Signing Up with Hoopla — What We Found
Hoopla Hosting is a local New Zealand–owned budget shared hosting provider.
We signed up for Hoopla’s Starter (2GB) Auckland Web Hosting plan, took notes on the process, and ran the same WordPress benchmark tests we use everywhere else. Here’s what we found.
The Hoopla signup story
Hoopla Hosting let us sign up for the $8.65/month NZD ex-GST Starter plan on a month-to-month term. They do have a cheaper Mini plan, but we skipped that tier because it has a minimum 12-month term.
We found the checkout experience to be straightforward.
Hoopla Hosting uses the old familiar cPanel for website management. Once we got into cPanel it asked us if we wanted to start with a blank WordPress site, or use their website builder. As usual, we chose to start from scratch.
We pointed our domain’s nameservers to Hoopla Hosting, then waited for DNS propagation before SSL could be issued. We encountered some friction here—you have to install Let's Encrypt manually from cPanel. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s a step that most other hosts handle automatically. If you're benchmarking or launching quickly, budget time for that propagation window.
We installed WordPress, ran PHP Vitals (v1.2.1 reported a 30.2 second total run time), then WP Benchmark. During testing the provider terminated the account and refunded — noted in our data as the observed refund behaviour.
Control panel
Plan features: Hoopla Starter (2GB) Auckland Web Hosting
Last updated 13 August, 2026
Overview
| Price | $8.65/mo NZD ex-GST · renewal rate |
|---|---|
| Storage | 2GB |
| Bandwidth | 150 GB/month |
| Panel | cPanel |
| PHP | 8.1 |
| Minimum term | 1 month |
| Support | email, tickets |
| Server | New Zealand (103.96.117.42, AS133950 Hoopla Hosting Limited) |
| Refund note | Account terminated and refunded |
Default PHP 8.1.34. Let's Encrypt SSL installed manually via cPanel after nameserver propagation.
Benchmark results ?
| Test | Result | Date |
|---|---|---|
| PHP Vitals | F (30.24s) | 2026-08-13 |
| WP Benchmark | 4.7 / 10 | 2026-08-13 |
Hoopla posted the weakest combined scores in our table (F / 4.7). WP Benchmark flagged PHP 8.1.34 as outdated and suggested 8.3+ where compatible. Filesystem and database sub-tests were particularly weak; password hashing and file stream operations dominated PHP Vitals time.
These results are not ideal for performance-sensitive WordPress sites or anyone who needs modern PHP and hands-off SSL on day one.
What you can expect with Hoopla
Good fit if you want
- Lowest NZD renewal price in our comparison
- Auckland hosting and cPanel
- Month-to-month billing with no long-term lock-in on Starter
Watch out for
- Hard 2 GB / 150 GB caps (not “unlimited”)
- PHP 8.1 only
- Manual Let’s Encrypt after nameserver changes
- Weakest benchmarks we measured
Location and Backups
Try Hoopla
Sign up for their Starter (2GB) Auckland Web Hosting shared plan on their site.