrassing when I as the web developer got told this by my client.

WP Hosting Australia Review

WP Hosting continues to be a leading website hosting company in Australia. WP Hosting offers an easy-to-use dashboard and local support at competitive prices.

They are constantly monitoring site traffic patterns and updating service features by using top quality server resources like SSDs, FTPS Servers, Firewalls & Antivirus Protection enabled servers to ensure your data will always be safe.

WP Hosting Australia is suitable for either e-commerce, brochure site or blogging platforms.

Their packages start from $19 (AUD) which includes:

• 5GB Storage
• Unlimited Traffic
• Malware Scanning
• Live Chat and Email Support (Phone support is for their Business plan customers $29 per month)

As a developer, I worked with WP Hosting for a long time. Could be close to 7 years.

In the early days, I had a great relationship with them, but in recent years their level of support dropped off and out of frustration took all my clients to other providers that could work closer with my agency.

Having said that, I could never fault their servers and speeds for the price you pay. Like most hosting company, they do offer a free migration, which is a great addition.

I do think if you are a small business and are looking for a team of honest guys to host your website, it’s worth having the chat with WP Hosting.

Nimblo Hosting Review

Nimblo WordPress hosting are the new kids on the block.

They have been around for just a couple of years, but they already demonstrated their ability to manage top security and the fastest servers on the market.

Their pricing starts at $20 per month which includes:

• 25GB Storage
• 1GB Memory, 1CPU
• Free SSL
• Daily Backups

They are currently working on a new dashboard, that we will soon see.

However, so far I’ve been very impressed with their level of service, and the speed.

Conclusion

When it comes to Web Hosting Services in Australia, there is a place for everybody.

The best thing you can do when choosing your hosting provider is to compare all of the services they offer and their pricing plans.

It’s not an easy task since there is such a difference in price. Some hosting companies are as cheap as $6 per month VS $30 per month and have some limitations here and there, but eventually one will fit what you need perfectly!

The Nimblo hosting platform was designed with small business owners in mind. They understand that budget is a concern and they offer to host plans as low as $20 per month. For the level of service, and speed of sites, this is a great value.

The other thing I really liked about Nimblo was that their customer support is 24/365- ready to answer any of my questions or problems day or night. That’s something you just don’t find in every hosting platform nowadays!

It might be time for you to decide which hosting will work best for your needs. I’ve found that the cheapest website hostings are not always the best option because – let’s face it – if we’re talking budget you get what you pay for, especially in the web hosting world!

There are so many more hosting providers out there that I haven’t reviewed that could offer great service too, and I would love to hear them.

I’m also happy to add any reviews to the blog post to help people make their choice, as I know from first hand, there’s nothing more frustrating than dealing with bad customer service at a hosting company.