My Verdict
There are so many hosting providers that promise the world. And those that do, usually under deliver.
My first impression of Zuver was that they were another hosting provider with empty promises.
Their homepage says, ‘We challenge you to find a faster solution. Spoiler: You won’t find one.’ This is a big call!
With that being said, I cloned this website and spun it up on their Smarter WordPress Hosting entry level plan.
After 5 tests using a clone of this site, I got an average load time of 0.6s. The fastest was 424ms, a record time for my site!
Pretty damn quick! As Zuver says, lightning fast 😀
Pros
- FAST! Average load time using clone of this website was 0.6s after 5 tests using desktop
- Dashboard looks nice
- Option to easily disable wp-cron
- Option to easily change WordPress Dashboard login URL
- Problem Free Migration (even when doing manually!)
- Next-generation DELL cloud Australian servers with fast SAS SSD storage
- 60 Day Money Back Guarantee!
- Comes with an ‘SEO Toolkit’
- Nice option to be notified by phone call when a support ticket is resolved
Cons
- Dashboard backend was slow, especially when loading SEO Toolkit (took ~10 seconds)
- No Online Chat Support
Table of Contents:
– Who is Zuver?
– First Impressions
– Cool Features
– Pricing
– Speed Tests
Who is Zuver?
Zuver claims to be Australia’s fastest and most reliable Managed WordPress platform.
Fact: the name Zuver is derived from the German word “zuverlassig”.] I don’t speak German but apparently it means reliable, dependable and trustworthy. So far they have given this impression 🙂
They have been around since 2012 but recently revamped their branding in 2019. I don’t know what it looked like back then, but it looks cool now!
They specialise in providing low cost, high quality hosting and domain names to the Australian market.
Also, unlike many, their support centre is based in Melbourne (close to me) with a help desk full of Australians!
First Impressions
Revamped Dashboard
Positive Notes
– They use Plesk, which has a nice looking control panel.
– HSTS option within SSL settings.
– SEO Toolkit
– WordPress comes pre-installed with LiteSpeed cache plugin, which is great for beginners.
– Dashboard looks nice.
– When importing my website, I didn’t experience any problems. I didn’t even have to disable my caching plugin OR fix any broken links!
– 60 day money back guarantee!
– There was an option to disable wp-cron, which was cool. Great for those who aren’t familiar with the wp-config file.
– Another cool option to change the login URL. Nice security add!
Negative Notes
– Adding the SSL certificate could have been smoother.
– Dashboard and backend in general seemed a little slow. Especially the SEO Toolkit section that took ~10 seconds to load.
– No online chat support, only ticket support with a 1 hour wait time. However, you can get priority support for $5.
Cool Features
Features and benefits.
Zuver actually provides everything a WordPress website owner needs. All the standard stuff + some really cool extras.
Backups
Running a WordPress website requires regular maintenance. And when doing so, you absolutely must take a backup (or have recent backups on hand). They take backups every hour! Not once a day like most other hosts. This is a big differentiator!
Staging & Cloning
If you are making changes to your site, it’s best to do so behind the scenes, without your visitors knowing.
Zuver provides the ability to stage and clone your website. Great features if your website is always being updated.
There is nothing worse than running a software update or making major design changes, which goes wrong and takes hours to fix. The whole time being seen by your visitors.
It is always better to make mistakes in a staging environment and ONLY pushing live WHEN everything is working 100%.
Smart Updates
This is a cool feature. One of the biggest problems when updating your WordPress version, theme or plugins, is the risk of your website breaking.
Usually due to incompatibility between the different third party software. But sometimes from a bug in one particular plugin.
This is why I mentioned above that running updates should be done from a staging environment first. The Smart Update feature essentially does this for you on the fly. Essentially testing the updates without affecting the live site. If something goes wrong, you’ll be notified. You’ll even get before and after screenshots so you can check manually!
An even BIGGER differentiator!
WordPress Software Smart Update
ImunifyAV Code Protection
This is like a malware scanner that works proactively to secure your website; protecting it from malware and viruses. Usually a premium service with other hosts. Great to see this built in!
Pricing
Zuver Pricing.
Speed Tests
When visiting Zuver for the first time, they challenge you to find a faster hosting provider. They also claim to be lightning fast. Well, they aren’t lying. I set up a cloned version of this website on their smarter hosting plan using the subdomain: zuver.maxjacobs.com.au.
Literally nothing has been changed between this site and the cloned version. All plugins are the same including the caching plugin. Check out the speed test results below.
Zuver speed test using GT Metrix.
GT Metrix tests using clone of maxjacobs.com.au on Zuver:
Test 1 = 0.5s (TFFB = 121ms)
Test 2 = 0.6s (TTFB = 135ms)
Test 3 = 0.6s (TTFB = 154ms)
Test 4 = 442ms (TTFB = 21ms)
Test 5 = 0.9s (TTFB = 34ms)
Average Load Time = ~0.6s
Average TTFB = ~93ms
Cloudways speed test using GT Metrix.
GT Metrix tests for maxjacobs.com.au on Cloudways:
Test 1 = 0.7s (TTFB = 173ms)
Test 2 = 0.8s (TFFB = 90ms)
Test 3 = 0.6s (TTFB = 158ms)
Test 4 = 0.6s (TTFB = 86ms)
Test 5 = 0.7s (TTFB = 166ms)
Average Load Time = 0.68s
Average TTFB = ~135ms
Speed Comparison
– 442ms load time using Zuver is a speed record for my site. Relatively fast considering I use a heavy page builder (Elementor Pro) with lots of content/images on the home page.
– The YSlow score is also 1 point higher; increasing the ‘Minify Javascript and CSS’ score from 90/100 to 100/100.
Zuver Reviews
Zuver Reviews from zuver.net.au.
Zuver Alternatives
– Kinsta
– Cloudways
– Best WordPress Hosting In Australia
Final Thoughts
The main reason I did this Zuver review was their challenge to find a faster hosting provider. Effectively claiming to be the ‘fastest’.
I don’t think they are the fastest, but they certainly didn’t disappoint!
Zuver is definitely a high performance host providing lightning fast servers. I mean, 424ms load time!? Pretty good for a page with lots of content using a heavy page builder 😉