SiteGround Review

I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical at first, but that quickly changed. In fact so much that I have moved this site to them and I’m using their GrowBig GoGeek plan.

Because of their dedication to uptime, speed, security and support – it really is the superior web host right now! And I’m not the only one that ❤️ them.

Here I will look at the most important features of SiteGround, what their pricing plans are like, and walk through the pros and cons (because they’re not 100% perfect) to help you make up your mind before you sign up with SiteGround for your website, blog, or online store.

This site is hosted by SiteGround and over the last couple of months I have monitored and analyzed uptime, speed and overall performance to see just how well my site performs with them. I have even set up a test site using the default WordPress theme. You can jump straight to the uptime results here.

Just give me ten minutes of your time, and I will give you all the “must-know” facts and I’ll answer questions like.

When you have finished reading this you will know if it’s the right (or wrong) web hosting service for you to use.

SiteGround offers superb hosting that comes packed with extra features and they are usually not the cheapest web host out there.

Nevertheless their prices right now are matching some of the cheapest in the business (from $3.95 per month, down from $11.95 a month).

What this review will cover:

When you’re setting up a website, particularly one that will serve as a source of income, you need to know that you can rely on your host to provide excellent services and support.

If your website is down or has technical glitches that affect the users’ experience, you will end up losing money. Which is no bueno!

So let’s talk about SiteGround. What makes them special? Why do so many people rave about them?

#InterestingFact

WordPress Hosting is a closed Facebook group with almost 7,000 members solely dedicated to WordPress hosting.

Each year members are asked to vote for their favourite web host. Can you guess which WordPress web host got the most votes?

That’s right. SiteGround has been voted the #1 WordPress host for two years in a row now (#1 in 2017’s poll and #1 in 2016’s poll)

This review will discuss SG’s primary features and talk about why you should consider using it for your hosting needs.

Main Features

They have a ton of great features, but there are four main features that really set them apart from other web hosts out there.

This helps explain why SiteGround is recommended by WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, and why it gets such enthusiastic user support and great customer reviews.

Server Speed

When it comes to making a website user-friendly, one of the most important issues is speed.

Once I moved this site over to them I immediately had a much faster loading website.

To test this, I used Byte Check, a tool that measures time to first byte (TTFB). In other words, it measures the responsiveness of a web server.

The results were nothing short of amazing. In fact, my homepage time to first byte went from 2.3 seconds down to 0.2 seconds once I switched over.

Using GTmetrix, my homepage loading time went from 6.9 seconds down to 1.6 seconds after I moved my site. That’s a 5.3 seconds faster load time!

My homepage loading speed using Pingdom went from 4.96 seconds down to 581 milliseconds after I moved across. That is pretty amazing!

Sites that load slowly aren’t likely to rise to the top in any niche.

Why? Because web users are notoriously impatient. In fact, studies show that if a page hasn’t loaded in three seconds, users are likely to navigate away in search of something faster – and the longer the wait is, the more people you’ll lose.

As a result, SG takes site speed seriously. And their expert developers are always working on new technology to help improve site load times – and it shows.

Here are some of the specific technologies they use to guarantee quick loading times to their clients:

• Solid State Drives (SSDs) are up to a thousand times faster than regular drives. All of the databases and sites hosted by SiteGround use SSDs for storage.
• NGINX web server technology helps speed up the loading time for static content on your website. All of SG’s clients’ sites get the benefit of NGINX web server technology.
• Web caching plays a key role in loading dynamic content from your website. They have built their own caching mechanism, SuperCacher, which relies on NGINX reverse proxy. The result is faster loading of dynamic content and better website speed optimization.
• Free Content Delivery Network (CDN) and HTTP/2 and PHP7 enabled servers help speed up loading times around the world by making your content more accessible.

In addition to all of the above, they perform regular updates to their technology to ensure that the sites they host aren’t lagging because they haven’t kept up with technological changes. The result is the fastest loading times available.

Security

It seems as if hardly a day goes by without news of some new security breach online. Individuals, corporations, and even government entities have been victimized.

The truth is, security is a major concern for anybody who owns a website.

SiteGround offers some of the most reliable security available. You’ll still have to do your part in keeping your site safe, but here are some of the security features that make them unique.

• Site isolation ensures that your site is not negatively impacted if there’s a security breach of one of the other sites on your server. Think of it like a hosting firewall that protects your site from hackers.
• All of their servers support HTTP/2 technology, which is the most secure option available. Many web hosts are behind in this area, but not SG.
• All of their clients get the benefit of their web application firewall (WAF), which protects against security breaches and is updated regularly.
• Proactive patches are sent to all clients when new threats emerge.

They also run regular virus and malware scans on your site and send reports to notify you of the results, so you always know what’s going on with your website. That’s one of the things that users love about their web hosting service.

In 2018, SiteGround was extremely successful in keeping clients sites well secured. They responded to 3 times more threats compared to last year. Statistically, they:

• Wrote 250 new custom firewall rules
• Added 125 livepatch kernel modules
• Mitigated 186 DDOS attacks
• Stopped 7 million brute-force attacks
• Stopped 160M bad bot requests towards client’s sites
• each day with their anti-bot AI solution

Support

A hosting service can have state-of-the-art technology and good security, but for most people, it’s what happens when things go wrong that matters the most.

SG is a company that prides itself on client support. They make customer service a priority and it shows in their reviews and through the loyalty of their clients.



The fact is that their response times leave their competitors in the dust.

Their closest competitor has an average response time for a support ticket of 44 minutes – but SiteGround’s response time is just eight minutes.

They offer three ways to get support:

• The live chat system will get you an immediate reply and is available 24 hours a day
• Likewise, phone support is staffed around the clock and will get you an instant reply
• Submitting a ticket will get you a reply in less than 10 minutes – and this response time is even less if you have paid for one of their priority services

Instead of waiting hours (or even days) for help with your site, you can count on this web host to give you a timely response. Of course, that means you can pass on the same excellent services to your site’s users.

SiteGround WordPress hosting

As mentioned earlier, WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world. In addition to powering just under 27% 30% of all the Internet’s sites, it’s also responsible for delivering as much as 60% of the web content worldwide.

That’s why with SiteGround, you get managed WordPress hosting with all hosting plans, along with a ton of great features:



Here are some of its best WordPress-related features:

• All plans come with fully managed WordPress hosting.
• Regular, automatic WordPress updates ensure that you’ll always have the latest version of WordPress. This option is included in all plans.



• Automatic updates of installed WordPress plug-ins is also available on all plans.
• The team keeps an eye out for WordPress vulnerabilities and writes WAF updates to protect you from them.
• Their speed technologies, which were detailed above, are specifically geared toward helping WordPress sites load as quickly as possible.

You also get to take advantage of their exclusive SuperCacher plugin, which is a built-in caching plugin that increases the number of hits your site can handle. This means your site will load faster, even when you experience an influx of unexpected site traffic.



Keep in mind that the StartUp plan only comes with static caching, and that the GrowBig and GoGeek plans come with both static, dynamic and memcache caching.

Here’s an explanation of the differences.

While WordPress is their main focus – which makes sense, given WordPress’ dominance of the market – they are also a recommended partner for both Joomla and Drupal content management systems.

The features listed above make them a favorite of both individuals and companies who want the reassurance of 99.99% uptime, fast site loading, state-of-the-art-security, and top-notch customer service.

Load Time & Uptime Test

Over the last couple of months I have monitored and analyzed the uptime, speed and overall performance of my test site hosted on SG.



My test site has had an average uptime of 99.99%, which is 0.2% better than the 99.79% industry standard, which is what they promise their customers.

• January 2018 average uptime: 100%
• February 2018 average uptime: 99.99%
• March 2018 average uptime: 100%
• April 2018 average uptime: 100%
• May 2018 average uptime: 100%
• June 2018 average uptime: 99.99%
• July 2018 average uptime: 100%
• August 2018 average uptime: 100%
• September 2018 average uptime: 100%

During the same period, my test site has had an average page loading time of 745 milliseconds. Yes, that’s well under 1 second.

• January 2018 average page load time: 750 ms
• February 2018 average page load time: 730 ms
• March 2018 average page load time: 760 ms
• April 2018 average page load time: 720 ms
• May 2018 average page load time: 700 ms
• June 2018 average page load time: 790 ms
• July 2018 average page load time: 705 ms
• August 2018 average page load time: 815 ms
• September 2018 average page load time: 700 ms

SiteGround Pros and Cons

The features that they offer their web hosting clients are impressive, but covering the technical aspects of their service doesn’t really give you an idea of what choosing SiteGround can do for you on a practical level.

With that in mind, let’s look at some of the real world pros and cons of using this hosting company. As you will see, there are a lot more pros than cons – which is not surprising given their commitment to excellence.

The Pros of SiteGround

The pros of using SiteGround to host your website are undeniable. This is a company that prides itself on excellent service – and it shows.

Uptime

If you’ve spent any time at all shopping for a web host, you’re familiar with the importance of uptime. A hosting company’s uptime percentage tells you how often, on average, you can expect your website to be “down” or unavailable.



It’s not possible for any hosting service to claim 100% uptime since there are too many variables in play to be sure that there will never be any downtime. However, they do guarantee a 99.99% uptime.

That’s impressive by any standard, and they live up to it. They use monitoring software that notifies them immediately when there is an outage and work quickly to resolve any issues.

To put this in perspective, 99.99% uptime means that your site might be down for a little over four hours in any six month period.

Their uptime percentages are truly impressive. Their overall average is 99.99% uptime, and a look at their website in April of 2017 revealed:

• A monthly average uptime for the past 30 days of 99.999%
• An annual average uptime for the past 365 days of 99.996%

In practical terms, their customers hardly ever have to worry about their websites not being available.

Loading Times

I already talked about the speed technology that they use to minimize loading times for WordPress sites, but what does it mean in practical terms?

Earlier, I mentioned that most Internet users will give a site three seconds to load before they consider navigating away. That’s not much time, so if you want to hold on to your site’s visitors your load times need to be very fast.



Sites hosted on SiteGround have an average load time of 1.3 seconds per page. That’s very quick and it speaks to the efficiency of the speed technology the company uses.

Server Response Times

Another clear pro is that it has very fast server response times. The server response time is a measure of how long it takes the server to deliver all of the elements of your website to a user’s browser.

SiteGround has extremely fast server response times averaging about 190 milliseconds over a six month period. That means that regardless of where your data is stored, the information on your site – both static data and dynamic data – can be delivered to a user’s browser almost instantaneously.

Why does this matter? Again, it has to do with user experience. You want the people who visit your site to have as little time as possible to consider navigating away. When your server responds very quickly, as the their servers do, your users are likely to stay on your site.

Multiple Data Centers

Part of the reason that their server response times are so fast is that they offer their clients access to multiple data centers located at strategic locations around the world.

When you sign up you are given the option to choose your preferred server location.



While data delivery speeds as a whole have sped up considerably over the years, the physical distance between a user and the server can impact the loading times.

To address that issue, they have data centers in:

• Amsterdam
• Chicago
• London
• Milan
• Singapore

When you sign up for hosting services, you have the opportunity to choose where you want your data to be stored.

Daily Backups

You know how important it is to backup the data on your website. If you don’t, you risk losing both static data and dynamic data, some of which may be irreplaceable.



If you set up your site with SG, you’ll need to make sure to have a regular backup system in place, just in case something happens to your site. However, in the event that your backup fails, they have you covered.

They perform daily backups of all of their clients’ websites so in the event that your backup fails or you need to reclaim your data for some reason, you can contact customer service and get what you need.

You get free daily backup copies (only one backup per day on the StartUp plan) of your website as well as a website backup and restoration service (if you sign up for the GrowBig or GoGeek plans).



Hosting backups are like website insurance. User errors, hacks, deleted files, or website updates gone wrong can all be instantly solved with a backup restore.

• View and manage backups easily with their simple to use 1-click backup tool
• Create and restore website backups quickly and easily with one click
• Avoid data loss due to website mistakes
• Experiment with website updates that you can quickly undo



You can create and restore backups instantly by yourself using the 1-click backup restore tool in the easy to use cPanel.

Transparency

It’s natural to want the companies you buy from to be transparent about what they do and how they do it. It’s particularly important when you’re going to be trust a company with all of the content on your website.

They have, for the most part, a great record with transparency. When you visit their site, you’ll see that they display both their monthly uptime percentage and their yearly uptime percentage so you can see how their sites are performing.

They also provide – free of charge – the IP addresses of all of their data centers. Why does that matter? Because it lets you test the loading speed of your site from each one of the data centers so you can pick the one that will deliver the best user experience to your site’s visitors.



They’re also very honest about what’s included in each one of their plans. Some of the higher-priced plans user low-volume servers to ensure faster load times. With SiteGround, you’ll always know what you’re getting in return for your money.

Global Reach

As a whole, the hosting industry is very United States-centric, and that can be a problem for people who live in other countries.

SiteGround is based in Bulgaria but they have a global perspective that makes them highly accessible to companies and individuals around the globe.

To begin with, they’ll accept multiple currencies, including:

• US dollars
• British pounds
• Euros
• Australian dollars

They also have a dedicated Spanish-language page and toll free phone numbers in various locations. They offer country-specific domain names, too, which makes easy for local companies to choose a domain name that’s specific to their country. (FYI they no longer offer a free domain name when signing up.)

State-of-the-Art Security

We talked earlier about site security, and one of the biggest benefits of choosing them to host your site is that you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing that your site is protected by some of the best security tools available.



In addition to the built-in security features that we already mentioned, you can get a slew of other security features that can help protect your data – and your users.

• Anti-spam tools, including SpamAssassin and SpamExperts, to protect your site from spammers
• The ability to block certain IP addresses (very useful if you’ve been subjected to an attack)
• A free SSL certificate (available with certain plans)
• HackAlert, a $1/month add-on that will notify you immediately if your site is under attack
• Leech Protect, a feature that allows the administrators of your site to prevent users from giving out or posting their password or login information
• Their free SiteCheck tool allows you to quickly and easily check your site for malware to make sure that your visitors are protected

They take security seriously, and that’s a big pro, particularly if your site has an ecommerce store or collects any private information from users.

Customer Service

If you’re an experienced web developer, you might find that you have little need for customer support. For the rest of us, though, it’s important to know that we can get the help we need, when we need it.





SiteGround customer support is truly unparalleled. As mentioned earlier, you can access live chat or telephone support 24/7. You’ll be notified immediately of how many customers are ahead of you, and in most cases the wait times are minimal.

The same is true of putting in a support ticket through their website. Their customer service reps are friendly, helpful, and patient, making them a particularly good choice for individuals and small businesses who are in need of some hand-holding.

Free site migration

Website migration is a major hassle when it comes to switching web hosts. One of the many good things about SiteGround is their free website transfer service.

This service applies not only to WordPress sites, but also other CMS platforms like Joomla and Drupal, and of course single websites and static HTML websites too.

Their transfer service includes a free transfer of one website (regardless of size), as well as transfer of emails, FTP accounts, addon domains for (for accounts managed with cPanel).



1. Sign up for SiteGround hosting
2. Login to your Customer Area
3. Click on the Support Tab



Scroll down a bit to the “website setup assistant” section.



Fill out the website migration form and wait for them to get back to you. You will be amazed to know that the process of transferring your WordPress site to SiteGround is completed within just 24-48 hours.

FYI …

They have just released a new tool that allows you to easily transfer a WordPress site from any other hosting provider to them. They call it the SiteGround Migrator.



You simply install their new Migrator plugin on your WordPress site to get started. After doing that, they will automatically transfer your entire WordPress site to the destination domain and folder you specified earlier. Learn more about this tool here.

Cloudflare CDN one-click activation

Cloudflare’s CDN is included for free with all plans, and in the cPanel you can activate Cloudflare in just 1 click.

WordPress recommends using a CDN like Cloudflare in their speed optimization guide.

With just a click on the “activate” button the Cloudflare content delivery network (CDN) will cache your website content and will distribute it over multiple data centers around the world.



Next, you navigate to the settings tab and set the Cloudflare settings to aggressive caching, minification of static resources, and activate Railgun to accelerate the connection between Cloudflare and the server. Doing all this will give your site faster load times.



The Cons of SiteGround

No web hosting company is perfect, and there are a few downsides to consider before you make the decision to use SiteGround as your web host.

Data Storage Limits

The first negative thing is that they have fairly low caps on the amount of data you can store on your site.

There are undoubtedly good reasons for these limitations. The more data customers store on their shared hosting servers, the more likely it is that they’ll experience slow load times and server response times.

However, people who have image/video-heavy sites might have an issue with their storage limitations. They range from 10GB at the low end to 30GB at the high end. That might be plenty for most text-based sites.

The only solution to this particular issue is to make your best guess about how much storage you will need to keep your site going and then see if one of the plans can accommodate your storage needs.

• StartUp: 10GB storage (okay for most non-CMS / non-WordPress driven sites)
• GrowBig: 20GB storage (okay for WordPress / Joomla / Drupal driven sites)
• GoGeek: 30GB storage (okay for ecommerce as well as WordPress / Joomla / Drupal driven sites)

Resource Over-Usage

They have something they call a monthly allowance of “CPU seconds per account”. Basically this limits how much resources your site is allowed to use per month. The potential problem here is if you go over this limit regularly, then they may put your site on hold until the next month when your monthly allowance resets.



They outline the monthly resource limits in their plan details:

• StartUp: Suitable for ~10,000 visits per month
• GrowBig: Suitable for ~25,000 visits per month
• GoGeek: Suitable for ~100,000 visits per month

However you should be aware that an overuse freeze can happen well below 100k visit limit on the GoGeek plan. So if your website attracts considerable traffic, say more than 3,000 visitors per day, then even the GoGeek plan might not work out for you.

I would argue that if you get thousands of visitors to your site per day then you should stay away from shared hosting plans altogether, as you are better off with a cloud hosting or VPS plan (they come with many more resources).

Plans & Prices

They offer three different plans for their shared hosting service; Startup, GrowBig, and GoGeek.

SiteGround StartUp Plan



The StartUp plan starts at just $3.95 per month.

• Host 1 website only
• ~ 10,000 monthly visits
• 10GB web space
• Essential features:
• SSD storage
• Free setup & site transfer
• 30 day money back guarantee
• 99.9 percent uptime guarantee
• 24/7 technical support
• Unlimited bandwidth, emails, databases
• Free SSL & HTTP/2
• Free daily backups
• Free CloudFlare CDN
• SuperCacher static caching only
• PHP7 + OpCache
• WordPress & Joomla tools
• cPanel & SSH access

StartUp is a pretty fantastic entry-level plan for beginners but you can only host one website with this plan.

SiteGround GrowBig Plan



In addition to the standard features you get in the StartUp plan, the GrowBig plan gives you premium WordPress caching, premium support, daily backups and access to a premium site backup and restore service. Your first year of Wildcard SSL certificate is also included for free.

The GrowBig Plan starts at $5.95 per month.

• Host unlimited websites
• ~ 25,000 monthly visits
• 20GB web space
• All essential + premium features:
• SuperCacher dynamic & memcache caching
• 30 daily backups
• Priority support
• SSD storage
• Wildcard SSL certificate
• Backup & restoration service
• 2x server resources
• 2x database resources
• 2x email resources

GrowBig is the plan I recommend you sign up with. You can host multiple websites and you get more than 2x the resources (resulting in a faster loading website) than the StartUp plan.

SiteGround GoGeek Plan



With the GoGeek plan, you get all the benefits of the StartUp and GrowBig plans, plus geeky features and 4x more resources compared to the StartUp plan.

The GoGeek Plan starts at $11.95 per month.

• Host unlimited websites
• ~ 100,000 monthly visits
• 30GB web space
• All essential & premium + geeky features:
• SuperCacher dynamic & memcache caching
• 1-click WordPress staging
• SG-Git for repository creation
• Pre-Installed Git
• Free PCI compliance
• Premium backup & restoration service
• 4x server resources
• 4x database resources
• 4x email resources

The GoGeek plan is for heavily-trafficked or resource-intensive websites. It comes with 4x faster servers than the StartUp hosting plans.



Hosting Plan Comparison

Which plan should I get? That is what this section aims to help you find out …

The main difference between the plans is that with StartUp you can only host 1 website. GrowBig comes with more server resources (= faster loading website), you also get priority support, 30 daily backups (instead of just 1 with StartUp) and dynamic caching (instead of just static caching with StartUp).

The GoGeek plan comes with 4 times more server resources and you can create a staging site. You also get premium website backup and restore services, as well as free PCI compliance.

Want to know what the key differences are between the StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek packages?

Here is a comparison of StartUp vs. GrowBig plan, and GrowBig vs. GoGeek plan.

SiteGround’s StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek plans are all reasonably priced, but the more expensive plans include more server resources.

SiteGround StartUp vs. GrowBig Review

All of SiteGround’s hosting plans are reasonably priced, but the StartUp plan is the cheapest plan offered. This is the entry-level plan and it comes with the least resources and features. The StartUp plan is I think best suitable for those who need to have only one website, such as a personal or small business website or blog.

One key difference between the StartUp and GrowBig plan is that with the former plan you are only allowed to host one website (with the GrowBig plan you can host unlimited websites). If you intend to run multiple websites on your one hosting account the StartUp plan should be a no-no.

In contrast, the GrowBig plan is better suited for small business owners and bloggers using WordPress because you get 2x more server resources and a lot more features compared to the StartUp plan.

GrowBig lets you host multiple websites, use the Supercacher static, dynamic and memcache caching technology (StartUp only offers static), and you get a free wildcard SSL certificate. Another feature the StartUp plan lacks is backup and restore functionality. The GrowBig plan comes with basic backup and restore services.

Another key difference is that with the StartUp plan you only get standard support, compared to GrowBig’s premium support. So if you think you will need a bit of hand-holding from their friendly, fast and knowledgeable support team, then you should opt for the GrowBig plan.



You should consider choosing the GrowBig plan if:

• You want to host more than just one website on your hosting account
• You want 2x more server resources (i.e. a faster loading website)
• You want 30 daily backups instead of the one daily backup you get with StartUp
• You want premium support instead of the standard support that comes with StartUp
• You want 20GB of web storage instead of the 10GB that comes with StartUp
• You want access to their basic backup and restore service
• You want static, dynamic and memcache caching instead of only static caching that comes with StartUp
• You want a free wildcard SSL certificate for the first year

SiteGround GrowBig vs. GoGeek Review

One key difference between the GrowBig vs GoGeek plan is the extra server resources that only comes with the latter. GoGeek comes with 4x more server resources and fewer users that share the server’s resources. This means you get a fast loading website when you opt for the GoGeek plan.

Another difference between the plans is the additional “geeky” features you get only with the GoGeek plan. One such feature is site staging environments, which lets you copy your live site or test new code and designs before publishing changes on your live site. Another feature is Git, which comes preinstalled that lets you create repositories of your website.

Finally GoGeek comes with their premium website backup and restore services, and free PCI compliance to help safeguard your ecommerce site.



You should consider choosing the GoGeek plan if:

• You want 4x more server resources (i.e. a fast loading website) and fewer users that share the server resources
• You want staging environments so you copy your live site or test new code and design before publishing changes on your live site
• You want 30GB of web storage instead of the 20GB that comes with GrowBig
• You want free PCI compliance to make your ecommerce site fully PCI compliant
• You want pre-installed Git so you can create repositories of your website
• You want their premium backup and restore service, instead of the basic service that comes with GrowBig

Which hosting plan is best for you?

Now you know what plans they offer and you are now hopefully in a better position to choose the best shared hosting plan for your needs. Remember you can always upgrade to a higher plan later on.

Based on my own experience, here is my recommendation for you:

• I recommend that you sign up with the StartUp plan if you intend to run a simple static or HTML site.
• I recommend that you sign up with the GrowBig plan (this is the plan I’m using) if you intend to run a WordPress, Joomla or any CMS powered site.
• I recommend that you sign up with the GoGeek plan if you intend to run an ecommerce site or if you need WordPress/Joomla staging and Git features.

 

SiteGround FAQ

Here you will find answers to some of the most common questions.

1. What is SiteGround?
2. Do they have a money-back guarantee?
3. What payment methods do they accept?
4. Do I get to choose a datacenter location?
5. Do they offer free website migration?
6. Will they do backups of my website?
7. What is their uptime guarantee?
8. How can I contact their support?
9. Do they offer SSL and CDN?
10. Is it good for WordPress hosting?
11. Does it come with Solid State Drives (SSDs)?
12. Do I need the SG Site Scanner?
13. Can I trust reviews on Reddit and Quora?
14. What is the best SiteGround alternative?
15. Where can I find SiteGround coupon codes?

 

What is SiteGround.com?

SiteGround is a web hosting company that offers a range of services, from shared hosting, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS, and reseller hosting, to dedicated servers and enterprise hosting. SiteGround was founded in 2004 and hosts over 800,000 domain names worldwide. The company is independently owned (SiteGround is NOT owned by EIG) and its headquarters are located in Sofia, in Bulgaria and has data centers in Chicago, London, Amsterdam and Singapore. They have an A rating from BBB. The official website is www.siteground.com. Read more on their Wikipedia page.

 

Does SiteGround have a money-back guarantee?

Yes. They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can cancel your service within the first 30 days and you will receive a full refund. The money-back guarantee does not cover domain names, cloud or dedicated server hosting.

 

What payment methods does SiteGround accept?

They accept payment via credit cards like Visa and MasterCard, and you can even pay via PayPal (however you’ll need to reach out to support to obtain the PayPal payment link). Payments can be made for one, two or three years in advance. You can also pay on a monthly basis, however paying monthly incurs a setup fee.

 

Do I get to choose a datacenter location?

Yes, upon signing up you get to choose your preferred data center location. They have data centers in Chicago, London, Amsterdam and Singapore.

 

Does SiteGround offer free website migration?

Yes, they will migrate one existing website for you, free of charge, no matter how small or large your site your is. And they’ll do so without any downtime. Their site migration service includes all types of websites, including WordPress and Joomla powered websites. You submit your site migration request in your Customer Area. If you need additional help, they provide 24/7 support to get your site up and running quickly.

 

Will SiteGround do backups of my website?

Yes, the StartUp plan includes one site backup per day and the GrowBig and GoGeek plans perform 30 backups per day of your website. GrowBig and GoGeek also comes with a 1-click site restoration service. You can also create manual backups through the cPanel at any time.

 

What is SiteGround’s uptime guarantee?

SiteGround guarantees an uptime of 99.99%. If they fail to provide this then they will provide you with an account credit. You are able to monitor uptime from inside your Customer Area.

 

How can I contact Siteground support?

If you run into any trouble with your website or need billing or account assistance, you can contact them 24/7. They provide new account onboarding help, free website transfers and ongoing assistance at any time via email/tickets (10 min reply time), live chat (instant reply time) or phone (instant reply time). Their phone numbers are 1.866.605.2484 (US), 44.800.8620379 (UK), 61.1800.357221 (AU), 34.900.838.543 (Spain) or 1.800.828.9231 (rest of the world).

 

Does SiteGround offer SSL and CDN?

Yes. All plans come with a free SSL certificate. The StartUp plan includes a free Let’s Encrypt SSL, while the GrowBig and GoGeek plans come with a free Wildcard SSL certificate. Free CDN from CloudFlare is also included with all plans.

 

Is SiteGround good for WordPress hosting?

Yes. All plans come with managed WordPress hosting which means automatic WordPress core updates and patching, automatic WordPress installation on account set up, features such as the SuperCacher caching plugin, site staging and 100% free site transfer service.

On top of that. They have been voted the #1 WordPress host for two years in a row now (#1 in 2017’s poll and #1 in 2016’s poll by WPhosting Facebook Group). And it is well recognized for use in different countries locally, like Australia and in the United Kingdom.

 

Does SiteGround come with Solid State Drives (SSDs)?

Yes. All plans come with SSD. SSD, in addition to NGINX, PHP7 and HTTP/2 will make sure your site loads very fast.

 

Do I need the SG Site Scanner?

If you want the extra protection. SG Site Scanner (previously called HackAlert) is powered by Sucuri and is a premium malware detection and early warning system to help protect your site and costs $19.80/year.

 

Are reviews on Reddit and Quora trustworthy?

Yes, Quora and Reddit are both good places to read reviews from real people and customers about them. You can find reviews on Reddit, and on Quora. You can also read reviews on Yelp and TrustPilot.

 

What is the best SiteGround alternative?

SiteGround is the web host I use for this site and it’s the web hosting company I recommend. But if you are researching web hosts (which I recommend you do) and are looking for a good alternative to SiteGround, then here is my list of alternatives. I believe that the best alternatives to SiteGround are A2 Hosting (pretty much identical features but offers somewhat faster/better server speed technologies) and InMotion Hosting (again pretty much the same features but comes with a free domain name and a 90-day refund policy).

 

Where can I find a SiteGround coupon code?

You won’t find one because they don’t have the option to enter a promo code. So if you found a SiteGround coupon code online, then it’s a fake one. However they run various promotions (usually during major holidays) where they offer discounted pricing.

 

 



Do I Recommend them?

Is SiteGround a good web host?

They offer shared hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers and enterprise hosting plans. SiteGround’s web hosting is “crafted with care” to ensure top server speed, unmatched security and 24/7 fast and expert support. Here are the main reasons why SiteGround is a good web host to sign up with.

Speed and uptime

All of their web hosting plans come with the latest speed technologies such as SSD drives, NGINX, HTTP/2, PHP7 and free Cloudflare CDN. In other words, if you host your website with them it will load super fast!

Security

They take security seriously and offer unique security solutions such as free daily site backups and restore, malware scans and DDOS protection and SSL certificates. Get the best security and backup services using their in-house tech solutions!

WordPress

They offer managed WordPress hosting on all their plans, which means automatic WordPress core updates and patching, automatic WordPress installation on account set up, plus features such as the SuperCacher caching plugin, site staging and 100% free site transfer service. No wonder WordPress.org endorses them!

Support

They provide industry leading new account on-boarding help, free website transfers and ongoing assistance and support at any time via phone, chat or email. No wonder they consistently achieve nearly 100% customer satisfaction rates!

Get started with SiteGround.com now

So .. Do I recommend SiteGround?

Yes – I highly recommend SiteGround.

Especially now that I now use SiteGround (I’m on the GrowBig plan). Because remember, not very long ago I decided to move this site over to them.

They offer a very affordable and reliable web hosting service for your website.

They have industry-leading and impressive uptime levels, fast servers, strong security features, and excellent customer service that leave the competition in the rear-view mirror.

The few downsides of choosing them as your web host, in my opinion, are far outweighed by the upsides.

Provided that your site doesn’t go over the resource limits, you can be confident that your site will load quickly, be available when you need it, and will be secure to protect your data and your visitors’ privacy.

If you’re still sitting on the fence about SiteGround then take advantage of their 30-day money-back guarantee, meaning you can “try them out” and if you aren’t happy, then you will get your money back.

SiteGround offers superb hosting that comes packed with extra features and they are usually not the cheapest web host out there.

Nevertheless their prices right now are matching some of the cheapest in the business (from $3.95 per month, down from $11.95 a month).

Get started with SiteGround’s web hosting services

NOVEMBER 2018 UPDATE: I no longer use SiteGround to host this website. I’m now with Cloudways. I wasn’t unhappy with SiteGround or anything, it’s just that Cloudways can better handle the performance as this site keeps growing.

FTC disclosure: To get you the cheapest price possible, I’ll earn a commission if you decide to purchase through my links.

SiteGround Review 2019
Price
Features
Speed
Security
Support
4.8
Rating
Summary
Do I recommend SiteGround? Most definitely! In fact so much that I decided to host this website with them. There’s a reason why SiteGround is one of the fastest growing independent hosting companies. Because no other shared web hosting service can beat them on technical features like speed, performance, security and uptime. This makes them the #1 choice to anyone who cares about having a fast loading website, with good uptime and security, along with superb customer support and at a cheap price.
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