SiteGround is considered as one of the best web hosting companies on the market today by everyone, left, right and center. But c’mon, can they really be THAT good? Seriously!
Well that’s exactly what this SiteGround hosting review aims to find out.
I’ll admit that I was a bit sceptical 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.
Overwhelmingly positive SiteGround reviews on Twitter
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. I have set up a test site using the default WordPress theme and 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.
- How much does SiteGround 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 SiteGround?
- Which is the best plan for WordPress sites?
- Will SiteGround take automatic backups of my site?
- Does it come with 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.
What you’ll learn
- Main features
Here I’ll cover the main features and what SG’s web hosting services come with.
- List of pros & cons
Here I’ll go into more detail and cover what the pros and cons are (or jump straight to the pros or cons).
- Hosting plans & prices
Here I’ll cover plans and prices and what the features are for each plan.
- Do I Recommend SiteGround?
Here I’ll tell you if it’s a web host I recommend (hint: yes I do) or are you 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 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)
WPhosting Facebook Group
This SiteGround review (September 2018 update) will discuss the primary features and talk about why you should consider using it for your hosting needs.
About SiteGround
- SiteGround was founded in 2004 its headquarters is 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 included with managed WordPress hosting.
- Free SSD drives come included on all shared hosting plans.
- Servers are powered by PHP7, HTTP/2 and NGINX+ caching
- Offers free SSL certificate (Let’s Encrypt) and CloudFlare CDN.
- Also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Website: https://www.siteground.com
Now let’s dive into the review ..
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.
Byte Check is a tool that measures time to first byte (TTFB). It’s a measurement of the responsiveness of a web server.
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 to SiteGround. 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.
They take site speed seriously. They are always working on new technology to help improve their sites’ 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 to 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, SiteGround also makes 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. 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 SiteGround is not.
- 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 sends reports to notify you of the results. That’s one of the things that users love about their web hosting service.
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.
They are a company that prides themself on client support. They make customer service a priority and it shows in their reviews and the loyalty of their clients.
The fact is that their response times leave their competitors in the dust. The average response time for a ticket for their closest competitor is 44 minutes – but SiteGround’s response time is just eight minutes.
They offer three ways to get support:
- 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 – 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 SiteGround 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.
SiteGround comes with managed WordPress hosting that is packed with great features:
For that reason, it’s very important to choose a web host that supports WordPress – and SiteGround does. 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.
Their SuperCacher plugin is exclusive to SG users, and it’s a built-in caching plugin that increases the number of hits your site can handle which in return speeds up your website loading time.
The StartUp plan comes with static caching only, and the GrowBig and GoGeek plans come with both static, dynamic and memcache caching. Here’s an explanation what the difference is.
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 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
Pros and Cons of SiteGround
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 – not surprising, given their commitment to excellence.
The Pros
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 a 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 to resolve it.
To put it 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 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 on the whole have speeded 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 SiteGround, you’ll need to make sure to have a regular backup system in place. However, in the event that your backup fails, they have you covered.
They do 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.
They give you 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 (only on GrowBig and GoGeek plans).
Hosting backup is 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 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 security, and one of the biggest benefits of choosing SiteGround 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.
Customer support is truly unparalleled. As mentioned earlier, you can get live chat or telephone support. 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 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).
- Sign up for SiteGround hosting
- Login to your Customer Area
- 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 SiteGround Migrator.
You simply install their new Migrator plugin on your WordPress site to get started. By 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
No web hosting company is perfect, and there are a few downsides to consider before you make the decision to use them 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 the 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 is a limit of how much resources your site is allowed to use per month. The potential problem here is if you go over, and overuse this limit, then they may put your site on hold until the next month when your monthly allowance is reset.
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 than 3,000 visitors per day, then even the GoGeek plans 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 (come with much 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 days 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, you receive 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, you get more 2x more resources (resulting in a faster loading website) than the StartUp plan.
SiteGround 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 & restorate service
- 4x server resources
- 4x database resources
- 4x email resources
The GoGeek plan is for heavily-visited or resource-intensive websites and 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 get premium website backup and restore service, and you also get 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 on offer. 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, 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 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 you get a lot more features compared to the StartUp plan.
GrowBig lets you host multiple websites, use the Supercacher static (StartUp only offers static), dynamic and memcache caching technology, and you get a free wildcard SSL. Another feature which the StartUp plan lacks is backup and restore functionality. The GrowBig plan comes with basic backup and restore service.
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 handholding 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 design before publishing changes on your live site. Another feature is Git which comes preinstalled and lets you create repositories of your website.
Finally GoGeek comes with their premium website backup and restore service, and you also get 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 about SiteGround.
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 good for WordPress hosting?
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.
Does SiteGround come with Solid State Drives (SSDs)?
Do I need the SG Site Scanner?
Are reviews on Reddit and Quora trustworthy?
What is the best SiteGround alternative?
Where can I find a SiteGround coupon code?
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 inhouse tech solutions!
WordPress
They offer managed WordPress hosting on all their plans, that 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 onboarding help, free website transfer and ongoing assistance and support at any time via phone, chat or email. No wonder they consistently achieve nearly 100% customer satisfaction rates!
So .. Do I recommend SiteGround?
Yes – I highly recommend SiteGround.
In fact so much that I now use SiteGround (I’m on the GrowBig plan), because 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, far outweighed by the upsides.
Provided that your site don’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.
FTC disclosure: To get you the cheapest price possible, I’ll earn a commission if you decide to purchase through my links.
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.
Hi Neil,
We’re sorry to hear you no longer will be recommending our services.
Regarding hosting renewal, please note that it is on our regular prices which are public and visible both on our website sales pages, and in the User Area on our renewal and new hosting accounts order forms. In addition, approximately a month prior to the expiration date of your account we send you a notification reminder that your renewal is coming up listing the rates. In case you choose to renew your account for a longer period we can offer you a discount of up to 30%.
It is true that some prices have been updated lately and this is happening after long period of keeping them without change even though we included a lot of value-adding features to our packages over the past several years like free WordPress migrator tool, free SSL certificate, anti-bot system on server level, integration of the latest speed technologies and PHP versions. Charging the regular prices allows us to continue to deliver high-quality hosting and develop new features to improve the experience for our customers.
Regards,
SiteGround Team
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 . . .
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.
I would like to leave this review about SiteGround,
Don’t waste your money with SiteGround, their supposed customer service is a joke! I signed up with them yesterday and while chatting with a service agent and explaining to her my situation she suggested which plan to sign up with she answered my questions and even helped me with the website transfer. Well today I wake up ready to start getting my site started I find out that transfer of a website is different than transfer of a domain and that I have to pay an extra $16, which no $16 won’t break the bank but what kind of site does this. I clearly explained to the representative while I was signing up that my domain was on a different hosting site that I hadn’t even signed up for hosting for that domain. She NEVER told me that I would need to pay to transfer the domain, even while setting up my site I was led to believe both transfers were the same. Then after speaking to two representatives I’m told I don’t need to transfer but can still just run hosting using SiteGround, WHY is it taking two representatives and my getting very upset to find this out? And then finally the manager after I tell him I will be writing this negative review offers to comp the service for me. Seriously? First of all just explain from the beginning what is needed and don’t expect everyone to know everything about website hosting and to know the difference between transfer of a website and domain, secondly offer solutions right off the bat not after you have an angry customer. And don’t let your last resort be customer service that should be the first thing you try.
Lesson learned: Save yourself a headache and just go with a different hosting site that actually values you and won’t take advantage of you.
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 cents
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.
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.
Hi:
Been using siteground on my first ( small blog) site for almost 7 months. ( grow big). Ironically, the ONLY problem I have with them is a semi- daily TTFB slowness which, theoretically, should not happen so often.
They say “Go GeeK” should help this but… Im not ‘ totally’ confident of this promise. If I could get a deal or $30 month plan with Managed KINSTA , I might go for it even as I’m just starting out.
What’s your experience with Siteground’s TTFB responses??
Thanks
Howard
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.
(not sure if my last message was sent)
Hello Lisa. Like you i’m also starting as a freelance webdesigner, building sites for my clients. WordPress sites like blogs and landing pages. At the moment i need an advice related to Siteground host plans. Should I host my client’s websites individually on a StartUp plan or should I host my client’s websites on my GrowBig plan? Thanks
Hi Sofia… apologies for my (very) late reply. That’s great to hear that you’re starting your own webdesign biz. Personally I would setup client’s websites on individual plans like StartUp
Hello Lisa. 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 StarUp plan and host them individually? Thanks
Can a website I have on ipower be moved to your hosting?
Hi Heidi… I’m pretty sure iPower is using the vDeck control panel and SiteGround is using cPanel. Because it’s not cPanel to cPanel migration SiteGround can only transfer the files and databases of your site, not your e-mail accounts and other account settings. I hope this helps. BTW SiteGround rocks! 🙂
Hi Lisa,
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.
Hi Pieter, sorry I don’t as I haven’t tried out SG’s cloud offering (yet). This won’t be unbiased as they want you as a customer but have you tried reaching out to SiteGround’s pre-sale support and asking for benchmarks?
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”.
These people are thieves, they renewed my ‘subscription’ for 163 USD a YEAR after I cancelled my service with them. DO NOT TRUST THEM!
I’m sorry to hear that David. Did you contact SG billing support and ask them why they did that?
Hi David,
We were sorry to hear you were not satisfied with our services. We checked on your case with the renewal payment and we can see our representative has issued a refund for the charge on the same day, May 20th, when you have contacted us about the issue.
Please note our renewal system works automatically and renews purchased services for the convenience of our clients and to prevent downtime for their websites, unless the customers have specified otherwise in their accounts. In addition to that we send 4 notifications prior to charging the amount, and there is also a notice in the client area about upcoming expiration date. Since there has been no response or cancellation we received from you, your account was renewed as scheduled.
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).
Thanks very much Allyson. If I were you I would choose SiteGround over Bluehost, and when signing up I would pick Chicago as the server location. Good luck with your blog!
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!
I would pick the Grow Big or Go Geek plan (probably the latter if you are going to accept online payments and need pci compliance). Good luck!
Now I have to check out SiteGround 🙂 Thanks for doing this and having a thorough look at SiteGround Lisa
Thanks Liz, glad to hear you like it and if you have any questions don’t be shy to reach out