Panthur.com.au review

First impression

Prior to their start, Panthur was a non-profit hosting service initiated by Adam Seliman in Australia back in 2009. Currently located in Melbourne, their services now include domain registration, shared hosting, SSL Certificates, and even reseller hosting. Panthur was later bought out by Hostopia Australia, a branch of the Delux Corporation, a company based in the USA. They earned notoriety for their guaranteed uptime and support of 99.9%, making Panthur the number one Australian hosting service according to many.

Trial Period

Unfortunately, potential customers will not be able to try out its services before committing, but you can expect a full refund if the service is not up to par with your standards, as they have a 30-day money-back guarantee in place for their hosting services.

Billing Cycle

Panthur is flexible when it comes to billing for its services. Users can go month to month, or for those who wish to stay a bit longer, there are also semi-annual and yearly options. Best of all, the longer you sign up, the bigger the discount! A yearly plan is off 5% of the cost, the 2-year plan gives 10 % off, and if you decide to stick around for three years, you will be given 20% off. That’s a great way to save money if you know you’ll be in the area for a while.

As for payment methods, they now take all the main credit and also accept PayPal alongside BPay, a well-known bill payment service in Australia.

Control Panel

The good news is that Panthur includes cPanel in its hosting plans to ensure a smooth and easy experience. cPanel, if you haven’t heard of it before is basically the leading web hosting control panel, and by far the most popular in the industry. With its user-friendly dashboard, you can do everything from creating an email and managing your database to installing WordPress and using backups. For beginners and seasoned professionals alike, cPanel makes encountering all of the complex sides of web hosting easier.

Limits

Panthur’s Shared Hosting plans are available in three options: Business, Stealth, and Economy. All these are operated through enterprise-grade LiteSpeed web servers.

Each division includes three options. The Panthur option at the top end offers 75GB SSD storage, 8GB RAM, unlimited MariaDB databases, and email accounts, while the Mini, their entry-level option, has the bare minimum of 2GB SSD storage, 1GB RAM, unlimited MariaDB databases (version 10 or higher), and unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts. From low-cost solutions for basic sites to high-resource plans for e-commerce stores, there is a solution for everyone. In addition, all the plans offer a 256-bit SSL certificate and 30 restore points over a period of 30 days.

Website Builder

As if it could not get any better, all their shared hosting plans come with the Website Builder Pro which is absolutely free. If coding is really not your forte or you simply do not wish to deal with the technical aspects, this tool makes website creation easy with its simplistic drag-and-drop feature. It has so many templates that make it easy for a user to create and deploy a site within minutes with no effort on custom design needed. If you prefer a Content Management System (CMS), which I personally prefer over most dedicated website builders, you can install WordPress, Drupal, Magento and so many other programs with just a couple of clicks, and that opens up a world of possibilities.

Whether you intend to create a sleek professional business website or tailor a personal blog, WordPress (and many other CMS alternatives) can assist in creating stunning websites without a hint of coding background.

Security

This provider from Australia takes security seriously. Every domain hosted by them is enabled with AutoSSL, which automatically adds a 256-bit domain-validated SSL certificate. This resolves any uneasiness around data exchanged between the visitors and the website during the time the information is not being accessed. They also add additional layers of security by restricting access from malicious users and including protection against DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks, which helps keep the hosting environment safe for all domains.

Like many providers, this hosting company also has a 90-day data backup policy.
That said, it is important to note that Panthur does not encrypt data at rest by default, and although SSL encryption is used when sending data, the burden of encrypting files is left to the user.

Another thing to remember is that, by default, Panthur does not provide advanced security features such as intrusion detection systems (IDS) or security information and event management (SIEM). Users are given tips on enhancing security for certain CMSs like WordPress, but customers needing more sophisticated and granular security threat monitoring or analytics will have to implement those themselves.

OS

Panthur uses CloudLinux 7 for its hosting plans, which is great for reliability and security. For those not in the know, CloudLinux is a derived Linux OS made for shared hosting platforms. What makes this exceptional is the isolation of each hosting account, meaning one website cannot gobble up the entire server resources and slow interned websites down. That is like ensuring a noisy neighbor does not disrupt the entire apartment complex. This further enhances security because accounts are compartmentalized; if one site gets attacked, the damage is contained.

Support

Panthur offers a variety of support channels to ensure customers receive assistance whenever needed. Their ticket support system is available 24/7, allowing you to submit inquiries at any time. Phone support operates daily from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM AEDT, catering to both sales and technical issues. Additionally, live chat support is accessible 24/7 through the client portal for existing members. Panthur aims to respond to technical support requests within 20 minutes, but in my experience, they were even faster. Their agents are also a pleasure to deal with!

Conclusion

If you are looking for reliable and straightforward shared hosting, Panthur is certainly worth considering. They do not offer VPS or dedicated servers (these can be bought from their sister company, Digital Pacific), and honestly, that's a good thing - by focusing exclusively on shared hosting, they manage to do it exceptionally well.