Features and Ease of Use
Performance and capacities vary between plans, but all Servers Australia plans come with the same feature list:
- SSD drives
- Multi-layer security
- Instant provisioning
- Proprietary Partner Portal dashboard management
- DDoS protection
- IPv4
No specific mention is made of one-click integrations with Joomla, Drupal, or Magento, but there is a dedicated WordPress hosting plan that offers:
- SQL databases
- Plugin and theme installation management
- Site backups every 15 minutes
- Rapid SSL certificate installation
- Nimble Storage
- Plesk Power Pack
- One-click site installs
- Debug management
- Codex and Security Experts
- Revisium Antivirus Premium
- Test environment for automatic updates
- Easy data migration between WordPress sites
- Analysis of website speed improvements
- 30-minute hardware replacement guarantee
Servers Australia also offers customized managed solutions with additional services including:
- Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
- Managed cPanel and Plesk control panels
- OS management
- Backups
- Site monitoring
- Veeam/Datto/Nimble disaster recovery
- Anti-virus and security hardening
- Application support and custom installations
There is no information on their website about PHP capabilities, FTP accounts, or SQL databases for non-WordPress hosting plans, and when I tried to download their information pack it didn’t arrive in my inbox. On the plus side, Servers Australia offers a 100% uptime guarantee on all plans.
Pricing and Support
Servers Australia offers three hosting plans, and each plan comes with a “Price Match Guarantee” that Servers Australia enforces according to their terms and conditions. It’s important to note that domains and SSL certificates need to be purchased separately.
The speed and capacity of their entry-level plan are about the same as the industry average, but the cost is five times higher. The price-to-performance ratio of each subsequent tier is inconsistent. For example, the mid-tier plan has four times more RAM, twice the disk space, and five times more data than the entry-level plan, but it’s hard to see if this is worth the 3x increase in price. The jump from mid-tier to high-tier plans offers twice the performance and memory for only a 66% increase in price.
The prices for WordPress hosting are much higher than the industry average. However, they do come with the additional management options and proximity to the Australian and New Zealand markets, so there is some added value cost for e-commerce merchants already set up on WordPress and selling to the antipodean market.
Inconsistent support is provided in Australian English. The site claims there is 24/7 live chat, and indeed there is a chat icon (which you might miss) at the bottom-right of every page of their website except the support pages. I understand that email support should receive a response in just a few minutes, but my email went unanswered. Phone support was not much better, as I was made to wait a long time for a response. A self-help knowledge base is available, but in my opinion, it is poorly organized and only provides answers to highly technical questions.
