General
No — we do not provide email hosting services. We recommend that you host your email with a specialist mail hosting provider, such as:
If you register or transfer your domain to WP NET, we provide email forwarders for email addresses under those domains. For example, if you registered website.nz with us, you could add an email forwarder to catch all mail addressed to hello@website.nz and forward it to youraccount@gmail.com. You can set up as many email fowarders as you need.
Yes — WP NET provides domain registration, renewal and transfer services.
When you sign up for a hosting account, you can opt to register a new domain, or transfer an existing one. You can also choose to keep your domain with your current registrar. You do not need to register or transfer your domain to WP NET in order to use our WordPress hosting & support services.
Supported TLDs: .nz | .co.nz | .net.nz | .org.nz | .geek.nz | .kiwi.nz | .maori.nz | .kiwi | .com | .net | .org | .biz | .website | .info
Domain Pricing
- .nz | .co.nz | .net.nz | .org.nz | .geek.nz | .kiwi.nz | .maori.nz — $50 / year
- .kiwi — $85 / year
- .com | .net — $45 / year
- .org — $40 / year
- .biz | .website — $55 / year
- .info — $65 / year
All domains can be registered for 1 – 5 years. Transferring a domain to WP NET is free. However, you are required to pay for an additional year of registration, which is added on to the domain’s lifespan.
WordPress Core
WP NET support no longer installs WP core software updates automatically. Updating of WordPress core is now at the discrection of the customer. WP NET are available to assist and provide technical support whenever you’re ready upgrade your site(s), just open a support ticket and we’ll be happy to help.
WP Site, WP Studio and WP Shield customers can request that we update your WP core, plugins or themes by opening a support ticket. Depending on the time required and whether any additional work is needed, development fees may apply in some cases.
In the course of investigating technical support queries, WP NET support may opt to update your WordPress core software as part of the troubleshooting process. We will usually notify you in advance.
Plugins & Themes
WP Site, WP Studio plans include automatic installation of security-related updates via the Plesk WordPress Toolkit, using vulnerability data from PatchStack & WordFence. Security updates for plugins and themes are configured to install by default. You can customise your auto-update policy in the Plesk Panel.
WP Shield sites (hosted on WP Server) include automatic installation of security updates via the WP Guardian service, using vulnerability data from PatchStack & WordFence.
If you have sites hosted on a WP Server that are not covered by a WP Shield support service, then no updates will be automatically installed and the customer maintains responsibility for all updates (WP core, plugins, themes etc).
General, day-to-day updates that are not security related, remain the responsibility of the customer.
WP NET is a dedicated WordPress web host — run by developers with years of experience building, maintaining and supporting WordPress websites. WP NET’s hosting service and features goes beyond your standard web hosting in terms of features, support and performance.
Our hosting services are built upon state-of-the-art cloud hosting technology, and our servers are optimised to run WordPress and nothing else. We implement numerous security and performance enhancements so that your sites are as fast and secure as possible.
When you contact WP NET support, you’re dealing directly with an experienced WordPress developer who knows what they are talking about.
As a general rule, we do not provide content management services – however – we try to be helpful! The best thing to do is ask!
Please open a support ticket and we’ll let you know if it can be covered by your hosting support service, or whether there will be additional fees.
We accept payments via Credit Card (Stripe) and Direct Debit (GoCardless).
Credit card payments are processed by Stripe, a secure, PCI-compliant payment gateway. WP NET does not store your complete credit card details — all details are encrypted and securely transmitted to Stripe for processing. If you opt to save your credit card for future billing, your card details will be stored by Stripe. You can remove or update your card details at any time from our customer portal website, My WP NET.
If you would like to pay by bank direct deposit, please use the Direct Debit (GoCardless) option. If your bank does not support GoCardless, please contact us for bank details so you can make a manual payment. You’ll need to set this up with your bank directly.
Yes, all hosting plans and servers can use free SSL (TLS) certificates provided by Let’s Encrypt. Installation and renewal of Let’s Encrypt certificates is handled automatically.
You are also able to use certificates from other sources, such as an Extended Validation (EV) and other specialised types of certificates. If you have any questions, please contact us.
We try to be as helpful as we can — it really depends on what it is you need done.
Existing customers should open a support ticket and then we’ll let you know if we can help. Development fees may apply.
We do provide some technical SEO services. Development fees will apply. Customers can open a support ticket with the details and we’ll let you know if we can help.
For SEM, paid search and other digital marketing services, we generally refer to one of our recommend providers. Contact us for details.
Once your WP NET hosting account is active you will receive an email with instructions on how to do this. This email will include an IP address for the WP NET server where your hosting account is located. You will need to edit your domain’s DNS ‘A’ record to point to this IP address.
If you need any help with setting up or configuring your DNS, please open a suport ticket and we will be happy to help.
As a general policy, our WP Expert WordPress developers are available to our existing hosting customers only. However, if you’re really stuck … we try to be helpful! Send us a message and we’ll let you know if we can help.
As a small, distributed team, we must ensure that we reserve sufficient resources for incidental support, maintenance and management tasks. Therefore, we do not take on large-scale projects, such as complete site builds.
If you’re a WP NET customer with a development enquiry, please open a support ticket and we’ll let you know if we can help.
WP NET’s rate for all development work and out-of-scope technical support is NZD$85 per hour, + GST.
For suggestions on where to find a WordPress designer or developer, please see Find a WordPress Developer.
If your site gets a lot of traffic, we recommend our single-tenant WP Server. With WP Server, you have dedicated resources just for your website(s) and improved isolation from other customers.
Our WP Site and WP Studio hosting is a shared-server platform, especially designed to run WordPress websites. We run a low number of sites per server and we over-spec CPU and RAM resources. While this platform is suitable for most small-to-medium sized sites, for very high-traffic, WooCommerce, LMS, membership and other application-type sites, WP Server is a better choice.
If you’re not sure about what kind of hosting service you need, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to discuss your requirements.
Yes — once you have signed up with WP NET we install a fresh copy of WordPress for you automatically. You can then install your chosen theme — and start building your new site!
However, what we recommend you do is build your WordPress site locally — on your own computer — and then deploy it to WP NET when you’re ready to go “live”.
While setting up a local server does have a steeper learning curve and can sometimes get complicated — it’s often worth the effort. The dramatically faster page loads make building and testing a WordPress site a lot faster. Also, if you edit files, you only have to save in your editor and your changes take effect — no round-trip editing with FTP.
There are many tools available to help you run a WordPress server on your local machine. If you have any questions or need help setting up a development site, just open a support ticket.
Yes — we provide a hack repair / site clean service to new and existing customers.
Our WordPress Experts clean your site in an isolated test environment. We conduct a full security review and make other optimisations and suggestions as required. Once verified, tested and optimised — we re-deploy your site.
Fees are based on our standard hourly development rate of NZD$85 per hour + GST. Please enquire for an estimate.
Typical hack repair jobs range from NZD$350-750 + GST.
At WP NET we are 100% focused on WordPress hosting and technical support — we don’t get bogged down with development, design or SEO services — we spend each day working to make our customer’s WordPress sites faster and more secure.
Our aim is to ensure that our customers get the best possible hosting and support for their WordPress sites. After careful and constant reviews of the cloud hosting market we bring the best of the providers together with our friendly, responsive, local support team of WP Experts.
Our internal customer surveys show that most of our customers choose us for one (or all!) of three reasons:
- Our WordPress expertise
- Local, responsive and helpful technical support
- NZ location — no time-zone or language barriers
Technical
WordPress Multisite is only supported on WP Server products.
WordPress Multisite is not supported on WP Site or WP Studio plans.
Please contact us for more information.
WP-CLI is not currently available on shared-server WP Site and WP Studio plans. However, many of the functions that you can perform with WP-CLI are available via the Plesk WordPress Toolkit.
All WP Server and legacy Managed Servers have WP-CLI installed by default.
WP Site and WP Studio are a “shared-server” platform, so dedicated IP addresses are not supported.
Each WP Server includes 1x dedicated IP address, which is shared between all sites on the server. Additional IP addresses may be available. Fees apply. Please open a support ticket and we will assist.
Nginx-only
Nginx + Apache
On these platforms, you can use .htaccess files for redirects and other hosting configurations.
WordPress hosting servers typically use either Nginx-only, or Nginx & Apache.
For many years, a popular set up was to use Nginx as a reverse-proxy, with Apache as the primary server. This configuration provides some of the benefits of Nginx (lower resource usage, better scaling) while maintaining the broad compatibility and familiarity of Apache.
More recently, Nginx-only configurations have become more common and our currently preferred set up is Nginx-only with PHP-FPM and built-in Nginx page-caching.
Contact WP NET for more information.
WP Server is a fully-managed service, so WP NET support perform all technical operations on your behalf. Just open a support ticket and we’ll set it up for you ASAP.
Our default WP Server configuration does not include a control panel, so there is no customer-facing interface for creating websites. However, we do plan to implement this feature in the future.
WP Site & WP Studio plans include additional free sub-domain sites and databases that you can use for development, staging and test sites.
You can easily create staging sites in a few clicks with the Plesk WordPress Toolkit’s Clone & Sync feature.
Cloned sites share your plan’s total disk space allocation, so you must have enough free disk space to perform a clone. You can add more disk space by purchasing a disk space add-on.
Please contact us if you have any questions.
BuddyPress is not permitted on WP Site or WP Studio plans. BuddyPress is very resource intensive and the official documentation recommends at least a VPS server. See the Buddy Press documentation for details.
BuddyPress with or without Multisite is supported on WP Server.
WP NET’s servers are fine-tuned and optimised to run WordPress — and nothing else. Our tests have found that new customers typically get a page speed increase of 50-100% compared to other hosts.
If your site does require some additional work to optimise and fine-tune performance, you can request this by opening a support ticket. Often this is covered by your support service, but in some cases fees may apply. We will discuss your options with you, which include:
- Install and optimise page caching
- Asset minimisation and compression
- CDN (content distribution network)
- Database clean-up and optimisation
- Other tasks as required
On WP Server products, SSH access is available using password or SSH key authentication. WP-CLI is also available, so you can manage your WordPress installations from the commands line!
SSH is not currently supported on WP Site or WP Studio shared-server platforms. We hope to have this feature available in the future. If you have a particular need for this, please contact us.
For domains registered with WP NET — yes — we provide free DNS zone management via our secure domain management portal. We are happy to assist new and existing hosting customers with domain and DNS configuration — just open a support ticket.
WP Server customers can host zones on Vultr’s Premium Anycast DNS network. Contact us for details.
If your domain is registered elsewhere, you will need to provide us with access to your domain registrar’s control panel, or we can just let you know what you need to do. Your registrar’s support team should also be able to help.
Yes — SSL (TLS) support is included on WP Site, WP Studio and WP Server.
Automated SSL certificates are provided by Let’s Encrypt and subject to their terms and conditions.
Only WP Site and WP Studio servers use Apache web server, so only those plans support .htaccess files for rewrites and other configurations.
WP Servers use Nginx-only, so .htaccess is not supported. If you have redirects or other server directives you need implemented, please open a support ticket and we’ll set them up for you ASAP!
WP Site & WP Studio
If you exceed your WP Site hosting plan’s allocated disk space you will receive an email notification each day. The email contains information to help you manage your disk space, and identify where you may be able to reduce your usage.
If you exceed your hosting plan’s disk space allocation for 3 consecutive days, a disk space upgrade will be applied automatically to cover your current usage. Storage upgrades are $5 / month per 2GB. Plus GST.
Yes — you can add more disk space to any WP Site or WP Studio hosting plan for NZD$5 per month per 2GB add-on, plus GST.
You can install WordPress on WP Site & WP Studio hosting plans with just a couple of clicks via the Plesk Panel. Newly provisioned WP Site hosting plans have a fresh copy of WordPress installed automatically.
If you need us to install WordPress for you, just open a support ticket and we’ll sort it ASAP!
WP Site & WP Studio shared-server hosting plans include unmetered data traffic, so you never have to worry about overage charges – ever!
Please note that the Fair Use Policy from our Terms & Conditions does apply.
WP Server
No — as a fully managed server, root access is not provided to the customer.
SSH access is available for each site hosted on a WP Server. You can use these accounts to connect for command-line operations, such as ssh, scp and sftp.
WP Server products include generous monthly data traffic allowances, with no regional restrictions. We’ve never had a customer exceed (or get anywhere close) to their limit on these servers. If you do manage it, overage charges are available on the WP Server Service Specification page.
For more information, please contact us.
WP Server customers can open a support ticket and we’ll install WordPress for you. If a database already exists, you can install WordPress with WP-CLI.
If you need any help with installing WordPress, just open a support ticket and we’ll sort it ASAP!
WP Servers are provisioned with the latest available 64-bit version of Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support).