Crucial Hosting Review Australia

In this Crucial web hosting review, we feel that it’s important to note that with servers situated in Australia, speeds for Australian websites are faster than if the servers were located anywhere else in the world.

The web hosting package specifications aim at small businesses and users seeking an all-in-one web hosting service for their first website. Its web servers sport the latest technologies and software, which helps with website speeds. But, during testing, we noticed the time to first byte and server response times were a bit slower than what we’ve seen from other web hosting companies.

It’s also worth noting that each plan offers unlimited subdomains and a free SSL certificate to seal the deal, offering a secure connection.

Since uptime is vital to a website’s stability and reliability, we had to see how Crucial Hosting’s uptime fares. 

Crucial Hosting boasts a 99.9% uptime guarantee on its website. During our review, we found that guarantee seems accurate, and we experienced no interruptions on our test site. This is excellent news for people who want to open their eCommerce websites and ensure their online store is always operational. And if your experience isn’t quite up to par, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee.

There’s no mention of a built-in content delivery network (CDN) on the site. But most websites are meant to serve Australia and neighbouring countries like New Zealand, so it’s not a huge issue for Australian web hosting customers.

The after-sales service for Crucial Hosting seems to be hit-and-miss, judging from most online reviews. 

The good news is that you can contact support via phone, email and support tickets, making life easier. Unfortunately, there’s no live chat option, which is typically the fastest contact method. The phone is reachable in just 10 minutes, while other means of communication, like email or ticket system, can take longer.

These were the average support wait/response times encountered during our testing:

In our Crucial Hosting review, we want to emphasize how easy it was to make a website and use its services.

When you choose a Crucial web hosting package, you’ll get instant access to your purchase within a few minutes. The Crucial Hosting dashboard is easy and offers access to the web hosting control panel and the built-in Softaculous installer, which offers 50+ free web apps and CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and plenty more. Crucial Hosting runs on cPanel, the most common web hosting control panel used by many web hosts worldwide.

While its blog isn’t updated regularly, the web host’s knowledge base offers some good articles to help get you started with Crucial Hosting. But the knowledge base does lack details and a proper how-to-get-started article. They also provide remote support via TeamViewer, and its customer service is operational 24/7 to solve any issues.

Also, we noticed that on WordPress Hosting, the plans come with the Plesk control panel instead of cPanel. While both are easy to use, you might need extra time to get used to the slightly different interface of Plesk.

Pricing starts at $19.09/mo AUD when paid annually, and you can expect the bill to reach $35.75 AUD per month in the advanced plan. It’s also worth noting that all plans come with 2GB of shared memory and 200% CPU resources. When it comes to CPU resources, it generally shows the server’s performance and how it’s allocated to a single account. However, Crucial web hosting doesn’t clarify what 200% actually means.

Domain names start at $19.90 AUD for 2 years, but the cost can reach $29.90 AUD when choosing a .com.au extension.

Extra security in the “Security+” plan costs an additional $3/mo AUD on top of any other fees and offers automatic security updates and proactive vulnerability identification and patching.

These are the shared hosting prices Crucial Hosting offers to its Australian clients:

• Web Hosting: Designed for virtually every user, this plan comes with 50GB of storage, unlimited monthly data quota, unlimited subdomains, and MySQL databases, and offers daily backups, DDoS protection and one-click installs for the most popular applications like WordPress. 
• Web Hosting Plus: This plan includes everything in the standard plan plus 100GB of storage space.
• Web Hosting Advanced: The highest level shared plan includes everything in the Web Hosting Advanced plan plus 150GB of storage space.

Crucial Hosting has been an established Australian web hosting company since 2003. It has proven to be a good choice for Australian website owners. With a focus on shared hosting, reseller hosting, and other hosting solutions, Crucial completes the lineup with its VPS hosting option, offering faster website speeds and enhanced performance for local users.

While lacking free domain registration, they provide essential extensions like .com.au and .co.nz, making them ideal for launching a local business in Australia or New Zealand.

In terms of performance, Crucial Hosting Australia excels with servers located in Australia, ensuring lightning-fast speeds in the region. But with its limited availability outside of Australia and the lack of prebuilt CDN in its hosting plans, speeds may be limited compared to other hosts. Metrics such as time to first byte and server response time reflect that.

Customer service experiences have been mixed, with some encountering issues while others have found satisfaction. Support is available through phone, email, and support tickets, though the absence of live chat may be seen as a drawback. However, its phone support is prompt, with email or ticket responses taking a few hours.

Powered by cPanel, a widely used control panel, managing websites becomes hassle-free. Although the blog lacks regular updates, the knowledge base provides some helpful articles, but they’re limited compared to other hosts.

Pricing-wise, Crucial Hosting is slightly on the expensive side, especially when considering the currency exchange rate between the Australian dollar and USD. Pricing becomes more affordable when opting for annual payment cycles.

In our Crucial Hosting review, we found that the web host presents a good solution for website owners seeking reliable performance and localized services but not for anyone outside the region. With a focus on the Australian market, VPS hosting, WordPress hosting, and a range of other hosting options, Crucial is a decent choice for individuals and businesses looking for web hosting services in this particular area.