WordPress Hosting Review: HostGeek Australia

For over 2 years now I’ve been a happy customer of HostGeek. I run 5 WordPress installations on their Savvy Geek Web Hosting.

Take a look at all their website hosting plans.

In this detailed review I’ll share my experience with HostGeek using their shared website hosting (what they call business website hosting, but very suitable to personal sites like mine), as well as giving you an inside look at the hosting environment and control panel, something not many reviews do. Also at the end of the post, there’s a special HostGeek discount coupon to get a really good deal on your hosting.

I’m a digital industry professional with over 10+ years experience, and in my job I deal with large scale hosting providers. So I know my stuff, I’ve shopped around and now am taking the time to tell you about HostGeek and why they’re so good. A few months ago I posted that HostGeek are the best WordPress hosts in Australia, now here’s the review to back it up.

My hosting setup

Since January 2011 I’ve been on HostGeek’s Savvy Geek plan, which costs $10 a month, but I pay yearly for a discounted $100 per year. The features of the plan include:

• 1GB disk space
• 20GB bandwidth per month
• Unlimited add-on domains – this is one of my favourite features. It means you can host an unlimited number of domains, pointed to your server. At the moment I’ve got deanwormald.com and youmakethewebsite.com.au hosted here plus a few others for web design clients of mine.
• Unlimited subdomains
• cPanel for automated installation of software like WordPress, and easy hosting management.
• Comprehensive database support and lots of server side scripts.
• + heaps more.

How HostGeek compares to others

I’ve used a fair few different hosting providers such as CrazyDomains, HostGator, RackSpace and BlueHost. HostGeek is on par with price for most of these providers – but there is one thing that really stands out - HostGeek has great support.

When I used CrazyDomains and HostGator, a response from their support to my question would usually take 72 hours. HostGeek respond to me within 24 hours, even on a weekend! I’ve found this really handy when building a site, as I don’t want to pause for 3 days, just for someone at tech support to help out with a 2 minute fix.

Why I love HostGeek and have stuck with them

Initially I chose HostGeek because they are an Australian company with servers hosted in Australia. As well as this personal blog of mine, I make websites for local Australian businesses, and there are local SEO benefits to hosting your site in Australia.

I’ve stuck with HostGeek because it’s been a very hassle free experience, my sites have performed well and it’s really easy to manage WordPress.

Support is great

As mentioned above, the support is great, looking back over the 16 support tickets I’ve submitted, here’s a few interesting stats:

• Average response time was about 55 minutes!
• About 1/3 of the tickets were sent on a weekend.
• In 14/16 instances, HostGeek fixed the problem or answered my question with their first response – no additional back and forth messaging required.
• They do offer Live Help chat on the site and a contact phone number, but I’ve always used the online ticket system.

Easy to use control panel

I’m great at building website, SEO and information design. I’m not good at configuring hosting and that’s why I love using cPanel (the hosting control panel that comes with HostGeek). It’s fast and easy to do anything such as:

• Creating email accounts and checking them by webmail
• Making and restoring site/database backups
• Using File Manager to manage files instead of FTP
• Easily create and manage FTP accounts
• Check on disk space usage, error logs, usage stats by domain, etc
• Automatically install WordPress using Installatron

Here’s a look at cPanel for my hosting:

Automatic Application (including WordPress) Installation

If you’ve seen the instructions on how to install WordPress on share hosting manually, it looks quite daunting. I’ve never successfully done it myself. That’s why I love this feature of the control panel – it’s called Installatron.

Installing WordPress is easy and fast, another one of my favourite things about HostGeek. To install WordPress, all you have to do is:

• Login to your hosting control panel.
• Click the Installatron icon.
• Find/search for WordPrses and click the icon.
• Click the Install this application button.
• Fill out the simple form (i.e. admin username and password).
• Then click install.

The Installatron system then automatically creates the directories needed, the database and then sends you an email with your login credentials.

Installatron will also email you when there is a new version of WordPress, making it easy to stay up-to-date with the software.

HostGeek website hosting rating

To give you a bit of an experience of my experiences, here’s a rating out of 10 for HostGeek and the others I’ve used:

• HostGeek: 8.5/10
• CrazyDomains: 3/10
• HostGator: 6/10
• RackSpace: 5/10
• BlueHost: 6/10

HostGeek discount code

Get 10% off hosting for life using the following code (be sure to follow the instructions for it to work):

•  Click the button below to start browsing the hosting plans (link will open in a new window).

HostGeek hosting plans

• Select your hosting plan and press the Order Now button.
• Follow the prompts for your domain name and payment.
• Enter and validate the promo code: YM10

Conclusion

If you’re looking for cheap, local hosting with good support and an easy interface to install WordPress… then these guys are for you!

If you have any questions about don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments below.

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