HostPapa Review Australia
HostPapa AU is a leading web hosting service, but we wanted to test if their quality and performance are as good as they describe. HostPapa entered the Australian web hosting market more than 12 years ago and quickly gained success with its affordable services and dedication to customer support.
Within this HostPapa review for Australia, we’ll give you a rundown of our results after testing the most important hosting features to help you decide if it meets your needs.
HostPapa AU Highlights
We picked HostPapa because it has a complete catalogue of hosting services to meet the needs of both individuals and small businesses. HostPapa is well-known for its shared hosting solutions, available at fairly competitive pricing. They also include Managed WordPress and a Do-It-For-Me plan that will make the lives of website owners easier. For those less experienced in the world of web hosting, there is an extensive Knowledge Base and 24/7 customer support, which we personally found to be among the best in the hosting industry.
As for bigger businesses with higher traffic and greater resource needs, their VPS servers have amazing performance and security results. HostPapa offers many add-on features, so you have the flexibility to choose only the ones that meet your needs. As your site grows, there are lots of upgrade options available.
Their simpler plans offer a wide array of features, including a free domain name, a free SSL certificate, and even plans for unlimited disk space and a Wildcard SSL certificate in some higher-tier solutions. HostPapa AU also offers local domains specifically tailored for the domain market (.au, .com.au, .id.au, .org.au, .net.au, and .asn.au), allowing your business to establish a strong local presence. All shared plans include free site migration and email addresses (starting at 10 with the lowest plan).
HostPapa is a top option for businesses of any size, whether it’s a starter blog or a high-traffic and worldwide website. If you’re not keen on using WordPress, the website builder included with shared plans can be a useful starting point, as it provides more than enough tools to get you going. But even though we liked some of the features this company offers, in this HostPapa review for Australia, you will find some downsides to consider.
Pros
- Services for small businesses at lower prices with no hidden fees
- Free site migration and domain name with shared hosting plans
- Purchase .com and .au domains for your Australian website and pay in AUD
- 24/7 expert customer support in multiple languages
- Easy-to-use HostPapa Dashboard and cPanel
Cons
- Some plans don’t have monthly options
- Free automatic backups available only on select plans
- You can only have 1 website on the Start plan
Quick Info
Money Back Guarantee | Yes, 30 days |
Uptime | Guaranteed, 99.9% |
Free domain | Yes |
Free migration | Yes |
Ready to try HostPapa?
HostPapa has been our top host for 4 years in the Australian market, and with good reason! They offer many great services at a low cost, providing the best value for money we found amongst our best hosting reviews.
Starting from $1.95/mo
HostPapa's General Performance
4.8/5
HostPapa truly impressed us during our testing with their disk storage and server performance. Their servers consistently delivered outstanding results, and their highly regarded uptime proved to be reliable.
What we found particularly appealing about HostPapa was their affordability without compromising quality. And as your site grows, you can increase the servers’ resources to get better load times and more disk space.
![hostpapa-review-2 hostpapa-review-2](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_webp,q_glossy,ret_img,w_1387,h_739/https://www.hosting-review.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/hostpapa-review-2.png)
HostPapa’s Uptime Report
4.8/5
What impressed us most was HostPapa’s proactive approach to minimizing any potential downtime. They support the Cloudflare content delivery network (CDN), which means that even if there is a brief moment of downtime, your website remains accessible to users. This feature ensures your online presence remains strong, especially for eCommerce businesses.
Our opinion here is that HostPapa is really backed by great infrastructure, a fantastic time-to-first-byte, and favourable first contentful paint. It’s a top selection for small businesses and their online ventures.
![hostpapa-review-3 hostpapa-review-3](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_webp,q_glossy,ret_img,w_1976,h_1126/https://www.hosting-review.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/hostpapa-review-3.png)
HostPapa's Support Service
4.6/5
HostPapa customer service is known for the many awards they’ve claimed. Their customer service is accessible via:
- Phone
- Live chat
They also have a Knowledge Base with helpful tutorials and a blog where customers can find interesting topics that answer most of their questions. However, we suggest just reaching out to support if you’re unsure, and also, they offer the possibility to assist you in different languages, including English, Spanish, German and French.
We tested their support, and they were able to solve most of our inquiries in minutes. For more complex issues around website building and email setup, assistance is provided via a support ticket (which you can review via HostPapa Dashboard). In that case, your issue will be resolved in a matter of hours.
These were the average support wait/response times encountered during our testing:
Live Chat | 0m 32s |
Phone | 0m 17s |
19m |
If you’re looking for premium support, HostPapa offers PapaCare+ for an additional $49.95 per month. This service provides priority support and assistance when installing popular software like WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal. After installing, their team helps maintain those plugins, reducing potential downtime by actively monitoring your site. PapaCare+ will feel like having your own IT person who’s just a chat (or call) away.
HostPapa: Ease of Use
4.6/5
The HostPapa Dashboard manages your account effectively, providing access to all your additional services, domains, websites, and support tickets from a centralized interface. From the HostPapa Dashboard, you can access cPanel, the industry-standard web hosting control panel, to configure various options for your website.
On shared web hosting plans, you still have plenty of options to configure your account however you like, but it might feel overwhelming if you’re a beginner. You’ll also get a one-click installer courtesy of Softaculous, which makes it incredibly easy to install applications such as WordPress and 400 other scripts.
HostPapa’s Pricing
4.4/5
In this HostPapa review for Australia, we noticed they offer four affordable options for web hosting plans, each tailored to accommodate your specific requirements. In our opinion, the low-cost Start plan is the ideal choice for most users. Their next best deal is the Pro plan, currently on sale for $3.95 – the same price as Plus, but with more features.
These are the shared hosting prices HostPapa offers to their Australian clients:
- Start: Designed for small sites or blogs, this plan costs $1.95/month and includes one website, 100GB of SSD storage, free domain registration, 10 email addresses, and Website Builder (Start version).
- Plus: For $3.95/month, this plan offers everything in Start, plus 10 websites, 100 email addresses, website staging support, and additional advanced features.
- Pro: Offering enhanced speed, security, and performance, Pro is on sale for $3.95/month, and in addition to everything that comes in Plus, it also has unlimited websites, a Wildcard SSL certificate, and Website Builder (Business edition).
- Ultra: A powerful plan with even more server resources. For $12.95/month, Ultra provides everything in Pro, plus 4x more server resources, automated backups of 5GB, and a fully managed web application firewall, among plenty of other features.
Ready to try HostPapa?
HostPapa has been our top host for 4 years in the Australian market, and with good reason! They offer many great services at a low cost, providing the best value for money we found amongst our best hosting reviews.
Starting from $1.95/mo
Our Verdict
4.8/5
In our opinion, while these hosting plans are popular choices, we were happy to discover that HostPapa AU goes the extra mile by offering solutions for more demanding use cases, and it’s even tailored for the Australian market.
We tested their Managed WordPress hosting and enjoyed the additional features it brings, such as malware scanning and extra disk space. It’s worth mentioning that these advanced features do come at a higher price compared to shared hosting, making it a product targeted at specific needs like high-traffic website owners.
The VPS hosting solutions and the additional email plans (HostPapa Business Email, Google Workspace, and Microsoft 365) make a complete package for professionals who need more control and resources for their websites.
Whatever the requirement, if you’re looking to build and maintain a website, we greatly recommend HostPapa for Australian users. Stable and robust platform paired with great (and knowledgeable) customer support, all bundled for a reasonable price – it just ticks all the boxes. Our experience with this HostPapa review for Australia showed that it delivers an outstanding value/price ratio. They offer a hosting experience packed with features at a competitive price point, making them an optimal choice for Australian website owners.
Scoring
When determining the best web hosting providers, we take into account multiple factors like user reviews, the web host performance, value for money and customer support.
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