SiteGround is considered as one of the best web hosting companies out there. But c’mon, can they really be THAT good? Seriously! Well that’s exactly what this SiteGround review aims to find out. Are they as good as they say?
I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical at first, but that quickly changed. Fast speeds, and tons of extra features that are perfect for both beginners and power users make SiteGround an excellent web host.
Summary: SiteGround has set a new industry standard when it comes to high-performance shared hosting and WordPress hosting services. While they get beaten on price and add-on bonuses by competitors like Bluehost, SiteGround does much better when it comes to speed, performance, security, and core hosting features. If site speed and security matter more to you, then you should pay a bit more and use SiteGround.
If you don’t have time to read this SiteGround review, just watch this short video I put together for you:
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Free daily automatic backups & restore
- Automatic WordPress installation (and officially endorsed by WordPress.org)
- Managed WordPress hosting on all plans
- Innovative speed technologies (SSD, HTTP/2, PHP7, NGINX + more)
- Free SSL certificate & Cloudflare CDN
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.
SiteGround is the #1 web hosting favourite in many surveys/polls on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/groups/wphosting/permalink/1160796360718749/ www.facebook.com/groups/wphosting/permalink/917140131751041/ www.facebook.com/groups/473644732678477/permalink/1638240322885573/ www.facebook.com/groups/wphosting/permalink/1327545844043799/
Their speed technology is the main thing people like the most. SiteGround also gets positive feedback and ratings on Twitter:
In this SiteGround review, 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 was hosted by SiteGround and over a couple of months, I monitored and analyzed uptime, speed and overall performance to see just how well my site performed with them. I also set up test sites using the default WordPress theme.
Just give me ten minutes of your time, and I will give you all the “must-know” facts and I’ll answer questions like.
- How much does hosting cost?
- What’s the difference between StartUp, GrowBig & GoGeek?
- Do I get to choose a server location?
- What are the pros and cons of using them?
- Which is the best plan for WordPress websites?
- Will they take automatic backups of my site?
- What do they do to speed up my website?
- Does it come with an SSD? What about CDN & SSL?
- Will they help transfer my website over to them?
- What’s their SuperCacher plugin for WordPress 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 best in the business (from $6.99 per month, down from $14.99 a month).
This SiteGround review will cover:
1. Main features
Here I’ll cover the main features and what SiteGround’s web hosting services come with.
2. List of pros & cons
Here I’ll go into more detail and cover what the SiteGround pros and cons are (or jump straight to the pros or cons).
3. Hosting plans & prices
Here I’ll cover plans and prices and what the features are for each plan.
4. Do I Recommend SiteGround?
Here is my SiteGround review summary where I tell you if I recommend them, or if you’re better off signing up with a competitor.
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 favorite web host. Can you guess which WordPress web host got the most votes?
That’s right. SiteGround was voted the #1 WordPress host for two years in a row (#1 in 1st poll and #1 in 2nd poll)
This SiteGround review (2020 update) will discuss SG’s primary features and talk about why you should consider using it for your hosting needs.
About SiteGround
- SiteGround was founded in 2004 and its headquarters are located in Sofia, Bulgaria.
- They offer a range of hosting services; from shared hosting, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS, reseller hosting, to dedicated servers and enterprise hosting.
- All plans come with fully managed hosting.
- Is an official partner of WordPress.org
- Free SSD drives come included on all shared hosting plans.
- Servers are powered by Google Cloud, Ultrafast PHP, PHP7, HTTP/2 and NGINX + caching
- All customers get a free SSL certificate (Let’s Encrypt) and CloudFlare CDN.
- There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Official website: www.siteground.com
Now let’s dive into the review…
SiteGround’s Main Features Reviewed
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. A study from Google found that a one-second delay in mobile page load times can impact conversion rates by up to 20%.
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, SiteGround 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 customers:
- SiteGround’s infrastructure is powered by Google Cloud with SSD-persistent storage and ultra-fast network.
- 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.
- Ultrafast PHP ensures up to 30% faster websites.
In addition to all of the above, SiteGround reviews & performs 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.
SiteGround 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 2019, 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
Customer 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.
SiteGround 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 support system will get you an immediate reply and is available 24 7
- 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’s WordPress hosting
As mentioned earlier, WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world. In addition to powering just under 30% 34% 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 are also available on all plans.
- The SiteGround team keeps an eye out for WordPress vulnerabilities and writes firewall WAF updates to protect you from them.
- Their speed technologies, which were detailed above, are specifically geared toward helping WordPress websites 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’s dominance of the market – SiteGround also is a highly 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 and 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 SiteGround.com.
Because apart from page load times, it’s also important that your website is “up” and available to your visitors. I monitor uptime for SiteGround to see how often they experience outages.
The above screenshot only shows the past 30 days, you can view historical uptime data and server response time at this uptime monitor page.
Reviewing SiteGround’s 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 SiteGround 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.
SiteGround Uptime Guarantee
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 works 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 2020 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.
SiteGround’s Load 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.
SiteGround 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 load 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 their servers do, your users are likely to stay on your site.
Multiple Data Centers
Part of the reason that their servers are so fast is that they offer their clients get access to multiple data centers located at strategic server 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
- Sydney
- Frankfurt
When you sign up for hosting services, you have the opportunity to choose where you want your data to be stored.
Free 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 website 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 have 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 (control panel).
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 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 take a look how their sites are performing.
SiteGround also provides – free of charge – every IP address of all of their data centers. Why does that matter? Because revealing the IP address lets you speed 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 price plans use 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 it 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 advanced 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 WordPress 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 WordPress site migration.
For non-WordPress sites and for those who want expert help. SiteGround’s professional site migration service is done by experts and costs $30 per website.
This paid 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 transfer of one website (regardless of size), as well as the transfer of unlimited email accounts, FTP accounts, addon domains for (for accounts managed with cPanel control panel).
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.
SiteGround Migrator plugin lets you easily transfer a WordPress website from any other hosting provider to SiteGround.
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 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 host is perfect, and there are a few downsides to consider before you make the decision to use SiteGround as your web hosting provider.
SiteGround 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.
However, people who have image/video-heavy sites might have an issue with their storage limitations. They range from 10 GB at the low end to 40 GB 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 take a look and see if one of the plans can accommodate your storage needs.
- StartUp: 10 GB storage (okay for most non-CMS / non-WordPress powered sites)
- GrowBig: 20 GB storage (okay for WordPress / Joomla / Drupal driven sites)
- GoGeek: 40 GB 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 package. So if your website attracts considerable traffic, say more than 3,000 visitors per day, then even the GoGeek 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 altogether, as you are better off with a cloud hosting or VPS plan (they come with many more resources).
Plans and Prices
They offer three different pricing plans for their shared hosting service; Startup, GrowBig, and GoGeek.
SiteGround StartUp
The StartUp plan starts at just $6.99 per month.
- Host 1 website only
- ~ 10,000 monthly visits
- 10 GB disk space
- Essential features:
- SSD storage
- Free setup & site transfer
- 30 day money back guarantee
- 99.9 percent uptime guarantee
- 24/7 tech support
- Unlimited bandwidth, email accounts, 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
In addition to the standard features you get in the StartUp plan, the GrowBig package 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 package starts at $9.99 per month.
- Host unlimited websites
- ~ 25,000 monthly visits
- 20 GB disk 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
With the GoGeek package, you get all the benefits of the StartUp and GrowBig plans, plus geeky advanced features and 4x more resources compared to the StartUp package.
The GoGeek Plan starts at $14.99 per month.
- Host unlimited websites
- ~ 100,000 visits per month
- 40 GB disk 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 package 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 receive 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 hosting packages?
Here is a comparison of StartUp vs. GrowBig, and GrowBig vs. GoGeek.
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 package 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 package you can host unlimited websites). If you intend to run multiple websites hosted on your one hosting account the StartUp plan should be a no-no.
In contrast, the GrowBig plan is better suited for small business website owners and bloggers using WordPress because you get 2x more server resources and a lot more advanced 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 package.
You should consider choosing GrowBig 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 20 GB of web space instead of the 10 GB 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 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 package.
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 package 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 40 GB of web storage instead of the 20 GB 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 SiteGround shared plans offer and you are now hopefully in a better position to choose the best shared hosting plans 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.
What is SiteGround.com?
Does SiteGround have a money-back guarantee?
What payment methods does SiteGround accept?
Do I get to choose a datacenter location?
Does SiteGround offer free website migration?
Will SiteGround do backups of my website?
What is SiteGround’s uptime guarantee?
How can I contact Siteground support?
Does SiteGround offer SSL and CDN?
Is SiteGround a good hosting provider for WordPress sites?
Yes. All plans come with fully managed 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% webfree 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)?
Do I need the SG Site Scanner?
Are SiteGround reviews on Reddit and Quora trustworthy?
What is the best SiteGround alternative?
Where can I find a SiteGround coupon code?
How much does SiteGround hosting cost?
Is SiteGround a good hosting company?
They offer shared hosting, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated hosting 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 from the SiteGround team. Here are the main reasons why SiteGround is a good web hosting provider to sign up with.
Speed and uptime
SiteGround hosting plans come with the latest speed technologies such as SSD drives, NGINX, HTTP/2, PHP7 and free CDN with Cloudflare. In other words, if you host your website with them it will load super fast!
Hosting 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 ease of use WordPress managed 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 website transfer service. They also offer managed WooCommerce hosting on PCI-compliant servers. It’s no wonder WordPress.org endorses them!
Support
They provide industry-leading new website account onboarding help, free website transfers, and ongoing assistance and support at any time via phone, live chat, or email. No wonder they consistently achieve nearly 100% customer satisfaction rates!
So .. Do I recommend SiteGround?
Yes – I highly recommend SiteGround.
Especially now that I now use SiteGround (I’m was on GrowBig). Because remember, not very long ago I decided to move this site over to them.
I like SiteGround because they offer very affordable and reliable web hosting 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 options that come packed with extra features and they are usually not one of the cheapest web hosting companies out there.
Nevertheless, their prices right now are matching some of the cheapest hosting competitors in the business (from only $6.99 per month, down from $14.99 a month).
FTC disclosure: To get you the cheapest web hosting price possible, I’ll earn a commission if you decide to purchase through my SiteGround review links.
Review Updates
25/11/2020 – One-click Elementor installation
15/09/2020 – Ultrafast PHP feature added
01/07/2020 – No longer offering free website migrations
18/06/2020 – SiteGround price increase
12/05/2020 – GoGeek comes with 40 GB of storage
04/05/2020 – New server locations: Sydney, Australia and Frankfurt, Germany
12/02/2020 – SiteGround moving to Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
20/01/2020 – Backup options and new control panel dashboard
53 User Reviews for SiteGround
Review sent
Always There to Help
I cannot say enough good things about SiteGround. Their support is amazing, their interface with all of the tools is easy to maneuver. Do not hesitate in switching from a provider that just takes your money. SiteGround's support always help and ALWAYS gets me back up and running.Excellent sales rep
I was looking for a hosting service since I needed to move from Bluehost where my site speed was terrible. Toni M. answered all my questions quickly and in terms which I could understand being new at all of this. She didn't try to oversell and felt genuine all through the process, like she really wanted to help and sell the most suitable options for me. At no point in time did I feel like she was taking me for a ride and squeezing me for everything she could. I have trained sales reps and I know how this works. It took about 25 minutes from when I pressed the chat button until I was a customer and the migrating process had started. I hope the service is as good as that moving forward.Great Service!
We had problems with the 2FA code emails not being received. The guys on the help desk were just brilliant - resolved the issue immediately and without fuss. This service is definitely worth the money - really happy. Oh, we've been with them for a couple of years now and we have never once had an issue before with our site, security, access or anything else. Totally professional service. Lovin' it!No Zone Editing Without A Hosting Plan!
I can't believe it. Why the hell would I renew my domains with Site Ground after discovering that I can't even edit my zone files unless I buy an necessary hosting plan?? This means Site Ground won't let you register a domain and them point it to your own servers! So predatory and far too expensive for far too little functionality. Our relationship is over! Thanks for nothing.Knew Exactly How To Help Me!
Had instructions from Facebook about adding a TXT record to my DNS configuration. No idea how to do that, but I was guided through the whole thing and it was all done and dusted in about 20 minutes. Such a relief to have such pleasant, efficient support when you need it!Super Efficient
Siteground took care of my hosting needs efficiently. From the initial conversation with the sales team on which plan to buy to the migrating of my website from the current host to Siteground. There were detailed instructions provided on how to change the DNS settings and what other things to look out for like the email accounts needed to be created first before I changed the DNS. Kristian from Tech Support helped double checked that my domains were all pointing in the right direction - and went an extra mile to make sure an old domain I had was pointing to the above website as well by parking it. I just love how the team is always proactive. I'm so glad I moved over to Siteground!Sofiya is Patient, Cheerful and Helpful
Sofiya helped me with WP site security via the SG Optimizer. I'll be looking into the SG Optimizer plugin for WordPress tutorial. Our site had no padlock despite an active SSL. In a matter of two clicks, it has a padlock and is secure. Thank you Sofiya! Stay cheerful, patient, helpful and safe!Simply the best
Doesn't matter what you ask them, they are here to help any time with often excessive answers that make you think: Doesn't this guy have any more customers than me? Seriously: One of the best customer oriented support experiences I ever made. They even refunded me an upgrade which isn't covered by their refund policy. Sure, this was an exception and is nothing to count on, but still very mentionable in times when most companies are only thinking about making money, not about the customers.5 Star Service
Pavel delivered 5 star service. I made a billing mistake, he corrected it and helped me to do the thing I was trying to do (migrate one website to another plan). Very happy with Siteground's service.Changed passwords and spam blocking my own domain?
Over the past week I have become gravely concerned about Site Ground after some disastrous failures and blocked domains. All of our emails became unusable when an unknown and unauthorized change to the domain password took place sometime late Friday 9/11/20. The issue was not discovered until Sunday 9/13/20. The Site Ground tech support would not grant our Admin the ability to see IP addresses of users of our account. Stating it would violate the EU's GDPR to do so. On Monday a new tech support person sent over the logs. We still have not found out how the email domain password was altered. Now on Weds 9/16/20 Site Ground's Spam software decided that our dot net and dot com email domains were a spam threat and shut us down (see attached picture). In this global pandemic anything that threatens our ability to use email is a major problem. I need to speak to someone in management at Site Ground. We are losing confidence that SG is provider we can trust.Ultra quick, super friendly and very helpful
I ordered the domain onsgreens.com together with the hosting package. After that i ordered the domain ons-greens.com as well. I wanted the website to listen to both domain names, being ons-greens.com the main one. I got on chat via the Help Center, i was connected immediately and it was solved in a minute. Stunning!The best hosting provider I’ve ever dealt with
I have dealt with Siteground Customer Support many times over the years. They have helped me address issues with a variety of different client sites. I'm a front-end guy so often I mess things up on the backend. Not once has Siteground failed to fix any issue I have ever had. They are by far, the best hosting provider I have ever dealt with and I will continue to push all my future clients over to them.Amazing high-touch technical assistance
I have used Siteground for my last three clients' sites, and it's made my life much easier. Having live chat is so important when I'm on a deadline, and they always solve my issues/questions within minutes.Primo! Perfection!
Kudos for Viktor R. There was a huge problem with my site being used by spammers without my knowledge; he knew right off the bat what might solve the problem, executed a small change on the server end, and it appears it's going to do the job. Could never have figured this out myself (I tried a time or two). Top-notch service.Wow, what great customer service!!
I'm fairly new to Siteground (a GoDaddy refugee) and cannot believe how much better the customer service is. I had a sticky problem that Daniela resolved without so much as blinking. I am so impressed and very happy to be with a hosting company that loves their customer!First Class Service!
I am not at all techy and so when it came to switching my hosting over to Siteground I wasn't looking forward to changing DNS settings and updating MX records. I contacted support via the chat function and from the outset, Elian was patient and supportive. He understood that I didn't really know what I was doing but he stuck with me as I tried to follow his very excellent instructions. I didn't feel rushed and he made me feel as though I was doing a great job. I felt like we were a team. Absolutely amazed by the service I received. Thank you!Wix Domain point to Siteground
Very professional and helpful. They helped me to point my wix domain to siteground account in a minute. Thanks for your support.Best place to start a blog
If you are a blogger or aspiring to be one, you should definetly give Siteground a try. Their servic is built for beginners. Even if you know nothing about websitees and computers, you don't have to worry. Siteground's support team will guide you through any technical problems you might face. They explain everything in simple words and help me out every time. Can't recommend it highly enough.Solid Performance – Subpar Offerings
Great performance and uptime. Those aspects have never been over-emphasized or misrepresented in any review I've ever read. I've always had positive interactions with support too. That said, I feel like I'm paying too much now that they've decided to drop cPanel, which was one of the very few perks of hosting with SG. I've always dealt with the ridiculously low data storage caps because of the aforementioned performance and uptime - and the fact that they had cPanel. They've dropped it in favor of a ludicrously unintuitive management panel of their own creation, where everything is neatly hidden away and takes multiple steps to reach. cPanel may be dated, but everything is right there, only one click away. No searching, no typing, no remembering shortcuts, no creating shortcuts, no multiple tabs, it's just there. I wouldn't mind the new management panel had they structured it more intuitively and maximized workflow, but they didn't - so it isn't. This lightweight panel that saves on resources should have created higher data caps, or lower hosting costs, or open the door to other lower cost (or free) add-ons like domain privacy or the like, but nothing has changed in that regard. It's put me in the position of looking at their competitors, who have slightly lower performance scores, but have a full compliment of features at a noticeable reduction in cost, and without the caps and restrictions. I have to think about my customers too and I'm about to move them.10/10 – Amazing Service
We host multiple websites for us and our clients on Siteground and we have nothing but good things to say about our experience. Not that there haven't been any problems or technical glitchces, but support is always available and ready to help.Speed speed speed
Had my site moved to Google Cloud platform and now it is loading faster than before. SiteGround in my opinion is one of the best web hosts on the market! Sure prices aren't the cheapest but features and support are great, and you get what you pay for!Do not use them!
Do not use them. They are getting greedy and their hosting servers or software are unreliable. When they have an error or bug on their software they just shoot down your website. If yo have a business and do not check your website periodically, you will not even notice, just wondering why you do not make any sales anymore.You can see the difference in speed
When I moved my website to Siteground, I saw a 30% increase in speed on GTMetrix. I saw the speed boost right after I moved my website to Siteground without any optimization.The support team is very helpful
I am a fan of the support team. They are not just quick, but also very helpful. They have taught me, a complete noob, so many new things. The support team is always helpful, polite, and quick. I love Siteground!I have been with Siteground for 4 years
I have been with Siteground for 4 years, and they have been really great. Their customer support and WordPress hosting are simply outstanding! I feel like they always go the extra mile when I need any help. Thanks!!BEWARE OF Siteground support’s sudden magic “poof” trick
BEWARE OF Siteground support's sudden magic "poof" trick. I'm Go Geek account for 3 years prepaid. I am looking at other host now because of this. First year was excellent, but support has tanked, and the SG home page does not show usual notice about COVID-related service congestion, in fact they are still promising and promoting "Our Customer Care team is among the highest-rated support squads online, fast, multi-skilled and helpful." and support is available "24/7 by phone, chat an ticket," Seems a bit misleading and they could have approached this differently and mustered my and other client's support. Now I feel as if I've paid for something I'm just not going to get anymore, which is reason for me to be forced to switch hosting companies. SG might respond to this post, but is that what they need to do right now?? Is it all about controlling a PERCEIVED reputation, instead of just earning it honestly? I'm not angry, but I have to think of the sites we have and the business we are starting. I am glad this happened before our first ite went live. We can switch hosts without disruption to our visitors. It's likely that switching will be permanent because set up is not time-consuming and we want a long-term relationship hosting company. We wanted that all along and that's why we went 3 year "Go Geek" plan. In any business, it really is hard to earn someone's trust back. And now the service is markedly obstructive compared to what is was pre-COVID. When I request service, I'm no longer given usual page with option for ticket or chat. Instead the support page says this: "Recently, we have been receiving a significant number of support inquiries - both service and non-service-related ones. While we are doing our best to address everything that comes our way, we’re simply not able to attend to every issue. That is why we would like to remind you that the scope of our support includes all service issues regarding website, email, and domain’s availability and proper functioning, but does not include application setup, problematic code and database queries, among others. As a result of the high load, we have temporarily streamlined the support process to increase the problem resolution efficiency and give priority to the following: Service unavailability If your site, email or domain name is not working, please report it here. Report a service issue. Malfunctioning of our tools and interfaces. Please report bugs in our tools preventing you from using our hosting as intended here. Report a bug. For all other issues, we recommend the following: If your site is having a problem after a change you have made, please use backup recovery. If you need information on how to use our tools, please start by checking our extensive Knowledge base. We have step by step tutorials that will help effectively. If you have a problem with your WordPress site, such as plugin incompatibility, application settings, slow performance (usually due to slow queries or too many plugins), or similar, it is best if you contact a professional developer. You may check our partners at Codeable if you don’t have one already. Please note that your service issue reports will be reviewed, but if the reported issue is not a result of a malfunction in our systems, we will not be able to help with it at the moment." Do I have impossibly high standards to want what was promised and delivered until it suddenly wasn't? To be fare, this kind of change could be contractually cool, but it just isn't good for my business and it does shake my faith in the brand and their reputation--it's kind of surprising to see them do something like this. I think the competitive environment is brutal for host companies, but again I'm not angry, just disappointed because we have to go through all the trouble of moving. Many companies make decisions that don't help them and they recover, so too may SG. (But SG will do that with the money we've given them for time we won't use.) Expensive lesson but a valuable one. But since we're going to start looking for other hosts today, SG will probably have to move forward without us. ricky mayNot what I signed up for
I created my first website with Siteground about 4 years ago and I have been a customer ever since. In the last few months, I have been seeing a slow decline decline in the quality of their service.Their customer support was what attracted me to the service and what has kept me around but now it seems to be getting a lot slower with time. I used to get fast responses every time I hit them up. But now, it takes a couple of minutes before I receive a response. The support team solves problems but it is getting slower by the day.Better than most web hosts
Have been with them since 2013. Unlike most other web hosts, Siteground offers what they promise. Unlike my previous web hosting, my site now actually loads up fast and doesn't go down when i receive a traffic surge. I recommend this service very much.Great if you work with clients
I am a web developer and I work with dozens of clients every year. Managing client sites has always been a pain in my ass. I love the fact that Siteground takes care of upgrading your WordPress websites for you. The best part is they test new updates before they push them to all the sites on their servers. But the pricing is a bit high.interested in Siteground host plans
Hello. Like you, I’m also starting as a freelance web designer, building websites for my clients. I would like to have an advice. I’m interested in Siteground host plans but i’m not sure about what plan i should choose to host my client’s websites. Should I have my own GrowBig plan and host there all my client’s websites ou should I choose StartUp plan and host them individually? ThanksSiteground is the best option
Before Siteground, I hosted all my websites with Bluehost. Their services were okay, but Sitegroud is soooo much better. Most web hosts have so many issues and slow your website down. But Siteground is fast, reliable and has an amazingly helpful support team. If you are furstrated from slow support response times or slow site speed, just move over to Siteground.Great support available all the time
Siteground’s support is one of the best experiences I have had in this industry. You can reach their support team any time via live chat. They have solved a lot of technical problems for me. They took their time but they fixed the problems. I highly recommend Siteground for anyone who isn’t a tech geek.Amazing experience with Siteground
We are from codigeeks.com It was an amazing experience with Siteground. Installation was smooth and completed within 1 hour. Support was great and we highly recommend Sitegronud. First, we had a conversation with the sales team and it was superb and we immediately purchased the plan with siteground. We have never seen such service before. Simple Awesome.These people are thieves
These people are thieves, they renewed my 'subscription' for 163 USD a YEAR after I cancelled my service with them. DO NOT TRUST THEM!Perfect for a beginner
If you don't want to waste your time learning how web technologies work, just sign up for Siteground. I love it that all my websites get a free SSL, fast support, free email, and daily backups. The only thing I don't like is the email client. It's too basic.Patient and helpful support
This is the first time I have created a website and Siteground support team has been very helpful and patient with me. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!Couldn’t be any easier
Most of my clients are eCommerce businesses. Installing and managing WooCommerce and WordPress couldn't be any easier. The best part is their support team is always available to help you out. Some of my clients prefer Magento or Prestoshop, both are available for install from the cPanel.I just moved over to SiteGround from GoDaddy
I just moved over to SiteGround from GoDaddy and I can't believe I didn't do that sooner. SiteGround is SO. MUCH. BETTER. Just wanted to give my 2 centsSo much faster than our previous web hosting service provider
We saw a huge boost in the loading speed of our website as soon as we migrated it over to Siteground. I love the free extras such as built-in caching, free email address on your own domain, etc. Everything seems to be going great. We have seen zero downtime. But the quality of customer support, at least in our experience, didn't match the raving reviews we read about the service on review sites.couldn’t be happier!
I am not a technical person. The great thing is that almost everything is done for you automatically and the things that you need to change have tutorials or support helped me out in no time at all. I have been with them for four months now and couldn't be happier!I am moving my site away from SiteGround
I am moving my site away from SiteGround this weekend. For 3 months I kept telling them that my site was not pci compliant because of open ports and only tls 1.0 . For 2 months they kept sending me these reports saying there were AND that all ports were tls 1.5. Well after 2 months they finally "upgraded" my support level and was told many ports are only tls 1.0 and there are many open ports. I had to hire a third party to investigate this and go back and tell Site Ground. Very disappointing support.Confused
Why do you need to transfer your domain? Just update the DNS on your domain provider. Please don't blame a good company with your ignorance.Wish I would have gone to siteground
I have had a terrible experience with godaddy, and have a useless, slow website I pre-paid for, and didn't ask for a refund soon enough. Wish I would have gone to siteground. I found out after the fact from someone how much better it is.massive renewal price hike
I have also been recommending SiteGround for the last few years but not since their massive price hike in June which happened with no warning.Great review!
Great review. Would you happen to have any data/benchmarks/speedtests comparing gogeek and cloud hosting? I'm thinking of switching over our e-commerce website, but I just can't find any comparison of the same website being loaded on gogeek and cloud.Excellent help from Safeground (10/10)
Hi. I just want to point out something new I discovered when signing up with Siteground recently. I was looking for hosting and domain registry in Europe. Only after signing up did I realise Domain registry is carried out by one of their partners. In my case the ''domain name and related services ordered through SiteGround Hosting Ltd. are provided by Tucows Inc'' (based in America). I wasn't too pleased about that. So I spoke with Safeground (Konstantin K & Ivan S) and I will use one of their other Domain providers which OpenProvider based in Holland. Siteground use 3 Registrars for all our domains - TUCOWS, OpenProvider and ENOM (US based owned by Tucow). I haven't done extensive research but I'm sure this is not clear on their site and I didn't see this in any of the reviews. Apart from that very excellent help from Safeground (10/10)! Michael . . .Start with “Grow Big”
Good Review. I'm from Papua New Guinea. Currently researching on which website hosting service to use. This gives me confident to choose siteground, probably have to start with "Grow Big".I am in love with SiteGround too!!
I am in love with SiteGround too!! I can highly recommend them to everyone. I use siteground for my own websites as well for my clients, and I never had any issues whatsoever.TTFB would probably be slower on SiteGround
TTFB would probably be slower on SiteGround than some other hosts. TTFB is a little misleading as it's not the first byte of the page, but the first byte of the HTTP request. A lot can affect this, like compression on an NGINX web server (which is SiteGround). I'd pay more attention to the overall performance of your site with tools like Pingdom or GTmetrix.I don’t know what happened in the past few months
I don't know what happened in the past few months. I have been a Siteground customer for over three years now and I had never had a problem and only had good words for the service. But these past few months, my site has gottten a lot slower than it used to be when I first signed up. The customer support is fast and helpful but hasn't been able to solve my problem yet. I don't if anyone else is also facing this same issue.Good for someone who is based in Canada?
Hi! Great review, especially since I am trying to figure out a good host for a blog I'm planning. Do you think SiteGround is still a good option for someone who is based in Canada? So far seems like a way better option than BlueHost (which I'm greatly considering even though I've read some terrible reviews).Should I get Grow Big or should I get Go Geek?
Good review but you've made me even more confused :) I can't decide which plan I need for my e-commerce dropshipping site, should I get Grow Big or should I get Go Geek? Please help!Now I have to check out SiteGround :-)
Now I have to check out SiteGround :-) Thanks for doing this and having a thorough look at SiteGround